Chapter 387: Two Certificates of Effectiveness

At 7:50, she came downstairs. The exhaust fan in the kitchen was roaring, and He Xiufen was dropping two handfuls of noodles into the pot at once.

"So early."

"Nine o'clock at the Intermediate Court."

"Eat first." He Xiufen set one bowl on her table and left the other by the stove, then reached for it and set her hand back down. "I'll let this one cool."

She sat and ate her bowl, nudging the fried egg to the rim to cool, then pushing it back into the broth. When she finished, she carried the bowl to the stove and He Xiufen took it from her hands.

"I'm going."

"Come back for lunch." He Xiufen said. "Two bowls at noon. I'll keep an eye out."

At 8:50, only two of the windows at the Intermediate Court's filing division were open. There was a line at Window No. 3: a man hugging a cardboard box sealed with three strips of tape, and another hauling a woven sack with a plastic file folder poking out the top. The man in front slid a stack of papers through, and the clerk inside said, "You'll need an extra Service Address Confirmation Form." He set the box on the floor and crouched to rummage through it. She edged half a step aside and pulled the receipt slip from the file. The corners had been handled so many times they'd gone soft.

"What are you here for?"

"Picking up a certificate of effectiveness for a judgment. Application submitted April 26. Surname Shen."

The woman clerk pushed her glasses up her nose and flipped open a hardcover register, tracing down line by line with her finger until she stopped at one. "Qinghe... Qingshi Village, that one?"

"Yes."

"Receipt slip."

She passed the slip through. The clerk checked it, then held out her hand again. "Practice certificate."

She opened the dark blue-covered certificate and slid it over. The clerk looked at the photo, the name, the issue date, then pushed it back and drew two sheets of paper from the drawer. The paper was stiff, with a heading at the top, a paragraph in the middle, and a red seal at the end pressed deep enough to leave a shallow indentation.

The clerk wrote a word in the upper-right corner of each sheet: "Original" on one, "Duplicate" on the other. Then she pressed the seal onto the signature block, closed the ink pad box.

"Effective April 24." She said. "The judgment was served in court on April 8. The appeal period ended on the 23rd. No appeal filed. Sign down here, and write the date."

She signed and wrote "April 29." Only after signing did she read the two pages through: cause of action, parties, the operative part of the judgment, every item accounted for. The sentence in the middle she read twice—the judgment was issued on April 8 and took legal effect on April 24; the seal at the bottom belonged to the filing division.

"Can the duplicate be submitted to a court?"

"Of course. The duplicate's for you to use. Keep the original for yourself." The clerk said. "Both are stamped. Whoever sees them won't be looking at blank paper."

"End of month, you'll still check the mail, right?"

"We will." She closed the register. "If a notice of appeal with a postmark before the 23rd arrives, the certificate we issued has to come back. I'll call you if anything comes up."

"I'll remember that."

"Better that no one makes that call." She was already reaching for the next person's materials.

At 9:05, at the print shop across from the Intermediate Court, photocopies cost fifty cents a page. The owner laid the original flat on the glass, flipped the lid down, and a sliver of white light leaked from the edge. The copy came out thinner than the original, the print a shade lighter, but the seal still red. She counted them—one copy—and said no when he asked if she wanted it stapled. She set the money on the counter and slipped the page into the file.

At 10:10, she was back at the firm. The sound of chopping drifted up the stairwell, steady as a metronome. She laid the two certificates side by side on her desk, then pulled out the copy of the judgment from the file and checked the two deadlines once more: thirty days, 180 days, both calculated from the effective date. Once verified, she set one certificate on her left and tucked the other beneath Ge Xiaoyu's stack. The Intermediate Court had kept the receipt slip, so that slot in the Qingshi Village file sat empty; she filled it with the photocopy of the certificate and smoothed it flat.

Li Huilan was on the phone by the window, one hand cupped over the receiver. "...October 15 through the 23rd last year, seven transactions, all at your branch. Please read back the times and window numbers for the counter transactions, I'll write them down... yes, I'm only writing on paper." She hung up and turned around. "I'll send the statement request over this afternoon. Five of the seven visits line up with the times he came to pick her up; one was half an hour early, one half an hour late."

"The ones that line up are the hand. The ones that don't—that's someone knowing where the money was going." Shen Zhixia said.

"That's what I think too." Li Huilan said. "Old Kan got word back from the Enforcement Bureau this morning—they're looking into it. The son from the fifty-nine-year-old's case, I'll make another call this afternoon."

At noon, she went downstairs. Two bowls of noodles sat on the counter, and the table by the door had been wiped down several times.

"You got it?"

"Got it." She'd brought the left-hand certificate downstairs and passed it across the table.

He Xiufen wiped her hands on her apron twice before taking it. She turned the paper over and read it line by line, and at the end she looked at the seal longer than she'd looked at any of the words.

"So it's settled now?"

"Settled."

"Judgment came down April 8, and it took twenty-one days to get this piece of paper." He Xiufen handed it back and wiped her hand on the apron again. "Tomorrow at nine, Chengxi?"

"Nine."

"I'll have your breakfast ready earlier." She added, "Once you've filed it, come back and tell me."

"Even if I tell you, you'll know anyway."

"Knowing isn't the same as hearing it from you." He Xiufen placed the chopsticks by her hand. "Your noodles are going to clump. Eat."

At 2:00, Cai Qingru came up from the lane, a pen pinned to the strap of her canvas bag. She set the bag on the corner of Shen Zhixia's desk and pulled out the supervision form.

"The overflow pipe's still there." She said. "I went out this morning. The water in No. 3 Pond is half a foot below the pipe mouth. Once the weather warms up and the pond fills, it'll run into the ditch the same as before."

"Until May 24, that's twenty-five days." Lu Jibai said from across the desk.

"Twenty-five days." Cai Qingru unfolded the form. "What do I put for the effective date?"

"April 24." Shen Zhixia pushed the certificate toward her. "Here's the proof. This one goes to the Center."

Cai Qingru read the certificate through first, top to bottom, before taking the pen from her bag and filling in the date in the "Effective Date" box. She wrote slowly; when she finished, she lifted her finger off that box before moving to the next.

"The thirty-day box—"

"May 24." Lu Jibai said. "The 180-day box: October 21. Don't write 'within thirty days' on the form. Write the exact date."

"Exact date." She filled both boxes, then signed her name in the "Inspector" column and wrote her organization beneath it.

"The replanting quantity confirmer box—don't sign until the replanting is done." Shen Zhixia said. "The person counting seedlings has to be present and count them before putting pen to paper. He signs, then we fill it in."

"The people from the provincial capital will meet at the Intermediate Court gate that day." Cai Qingru said. "I'll drive to the lane and pick you up around eight." She clicked the pen cap on and glanced at Lu Jibai. "Is Attorney Lu coming?"

"I'll stay at the firm." He said. "The proposal still has one round to go—the defendant gets to submit comments."

"I'll go with Director Cai." Shen Zhixia said.

Cai Qingru folded the form into thirds and tucked it back into her canvas bag. When she stood, she pushed the chair back a little more gently than she had to.

"Who signs the 'Post-Rain Re-inspection' line?"

"The Center signs once, the firm signs once. Both names in the box." Shen Zhixia said.

"The Center's just me and one girl. When we can't cover it all, I'll call you." Cai Qingru slung the bag onto her shoulder. "Filing the child's case tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, nine."

"Once it's filed, I'll pass the word to his grandmother." She said. "This form of yours is so detailed my hand was shaking when I filled it out. One wrong box and two months of monitoring goes to waste."

[Thud. The Qingshi Village case—three items remain: the ditch, the money, and a signed acceptance by one party.]

She heard it, and nudged the certificate another half inch toward Cai Qingru's hand.

At 4:00, Lu Jibai closed the copy of the Qinghe proposal and turned around, focused only on tomorrow: "Three copies of the complaint—two for the court, one for the firm. The evidence list follows today's order. The certificate of effectiveness goes after the judgment, not in the middle."

"I'll adjust it accordingly."

"If the window issues the Notice of Case Acceptance and the fee notice on the spot, copy the dates into your notebook right there." He said. "The filing fee is due within seven days, counting from the day after you receive the notice."

"The slip has a QR code. I called Ge Changlin—he said he'll pay online." She said. "I'll get the screenshot from him when it's done."

"Write down the exact time he pays." He said, then bent over his papers and drew a horizontal line in the margin with a pencil.

At 5:00, she gathered up Ge Xiaoyu's stack and packed it into the old cloth document bag. The zipper was half broken and wouldn't close, so she fastened a paper clip at the top. She flipped the desk calendar to the box for the 30th and wrote: 9:00, Chengxi.

At 8:00 that evening, the lamp at home was pulled low. She took the papers out of the document bag one by one, checking against the evidence list: each line, she pulled the page out and compared. The power of attorney Ge Changlin signed back—two creases across the paper, a fingerprint pressed beside the signature, the ridges clear and distinct. The household register copy showing the child, one child on the page. The follow-up test report dated April 22—147—she paused over this one a moment. The last line was the page that only existed as of today, the red seal showing a darker ring under the lamp.

Checkmark after checkmark. The last one pressed harder than all the rest, the pen tip punching a small depression into the paper.

Zhi'an came out of the inner room for water and stood at the desk, looking at the stamped page.

"This is the seal?"

"Mm."

"Tomorrow it all rests on this?"

"Tomorrow it gets us through the door." She said. "After that, it rests on the pages inside."

"File it and the judge rules?"

"First we see if they accept the case. If they do, they schedule a date. The hearing comes later."

"How much later?"

"I don't know." She clicked the pen cap on. "It'll take as long as it takes."

Zhi'an set the cup by her hand and stood looking at the paper a while longer. "The writing's pretty big."

"The seal's big too."

He carried his water back to his room. The door wasn't shut all the way—a gap the width of a finger let out a line of light.

She put the papers back in the document bag in their original order, the complaint on top, the paper clip back on, the bag opening facing inward, squared up. On the corner of the desk stood the stack of notebooks; Volume Eight was askew, sticking out half a finger's width beyond the others. She reached over and pushed it straight, flush with the stack. She didn't open it.

She turned to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote at the top: April 29. A line beneath: Two certificates of effectiveness. One to Qinghe, one with the filing materials. One photocopy kept at the firm.

One more line: April 30, 9:00, Chengxi District Court. Bring practice certificate.

She reached to turn off the lamp, her hand pausing on the switch. The room went dark, and the stack of notebooks sat perfectly even.