Pei Chuan has always believed in one dead truth: the poor have to fight their lawsuits.
I am thirty years old and still living in a rental house in a village in the city. I am reluctant to change a sweater until it pills. I have been collecting wages for migrant workers and protecting the rights of laid-off workers. I have been living in the lowest corner of this city for five years.
Until that weekend, he saw Lin Zhi at the legal aid center.
She sat in the last row of the crowd, holding an old canvas bag and a purple bruise on her wrist. When it was her turn to consult, she didn't say anything and handed over a crumpled note first.
"Don't call me by my name, he's right outside the door."
Pei Chuan looked up and saw a man in a black coat standing at the door - his younger brother and the only son of the city's richest man, Pei Huai.
On the day of Pei Huai's wedding three years ago, Pei Chuan was at the scene of a mining accident hundreds of kilometers away. In the news photos that popped up on his phone, he looked at the profile of the bride with her veil lifted all night long. The next day, the court session was as usual, the case was accepted as usual, and I lived alone as usual, thinking that I had forgotten it a long time ago.
But now, she was sitting opposite him.
With red eyes and a trembling voice, he asked, "Lawyer Pei, can we fight the divorce case?"
The wind picked up outside the window, and the lax window of the legal aid station creaked. Pei Chuan lowered his head and wrote her name on the registration form, and the pen tip pierced the paper.
At the door, Pei Huai was filming this scene with his mobile phone and sent it to the family group.
Outside the window, someone started flying a kite. A butterfly kite floats in the blue sky.
Some things, after hiding for twelve years, cannot be avoided after all.
