Wu Ling and I had our phone call in the office. To be safe, I didn't put it on speaker, but Skinny and the others knew exactly what I said and did.
I suddenly slapped my cheeks, startling them. When I hung up, they were about to ask what was going on when someone knocked on the office door.
Before we could answer, the door opened.
"Lin, there's a contract here I need you to look over. The date next to the signature is wrong..."
I was called out to deal with an issue regarding a compensation agreement for the demolition.
The person who called me was Huang Wen, head of the demolition office's legal team.
He was around forty and had worked at the Justice Bureau before being transferred over when the demolition office was set up. We didn't interact much outside of work.
I followed Huang Wen to his office.
Huang Wen looked troubled, as did the others in his office.
It hadn't been long since Jiang You died. Most people in the demolition office looked troubled and on edge.
I probably looked troubled too, but I was worried about other things. For me, what happened to Jiang You was already in the past—a past that couldn't be changed.
By comparison, Skinny and the other three seemed to be in the best spirits.
"Right here. This part's been altered. That's not good." Huang Wen showed me the document.
Below the property owner's signature was the date. The "6" had been changed to an "8," and there were traces of erasure. They'd simply written the wrong number when signing and corrected it afterward. If you scrutinized it, it wasn't quite right.
Huang Wen hadn't usually been so particular.
As long as no one dug up the issue later, it