First-Class Lawyer

Chen Zhang made good on his word. After he talked about the grey channels for genetic modification, he didn’t speak a word more. Somehow or other, even though the intern before him looked very gentle and polite, he felt that this intern could swallow people whole the moment he opened his mouth.

He kept feeling that a single misstep and he would be played like a fiddle by the other person. Therefore, he simply shut up, putting up a determined front not to speak of what happened that night on Yaba Island. Or, put another way, that he was determined to bear this crime. 

So, for the last three minutes, the visiting room was pindrop silent.

He didn’t say anything and unexpectedly, that intern didn’t grow anxious. He didn’t even attempt to pry further. Instead, he looked the picture of calm as he sipped his water, gazing down at his own fingers.

“…”

And now, it was instead Chen Zhang who felt particularly awkward. 

He totally didn’t expect that he would end up being the one fidgeting in silence, while the intern seated opposite him, ever so calmly, admired his fidgeting.

In the end, the person to rescue him was the warden who came in.

That tall and sturdy warden wore a tiger-fierce face, saying gruffly, “Hey! Time’s up, stop talking—”

Right after he shouted this, he then realised that no one in the visiting room was talking in the first place…

And the weirdest thing was that the suspect, Chen Zhang, had ‘goddamnit you’re finally here’ written all over his face, gazing upon at him like he was the saviour of the world, more than eager to get back to his cell.

The warden, “…What did you two talk about?”

He asked ‘you two’, but his gaze only fell upon Yan Suizhi.

Yan Suizhi stood up. He pushed his glass of water forwards, saying with a smile, “We had a very interesting conversation. But, Mr Warden, if you keep asking, you’ll be breaking the law.” 

Over here, the meetings between lawyers and their clients were not monitored by wiretaps. Naturally, there wasn’t any need to divulge the contents of their conversation to the warden. On the contrary, if the warden insisted on asking too many questions, he would be sent to the interrogation room for tea.

The warden’s face immediately grew fiercer. “Oh. I was just casually asking, you’d better not tell me. I don’t want to know.”

With this, he patted Chen Zhang’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Chen Zhang raised his head, giving him a despairing look like he was in mourning. 

The warden, “…”

“I’m not dead, whose grave are you visiting?” He reprimanded in a less forceful tone, feeling that the suspect looked too pitiful.

Chen Zhang meekly bore the rebuke, never saying anything back nor showing any expression he shouldn’t have. He obediently stood up. His motions were a little slow, as stiff as the way he had gotten up from bed in the cell earlier.

Before taking a step, he subconsciously touched his hip before following the warden out of the door. 

Yan Suizhi was packing up the paperwork he had brought with him. These were the only things that he could bring into the visiting room.

He didn’t even lift his head nor was his attention even on Chen Zhang. Nevertheless, just before Chen Zhang left the room, he suddenly raised his eyes and asked, “Is a chronic illness acting up again? A hereditary disease?”

Precisely because of these words, Chen Zhang almost tripped over the low doorstep, his head whacking hard into the warden in front of him, consequently causing the warden to stumble a few steps. Unable to pull the brakes in time, the warden slammed loudly against the wall.

Yan Suizhi laughed as he went out, even telling Chen Zhang before he left, “I’ll still be waiting for you in the visiting room at this time tomorrow. I don’t mind sitting in awkward silence with you for an hour. You can prepare yourself mentally in advance.” 

Chen Zhang, “…”

Standing by the wall, the warden felt that this intern was even better at threats than some suspects. However, all of that was done with a particularly polite smile; no one could bring themselves to scold him.

Once outside the detention centre, Yan Suizhi took his ring-shaped smart device from the transparent pouch. He went through it for any new notifications, pulled up the map of the interstellar alliance, selected De Carma, and marked out the location that Chen Zhang had just mentioned.

As he slipped the smart device back onto his finger, all of a sudden two figures simultaneously leapt out of the alleyway at the side of the road, rushing straight towards him. 

“…”

Yan Suizhi said in his head, ‘People actually have enough guts to come like this right in front of the detention centre?’

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Yan Suizhi, in his head, ‘Misunderstand what? Do you think I’d believe you just because you said so?’

He turned around and was about to leave, but that round-faced guy immediately whirled around, blocking his path and hastily whipping out his press card.

“It’s okay, we’re not bad guys, don’t worry!” The round-faced guy pointed to the photo on the press card, putting it next to his own face as a basis of comparison. “Reporters, we’re just reporters. Jim Bens.”  He then pointed to the young man with a freckled nose following behind him. “Norman Hersey, the junior reporter assisting me. We’re from Honeycomb Media, look. We’ve the files to prove this.”

So what? Even Shithouse Media is no business of mine. Professor Yan thought this in his head, but nodded and said warmly, “Nice to meet you. Excuse me.” 

Zero mercy.

The two reporters, “…”

That round-faced guy called Bens continued to chitter, “We only need a moment of your time. Can we just have a short chat?” He forcibly waved his press card before Yan Suizhi’s eyes, as if that would make a difference.

Unexpectedly, it did. 

Because Yan Suizhi found the website logo on the press card familiar to the eyes.

He briefly sieved through his memories, fishing out a scene. It was back in the office at Southcross; Gu Yan had just received news that something had happened to George Manson, and he had searched for news with his photon computer. There was only a clickbait article on a minor, unremarkable website, but it was deleted in the blink of an eye.

If he didn’t misremember it, the logo of that unremarkable website was exactly the same as the one on this press card.

That so, it was clear as day what these two reporters were stopping him for. 

When the round-faced Bens saw that he wasn’t in a hurry to leave, he immediately revitalised, striking while the iron was hot and pointing to the cafe across the road. “There are open-air seats over there. We are very proper, we really only want to have a simple chat with you. If it really bothers you, we can sit outside so that you can leave anytime you want. How does that sound?”

Yan Suizhi gave it a thought, then readily agreed.

Of course he wasn’t going to hand them any information. Bushy-tailed Dean Yan wasn’t that kind. He wanted to wheedle information out of the reporters.

Since this website was actually able to be the first to get the news out, they surely had a certain standard. Even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t harm him to sit there for a couple of minutes. More importantly, while that freckled young man at the back wasn’t an issue, he could easily tell that the round-faced one called Bens was one of those stalker paparazzi and might be slightly troublesome to lose. 

The three of them each ordered a coffee. Yan Suizhi even ordered dessert. His blood sugar was running a bit low; he needed to eat a little something to give himself a buffer.

“If you don’t mind?” He asked very primly as he picked up a thin fork.

“Go ahead and eat, of course it’s fine!” Bens tended to speak in a loud voice, and he always liked to chuckle first to make him seem friendlier. It was a little exaggerated, but many times it did manage to force some friendliness into his demeanour.

However, while laughing, his hands were blindly typing out a message at rapid speed under the table. 

Immediately after, the smart device next to the young freckled Norman Hersey vibrated. He looked a little shy. Aside from the occasional dry laugh, he never spoke from start to end.

So, this time, he merely smiled bashfully at Yan Suizhi, lifted his finger, and turned away to tap open a hologram to read the message.

And so he found that the person who messaged him was, none other than, Jim Bens.

Who was seated less than half a metre away from him. 

Hersey, “…”

Bens, [This legendary intern lawyer is easy to deal with! Look at him, he’s even so particular with etiquette when eating his dessert. It’s obvious that he’s the kind who has a rich upbringing; those usually can’t pull their weight. He’s even a student, so he must be a very honest guy.]

Hersey, “…”

Putting it all together, the message ended up looking like a backhanded compliment at Bens’ own lack of manners and shamelessness. 

Hersey blinked. Pursing his lips, he closed the hologram with a straight face and sat back properly, not daring to answer.

Yan Suizhi took two unhurried bites of his dessert, suppressing the vague feeling of giddiness that was looming over him.

He wasn’t in any hurry at all. Instead, Bens was the one who turned anxious.

Bens’ gaze see-sawed for a moment between Yan Suizhi’s fork and dessert. He grinned widely. 

Yan Suizhi, “…” He wasn’t in a hurry, but the way this reporter smiled at him was affecting his appetite.

I can still put up with it if you had a face like Gu Yan’s, but please take a good look at yourself in the mirror, hm?

Professor Yan’s inner psyche had always been more caustic than what came out of his mouth, only that he very seldom expressed it. Or, if he did, it would be wrapped up in an assortment of polite pleasantries and elegant smiles.

Bens, naturally, had no idea. He barrelled on heedlessly, “So it’s like this. We’re reporters from Honeycomb Media, and we’ve been keeping a close eye on George Manson’s accident. Of course, we’d like to start by expressing our condolences on the matter…” 

He even lowered his gaze as he spoke. Next to him, Hersey couldn’t keep up with his tempo at all, watching it all play out with a dumbfounded look on his face.

“But, condolences aside, this doesn’t mean that we will give up on tracking down the truth.” Bens looked up and added, “We know that you—”

“No need for such courtesies.” Yan Suizhi suitably said.

“Alrighty, you.” Bens chuckled and changed to a less formal address, thinking that this intern was unusually well-mannered. “You’re the defence counsel this time. To be frank, I’ve rarely seen an intern assigned such an important case; you must be a particularly outstanding young lawyer with great prospects.” 

Yan Suizhi listened to his praises with a calm face, putting on a humble smile at the end of it.

Hersey drank his coffee in silence. He knew this skit by heart. Teacher Bens would first put honey in the other’s mouth until the other is dizzy with praise, then take a turn and say that the other is good in every aspect, but was just lacking a little bit of assistance. Afterwhich, he would say that he just so happened to have something with him that could lend some help…

Sure enough, after an lavish stream of praises, the topic took a turn. Bens said, “Actually, I know a bit of what really happened, but…”

His gaze scanned their surroundings. He lowered his voice. “Sheesh, forget it. Anyway, I can guarantee you that it wasn’t Chen Zhang who did it. We’ve been camping the hospital in the past few days. Even though we couldn’t get access into the ward, we still harvested a lot.” 

As he spoke, he cast out a hologram from his smart device, turning off the default privacy settings so that Yan Suizhi, seated across from him, was also able to see what was on the screen.

“Look at these photos, look! There are so many!” Bens said, “We took all of these animated photos in the recent days, and even some videos for a more complete visual to top it off. There are a lot of key information inside that could really give you a leg up.”

He glanced at Yan Suizhi to confirm that the other’s attention was indeed drawn to the photos, pride welling in his heart. He said, “We’ve even rolled out the real culprit. I know that this trial is very important to you. More precisely, the first trial is very important to every lawyer. You’ll want to make a splash, that’s for sure. So… how about it? I’ll give you the photos and videos.”

Yan Suizhi didn’t rush to answer him. Instead, he said, “It’s hard for me to judge the contents of the photos when you flash it like this. It’s a little out of bounds to say this, but…” 

Bens immediately understood what he meant. “I get it, of course I get you. You’re afraid that I only took some useless stuff to fool you, right? Here, you can take a look at them.”

Saying this, he extended his wrist to Yan Suizhi, magnifying the screen so that the other could see it clearly.

Yan Suizhi looked at the photos so quickly that it only took him five minutes to go through the hundred or so photos. As Bens said, he had captured quite a few people and quite a few things. Joe was there, as well as Zhao Zemu, and Laura and the other lawyers, all of whom were photographed when they visited Joe in the hospital after their release.

There were several more interesting pictures within them. One showed Joe and Zhao Zemu leaving the hospital, each wearing a cold expression. It appeared as if they weren’t getting along well, or if they had an argument over something. 

There were also several shots of the two of them standing together as they confronted the Manson family.

A hundred or so photos, depicting a wide range of relatives and friends. Among which, the ones who looked the most dejected were Joe and Zhao Zemu, and the ones who appeared the coldest were the Manson family. However, this fell within what Yan Suizhi had expected; none of these really surprised him.

There were even several more shots that weren’t of the hospital. It showed a grey, drab house, crammed inconspicuously between other similar looking houses.

“Where’s this?” Yan Suizhi asked simply. 

Bens scanned it and said, “Oh, it’s the where that diving instructor, Chen Zhang, lives. But there isn’t much to see there. No one came by in the few days that we took these videos.”

Yan Suizhi nodded. He quickly skimmed through those recordings, taking no more than five minutes, and he nodded again. “That’s enough, I’ve more or less looked through them, thank you. Right, you mentioned that you know who the true perpetrator is?”

Bens took back his smart device, lowering his voice and saying mysteriously, “Yeah.”

“Who?” 

Bens, “Joe.”

Yan Suizhi, “…”

He should let Gu Yan listen to this. His expression would be a beautiful sight to behold.

Of course, this didn’t mean that Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan had preconceived notions that caused them to directly rule out Joe as a suspect. It was just that the expression and tone of this reporter was too theatrical. If Young Master Joe saw it, he’d press Bens’ face into the doghouse. 

“Joe had an altercation with Manson before. It was the very messy sort, the kind where teeth were knocked out,” Bens said. “And Zhao’s family is too weak, he had to latch onto Manson’s influence, so he wouldn’t pull such a thing. As for these lawyers, there’s either too much or too little at stake. Most importantly, there isn’t any motive. They also haven’t made any suspicious movements. Only Joe has; his emotions these days are on his sleeve, he’s acting weird.”

Bens said, “He’s a little… abnormally pleased and enraged. How should I put it. I don’t know if you can imagine that kind of psychology—like I’ve done something really terrible, but I’m not scared because I’ve confidence that I can escape punishment. However, when the police really come searching, I still feel a little anxious.”

This reporter even illustrated his narrative with photos, picking out a few and saying, “Check these out. This one’s when a policeman is searching him. Doesn’t he look especially tense, look at his expression.”

“After that, the policeman wasn’t able to sniff out anything.” The reporter pointed to the other photos. “And he visibly relaxed. The puffed up cockerel expression from earlier has vanished, amirite?” 

“The clincher comes right after this; doesn’t he look like the cat that got the cream?” The reporter said, “See that look in his eyes behind the policeman’s back, doesn’t it look like he’s picking a fight?”

Yan Suizhi, “…”

Leaving all else aside, once this round-faced guy named Bens spun a spiel around it, even unimportant things would look interesting.

He considered it before saying to Bens, “Tell me your conditions. You wouldn’t help me for no reason, right?” 

Bens laughed, then said, “I like talking to smart people. That said, it’s just a small thing we’re asking for. Due to the Manson family meddling in it, the trial isn’t open to the public; we don’t have the entry clearance to listen in. Plus, the checks are very strict. The only exception is that lawyers can bring their assistants.”

As a matter of fact, despite nominally calling it assistants, it did not specifically refer to people with ‘so-and-so assistant’ in their job titles. Rather, it referred to who the lawyers deemed necessary to accompany them in court. The usual quota was up to two.

Bens’ words ended here. Yan Suizhi wore an expression of enlightenment.

“You understand me, right?” 

Yan Suizhi nodded. “You hope that I can take you in under the guise of accompanying me to court?”

Bens said, “Yeah. We promise not to bring any recording equipment and to strictly follow the requirements of the court. Once we get in, we’ll just be sitting in a corner.”

I’ll be damned if I believe you.

If it was the lost and shy-looking Hersey next to him who had said something like that, Yan Suizhi might have swallowed down a few sentences. It was very apparent from just one look that Bens wasn’t an honest man. Especially when he was talking, Hersey kept his head lowered the whole way through, his eyes darting from side to side, obviously not particularly approving of Bens’ approach either. 

Yan Suizhi, “Got it.” He slowly and unhurriedly finished the last bit of his coffee.

Bens’ felt that with so many photos and videos in hand, there was no way that this intern wouldn’t be tempted. He already had it in the bag.

However…

Yan Suizhi put down his coffee cup and got up. He said, “Thank you, have a good day.” 

Bens, “????”

Are you really leaving just like that after fucking putting your fingerprints all over the goods? Can you be any more shameless?!

Three minutes later, Hersey tugged Bens. “Mr Bens, he has already gotten in a car and left. We’d better go back. I don’t really think that this is a good case to stick our fingers into, how about—”

“Stop with all that ‘how about’!” Bens rolled his eyes at him. “You’re going to bring up that explosion case again, aren’t you? That was goddamn ages ago, the public interest is long gone. With the amount of effort, why don’t you find a column to write yet another memorial piece for the dean, if you drop his picture you might even be able to get more eyes on it.” 

After Bens was done scolding, the more he thought about it, the unhappier he felt. He grunted, “Nope, I’m so pissed that I can’t breathe easy. I can’t believe an intern just upped on me.”

Hershey frowned slightly. “Are you going to do anything?”

“C’mon. We’re going to tail him,” said Bens.