Chapter 6: Evidence in the Old Phone
That old phone had been soaked in water for half an hour.
The screen was completely black, and I thought it was dead.
The internet café was washed in a pale, miserable light. I placed the phone on the table and blew hot air onto it with a hair dryer for twenty minutes.
When I pressed the power button for the third time, the screen lit up.
Beneath the shattered glass that looked like a spiderweb, rings of light spread outward, like looking at a lamp from beneath the surface of the water.
The icons on the home screen appeared one by one.
Photos.
Recorder.
File Manager.
Everything was still there.
I gripped the phone, my palms covered in sweat.
The first thing I opened was the recordings.
I scrolled down the list.
Thirty-five files.
The oldest was from five years ago.
The newest was from last night, when I secretly pressed the record button while Chen Hui was pinning me against the wall.
I had numbered every file from “001” to “035,” adding the date and a brief description of its contents.
001: “Second Brother's startup loan. Agreed to pay back double. Call recording.”
Duration: four minutes and twelve seconds.
I tapped it.
Chen Hui's voice came through the speaker, still carrying the sincerity he had back then.
“Little Brother, don't worry. Count it as a loan. I'll pay you back double.”
People were playing games around me in the internet café. Keyboards clattered nonstop.
I put on my earphones, turned the volume all the way up, and listened to the recording three times.
His voice was young and full of eagerness, carrying a kind of affection I would never hear from him again.
004: “Before buying the house, Mom said to put Big Brother's name on it. We're family.”
Duration: two minutes and eight seconds.
My mother's voice flowed through the earphones, soft and gentle.
“Put your eldest brother's name on it. It'll make the loan easier. We're family anyway. How could your mother lie to you?”
I exited the recording.
Then I scrolled down.
012: “Big Brother said the second bedroom would be kept for me.”
Duration: one and a half minutes.
Chen Qiang's voice was casual, as though he were talking about something completely natural.
“Little Brother, once the house is ready, we'll all live there together. Mom and Dad will use the master bedroom, and you'll use the second bedroom. You paid for it, so we have to keep a room for you.”
017: “Dad hospitalized. Mom said the family had no money.”
Duration: three minutes.
My mother's voice came through the phone, crying between broken sentences.
“Your father's illness… the surgery costs 12,000 yuan… We really don't have the money…”
I said, “Mom, don't worry. I'll figure something out.”
Her crying immediately quieted by half.
“Mo, you're truly the pillar of this family.”
025: “After my workplace injury, Mom asked whether Second Brother's company needed money.”
Duration: one minute and forty seconds.
I was lying in a hospital bed with my right leg in a cast. It was the second day after surgery.
My mother called.
The first thing she asked was, “Is it serious?”
The second thing she said was, “Your second brother's company is short of money lately.”
The third thing she said was, “Your eldest brother wants to change cars. That 50,000 yuan you mentioned before…”
From beginning to end, she never once asked whether I was in pain.
033: “Second Brother said I gave the money willingly.”
Duration: two minutes and fifty-one seconds.
Chen Hui's voice had changed.
Cold.
Hard.
Filled with the viciousness of someone who felt insulted.
“You're just a middle-school student. What do you know about investing? That money was money you gave to the family, not a loan. Do you have an IOU? Go ahead and sue me. Do you think you'll win?”
The final recording, 035, had been made just last night.
Three minutes and seventeen seconds.
Chen Hui calling me an ungrateful bastard.
My mother crying beside him.
My father sighing.
My eldest brother saying nothing.
And at the very end, my mother's words—
“You weren't born to me.”
I pulled out my earphones.
The noise of the internet café rushed back.
Someone was cursing at their teammates.
Someone was eating instant noodles.
A machine at the cashier counter chimed.
I stared at my phone screen.
The thirty-five recordings were arranged chronologically, like a historical record.
A history of how I had treated them as family while they treated me as an ATM.
I exited the recorder and opened my photo album.
More than ten thousand photos.
I scrolled back to the earliest batch of screenshots.
The first one was the transfer record from the day I bought the house.
370,000 yuan.
Recipient: “Chen Qiang.”
Remark: “House Payment.”
The second was the 5,000 yuan living expenses I had sent my mother half a month before buying the house.
The third was the 3,000 yuan I had sent my father for medicine three days before the purchase.
The fourth was a screenshot of the balance I had left for myself one week before buying the house.
43,000 yuan.
Three outgoing transfers.
One remaining balance.
On the day I bought the house, I had given everything I could.
And I had kept 43,000 yuan for myself.
I opened each screenshot one by one.
I enlarged them.
Captured new screenshots.
Then I saved them all into a new album.
I named it:
Evidence.
Then I opened the banking app.
I logged in and opened my transaction history.
Starting from the first 200-yuan transfer ten years ago, I scrolled down one transaction at a time.
There were no mobile banking records for the money I had sent through the post office in the early years.
But I found every electronic transfer from later on.
Not a single one had been deleted.
Every month, on roughly the same date.
The amounts were consistent.
From 200 to 2,000.
From 2,000 to 5,000.
From 5,000 to 10,000.
Ten years.
120 months.
Only three months were missing.
One was when the foreman disappeared and ran off.
One was when I was injured and hospitalized.
And one was during the citywide lockdown.
I reached the bottom and calculated the total.
370,000 yuan for the house.
200,000 yuan for the loan.
And the living expenses I had sent home over those ten years.
Altogether, I had sent my family nearly 900,000 yuan.
Nine hundred thousand.
I had started carrying bricks at fourteen.
Ten years of it.
I stared at that number for a long time.
The air conditioning in the internet café made me shiver.
I wrapped my jacket tighter around myself and continued scrolling.
After finishing the banking records, I moved on to WeChat.
My chat history with Chen Hui.
The most recent message was from six months ago.
He had sent me a photo of a BMW with the caption:
“Little Brother, your big brother changed his car.”
I had replied:
“Congratulations.”
I scrolled upward.
Five years ago, the day he borrowed the money.
“Little Brother, your big brother is about to make a fortune. I'm short 200,000. Help me figure something out.”
“Count it as a loan. I'll pay you back double.”
“Once I make it big, you'll be the first person I repay.”
Exactly the same as the recording.
Text and audio.
Two layers of evidence.
I kept scrolling.
Then I opened my chat history with my mother.
Her latest message was from last night:
“Your second brother is right. Just forget about the money.”
Scrolling upward.
The day I bought the house:
“The certificate is out. Don't worry.”
Further up.
The day my father was hospitalized:
“We really don't have the money at home.”
Further up.
The year I first went to the construction site:
“Mo, you're truly the pillar of this family.”
I took screenshots of every single one.
When I finished organizing everything, the sky was already bright.
A gray, hazy light seeped through the internet café windows.
The rain had stopped, but the sky was still overcast.
I opened the file manager and created a new folder.
I sorted the transfer screenshots, chat screenshots, and audio recordings into separate categories.
There were 167 files in total.
They occupied 120 megabytes.
Then I backed everything up to the cloud.
And then to a USB drive.
There was also another copy stored by Old Zhou.
Three backups.
Impossible to lose everything at once.
After finishing, I called Old Zhou.
“Brother Zhou, I've organized everything.”
“Good. I'll come pick you up now. The lawyer is expecting us at nine.”
“Brother Zhou.”
“Hmm?”
“Did you contact Mr. Zhao?”
“I did.”
Old Zhou's voice was steady.
“He agreed to meet you, but he has a condition.”
“What condition?”
“He wants to listen to the recordings first. He says Chen Hui screwed him over before, and he wants to make sure you're not here trying to set him up for Chen Hui.”
“No problem.”
I hung up and slipped the phone into my pocket.
When I stood up, a wave of sharp pain shot through my right leg.
I held onto the table and stood there for a long while.
The young woman working the internet café counter glanced at me, looking like she wanted to say something.
I nodded at her.
Then I dragged my injured leg and limped out the door.
Outside, Old Zhou's van was parked by the roadside, the engine already running.
He waved at me through the window.
I got into the van and handed him the USB drive.
Old Zhou took it, weighed it in his hand for a moment, then slipped it into his inner pocket.
“Mo.”
“Hmm?”
“Your mother called me again last night.”
I turned to look at him.
“What did she say?”
“She told me to ask you to come home.”
Old Zhou started the engine, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
“She said your second brother agreed to give you 50,000 yuan, on the condition that you delete the recordings.”
I looked out the window.
The county town was still covered in morning mist.
Breakfast stalls had just been set up along the roadside.
People crouched by the street drinking soy milk.
A water-spraying truck slowly drove past, playing Happy Birthday.
“Brother Zhou.”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think I should delete them?”
Old Zhou didn't answer.
He turned the steering wheel and stopped the van in front of the courthouse.
“We're here.”
He switched off the engine and turned to look at me.
There was a seriousness in his eyes I had never seen before.
“Mo, remember this.”
“Those recordings and transfer records aren't tools you're using to demand money.”
“They are evidence of the ten years you spent working your blood and sweat away.”
“If you delete them, it's the same as telling everyone that your ten years, Chen Mo's ten years, were worth nothing.”
I pushed open the door.
My right leg touched the ground.
A piercing pain shot upward from deep inside the bone.
I gritted my teeth and stood upright.
Then I looked up at the entrance of the courthouse.
The national emblem gleamed harshly in the morning light.
I clenched my phone in my hand.
The screen was shattered.
But all that evidence was still inside.
Thirty-five recordings.
167 files.
Ten years.
“Brother Zhou.”
“Let's go.”
We walked into the courthouse together.
ns216.73.216.62da2
and then Add to home screen.