CH 19

Solemnly, Yan Suizhi said, “I do.”

Joshua’s voice abruptly raised. “Really?!” 

“I only need you to do me a favour.”

“What favour?”

“See that black bedside cabinet over there?” asked Yan Suizhi.

Joshua nodded, “D’uh, I’m not blind.” 

“Now, go over.”

Joshua couldn’t quite make head or tails of his words. He scratched his head and circled around the bed to stand by the bedside cabinet. He kicked it. “And then? What the heck are you being all mysterious for, can’t you just say it straight? Could it really be that the way you have is stored here?”

With a smile, Yan Suizhi nodded. “That’s right. Open the drawer now.”

Joshua, “…Can’t you say it in one go. After that?”

He frowned and grumbled non-stop. He looked impatient, but he still did as instructed.

Yan Suizhi, “Do you see what’s inside?”

Joshua, “There’s a roll of… duct tape?”

Yan Suizhi’s smile turned even more beatific. “That’s the one. All you have to do is tear two strips off that to seal your mouth shut, and we’ll have a solution.” 

Joshua, “………”

In that split second, Joshua’s hands reached out.

Yan Suizhi said, smiling, “Lift that cabinet and you won’t have a lawyer anymore.”

“…” 

Joshua withdrew his hands with a dark face and raised his foot.

“Blmx atf yfv jcv atf fcv gfreia kbeiv yf atf rjwf.”

“…”

Lf obgmlyis tjiafv tlr obba, jiwbra qeiilcu j wermif, atfc tjylaejiis bqfcfv tlr wbeat ab megrf. 

Ktf kbgv “oemx” rajgafv ab obgw.

Tjc Velhtl rwlifv jujlc.

Ktlr alwf, klatbea tlw cffvlcu ab rjs jcsatlcu, Abrtej jeabwjalmjiis rkjiibkfv vbkc atf ajli-fcv bo la.

“Learning by precedent. Aren’t you quite the clever one?” The esteemed Professor Yan gave a word of praise. 

As for the one being praised… from the looks of it, he wanted to give up on life.

Joshua Dale couldn’t stand the injustice. This blockhead got so incensed his entire face turned dark, and he stomped back to the chair, sitting his butt back down. His mouth opened and closed many times before he finally squeezed out one sentence. “I know you guys have rules. Lawyers have to act in the best interests of their client, you can’t just piss me off like this.”

Yan Suizhi said, “You actually know this?”

“…” 

Joshua felt that this sentence could be regarded as a personal attack.

He glared at Yan Suizhi. After a long while, he waved a white flag. His head drooped. He kicked his legs together irritably, but didn’t make any large movements.

Yan Suizhi was about to say something as he watched him, but Gu Yan tossed a sentence over out of the blue. “If you continue being upset, I won’t have a client anymore.”

Joshua, “…” 

Yes. Because the client was right about to drop dead from sheer anger.

“That won’t happen,” Yan Suizhi laughed. He looked into Joshua’s eyes, light mirth in his voice, “You aren’t actually angry. Really. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting there, glaring and silently holding it in like a pufferfish. You aren’t truly angry, because you can tell apart who’s teasing you, and who’s deliberately targeting you with malice.”

Yan Suizhi paused, then went on to say, “You’re actually very clever, simply that your temper runs faster than your head does. If you scold people a little less, wait for your brain to catch up before throwing a tantrum, you’d end up in a better place than now; it’d be easier to get people to like you. Moreover, you don’t have to rely on profanities if you really want to anger someone. Did you see me curse you just now? Isn’t your face equally green from reining in your anger anyway?”

Joshua, “…” 

Gu Yan, “…”

The front part sounded all good and proper. Yet he ended up teaching others who-knows-what type of nonsense thing…

However, Joshua really wasn’t able to work up a temper at him, merely replying him with a roll of his eyes.

“There will be a way,” Yan Suizhi said. “As long as you didn’t lie to us, we wouldn’t lie to you. Go head back first, I’ll discuss it further with Teacher Gu.” 

“Mn.” This time, Joshua Dale didn’t say much else. He simply nodded, got up and walked to the door.

When he pulled the door open, his head turned back as if he was wavering over whether or not to say something. But he ultimately didn’t, and made to leave with his head hung low.

Before he closed the door, Gu Yan abruptly and indifferently said, “Don’t climb other people’s wall in the future. That’s not a good thing.”

Joshua, “Mn.” 

The door closed; Joshua Dale had left. But the two people in the room didn’t immediately start talking.

A long minute later, Lawyer Gu’s eyes flickered over to the electronic clock in the hotel room. “From when Joshua Dale stepped into the room to when he left, the time totalled an hour and thirty-nine minutes. You occupied approximately 80% of it, leaving me 20% of supplementary time thereabout.”

As he spoke, his eyes shifted, and the gaze he directed at Yan Suizhi was mild. “Why don’t we switch? I’ll be your intern for a change.”

Yan Suizhi, “…” 

Habits were terrifying things; Professor Yan, more accustomed to riling people, almost replied with a smile and a ‘sure, why not.’ Luckily, he managed to restrain the smile on the lines of his lips in time.

“Um.” Thinking that this topic better be brought to a close, Yan Suizhi habitually raised a coffee cup from the round glass table and he said, “It’s my first time directly participating in a case, I got a little overexcited. Oh right, Teacher Gu, do you have any thoughts on the events that Joshua Dale described eight hundred times?”

An honorific to give the other face, and business matters to change the topic.

Perfect. 

However, before he could drink from that cup, Gu Yan reached over and took it away.

Lawyer Gu held the rim of the coffee cup. He pointed his index finger at him and said frostily, “Let me give you a tip. You can change the topic, but don’t go around stealing coffee that is not yours with your restless hands.”

Yan Suizhi, “…”

“As for the events that the client described—” Gu Yan drank a mouthful of coffee, pulled out the case file and looked at it, saying, “Although my former teacher rarely said anything serious, there was one sentence that could be heeded.” 

Yan Suizhi sneered in his mind. He thought, mhm, go ahead and speak ill of me. We’ll see if you cry when you learn the truth.

He maintained a warm smile, asking, “What was it?” Of course he knew which sentence it was. The truth was that he didn’t want to ask such an idiotic question, but he was pretending to be an inexperienced intern, right? Simple-minded, easy to bluff, easy to grow confused.

His experience told him that almost every intern would have asked such questions before, so there wasn’t anything wrong with affecting this reaction.

Gu Yan placed down his coffee cup. He said, “As for the many things that the client says, let him say as he pleases, and you just listen as you will.” 

Professor Yan continued to put up an act. “So, Teacher, you feel that Joshua Dale isn’t telling the truth?”

Gu Yan gave him a look. His gaze turned back onto the evidence, and he said, “That sentence earlier describes what usually happens. I told it to you only so that you’d stop asking such questions.”

Yan Suizhi kept smiling, “…” He didn’t even have to ask this in the first place.

Gu Yan spread a few pages of evidence between them. The finger resting on the paper changed directions to point at Yan Suizhi. “Have you seen these pieces of evidence? If what Joshua Dale said is true, then the evidence in these pages are false. If these pages are true, then he is lying.” 

Yan Suizhi, naturally, had read these pages before. The written contents were enough to link a whole chain of evidence, proving that Joshua Dale had not only stopped outside of Kitty Bell’s house, but he had also entered the house, touched the tools used to commit the crime, and so on…

These evidence had come from the police.

According to these, what happened that day was a different story—at approximately 7:15 p.m., Joshua Dale climbed over the yard wall around Kitty Bell’s house. He had been observing this old madam’s schedule for a long time and was very familiar with it. While the old madam was knitting inside, he crept inside the room with a pillow from the living room sofa and a bronze ornament.

Kitty Bell’s armchair was always faced away from the door for the heating would warm her better and allow her fingers more dexterity. After Joshua Dale entered the room, he muffled any sound from her with the pillow and hit the old madam on the back of her head with the bronze ornament. 

At approximately 8 PM, Chester, the grandnephew who took care of the old madam, returned. Joshua Dale hid in the dark yard. When Chester entered the house, Joshua climbed over the yard wall and returned to his own home, dropping that pair of earrings in his haste.

If Joshua was telling the truth, then the police had forged the evidence.

Gu Yan, “It depends on whether you trust the police here, or if you trust him.”