Chapter 472: A Different Bowl

During the half-hour recess at 15:50, He Xiufen didn't leave her seat. She flipped the handwritten pages over and back, added two lines at the bottom of the second page, then pressed the corners flat with her thumbnail.

Shen Zhixia spread her notebook on the table. A folded piece of paper was tucked inside that page, a half-line of writing showing at its edge. She closed the notebook and rested both hands on the table's edge.

At 16:20, the court clerk turned the hearing record to a fresh page. The presiding judge announced that the court investigation had concluded and court debate would now begin, with the petitioner speaking first.

He Xiufen stood, opened the handwritten pages, and read to the bottom of the second page. She flipped the third page over and pressed it down, then picked up from the back. That page she neither turned upward nor read aloud.

"The original defendant said one thing in another courtroom: 'The signature on that report is mine. I have nothing else to say.'" She paused. "The thing he wouldn't say — someone said it for him today."

"He confessed. What he confessed to was something he never did."

"We ask the collegial panel to find him not guilty according to law."

She sat down, the pages pressed beneath her hand, never raised again.

Someone in the second row of the gallery leaned forward, then settled back.

Prosecutor Ke opened the case file and read slowly. The original judgment found that the original defendant had provided a falsified water-sample test report, based on the re-test done at Qingyuan. Existing evidence now showed that the material for that re-test had been out of its seal the night before submission, and had been tampered with. The original of the re-test was authenticated as genuine, and its conclusions matched the one the original defendant had submitted that year. The original defendant's confession was corroborated by no other evidence in the case file.

He finished reading and closed the file. "The original judgment's factual findings are unclear and the evidence insufficient. We recommend that the judgment be revised according to law."

Someone's shoe sole scraped against the floor in the gallery. Auntie Wang tilted her head, and Cen Hong leaned in to repeat the words by her ear. Auntie Wang nodded once, her hand pressing down on her knee.

The chair at the defendant's bench still stood where it had been. A patch of paint near the top of the backrest had chipped away, exposing the pale wood beneath.

The presiding judge asked both sides whether they had anything further to add. He Xiufen said nothing further. Prosecutor Ke said nothing further.

At 17:30, the presiding judge said that since the original defendant was deceased, for the final statement, the close relatives were invited to speak.

She stood. The notebook stayed closed. That line on the inside cover—she'd copied it out many times, and today she could recite it without turning a page.

"My father wrote on the inside cover of his notebook: 'Evidence speaks for itself.'"

"Evidence doesn't." She raised her head. "People speak for it."

"Today, the people who spoke for it — all of them came."

The courtroom fell quiet. The presiding judge said it would be entered into the record. She sat down.

At 17:50, the presiding judge announced that the hearing was concluded and that the panel would deliberate and announce the judgment at a later date. The bailiff stepped over and pushed the chair at the defendant's bench half a foot further under the table.

The court clerk carried the hearing record over to the table beside the defense bench. He Xiufen turned the pages one by one. She first went to the second witness's section and pressed a finger to one line: "Is this line recorded in full — 'I came back on my own.'" The clerk said it was fully recorded. She turned to the third witness's section. "This line is verbatim." The clerk said it was recorded as spoken. He Xiufen signed, dated it, and passed the pen over.

She turned to her own statements, reviewing page by page, then signed and wrote the date: October 26. The prosecution side signed as well. The clerk gathered the record back up, the paper edge knocking against the table corner with a sound.

When they left the courtroom, the gallery hadn't fully emptied. The far end of the last row by the door was already vacant. Zhi'an stood waiting for her at the aisle entrance, Tang Guo behind him, bag in hand, phone still unpowered inside.

By 18:30, the sky outside the courthouse had gone fully dark. Ma Jianjun tucked his helmet under one arm, pulled out his phone, and typed a line into the group chat: Done for the day. He slid the phone back into his pocket and said, "Lawyer Shen, we're heading back. Evening shift."

"Take it slow on the road."

Peng Weidong came down the steps, said "I'm on day shift tomorrow," wiped his hand against his pant leg before extending it. She shook it.

Kang Wenying pushed through the crowd and thrust a plastic bag of tangerines into her arms. "Take them." She turned and went down the steps on her own, walking fast.

He Xiufen put the defense statement back into her bag, the pages still clipped together, the third page pressed to the very bottom. "Everything that needed to be said was said today," she said. "What's left is out of our hands."

The court's car was parked below the steps, the rear door open. Pang Chunlai's son stood by the door, one hand supporting his father's elbow, helping him up. Once settled, the old man rolled down the window.

"Shen Qian's daughter."

"When there's word, I'll call you."

"I'll wait for word." He rolled the window back up, the glass rising to the top. Behind it, he nodded to her once.

Cen Hong helped Auntie Wang down the steps, and they stopped in front of her. Auntie Wang reached out, found her hand, and squeezed it.

"My ears are bad. I couldn't hear everything." Auntie Wang said, "But that report he read out — the one with my husband's signature on it — I heard that."

"I've noted it."

Shi Lei came over asking if they needed a ride. Cen Hong said no, they'd walk on their own.

Only then did Tang Guo take her phone out and power it on. "I didn't film anything." She put the phone back, raised her head, and looked at the courthouse door. "That door — I'll be walking through it again."

She stood on the steps and looked back. The lights inside were still on, and someone was mopping the corridor.

October 27, business as usual at the firm. Around ten o'clock, Li Huilan passed by her desk and glanced at her writing. "That pen's out of ink. Swap the refill." Her hand stopped. She set the pen down and fished a different one from the drawer. Li Huilan looked at her for a beat, didn't ask, and carried her tea cup back to her own desk.

That afternoon, a woman sat across from her asking about unpaid wages. She talked for forty minutes; Shen Zhixia filled two pages of notes and told her where to go to file the forms. After the woman left, she turned the notebook to a fresh page and wrote at the top: October 26, in court. Below it: Three witnesses, all spoke. The next line down she left blank.

At noon on October 28, the noodle shop was crowded, and she sat at the inner table. A man at the next table pushed his bowl forward: "Boss, this bowl's gone cold. Give me another." He Xiufen answered from the stove: "Cold, you say? Then it gets replaced. I don't serve cold noodles to my customers."

She looked up.

That word had followed her for three days. Every time someone opened their mouth, it jumped out on its own. By the third day it jumped slower, but it still hadn't left. She'd told no one about it.

At ten o'clock on October 29, the court clerk called He Xiufen. She answered with a few "mm"s and said "Got it," then hung up.

"The trial period's been extended."

"Extended to when?"

"Three months isn't enough. The law allows an extension, up to six months total. Written notice will follow."

He Xiufen nudged the desk calendar forward. "The panel needs to read all those papers before they dare put down a signature. Can you wait?"

"I can wait."

"Don't just sit around while you wait." He Xiufen lifted her eyes to her. "Verdict or no verdict, that's up to the panel. But there's one thing left in your hands, and you're the only one who can do it."

She didn't ask which one.

On October 30, she didn't go to the firm. She cleared the table, set her notebook on the left, and stacked letter paper on the right. First she set herself a rule: put nothing on the page except what could be seen and checked against paper — what was said in court, written exactly as the record showed; whatever no one saw and no page corroborated, she wouldn't add a single word.

The first page began with who she was: the complainant, Shen Zhixia, daughter of the original defendant, Shen Qian. The next line gave the name of the accused. Then the facts.

That night nine years ago, she wrote it as the first witness testified in court: both cardboard boxes were sealed by him, and the samples spent the night in the village committee office. The next morning, around seven-fifty, he carried the second box. The box opening faced him directly; the new tape's seam was on the right, overlapping the old tear; the old staple holes were still there, the new staple holes one finger-width away. At ten-ten the same morning, they were delivered to Qingyuan, and the person receiving the samples counted twelve. The checkmark in the seal column on the handover form — it wasn't made by the sample submitter.

On the morning of February 24, at the Qingshi Village sampling site, the defendant's counsel asked the appraiser whether a seal tag, once torn off, could be stuck back on. She noted the exact time: 11:52. That same night, that batch of samples spent the night in the village committee's archive room. Before dawn on February 25, the entire batch was swapped and the seal tags were counterfeited. On March 3, the district bureau opened a case for suspected aiding in the destruction and fabrication of evidence. To this day, not a single person has been named.

On August 10, around 23:10, a car drove to Baixi Village and picked up an elderly man. The car had been arranged by someone in management at the plant, paid in cash up front. He was given twenty thousand yuan, told it was for medical treatment, and placed in an old dormitory compound in the north part of the city, with instructions not to return to the village before the trial. The car took the road toward town. On September 29, his son went to the town police station and reported it himself.

On the afternoon of October 26, the third witness said two sentences in the retrial courtroom: he didn't know the person who'd received the samples, and he'd never seen that handover form. She even wrote down where he was standing: the witness stand.

Halfway through the third page, she got up and pulled the window half shut. A smear of ink appeared across the back of her hand. She looked at it, didn't wipe it, and kept writing.

There was one spot she wrote three times and crossed out three times. What should have gone down on the page was that one word; what she wrote instead was "tampered with." What had been tampered with, who did it, when—she wrote line by line exactly as it was said in court, not one extra sentence.

For that night nine years ago, she started a new paragraph: Please examine according to law.

The request section she revised four times. She didn't write "he ordered the swap." She wrote "please investigate and determine according to law."

A little after 21:00, Zhi'an came out of the inner room for water and set a glass on her right. "Sis, don't stay up too late." She said, "Mm." He stood there a while, looked at the pages spread across the table, then went back to his room, the door left not quite shut.

At 22:00, the fourth page was done. She laid the four pages out and read them from the top, then flipped back to the very first line to check for any miswritten character. There was none. She signed at the bottom of the final page and wrote the date: October 31.

She took the folded piece of paper from her notebook. The crease had gone soft with age. She opened it and looked at that one line:

On the morning of March 21, did you speak on the phone with the person at Qingyuan who received the samples?

She folded it back exactly as it had been, tucked it into the same page of the notebook, and closed the notebook, resting it on top of the four pages.

The complaint did not contain it.

Outside the window, a car passed through the lane. Its headlights swept across the top half of the desk, and then were gone.