Chapter 376: The Packing Staple

April 17, 9:00 p.m. The last scooter sound in the alley turned the corner and faded. In the inner room, Zhi'an was writing. Each time he filled a page and flipped it over, the paper rustled clearly.

To the right of the desk sat the stack of notebooks, nine volumes, the first still wrapped in those two sheets of old newspaper. She lifted them one by one from the top, stacking them on her left. Only after she'd moved the eight volumes above it did she pull out Volume Seven from the very bottom.

Blue cloth cover, faded to gray-blue, one corner curled with a crease worn in by years of handling. The small characters on the spine sat in shadow under the lamp: December 2016 – March 2017.

On the night of April 7, at the bottom of the stairs, she'd said one thing: Once the judgment comes down, I'll open Volume Seven. In the nine days since the judgment, it had been nothing but other people's business.

The paper bag on the corner of the desk still held two steamed buns, cold now, the bag's opening rolled shut. She got up, put the buns in the pot, added half a ladle of water, turned the flame low, and came back to sit down.

First she pulled the index page from the top of Volume One and looked it over. Four columns, nine rows, the first six rows filled in. For Volume Seven's row, the start and end dates and page count were all copied, but the last column—what case it contained—was empty. Volumes Eight and Nine were the same: everything filled except the final column.

She tucked the index back in, placed Volume Seven directly under the lamp, and opened the cover.

On the title page, near the top, a line was written: Baixi Village, well water. The characters were small and dense, the horizontal strokes finishing with an inward hook.

December's pages were Baixi Village in winter. The paper was more brittle than the earlier volumes; it crackled as she turned the pages.

At the top of a page, a date and time: December 17, 9:00 a.m. Below it, three people, one paragraph each—which household, how they walked up, how many li of mountain road, how many in the family, which side of the yard the well was on. By the third person, the strokes were heavier than before, as if he'd paused for breath and started again.

He'd recorded what each well looked like: the coping built knee-high; the well rope glossy with wear; some wells not in the yard but outside the wall, requiring half a circle's walk to draw water. In one page corner, an added line: Third well water muddy, don't drink yet.

The livestock column was brief: two pigs, one cow, none. After one household, an extra line: Sold the cow, for the child's medical care.

After one paragraph, half a line squeezed in at the edge: Her husband stood inside the door, didn't come out to greet us. After it, a new line added: Didn't dare let him stand at the doorway.

She recognized that way of cramming words in. Volume One had it too—when the writing reached the edge, stroke pressed against stroke, squeezed up half a line, the spacing still generous, nothing spared.

When she was little, he'd taught her to write, saying the horizontal strokes should finish with a small inward hook. Doesn't have to be pretty; it has to be legible. Back then she'd thought he was too fussy.

Further on came the preparation for the lawsuit: household counts, name lists, every well numbered. One page had half a map drawn on it—the village entrance, the primary school, the road up the mountain, a dozen or more wells, connected by horizontal lines and marked One, Two, Three. Down the margin, a vertical line: See Volume Three.

She pushed her own notebook to the left, letting the lamplight fall fully on the book.

A sound from the inner-room door. Zhi'an came out to get water and stopped at the desk, watching.

"Dad's notebook?"

"Mm."

"Your eyes are red."

"The lamp."

He stood holding his cup for a while, turned it half a turn in his hands. "Want me to pour you some water?"

"No."

"I'll head back in, then."

"I won't be home for dinner tomorrow night."

"I'll make noodles."

He carried the cup back into the inner room, pulled the door shut, leaving a crack. The light through the crack went out a moment later.

The clock sat on the corner of the desk. She glanced up: 11:10 p.m.

The middle pages she turned slowly. The January entries recorded delivering materials to the court: how many trips, which pages were sent back, the surname of the clerk at the intake window. Early February began the first batch of samples, each number copied down one after another, all the way to the bottom of the page, where he'd written: I'll deliver. The window receives. Signed in my name.

That line was written fast, the strokes connecting, the horizontal ends missing their inward hooks. She'd copied those first-batch numbers before—on the report photocopy at the bottom of the cardboard box, the numbers began exactly the same way.

The March pages were softer than the earlier ones, the corners curled harder; she needed two fingers to hold them flat as she turned.

This section had ruled lines, one table per page: head of household, well location, livestock, family size, and a final column for children. The children were recorded in the most detail: age, which leg, whether they refused to take off their shoes. Under some names, an added line: cramps at night. Under others, just: refuses to remove shoes. And then nothing. More blank space than writing.

She dragged the cardboard box out from under the bed. The old address on the lid had long been blurred by water. She pushed the lid back with her knee, felt inside, and took out the hardcover notebook. The two books lay open on the desk, one left, one right.

On the hardcover's title page, the line was still there: Evidence speaks for itself. The ink was dark, written once, then traced over.

She pressed her hand over that line for a moment, then turned to the Baixi Village section.

The interview forms existed in both books—same column headings, same order. Under "legs," the same two lines: complains of leg pain, refuses to remove shoes. Below the hardcover's form, at the bottom of the page with the sample numbers, there was a calculation error, crossed out and rewritten, with a small note in the margin. On the same page in Volume Seven, there was also a correction, struck through with equal weight.

Neither had been torn out.

She turned further. At the top of a page: March 20. Beneath it, one sentence per line, the characters even more cramped than before:

"Second batch, twelve samples. Two cardboard boxes, small plastic buckets inside."

"Samples left overnight in the village committee office."

After those lines, the rest of the page was empty. She turned. The first line of the next page read:

"Early morning, March 21. Samples collected and delivered to Qingyuan."

"Sample-delivery intern: Lu Jibai."

Her eyes stopped on that line.

The characters were written very straight, each stroke set down fully, no connecting flow. Her father wrote names casually, always brushing past them, but at this point he'd slowed down. The vertical stroke on the right side of "Lu" was drawn long, the finish clean.

Below it, one more line:

"The packing staple sealing the cardboard box cut his knuckle. He didn't make a sound. I gave him a Band-Aid."

Heat rose from the lampshade. Her hand rested on the paper, motionless; beneath her fingers, the paper felt slightly damp. Her feet were cold.

She pressed her fingertip onto that name. The paper was thin; the pen strokes pushed through from the other side. In the hardcover notebook, there was a name struck through with a single line, beside it a note: He didn't dare speak. This place had no strikethrough.

Last winter, on the three stone steps outside the noodle shop, the lamp above had thrown a strip of white light. She'd turned his hand over—an old scar across the knuckle. She asked where it came from. He said a box cut it nine years ago, when he was moving things. She asked what kind of box. Paper box, he said. She said: Tell me properly someday.

The conversation had stopped there. Neither of them had pressed further.

Earlier still, in August, the night Tang Guo's case was announced, under the same lamp by the door, he'd said another thing: Nine years ago he signed another piece of paper, and to this day he still recognized the handwriting as his own. She'd assumed at the time it was another matter whose day hadn't yet come.

That February on the stairwell, she'd asked why he was so afraid of samples spending the night outside. He said: Once a sample spends the night outside, no one can say where it was during the night.

Back when they were still opponents, he'd said: Your father believed evidence speaks for itself. It doesn't. She'd taken it as a jab, nothing more.

In March, the day she copied three batches of sample numbers onto two pages of lists, he'd stood beside her looking at the second-batch section. He looked for a long time, his finger moving down the page line by line, twice, and he never touched a single page of that hardcover notebook.

On the day of the judgment, the System had given her three things. The second was called the sample delivery record. She'd always imagined that item was hidden in Qingyuan's archives, in a sealed steel cabinet with a seal strip on it—something to be found, notarized, identified.

For a moment, she thought it was written on this very page. But the words were her father's handwriting, not Qingyuan's seal.

She flipped back to check: on the other pages, the margins held small notes—see Volume this or that. These two pages had empty margins.

Move the bulb too close and it burns your hand. She pushed the lamp back an inch; the words on the page receded into shadow. Those two lines still stood.

She closed Volume Seven.

Only then did she hear the night sounds: someone pushing a cart downstairs, the iron gate bumping; a distant bus, its sound stretching long and then dropping away; water running through the pipes in the wall.

The water in her cup was gone; the bottom was cold. She stood to wash the cup at the sink, and on the way back, passing the doorway, she stopped. Outside the building entrance, the sound-activated light caught a gust of wind, lit for a second, then went out.

She didn't open the window or go downstairs.

Steam rose in the kitchen; the buns were heated through. She took one, broke it open, ate half, and left the other half on the pot lid.

She came back and sat, and opened Volume Seven again.

That line was still there. Under "Sample-delivery intern: Lu Jibai"—the packing staple and the Band-Aid.

The second reading was slower than the first, slowing most at those final words. Her father recorded cases and never recorded the injuries on people's hands. What he kept was dates, times, names, wells, legs, which batch, which sample number—anything beyond that he left out. The packing staple and the Band-Aid didn't belong to his system. At that point, his hand had hesitated half a beat and written it down anyway.

She held the two lines up to the light again. The name wasn't crossed out, and no mark of erasure bled through from the back.

She smoothed the corners of both pages, touched that name once more with her fingertip, then drew her hand back.

The hardcover notebook stayed on the desk too, both books lying open side by side—one new, one old.

Then she turned to her own page, pulled off the pen cap, and held the tip above the paper.

It hovered. After a while, she pushed the cap back on and closed the notebook.

She wrote nothing.

Her hand came off the paper and rested on her knee, a red line pressed into her palm.

She sat, waiting for the sound of a gavel.

Nothing came.

11:40 p.m. Her phone lit up on the edge of the desk. The screen showed one line: You asleep?

She looked at the line.

Replied: Asleep.

She sent it, then set the phone face-down on the open pages, screen pressing against the two spread sheets.

Tomorrow evening, seven o'clock, downstairs, at the door. He Xiufen had said she'd save two bowls of noodles. He said he'd read it.

Her father had written it on paper before he could read it aloud.

Tomorrow she had a question to ask, the one she'd mentioned on those three stone steps last winter: You read it. I'll ask everything at once. If he can't answer, she'd make a note.

What came next was in the volume after this one. She didn't reach for Volume Eight. She left it where it was.

The face-down screen lit once more, a sliver of white leaking from the seam, then dimmed. She hadn't turned off the lamp; the thin dust on the shade felt warm.

As the window glass slowly whitened, those two pages still lay spread under the light. She didn't close them.