Chapter 496: Happy New Year

At three in the afternoon on December 27th, the radiator on the second floor knocked and rattled, then fell quiet, then started again.

Li Huilan sat at her desk checking a stack of legal aid papers, marking page numbers in red pen along the margins. Shen Zhixia pulled the case intake register down from the bottom shelf of the bookcase—blue cloth spine, hard cover, corners worn soft. This ledger had been in use since December 30th of the previous year. The first line of the first page was written by Lu Jibai, the date column filled in with "December 30, 2026," every vertical stroke perfectly straight.

She flipped to the August page.

August 24th. The visitor column read "Shen Zhixia." The matter column was in He Xiufen's handwriting: "Shen Qian, criminal retrial, defense." Handler: He Xiufen. The fee column had a horizontal line drawn through it. Everything after sat blank.

She uncapped her pen, set the cap on the end, and didn't write.

She also pulled the kraft-paper archive box down from the top of the bookcase. The old registers were inside, pages stiff and brittle when turned. She flipped to the last page with writing on it: the result and case-closure columns were both in He Xiufen's hand, dated December 29, 2026—the Kang family matter. Flipping back, line after line, the ink shades varied, but the way the strokes connected never changed.

Li Huilan glanced up. "The closure column?"

"The handler is Director He."

"Then wait for her to come up." Li Huilan lowered her head again and let the red pen travel a short stretch across the page, then added suddenly, "In the cases I've handled, who fills in the columns and who does the running are never two different things."

Shen Zhixia clicked the cap back on and turned first to her own ledger entries. On the December 17th page, she had listed nine trips for Sun Guilan's matter, with a blank space after the ninth. Today she added two more lines in the margin: bus fare six yuan round trip, keep the ticket; two loads with no paper—dates still need to be asked. When she finished, she pulled the register back in front of her and laid her hand flat on the page.

At sixteen forty, He Xiufen came upstairs for the empty thermos.

The thermos sat beside the chair. She stood at the desk and looked at the ledger, asked nothing, and simply said, "Fill it in."

"The handler is you."

"The handler is me." He Xiufen slid both hands into the pockets of her padded vest. "I handled this one, but from filing the petition to going up to Baixi Village, you did the running on every trip. This time, you write it."

"That column has always been written by the handler personally."

"I can see that." He Xiufen shifted half a step closer. "I've filled it in for twenty-odd years. This time I'm handing you the pen. There'll be more of this kind of thing from now on."

Shen Zhixia lowered her head and wrote in the closure column: December 11th, took effect.

The ink bled slightly into the paper. She turned the register toward the window and blew on it. The writing in this line was smaller than all the surrounding entries.

Before closing the register, she flipped forward two more pages. The December 17th row: visitor Sun Guilan, matter "vegetable payment," handler Shen Zhixia herself, fee column blank, closure column blank. One column filled, one empty, in the same register, just a few pages apart.

"That one gets filled in slowly." He Xiufen picked up the thermos.

"Mm."

He Xiufen reached the stairs, then turned back. "Your father's case—write the closure date as the effective date, not the judgment date."

"I know."

"I know you know." She went downstairs.

Li Huilan capped the red pen and leaned back in her chair. "The case I closed that year—after the column was filled in, the person still came back to ask about it three times. The column is for the firm's eyes."

"When they come back to ask, who's that for?"

Li Huilan smiled faintly. "For themselves."

She snapped the archive box shut and pushed it back to the top of the bookcase, the palm of her hand coming away coated in dust.

On December 29th at sixteen hundred hours, she wrote "Three Questions to Ask" on a fresh page.

Following her father's format: the date and time at the top of the page, one item per line below.

The two loads with no paper—what day they were delivered, how many pounds, who was present.

The young man loading the trucks in the shed—what's his surname, when was he in the shed, will he talk.

That ledger—what's recorded in it, who wrote it, does it record anyone else.

At the third line, she lifted the pen. Sun Guilan had said the last time that man reached out to grab it, she'd pressed it against her chest and refused to hand it over—and someone else had been in the shed when he reached. She set the pen back down and added a line: who saw him reach for it.

The phone rang in the inner office.

It rang only twice before stopping—he picked up fast. The room went quiet for half a minute. The door opened, and Lu Jibai stood in the doorway, a pen still in his hand.

"The Bar Association," he said. "Disciplinary Committee, deliberation on January 11th."

Li Huilan set down her red pen. "Do they want someone present?"

"No. They deliberate, then send a piece of paper over."

He Xiufen sat in the old wooden chair under the window, folding the rag in her hands once. "That kind of paper comes slow. A slow paper is a steady paper."

"Ten-odd days from now." Li Huilan said, "After New Year's, it's the first thing."

"The first thing is boiling water." He Xiufen said.

Lu Jibai stood there a moment longer. "The defense statement was filed in August. Everything that needed to be said is in it."

"Then we wait for that piece of paper." He Xiufen said.

He nodded and didn't go back to the inner office right away. He looked at the page on her desk. "Auntie Sun's matter?"

"After the New Year, I'll start by asking the one who loaded the trucks."

"Bring someone when you ask."

"Who?"

"I'm here every afternoon." He said that, then went back to the inner office, the door half-closed behind him. From inside came the sound of a chair shifting, then pages turning.

He Xiufen said from under the window, "Don't go out to the outskirts alone before the New Year."

"I won't."

"Those two loads with no paper—get the facts straight about what exists before you worry about what doesn't." He Xiufen draped the rag over the chair back. "Wang Changshun's paper—three years, twenty-seven trips, he went on every one alone. That man trusts paper more than people. If anyone on the road asks one extra question, he stays home for two days."

"Auntie Sun's the same."

"One and the same." He Xiufen stood. "I'm going down to check the stove."

Shen Zhixia tucked the page into the file jacket marked "Sun Guilan." Li Huilan gathered her stack, weighed it down under a paperweight, and said, "Two days left. Then this year's over."

"Mm."

She shut the window tight and wiped one streak through the condensation on the inside of the glass.

On the morning of December 31st, before leaving home, she took the paper bag out of the wardrobe and put it in her canvas tote. Walking out the building door, she pressed the mouth of the bag—the page inside was stiff, pressing back through the cloth.

At noon she went downstairs for noodles and saw the wall calendar in the noodle shop had only one page left, the cardboard backing showing through beneath. He Xiufen said, "Next year's is in the cupboard. I'll change it tomorrow."

The office stayed busy as usual. The afternoon was quiet; Li Huilan flipped the desk calendar to the last month, then flipped it back, said "New one tomorrow," and left at eighteen forty, scarf wrapped twice around her neck, calling from the stairs, "See you on the fourth."

"See you on the fourth."

He Xiufen was downstairs closing down the stove, damping the fire. The outer office upstairs held only her; the light in the inner office was on, the door half open.

At nineteen hundred hours, she pulled the canvas tote onto her lap and took out the paper bag.

On its face was the writing she'd done on the night of the fifteenth, black ballpoint, a few strokes bleeding into the grain of the kraft paper. The bag stood soft, only one page inside, no sound when shaken.

She walked to the doorway of the inner office.

The copy of the defense statement lay open on his desk, pencil notes in the margins in his own hand. He looked up, saw what she was holding, closed the statement, pushed it to the corner of the desk, set down his pen, clicked the cap on.

She placed the paper bag on the desk, a foot from his hand.

He didn't take it right away. First he read the writing on the face of the bag from beginning to end, then turned the bag straight. He read slowly. At the last line, he traced the words with a fingertip to the final character and stopped.

"Certificate of effectiveness," he said.

"Picked it up on the fifteenth."

"I know you picked it up." He stood the bag upright and looked into its mouth.

"Original," she said. "The photocopy is attached to the compensation application."

He laid the bag flat and pressed both hands along the crease of the opening, smoothing it out.

"The compensation office said within two months. By February 15th."

"Two months," he said. "We'll get there."

Someone laughed downstairs, the door curtain rattled, then quiet. The radiator in the inner office ran hotter than the outer one, and a draft lifted one corner of the paper bag.

"That bag was empty last year."

"Empty."

"I said then I'd wait for a piece of paper worth putting in it."

"You said—write on the bag who gave it, what day, how it came into hand."

"You wrote it."

"The bag was yours," she said. "Keep it here."

"All right." He moved the bag to the corner of the desk, stood it upright against the stack of file jackets, mouth facing inward.

She stood at the edge of the doorway, one hand on the frame. A small chip of paint was missing from the wooden frame, showing a pale strip of raw wood.

"Lawyer Lu, Happy New Year."

"Lawyer Shen, Happy New Year."

His words came out as steady as the ones over the phone last year. She took her hand off the door frame.

"I'll go down first."

"Mm."

She reached the outer office door when he called from the inner room. "Lawyer Shen."

She turned back.

"After the New Year—the two loads out on the outskirts. Call me when you go to ask."

"You're here every afternoon."

"I'm here every afternoon."

She stood a moment. "Okay."

The light by the stove burned brighter than upstairs. Two customers had just left, bowls still on the table. He Xiufen was wiping the counter, the rag circling each table corner.

"He hasn't come down?"

"Reading." She sat at the table by the door. "Director He, send a bowl up."

He Xiufen answered with a nod, grabbed a handful of noodles and dropped them in the pot. The water rolled to a boil, steam fogging the window. She ladled out a bowl, lifted half a poached egg from another bowl and set it on top, and added one spoon less broth.

"A little less broth—he can't drink much." He Xiufen carried the tray upstairs.

She sat waiting for her own bowl. The layer of steam on the glass thinned slowly until she could see the streetlamp outside and a person passing beneath it. Upstairs, a stool scraped, then silence.

When He Xiufen came down, there was a patch of oil on her apron. "He's eating."

"Mm."

"What made you think to send it up today?"

"He's reading."

He Xiufen didn't ask further, added a spoon of broth to her bowl, reached over and straightened the cardboard behind the calendar. "Last day of the year."

"Mm."

She ate her noodles. The scallions were freshly chopped, a sheen of oil floating on the broth, waves of steam rising into her face.

Halfway through, the light on the second floor went out.

Footsteps on the stairs, coming down one step at a time. They stopped at the landing.

She set down her chopsticks and looked up.