0001 Do not look at what is improper
At nine o'clock in the morning, Guanzheng Law Firm resembled a large band. There was the rapid, clattering of keyboards at workstations, the humble apologies coming from the conference room, and the resounding curses after someone had just hung up the microphone.
Qu Zhong's head was throbbing from these sounds; no, to be precise, these sounds aggravated her throbbing headache.
There's probably three feet of gold hidden in the road outside her apartment complex. Otherwise, why would they have been drilling there with an impact drill late into the night for the past twenty days or so?
The noise from the nighttime construction was as loud as a troublemaker openly causing a disturbance, robbing Qu Zhong of many nights of normal sleep.
She took a melatonin pill before bed last night, hoping to fall into a deep sleep, but she was still woken up at 2 a.m. She sat up abruptly, shook her head and shouted, "Can't a person get any sleep?!"
Unfortunately, this sound was like throwing an egg against a rock for the impact drill.
Her anger intensified. She snapped on the bedside lamp, grabbed her phone from beside her pillow, and dialed the police, the citizen hotline, and the contact information for the nearby urban management brigade that she had randomly found online.
Is there no law anymore?
She had already prepared her complaint, outlining the facts, reasons, and legal basis in her mind, ready to launch into a long speech as soon as the call connected. But what was the result? No one answered, especially late at night.
No matter how impotent and furious she was, it wouldn't solve the problem right now. She could only swallow her anger, try to calm her voice, leave a message on the citizen hotline, put on her earplugs, and lie down to try to fall asleep.
It was completely useless. The next day, my dark circles were still down to the corners of my mouth, and my temples were throbbing.
Now that I'm at the law firm, I'm being bombarded with a new wave of noise.
One after the other, the causes overlapped. She hadn't done anything wrong, yet she was unjustly subjected to a joint infringement.
Qu Zhong looked up at the ceiling in despair: "Is there really a quiet desk in this world?"
Just as she was thinking, "It would be better if I were dead," a figure suddenly rushed past her, leaving behind a "Good morning, Attorney Qu" in her ear. When Qu Zhong looked up, the person who greeted her was already sitting down at the workstation diagonally opposite her.
She forced a polite smile and replied casually, "Good morning, Attorney Liu."
Liu Sensong is a senior of Qu Zhong's from law school. He started practicing law three years earlier than Qu Zhong, and at only thirty years old, he has already been promoted to partner at the firm. Because his real name is too difficult to pronounce, Qu Zhong secretly gave him a nickname: "Liu the Punisher".
The name "Jiaxing Liu" is a homophone for "Jiaxing Liu".
Qu Zhong thought it was a good fit because her senior's defense strategy was extremely unconventional. For example, he had recently pulled her aside for a serious discussion about whether he could change the charge to intentional injury in his defense statement when a client was being prosecuted for the crime of provoking trouble.
Qu Zhong was confused and greatly shocked. She suppressed the slight tremor of her lips and humbly asked, "How so?"
Liu Shen said solemnly, "There is hope for a reduction in sentence."
Qu Zhong outwardly exclaimed how impressive it was, but inwardly he thought, "Your client is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail."
"Attorney Qu, you're dressed so sexily again today." Jia Xing Liu's voice came softly from the upper left, almost drowned out by the law firm's symphony, but Qu Zhong still clearly understood the sarcasm in it.
Outsiders who are not familiar with the field are often misled by the image of elite lawyers portrayed in TV dramas, forming a stereotype that lawyers always walk into the law firm in suits and tie looking very respectable.
In fact, at Guanzheng, each lawyer prepares two sets of formal attire and keeps them in their office, only changing into them temporarily when they need to go out for court hearings or business meetings.
Normally, most lawyers dress very casually, prioritizing comfort.
In contrast, Qu Zhong's style of dressing is very bold. She never limits the colors she wears to black, white, and gray, nor does she deliberately control the so-called level of exposure.
Like today, she wore a tight-fitting tank top, the meager fabric outlining her full and impressive bust. She paired it with a bodycon mini-skirt, the length falling above her knees. Although she wore a light pink long coat over it, her curvaceous figure was still on full display.
Looking at her outfit alone, you would never associate her with a lawyer.
Just as Jia Xingliu described, she was very sexy.
Qu Zhong never cared what her colleagues said about her behind her back. She believed that it was a waste for a beautiful person not to wear beautiful clothes, and that inaction was a waste of her potential.
So she pretended not to hear what Liu had said about increasing her sentence, lightly rubbed her temples a couple of times, and then began to look down at the case materials at hand—
The meeting transcript was a full five pages long.
This is a case assigned by the legal aid center, involving joint crime. A large group of middle-aged people gathered in a teahouse called "Xiangwei Xiaochu". The teahouse has three floors. The bottom two floors maintain legitimate business, but the top floor is a brothel, where pimping is carried out.
The case came to light after about a year and a half. The teahouse was quickly shut down, and the main perpetrators were sentenced in separate cases last year. Her client, Xue Bo, was initially on the run but later surrendered himself to the police, and the case was only recently transferred to the procuratorate.
This wasn't the first time Qu Zhong had handled a legal aid case, but she had never seen anyone like Xue Bo who vehemently refused to plead guilty or accept punishment, and even refused to sign the interrogation record.
She visited Xue Bo at the C District Detention Center last weekend. No matter what she asked, he just tearfully said that he was just a nobody and was definitely not as the police accused him of. He would never admit to doing something he didn't do.
If this were Qu Zhong, who had just obtained her license two years ago, she would have held his hand through the glass, gritted her teeth, and said firmly, "Don't worry, I will definitely help you clear your name!"
After all, her mentor had said in class that as a criminal defense lawyer, one must fight with all one's might for even a second of freedom for one's client.
Who wouldn't be thrilled after hearing this? Who wouldn't want to be a principled criminal defense lawyer after hearing this?
However, the first case that Qu Zhong handled on her own after obtaining her license taught her a harsh lesson.
It was a drug trafficking case, and she clearly remembered that the person involved insisted he had an alibi and was therefore innocent. He claimed that he had been practicing driving at a driving school in his hometown, and that the driving instructor and other students in the same class could testify for him.
After hearing this, Qu Zhong excitedly called her mother and asked her to go to the local driving school for help. However, two days later, her mother called to say that there was no such thing.
Qu Zhong was stunned. When he asked the person involved again, he remained silent, sighing repeatedly with his eyes lowered. Qu Zhong assumed that he had been imprisoned for too long and had misremembered.
During their last meeting, when asked if he pleaded guilty, he shook his head vigorously. Qu Zhong believed him once again and prepared several pages of evidence day and night.
When they arrived in court, before she could even ask a question, this staunchly principled defendant pleaded guilty on the spot.
Qu Zhong nearly fainted in the defense counsel's seat.
The past cannot be recalled, but she has come to understand a principle: those involved are only human in person, and dogs in public.
Although Qu Zhong has learned from past mistakes and will not simply believe Xue Bo's one-sided account, what he actually did and didn't do in this joint crime still needs to be investigated.
She closed the meeting record, logged onto the city's litigation service website, and found that the case inquiry section had been updated with the information of the prosecutor in charge. She dialed the number.
A new intern recently joined the Third Department of the District C Procuratorate. The young woman is very enthusiastic. The director of the department told her to arrive at 8:30, but she sits down in the office 15 minutes early every day, while her colleagues are still eating in the cafeteria.
But today was different. As soon as she entered, she saw Zhai Shi sitting next to her.
She put her bag on the table, tilted her head, and asked timidly, "Teacher Zhai, so early?"
During her internship at the procuratorate, there wasn't much demanding or technically challenging work. For the first few days, she mostly worked through old files. Through quiet observation, she'd gotten a pretty good grasp of everyone else's personalities in the office.
One secretary was a chatterbox, constantly talking about her husband. The other, an older prosecutor's assistant, would run to the nearby gym every three minutes and couldn't finish writing a single interrogation outline in a day.
The only person she couldn't understand was Zhai, who was standing next to her. For days, this man hadn't said a word except for asking her to fetch a document from upstairs for official seal.
Hearing her ask, Zhai Shi glanced up at her briefly, then said indifferently, "Yes, something's up."
The intern then stopped asking questions.
Because his tire was run over and sent for repairs, Zhai took the subway to work this morning. The nearest subway station to his home is the terminus of Line 3, so there were plenty of seats. He found a seat near the door so it would be convenient to get off at his stop.
Early autumn is an awkward time for the station's air conditioning. Turning on the cooling is unnecessary, and turning on the heating is excessive. So it's simply left off, with ventilation relying entirely on the little bit of air that comes in when the doors open at each station.
It had been so long since I'd ridden a crowded subway during rush hour. The carbon dioxide from the crowds made Zhai drowsy, unless Qu Zhong, who had just entered the station, was standing right in front of him.
It has a sweet citrus scent, which is the smell of this season.
When Zhai looked up, he saw the rising and falling of her breasts, the rounded shape reminding him of a personified summer peach.
After a few short "beep" sounds, the subway doors closed, and the sudden movement caused the breasts that the tank tops couldn't contain to sway brightly in front of him.
Zhai's breath hitched, and he transformed into a criminal suspect suffering greatly in the interrogation room, having been caught out of a fatal flaw due to a careless answer.
The subway announcement rang out, and his Adam's apple bobbed heavily twice as he tried to avert his gaze. But when he looked down, what came into view was a pair of fair, straight, and slightly fleshy legs.
So what should have been a restrained approach turned into an escalation. He could already imagine how pert her buttocks were, and then, his thoughts, like a runaway horse, flooded him with even more unsavory images.
Perhaps sensing a somewhat offensive gaze, Qu Zhong casually waved his hand, covering most of his front with his thin outer coat.
This subconscious self-protective action brought Zhai back to his senses, and fortunately, he arrived at his stop.
He walked slowly, but managed to escape into the gates of the procuratorate. Upon arrival, he was supposed to go to the cafeteria for breakfast as usual, but he didn't.
He resignedly went into the bathroom, where his desires were finally released. He pulled out his already erect penis, made an "O" shape with his hand, closed his eyes, and began to rub his thick, long penis repeatedly.
Imagine those tender white breasts, changing shape in his large hands, the erect pink tips being rubbed between his teeth.
Without offense, without covering herself, she was stripped of all her clothes and sat between his legs, letting him caress her waist, hips, and thighs, even her more private parts...
"Hmm..." When the fingertips were finally released, what came to Zhai's mind was the face he had caught a glimpse of in the subway.
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