Chapter 438: The Mailbox

July 26, 4:20 p.m. The fan on the second floor swiveled toward her, but the air it moved was still hot. The Qinghe supervision form lay spread on her desk; the "Replanting Quantity Confirmer" column was still blank. Her pen touched the paper and a tiny dot of ink bled into it.

Her phone rang beside the pen holder. She knew the number on the screen—the one she'd copied digit by digit into her notebook back on April 26, without saving a name.

She set her pen down before answering.

"Lawyer Shen."

"Lawyer Han."

Paper rustled faintly on the other end. "People from the Intermediate Court came by Hengzheng." He paused. "You're moving faster than your father did."

The fan swung back toward the wall, lifting a corner of the form, then pressing it down again. Someone outside the alley was hawking watermelons, dragging the last syllable long.

"Anything else, Lawyer Han?"

"No."

She hung up. The screen went dark, reflecting the patch of sky outside the window—white with heat.

The inner office door was half open. Lu Jibai came out to refill his water, glanced at the phone in her hand as he passed her desk, didn't ask, and went back with his cup. The door clicked almost shut again.

She flipped her notebook to the July page. The bottom half still sat blank under those few lines. She added the date and time, copied his two sentences down verbatim. When she finished, the nib still rested on the paper. She looked at those words—moving faster. He hadn't said handling it faster.

Hengzheng had received the notice on the 22nd. Four days. He'd spent half a lifetime in that building; no paper moved in or out without him knowing.

She turned back to the May 13 page and glanced at it. A single line was copied there: Think for yourself who'll be first to step into the light when this comes out. She read it, closed the notebook, and pushed it into the drawer.

[Thud. This round: no entry.]

She bent back over the form. Her pen hovered over the "Replanting Quantity" box three times, and three times she lifted it. In the end she set the pen down and went downstairs.

Two tables were already occupied in the noodle shop. He Xiufen was scooping noodles from the pot; she lifted them with long chopsticks, shook off the water, and her voice came through the steam: "Nobody else is upstairs. Take that bowl up."

"Leave it. I'll eat later." Shen Zhixia leaned against the counter. "Han Chongli just called."

He Xiufen's hand stilled, noodles suspended over the pot. "What did he say."

"That the Intermediate Court people had been by Hengzheng. That I'm moving faster than my father did."

He Xiufen dropped the noodles into a bowl, poured a ladle of broth over them, pushed it toward her, then wiped her hands on her apron.

"He's counting the days," she said. "With a man like him, every extra word is one he's giving you."

"I can't give him the reaction he wants."

"Then don't." He Xiufen nudged the bowl another half inch toward her. "Are you afraid."

"No. I've never taken a cent from him."

"Then eat." She turned back to wiping the stove. "It's no good once it sits."

Shen Zhixia carried the bowl upstairs. The corner of the stairwell had a patch of wall blackened by stove smoke, same as the day she'd first arrived.

July 28, 10 a.m. Cai Qingru's call came in, wind from trucks passing an intersection in the background.

"Lawyer Shen, the money's arrived."

"How much."

"Four hundred sixty thousand, to the cent, into the Intermediate Court account. Came in this morning. I checked twice; the decimals match." She sounded like she'd just walked a stretch of road. "The appraisal fee was refunded too—Qinghe issued the receipt, the Center signed. Both items in the judgment: settled."

"How long to move it out."

"Have to wait for the court's process." Cai Qingru said. "The money's in their account; I'm just waiting to receive, not pushing. Last time we sealed that ditch, we didn't push either."

"And the ditch?"

"I came along it today. They're dredging the bottom sediment on that lower stretch—excavator's in, spoil piled on the slope under green mesh." She paused. "Auntie Chai stood by the ditch all morning without moving. I told her the money arrived. She said 'arrived is arrived,' then turned back to watch the excavator."

"The replanting column?"

"The seedlings aren't all up yet; can't count them. Once they grow in, I'll fill the form. Whoever does the measuring, I sign their name, date after the name."

"Okay."

After hanging up, she recounted the dates on the bottom rows of the supervision form. One hundred eighty days ran to October 21; from today, eighty-five days left. In those eighty-five days, the excavator had to push from one stretch to the next, the seedlings had to break through the soil, Cai Qingru had to come back three more times and sign at the bottom of the form each time, and the inspectors had to stamp the final box.

Money in the account was one thing. The ditch repaired was another. Only when both were done would this case truly be done.

[Thud. Four hundred sixty thousand: arrived.]

She slipped the form into the green-covered folder, pressed it flat, and set it on the second shelf.

July 29 to August 4, the firm ran as usual.

On the afternoon of July 29, Li Huilan came back from outside, dropped her bag on the desk, and said the opposing counsel in Lao Kan's case had called: the second payment was set for late August. "It's not that they won't pay—it's the queue. Their finance department only processes one batch a month." She unscrewed her cup and took a sip. "He's bound to call this evening and ask."

Sure enough, evening came. Li Huilan wedged the receiver against her shoulder and, flipping through the file, recited the dates to him. Then she recited them again. Finally she said: "Write it on paper, not on your cigarette pack."

The other end said something. She laughed once and hung up.

"What did he say?" Shen Zhixia asked.

"He said there's room on his cigarette pack." Li Huilan set the receiver back. "Also said he wasn't rushing me, told me not to get harsh with their side. I told him I don't get harsh; I just push paper."

On the morning of the 30th, an appointment letter came down from the Legal Aid Center: a day laborer who'd had his foot crushed on a construction site. The labor contractor had run off; the company was in Chengdong. The wage sheets were on the injured man's own phone, and he hadn't managed to export a single screenshot. Li Huilan clipped the letter into the file and said she could handle this one alone—she'd just need to stake out the company's front door twice, see what time people clocked in and what time they held meetings.

"How's the foot," He Xiufen called up the stairs.

"Seven stitches. He's lying low in a rental. The landlord won't even renew the lease." Li Huilan said.

He Xiufen cursed quietly downstairs, and after cursing brought up a bowl of edamame, sat down on the old wooden chair under the window, and shelled them all afternoon.

On the 31st, Li Huilan did go stake out the place. She came back and wrote in her notebook: 8:20 people in, 8:40 meeting, at noon someone came out to buy cigarettes. When she was done, she turned the notebook around for Shen Zhixia to read. "See? They're more punctual than we are."

"Next step?"

"Next step, I sit in their front office until someone comes out to take my documents." She closed the notebook. "That little guy's leg can't wait."

On August 1, Lu Jibai set the revised Qinghe form on the corner of her desk.

"The replanting column—who measured, what day, at which spot. Write it out clearly," he said. "Have the person who measured sign. Don't just write the unit name."

"Alright."

He withdrew his hand from the desk and went back to the inner office. The aisle between the two desks: neither of them took an extra step across it.

On the afternoon of August 2, she recalculated the Intermediate Court timeline. Case filed for review on June 24; three months, to September 24. In those three months the court could tell her to file at the Chengnan District Court, could send the case down for trial, or could try it themselves—she had all three lines on the notice slip memorized, and none of them said how long it would take.

She dialed the Intermediate Court's number, looked at it for a while, and set the phone face down on the desk.

He Xiufen came upstairs to collect dishes and stopped. "Any mail?"

"No."

"Paper doesn't chase people; people wait on paper." He Xiufen stacked the plates. "The year your dad waited for one piece of paper at the courthouse gates, he waited until dark, came home and said the court was under pressure, so many cases."

"I know."

"Then stop dialing those numbers so often." She carried the plates downstairs. "Dialing doesn't make it come."

That night Shen Zhixia went home. Zhi'an had left dinner in the pot, a bowl inverted over the lid. He sat at the desk doing homework and looked up. "Jie, any news from that side?"

"No."

"Oh." He lowered his head. His pen paused on the paper. "When there is, tell me. Don't read it all yourself first and then tell me."

"Okay."

She set the bowl on the table, sat down, and had eaten half before remembering she'd skipped lunch.

On August 3, Tang Guo called to ask if she could film the repaired stretch of Qinghe's ditch. "People keep asking in my comments—three times now. They want to know how that village turned out."

"You can film the ditch," she said. "No children, no house numbers."

"I get it." A fan whirred in the background on Tang Guo's end. "I'm not posting it yet. I'll wait until you say post."

"I didn't say you couldn't post."

"I'll still wait."

After hanging up, she sat in her chair for a while. The daylight outside was sinking; the scallion-oil smell from downstairs had already risen.

On the morning of August 4, she went over the events of the 20th once more in her notebook. Every question Judge Zhuo had asked, she'd written on paper: Who gave it, what day it was given, how it came into possession. She checked each item against those three again, line by line. At the last line she'd written: Recording disc, Pang Chunlai, July 1, forty-two minutes, recorded by myself.

Then she stood and opened the metal cabinet. The box on the bottom shelf was still there—hard drive, notarial certificate, appraisal opinion letter, each in its original position, untouched. She pushed it back and locked up.

That afternoon, she dialed Pang Chunlai's senior phone. On the last digit, her hand pulled away.

What she wanted to ask was tiny—small talk, really. Whether he'd had any trouble on the 21st, the day the court people went up the mountain. But asking that one question would mean making an uninvolved old man worry on her behalf, adding one more thing for his son to carry at the factory.

She set the phone face down.

At 6 p.m. she closed out the files and shut the windows one by one. He Xiufen called from downstairs: "Coming tomorrow for noodles?"

"Yes."

She locked the second-floor door; the two keys on the ring clinked together. The tin mailbox hung on the wall by the stairwell landing, not replaced in twenty-some years. A slip of old paper on its front read "Zhengping Law Firm," the characters bubbled and curling at the edges from damp. Court letters had once been stuffed in there, letters from the Center, and in those years, the Bar Association's annual inspection notices.

She pulled open the little door.

Empty inside. A thin layer of dust at the bottom, and in the back corner, a dried-out mosquito. She reached in and felt around, came out with a hand full of dust, pressed the door back until the brass latch clicked.

The System said nothing.