He Helped You Win

Su Niannian gripped the armrest of her chair.

"What do we do, then? Wait two years?"

Gu Siyue did not answer. She reopened the folder and went through the three documents Su Niannian had brought again: the original non-compete agreement, the compensation payment notice, and the resignation handover form.

When she reached the handover form, she stopped.

"What position is listed on your handover form?"

Su Niannian did not understand why she was asking. "Operations Support Specialist."

Gu Siyue placed the handover form and the non-compete agreement side by side on the desk. On the left, the "Position" field read Operations Support Specialist. On the right, the restricted scope listed artificial intelligence, code review, and software quality assurance.

"You used to be a product manager. When did you become operations support?"

"On my first day back from annual leave. May 14. Fang Xu, the product director, told me. He'd been parachuted in half a year earlier, and he was the one who approved my annual leave too."

"After the transfer, did you still have access to the product documents for the AI code review project?"

"No."

"The data dashboard?"

"They shut it down the next day."

"Technical review meetings?"

"They stopped inviting me. Not once."

"What about the Lark work groups?"

"They kicked me out of the core product group. I was only left in the big department group for announcements."

Gu Siyue picked up a pen and quickly jotted down several lines on a sticky note: access revocation dates, group removal times, and review meeting attendance records.

"How long was it from your transfer to your resignation?"

"A little over three weeks." Su Niannian thought about it. "Twenty-two days."

Gu Siyue closed the folder.

"He helped you win."

Su Niannian did not understand. "Who?"

"Fang Xu. Your parachuted-in director."

Gu Siyue pushed the two documents side by side toward Su Niannian.

"The prerequisite for a non-compete restriction is that the employee possesses trade secrets. When the arbitration panel decides whether that prerequisite exists, it does not look at what you once had access to. It looks at your actual position and scope of information access when you resigned."

She pointed at the handover form.

"When you resigned, your position was operations support. You could not view the documents, could not access the dashboard, and did not attend a single review meeting. Right?"

Su Niannian nodded.

"So." Gu Siyue picked up the non-compete agreement and pointed at the restricted scope. "Beaver Technology's own system records prove that during the twenty-two days before you resigned, you had already stopped accessing any core information related to the AI code review business. They were the ones who revoked your access, kicked you out of the groups, and stopped inviting you to meetings."

She set down the agreement.

"You cannot say she was unqualified to remain on the project while also claiming she was important enough that she could not work on a similar project at another company. You can only choose one argument."

Su Niannian loosened her grip on the armrest. She had been sitting in this office for over half an hour, and her back had been sweating the entire time.

Gu Siyue continued, "Did anyone else leave Beaver around the time you resigned?"

"Two people. One front-end developer and one tester. From the same department."

"Did they receive non-compete notices?"

Su Niannian thought for a moment. "No."

"People from the same department, leaving in the same period, who could access the same product information—none of them were put under non-compete restrictions. Only you." Gu Siyue tapped the desk with her finger. "This is not company policy. It is a targeted restriction. Arbitration panels are extremely sensitive to selective enforcement."

"So... we can win?"

"I am not saying we can win." Gu Siyue opened her laptop and began typing. "There is a break in the other side's chain of logic. You did not cause that break. They did. They made the transfer, revoked the access, and chose selective enforcement. I only need to put those three things in front of the arbitrator."

She looked up.

"File for arbitration."

Pudong New Area Labor and Personnel Dispute Arbitration Commission.

The hallway was long, its fluorescent lights painfully white, with identical doors lining both sides. The air smelled of disinfectant mixed with old documents.

Su Niannian sat on a plastic chair in the waiting area. Han Luyi sat beside her.

"Nervous?"

"Not really."

Her foot tapped the floor three times.

Gu Siyue walked over from the other end of the corridor. Black suit, low ponytail, folder tucked beneath her arm. Her heels struck the tiles in an unhurried, steady rhythm.

"No matter what they say in there, only answer the questions I ask you. Do not speak at any other time."

The hearing room was not large. A long table stood in the middle, with three arbitrators seated across from them. Su Niannian and Gu Siyue sat on the left; Beaver Technology's attorney sat on the right, a man in his forties wearing gold-rimmed glasses with a stack of documents before him. Han Luyi sat in the gallery.

Beaver's attorney gave his statement first.

His voice was calm and measured. During her employment at Beaver Technology, Su Niannian had been deeply involved in the core product design of the AI code review project, with access to user data, product roadmaps, and technical architecture documents. The non-compete compensation had been paid in full every month as stipulated in the agreement, and the procedure had been flawless. BugKiller and Beaver's products under development were direct competitors with highly overlapping business directions.

Every point was true. She had done those things. She had accessed that information.

When the attorney finished, he closed his folder.

The arbitrator flipped through the materials and signaled for the applicant's representative to speak.

Gu Siyue stood and opened the evidence index.

"Good afternoon, Arbitrators. Regarding the respondent's claim that the non-compete clause is valid, the applicant submits two sets of evidence."

The first set: job reassignment and information isolation.

The original resignation handover form. The position field read: Operations Support Specialist, not Product Manager in the AI Product Department. The applicant requested that the tribunal obtain the respondent's IT system records, which the respondent had provided. The access changes were precise to the minute: at 9:47 a.m. on May 14, access to the product document repository was revoked. At 2:12 p.m. on May 14, access to the data dashboard was removed. At 10:03 a.m. on May 15, she was removed from the core product Lark group. Technical review system meeting records showed that between May 14 and June 15, the AI code review project held seven technical reviews. Su Niannian's attendance: zero.

"The resignation handover form was issued by the respondent, and the IT records were generated by the respondent's own system. During the twenty-two days before her resignation, the applicant was no longer in the AI Product Department and no longer had access to any core information related to the code review business."

She handed the printouts to the arbitrators.

The second set: selective enforcement.

Two copies of resignation certificates were placed on the table.

"Two colleagues from the applicant's department resigned during the same period: one front-end developer and one test engineer. Neither received a non-compete notice. Is the non-compete restriction a company-wide policy, or was it a targeted action directed at the applicant? If it is policy, why did it not apply to employees in the same positions who resigned during the same period?"

Beaver's attorney flipped through the materials. He did not respond.

Gu Siyue closed her folder. She did not continue.

The arbitrators examined the first two sets of evidence. The presiding arbitrator looked up, flipped through the access-change records in his hand, and turned to Beaver's attorney.

"The respondent claims that Ms. Su possessed core trade secrets, yet your company reassigned her away from the core project and revoked all her system access on the very day she returned to work. Does your company still maintain that Ms. Su had access to trade secrets when she resigned?"

Beaver's attorney paused for two seconds.

"The reassignment was a normal personnel arrangement by the company and is separate from the activation of the non-compete restriction."

The arbitrator lowered his head and made a note.

Gu Siyue spoke.

"If the reassignment had nothing to do with the non-compete restriction, then what was the respondent's basis for activating it? Was it information the applicant accessed in her operations support role, or information she had accessed in a different position twenty-two days earlier?"

She paused.

"If it is the latter, then the respondent itself closed off her channels of access to information and severed all ties between her and the core project, yet still claims she remained someone who needed to be restricted. This contradiction in logic was not caused by the applicant. It was caused by the respondent itself."

Beaver's attorney opened a page of documents, looked at it for three seconds, then closed it.

The tribunal adjourned for deliberation.

Su Niannian remained seated. Beside her, Gu Siyue organized the documents, returning them one by one in order.

Fourteen minutes.

The arbitrators returned.

Ruling: The non-compete clause was not binding on Su Niannian. Beaver Technology was to cease paying non-compete compensation and refund the amounts already deducted.

When Su Niannian heard the words "not binding," her mind buzzed, and she could not think of anything.

They walked out of the hearing room.

The hallway was still just as long, the fluorescent lights still just as white. She sat down on a bench in the corridor. Her legs felt weak.

Gu Siyue stood nearby on the phone, already discussing another case. Her tone was exactly the same as it had been in the hearing, without a hint of fluctuation.

Han Luyi leaned against the wall opposite them, waiting.

After sitting for two minutes, Su Niannian stood up.

"Lawyer Gu."

Gu Siyue ended the call and looked at her.

"You are terrifying."

Gu Siyue smiled. Su Niannian had never seen that expression during the hearing.

"But so reliable."

"I'll send you the legal fee invoice later." Her tone was still cool, but she pulled out a tissue from her bag and handed it over.

Su Niannian took it. Her palm was drenched in sweat.

Gu Siyue nodded, turned, and headed toward the elevators. Her footsteps gradually faded before disappearing around the corner.

Su Niannian watched her retreating figure. The speed at which Gu Siyue had gone through the evidence, the rhythm of her questions, the timing of her pauses—everything had been precise to the second.

From beginning to end, this woman had never thought they would lose.

Han Luyi walked over.

"Let's go."

The two left the arbitration commission. It was drizzling outside. Haicheng at the end of June was stifling and damp.

"Han Luyi."

"Mm?"

"I'm going full-time with BugKiller from now on. Product, operations, marketing—I'll handle it all."

"Weren't you already handling all that?"

Su Niannian froze for a moment, then laughed.

"That was different. Before, I was just helping out."

She stood in the rain for two seconds without opening an umbrella.

"Now it's mine."

That evening, Han Luyi sent Gu Siyue a message.

"Lawyer Gu, we're preparing to register a company. We'll need your help drafting the shareholder agreement and intellectual property ownership documents. We'd also like to retain you as our long-term legal counsel afterward. Interested?"

Half a minute later.

"Send me the business scope and equity split. I'll draft a framework."

A few seconds later.

"No discount for long-term counsel. Also, Ms. Su's legal fees can be billed to the company after it is registered. Yours too."

He put down his phone. Rain was still falling outside the window.

His phone screen lit up. Su Niannian had sent him a Lark link.

BugKiller Full-Time Operations Plan v1.0. Thirty-seven pages.

Document creation time: 4:12 p.m. today.

The arbitration hearing had ended at 3:30.