Chapter 16: Chapter 10 (part 1)

Ning Wan had little memory of her drunken night. It felt as though she had had a dream, one in which her mother was beaten black and blue, and in which her father was roaring. It had not started out as a good dream, but in time, the negativity had been replaced by the sweet taste of ice cream - her favorite matcha, light and sweet without being cloying - and then Fu Zheng had appeared. She had even got an email back from the senior partner! Although it had been a rejection...

Rousing slowly from her hangover, Ning Wan felt a splitting headache coming on. However, she soon found that not all the things that had happened in her dream were false. She had, for example, received a reply from that partner, and it was indeed a rejection...

Sitting in the community lawyer's office, she met Fu Zheng's eyes and cleared her throat. "Xiao Li told me you sent me home yesterday. Thank you." Ning Wan coughed and probed hesitantly, "While I was drunk... did I say anything strange?"

Fu Zheng's voice was calm and natural. He looked up slightly to meet her gaze and said, "No. I left after taking you home."

"That's good. That's very good."

Ning Wan breathed a sigh of relief. In her dream, she had become riled up after receiving the senior partner's rejection and insulted him. She was thankful Fu Zheng had not been present, or it might have gotten around... she was still hoping to enter that partner's team somehow.

Now that she was sober, her mind was in a much better place. She took calls all morning, and received two community residents asking for a consultation. At noon, Fu Zheng seemed to have an appointment over lunch break, so Ning Wan took advantage of being the only person in the office to sit back and write an email. Creating rapport was impossible just through a single point of contact. The senior partner had replied, which meant that though it was a refusal, it was also a starting point. By interacting more with him, she hoped that he would become more familiar with her, and that he would come to understand her professionalism and recognize her ability. There was still hope to turn the matter around and eventually join his team...

Thinking these thoughts, Ning Wan was in high fighting spirits. She began carefully considering her words.

 

Meanwhile...

Some days after Fu Zheng had been "relegated to manual labour", Gao Yuan finally remembered to "grace him with his Majesty's presence". They made an appointment to have lunch together at noon.

"How are you doing? Working in the community is rough, isn't it? Most of the cases you take on have a lot of meaning, and working here will quickly force you to adapt to the domestic legal environment. Most of our domestic customers won't know the law as well as in the United States. " Gao Yuan smiled. "Working in community is actually a very challenging position. You might not last the full three months."

Fu Zheng had indeed been considering returning to headquarters early, but when he heard these words, he dug in his heels. "Of course I can do it. It's just grassroots law. How hard could it be?"

"Great! Come back after three months, and you'll have made a huge harvest. It's a valuable experience. If I wasn't needed at HQ, I'd volunteer myself!"

The two chatted on casually before Gao Yuan had a sudden thought. "By the way, did you have any ideas about who you want on your team? You could choose someone from the talent pool. We have a few rookies this year with excellent academic qualifications."

"It's troublesome to groom newcomers, though," Gao Yuan said, thinking aloud. "You wouldn't get anything done for the first six months. What about Ning Wan? She's pretty skilled, and as a matter of fact... "

Unfortunately, before Gao Yuan could finish, Fu Zheng had already interrupted. "No."

“?”

"Not Ning Wan."

"But why not? She has a decent reputation here among the community members, so she should be pretty good at taking on cases. Although she didn't graduate from a famous school..."

"Just not graduating from anywhere prestigious is enough to rule her out. The college entrance examination is a major life event, and if you do your best there only to make it into a 3rd-rate school, that means you're not good at what you do. If you were able to go somewhere better but didn't do your best, then you have an attitude problem."

"One could have done badly during the entrance examinations due to outside circumstances. You yourself may have gotten into famous schools throughout your education, but lots of people are ordinary. Give ordinary people a chance."

"Obtaining stable results over the period of many years is a talent in itself. If someone failed the college entrance examination, I won't sympathize with them."

Fu Zheng darted a look at at Gao Yuan. "Why didn't you pick her up, since you think she's so great?"

Gao Yuan ran his hand through his hair. "First of all, my team's very stable. No one leaves, so there aren't ever any new vacant positions. Second, when my wife saw the photo from Ning Wan's resume, she barred me from recruiting her into the team. She felt uncomfortable with the thought of me working closely with a woman that beautiful day in, day out. One's got to think of setting one's family at ease too, you know. Someone like you would never understand the suffering of a married man. "

Fu Zheng licked his lips. "She's not that beautiful."

"Of course she's that beautiful. Your standards are just too high..." About to add a few other observations, Gao Yuan caught a glimpse of Fu Zheng's phone screen. An email had just arrived, and his sharp eyes caught the beginning...

Fu Zheng also saw the email. He frowned and opened it, only to find out that it was Ning Wan. She had replied to his rejection last night with a warm email expressing gratitude-

"Thank you very, very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to reply to me. Really, thank you! I am grateful to you for pointing out the shortcomings in my resume and experience. Although it's true that at the moment I still have these flaws, if you could give me the opportunity to participate in related commercial disputes I believe you would gain a more comprehensive understanding of my ability... ...To have met someone like you, both so capable and also so enthusiastic and willing to help new people is truly my good fortune. You truly are a man with both virtue and skill. "

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Oh, virtue and skill, was it? What about all those four letter words you were spewing last night?

Fu Zheng sneered inside and calmly closed the window.

Sitting next to him, Gao Yuan was all fired up with gossip. "I saw that! I saw that with my 20/20 vision! I can't believe you got an email praising you to the heavens like that. Who sent it? What's going on? What are you going to say in reply?"

"I won't reply."

"What!? Why?" Gao Yuan complained bitterly on behalf of the owner of the email. "They buttered you up so well! Why won't you reply?!"

"Because I'm just a poisonous little viper." Fu Zheng took a sip of his tea and added, indifferently, "Just a man without a girlfriend who has no charisma at all."

? ? ?

 

Ning Wan wrote an eloquent and magnetic letter to the mysterious senior partner about to join Zhengyuan Law Firm, pouring in her enthusiasm and laying the flattery and adulation on thick. Alas, even after Fu Zheng came back from his lunch, a reply had not arrived.

But it didn't matter, Ning Wan consoled herself. The senior partner must be terribly busy. Didn't he take several days to reply to her last email? Calm down!

Fortunately, she was soon too busy to have the time to be nervous. People were coming into the office for on-the-spot consultations. Looking up, Ning Wan sighed. It was a familiar face--

"Aunt Wu, what brings you here?"

The sound of Ning Wan's voice made Fu Zheng, who was reading quietly next to her, raise his head. He looked at the door to find a thin middle-aged woman walking in, wiping away tears.

Even before she took a seat before Ning Wan's desk, she cried out, "Xiao Ning, I want a divorce!"

Sobbing, the woman howled, "I just can't do it another day! I can't take it anymore, Xiao Ning!"

"Aunt Wu, have a little water and tell me, what's wrong?"

"It's my damn fool of a husband! He hasn't been home in the evenings for a month! He must have some mistress or two outside, who knows what sultry little fox spoke two sentences to him... "

This was Fu Zheng's first time watching a community divorce drama. He watched Ning Wan with great interest, waiting to see how she was going to handle it.

Ning Wan remained quite calm and unruffled. "Aunt Wu, what have you been saying to Uncle Zhang? Maybe you misunderstood. Besides, you can't say that Uncle Zhang would have cheated on you just for the sake of a couple words. Haven't you been married more than ten years? You should know him better by now."

Unfortunately, Aunt Wu could not be persuaded. Instead, she got even more riled up. "Xiao Ning, he must have cheated, he must have. Recently, he's been completely ignoring me, and not only that, but he beat me!"

Holding out her hand, Aunt Wu showed Ning Wan the back. "Look, this is what he did!" Then she pulled up her sleeves to show her arms. "This is him, too!"

Fu Zheng followed the line of sight and saw a bruise on the middle-aged lady's hand and arms. His expression suddenly became serious. A divorce caused by arguments over chores or emotional disputes could be solved by mediation and negotiation, but once domestic violence was involved, there was no longer room for such things. There were only zero and countless cases of domestic violence in a marriage. If a beaten wife could not be saved from the marriage, she might eventually encounter lasting and escalating violence...

As a woman, Ning Wan must feel this even more than he. She would definitely not choose to mediate again this time, but instead help the woman sue for divorce and obtain the evidence of the crime.

However, he didn't expect Ning Wan to be totally without empathy. Her eyes were calm and indifferent, and she completely ignored the middle aged woman's injuries--

"Aunt Wu, you've got to have some faith in Uncle Zhang. Think how good he is to you usually."

"Remember the saying, sugarcane is never sweet at both ends. Nothing's perfect. A good marriage is built up by two people tolerating each other's flaws in their daily lives..."

……