Chapter 384: The Date I'll Set

April 26, 8:20 a.m., second floor of Zhengping Firm.

Three pieces of paper were laid out across the desk: the original Qinghe Power of Attorney with the seal stamped, a photocopy of her practice certificate, and a photocopy of the proof of service. The date on the proof of service was April 8. The corners had gone fuzzy from how many times she'd turned the page over.

The steel cabinet door slid open and shut again. In the Qingshi Village bag, the complaint for Ge Xiaoyu's case lay where she'd left it, the legal representative field filled in to match the corporate registry. The only thing still missing: a certificate of effectiveness.

She flipped the notebook to the Qingshi Village page. Two dates were noted there: May 24 and October 21. With her pencil she drew a circle next to May 24—the lead was blunt, so she went over it three times before the line finally closed. Next to October 21 she drew three circles, one right after another. Thirty days a circle, a hundred eighty days three circles—Chai Guizhi's rule, because circles were the shape she could read. Drawn in the notebook for her too.

Under the notebook sat a photocopy: the index page, four columns. Before leaving that morning she'd pulled it from the drawer and pressed it under the corner of the desk without saying why.

Li Huilan passed the door, thermos in hand.

"Headed to the Intermediate Court?"

"Nine o'clock."

"All three documents ready?"

"Ready."

"The fifty-nine-year-old case," Li Huilan set the thermos on the windowsill, "the court called this morning. Mediation's set for May 11. The son called back and said he'd come."

"Good that he's coming."

"His mother said: the three hundred yuan matters less than him showing up."

"Then let him sit inside the room. Not out in the hallway."

"That bench in the hallway—anyone who's sat on it knows how cold it is." Li Huilan lifted the thermos and headed toward the inner office. At the door she turned. "Straight back after you file? Noodles come up at noon. They don't wait."

"I'll be back."

Li Huilan went downstairs.

Nine o'clock sharp, the filing window at the Intermediate People's Court. The glass had a service guide taped to it, the print bleached pale by the sun. She took a number. Two people stood ahead of her—one hugging a cardboard box, the other clutching a stack of contracts.

The one with the box leaned over to ask which floor filing was on. The woman inside the window pointed toward the stairs. "Third floor. You still get your number here."

The one with the contracts smoothed each page flat one by one. On the third page, he suddenly turned to her. "Do I need to make a copy of this?"

"Three copies," she said. "The notice of acceptance, the proof of service, and the effective judgment. Bring all three."

He nodded and folded his contracts back up.

Her turn. The woman inside the window took the three documents, checking page by page, then looked up. "Plaintiff's agent?"

"Yes."

"Effective April 24, correct?"

"Correct."

"I'll call you once it's verified. Two or three days."

"Could it be done today—"

"Can't." The woman squared the stack. "The certificate only issues after the handling office confirms."

She took back her practice certificate, accepted a receipt slip, thanked the woman, and stepped half a pace back to clear the way.

By the time she came out, the sun had already warmed the front steps. She stood a moment beside the row of bicycles near the gate, folded the receipt slip twice, and tucked it into the case file. The slip bore only a filing date and a stamp. Nothing else.

Back at the firm by ten twenty.

Two new things sat on her desk. One was the first draft of Qinghe's remediation plan, held together with a paper clip, its edges as straight as if knife-cut. The other was a note, two lines: "Emails checked. Nothing." Signed below with a single character: "Lu."

She folded the note in half and slid it into the Qingshi Village bag, pressing down twice, but it wouldn't lie flat. On the notebook, beneath the line reading "No notice of appeal filed—check next week," she added: April 26, emails checked, nothing.

Lu Jibai came out of the inner office and set a cup on the corner of her desk, a scrap of paper underneath it as a coaster.

"The draft's on your desk," he said.

"I saw it."

"The third-party assessor's two pages are attached at the front. I arranged them according to their template. The page where you wrote 'why this can't be used' is on top. I didn't touch your wording."

"Thanks."

"The certificate of effectiveness."

"Materials accepted. Waiting for a call, two or three days."

"Keep the receipt slip. You'll need to attach a copy when you file the private-interest suit."

"I've got it. Bring one copy of the judgment, plus one more photocopy."

He picked up her cup, carried it to the thermos, dumped the half-cup of cold water, topped it with hot, and set it back where it had been. Then he sat down. The pencil on his paper never stopped moving.

She opened the draft. Page one: the heading, the matter, the scope of remediation. Page two: itemized procedures. Page three, a table attached at the back—this plot replanted with how many, how many survived, who would inspect. On page two there was a phrase, "additional inspection after rain." She made a mark beside it with her pencil, then erased it.

After erasing, she turned back to page one and circled the sentence: "Remediation to be completed within one hundred eighty days."

"The start date needs to be clear," she said.

Lu Jibai looked up.

"Write 'commencing from the effective date.'" She turned the paper toward him. "If it's not written down, when it comes time to count days, they'll start from day one."

"I'll change it." He pressed the pencil tip below that sentence and added a half line.

"The table too." She flipped to page three. "This column only has space for the inspector's signature. There's no one signing for how many were replanted in each plot. The replanting numbers are the plan's own claims. Someone has to sign for them."

"Who signs?"

"Whoever wrote the plan signs. If the Center just stamps a seal, that box stays blank."

"The photo captions need changing too." He pulled the paper half an inch toward himself. "Right now it just says 'ditch (scene).' Might as well write nothing. It needs the location—the name the villagers use, with 'as called by villagers' in parentheses."

"Match the notarial certificate."

"He'll match it. When it comes time to cross-examine, all three names have to point to the same place."

Noon. Footsteps on the stairs.

He Xiufen came up carrying a tray with two bowls of noodles. One she set on the outer edge of Shen Zhixia's desk, the other on Lu Jibai's. Two bowls, a desk-width apart.

"Broth's from this morning, simmered till now." He Xiufen said. "Don't leave any."

"Director He." Shen Zhixia called out.

"Yeah?"

"Nothing. I'll run down this afternoon and buy printer paper."

"Buy whatever you need. There's still two fingers thick of paper in the cabinet. Use that first."

He Xiufen looked at the two bowls, then at the two people each occupying their own desk. She asked nothing further and went back downstairs. At the stair landing she paused. "I'm going to the market early tomorrow. Tell me if you need anything." No one answered, so she went down.

Halfway through the noodles, Shen Zhixia set her chopsticks down and pushed the rest to the side of the bowl.

At 2:50 p.m., she pulled up Cai Qingru's number, meaning to ask how many days counted as "after rain." The number sat on the screen, not yet dialed.

At 3:20 p.m., the phone rang.

A number she didn't have saved. She picked up the phone, stood, and walked to the stair landing before answering.

"Hello."

"Shen Lawyer. This is Han Chongli."

The wooden railing had a layer of dust. Swept that morning, already settled again. She placed her hand on it.

It was very quiet on the other end—quiet enough to tell the windows were shut. Once, in the middle, came the soft sound of a glass meeting a desktop.

"Congratulations," he said. "The judgment has taken effect."

"Thank you."

"Your father's case." He paused, and the pause was exactly long enough for her to hear how the words "your father" came out of his mouth. "There are things I'd like to say to you in person."

She didn't respond.

"You set the date. I'll wait for your call."

Downstairs, someone dragged a plastic stool against the wall, scraping the floor over and over. The noodle shop door stood open; the vinegar bottle on the table nearest the door gleamed in the light.

"Once I've decided, I'll call you," she said.

"Good."

He said nothing more. A few seconds later, the dial tone.

She stood at the landing, the phone still pressed to her ear, the call timer on the screen ticking one more digit before it cut off. She lowered the phone and looked at the number.

The whole call—he hadn't mentioned the appeal, hadn't mentioned Hengyue, hadn't mentioned the three who'd been arrested, hadn't mentioned Lawyer Lu. He'd called her Shen Lawyer, in the same tone as that "congratulations" on the courthouse steps back on April 8.

[Thud. This call—no entry in the ledger.]

She put the phone in her pocket. On the railing, a faint print from her hand marked the dust. She rubbed at it with the back of her hand, but it didn't come clean.

At 3:30 p.m., she went back inside and opened the notebook to a fresh page. At the top, the way her father always did it, she wrote the date and time first: April 26, 3:20 p.m. Below that: Han Chongli called, requests a meeting, date mine to set. Below that, she copied out the number, digit by digit.

The penpoint stopped after "date mine to set." A dot of ink bled into the paper, and she didn't add a date above it.

She wrote the line on a blank page. She didn't attach it to the Qingshi Village page.

Lu Jibai looked up. He was looking at the phone in her hand, the screen still lit with the call log.

"That sentence on page two," he said. "If you think it's too harsh, cross it out."

"It's not harsh."

He set his pencil down and asked nothing else.

She flipped the notebook over, covering the page dated the 24th—the page where, beneath "That Night," one line still sat empty. That empty line remained unfilled even today.

The words on the steps back on April 8, she'd never answered them: If your father could see you, he'd say this complaint of yours is better written than his. She hadn't answered then, and she had no intention of answering today. When he said "your father," she'd simply stopped there.

At 5:20 p.m., she looked over the table on page three of the draft one more time. In the space left beside "signatory," she added in pencil: Confirmer of replanting quantity. When she finished, she sharpened her pencil and emptied the shavings into the wastebasket, doing it thoroughly—not a single scrap left on the desk.

At 5:30 p.m., Lu Jibai gathered the pages on his desk into a folder and stood.

"I'm going down," he said.

"Yeah."

He walked to the landing, paused a moment without turning, and went downstairs.

At 5:40 p.m., the exhaust fan kicked on, the sound traveling up from the floor below, pressing against the window glass. He Xiufen called out from in front of the stove: "Dinner."

A moment later, she called again: "Noodles are down, two bowls."

No one else was upstairs. The old wooden chair under the window sat empty, its armrests worn bright. The photocopied index on the corner of the desk lay open—four columns, the page numbers filled in for Volume Seven's row, the last box still blank, the corner of the paper curling up.

She closed the notebook and set it on top of that paper.

She didn't go down.