After the little episode with Bao Rui, Cheng Yao sat back down, took a deep breath, and began looking through her new case.
Her client’s name was Lin Fengjuan, twenty-five years old, only a year older than Cheng Yao. She had originally gone to consult the legal aid center under the bar association, and the staff there, finding she qualified for legal aid, had helped her apply—which was how the case ended up assigned to Cheng Yao.
The intake materials from the legal aid center were fairly sparse. All they revealed was that Lin Fengjuan’s parents were migrant workers, that the family was struggling financially, that Lin Fengjuan had gotten married a year ago, given birth two months ago, and divorced a month ago.
Then, half a month ago, a checkup had revealed the baby had a serious congenital heart condition requiring surgery. With no money for the operation, she had scraped together funds from every possible source and launched an online crowdfunding campaign, but caring for an infant with heart disease still cost a great deal every day. Left with no other choice, Lin Fengjuan wanted to sue the child’s father for child support.
Cheng Yao skimmed the file and thought the case seemed simple enough. Even after divorce, a biological father wasn’t exempt from his obligation to support his child—he still had to pay child support. It was a straightforward, unambiguous rule, but in practice, many people simply refused to pay after divorcing. Reminders did no good in such cases; the only recourse was to go through the courts and eventually rely on enforcement once judgment was rendered.
Cheng Yao figured all she needed to do was prepare the filing materials, sue the father outright, go through a second trial if he appealed, and then apply for enforcement once the judgment took effect.
No time to waste—she called the number on file and arranged to meet Lin Fengjuan at a quiet little café downstairs.
Lin Fengjuan arrived half an hour later.
Though only twenty-five, she looked considerably older than her age, worn down by life. Her skin was slightly flaking, clearly from lack of time to care for herself, and there were deep dark circles under her eyes—eyes that carried a hopeless kind of pain and exhaustion. Yet beneath it all, her features suggested that with proper care and an easier life, she would have been quite beautiful.
Looking around at the café’s elegant surroundings and upscale furnishings, she twisted at the hem of her worn coat, ill at ease. “I left in a hurry, didn’t have time to change.” She instinctively covered a stain on her chest. “The baby spit up on me.”
Cheng Yao smiled and gestured for her to sit. “Please, sit down. It’s always chaotic with a newborn. You’re nursing, so you probably shouldn’t have coffee—I ordered you a hot taro and highland barley milk instead.” She then called the waiter over and had a cup of hot water brought for Lin Fengjuan as well.
Lin Fengjuan gradually calmed down. She sat, took a sip of the warm milk, and finally spoke up. “Are you… are you Lawyer Cheng’s assistant?” she asked, a little embarrassed. “I heard the lawyer taking my case had the surname Cheng.”
“I am Cheng Yao.” She handed over her business card as she spoke. “I’ll be handling your case from start to finish, and I’ll do everything I can to get you as much child support as possible.”
Even though Cheng Yao was dressed professionally and carried herself with confidence, disappointment, worry, and dejection still crossed Lin Fengjuan’s face when she learned Cheng Yao was the one handling her case.
“You’re so young…” she said, lowering her head, running her fingers over the business card. “You look even younger than me, and I’m twenty-five. You look like you just graduated.”
Before Cheng Yao could explain, Lin Fengjuan sighed. “Still, thank you for taking a case like mine, one with no money in it. Legal aid is free to begin with—I can’t expect some big-name lawyer to represent me. Their time is worth too much.”
Cheng Yao smiled, unbothered. “People tend to assume that the older a lawyer is, the more experienced and trustworthy they must be, but judging a lawyer’s competence by age isn’t really fair.”
The Li Mengting case was proceeding smoothly according to her strategy, and everything so far had gone exactly as she expected, which gave Cheng Yao plenty of confidence. Her eyes were bright and earnest as she looked steadily at Lin Fengjuan. “Young lawyers have their own advantages too. We have more energy, sharper and more flexible thinking, and we might find unconventional approaches to a case. We’re also often more willing to throw ourselves completely into a single case than more senior lawyers.”
Lin Fengjuan looked a little embarrassed and nodded meekly.
“I’ve read the case information you registered with the legal aid center. It’s fairly simple, but to be clear, what I’ll be representing you on is a child support dispute, correct?” Cheng Yao pulled out a prepared checklist. “I’ll need the originals of some documents—your divorce certificate from your ex-husband, the child’s birth certificate, your household registration book…”
Before she could finish, Lin Fengjuan cut her off, her face pained. “I… this child… I’m not seeking support from my ex-husband.”
Cheng Yao paused, confused. “Why not? Then who exactly are you planning to sue for support?”
“It’s… it’s the child’s biological father…”
A husband couldn’t file for divorce while his wife was breastfeeding, so a divorce during this period had to be either initiated by the wife, or agreed upon by both parties. When Cheng Yao had first received the brief case file, she’d wondered why the divorce had happened just a month after the child’s birth—what had prompted Lin Fengjuan to initiate or agree to it.
Now the mystery was solved.
The child wasn’t her ex-husband’s.
Lin Fengjuan’s face flushed red, then paled, clearly ashamed of having had an affair and borne another man’s child during her marriage.
Cheng Yao gave her a moment to compose herself before carefully continuing. “So, what’s the situation with the child’s biological father?”
Lin Fengjuan bit her lip hard, her eyes reddening. “This is all my fault.” She began to sob. “Ah Min and I actually had a very good relationship. We met after starting work, dated for three years before marrying. He had a good temper, was good to me. If… if only there hadn’t been that high school reunion.”
Through her broken, halting account, Cheng Yao pieced together the whole story.
Not long after Lin Fengjuan and her husband Ah Min married, her high school class held a reunion, with almost the entire class attending. She hadn’t thought much of it and went along cheerfully. She had been the class beauty back in school, and now, newly married and doted on by Ah Min, she was radiant with happiness, the center of everyone’s attention at the reunion. And the most attentive of all was her high school first love, Lu Jian.
“Everyone kept wishing me a happy marriage, kept toasting me one after another. I was so happy that day, I just kept drinking, and before I knew it I’d had too much, started losing track of things,” Lin Fengjuan said hesitantly. “Then somehow, everyone else left, and it was just Lu Jian walking me back.”
Here, her eyes began to dart away, as if trying to erase this part of the story entirely. “After that I don’t really know how it happened—by the time I came to my senses, I was already… already at a hotel with Lu Jian, and we’d…”
Though she framed it in a way that shed all responsibility, as if she’d had no agency whatsoever, Cheng Yao could tell from her expression and body language that at that reunion, fueled by alcohol, some old spark with her first love Lu Jian had likely reignited—the two of them reminiscing about the past, until, half willingly, they had crossed a line.
Lin Fengjuan kept insisting, “Once I sobered up I regretted it immediately. Ah Min was so good to me, and I felt I’d wronged him terribly, but that one night with Lu Jian really was just a moment of foolishness. My heart only had room for Ah Min—I wanted to build a good life with him, I never wanted anything more to do with Lu Jian.”
“So you kept this hidden, never told Ah Min?”
“Mm.” Lin Fengjuan nodded, embarrassed. “Really, it was just that one time, my only mistake. Lu Jian was already engaged to his girlfriend at the time too, and he never intended anything long-term with me either—we both understood that night was just a small detour that wouldn’t affect either of our marriages. So I thought, since it was just the once, not telling Ah Min would actually protect our marriage rather than harm it.”
How was that “protecting” anything? Cheng Yao wanted to say—the moment you let alcohol carry you into bed with Lu Jian, you’d already stopped respecting that marriage.
Did a single act of infidelity really not count, so long as your heart remained faithful, and it never led to divorce? Could that really be called protecting a marriage, protecting it from harm?
Even though she didn’t agree in her heart, Cheng Yao listened patiently and professionally as Lin Fengjuan continued.
“After that, Lu Jian and I didn’t even exchange a single text message, we cut off contact completely. Ah Min never suspected anything, and gradually, I forgot it had ever happened. Around that time, Ah Min’s career was starting to take off, and we were preparing to have a baby.” At this point, Lin Fengjuan covered her face and cried. “But I never expected that a little over a month after the reunion, I’d test positive for pregnancy.”
Cheng Yao handed her a tissue.
Lin Fengjuan’s composure began slipping further. “I was so anxious at the time. Lu Jian and I—because we’d both been drinking—hadn’t used any protection either. Counting the timing, I was genuinely scared, but… but I thought, what if it really is Ah Min’s? After all, it was only that one time with Lu Jian, how could it possibly be such a coincidence…”
She wrung her fingers together. “Besides, at first I didn’t think much of it, I just felt unwell—dizzy, sleepy, acid stomach. When I went to the hospital, Ah Min came with me, and he was right there when the test came back positive. I couldn’t hide it from him… The moment he heard I was pregnant, he just picked me up and spun me around in the air, he was so happy. I really had no way to tell him I wanted to get rid of the baby.”
Lin Fengjuan probably didn’t realize that from the moment she took that first wrong step, everything that followed was destined to spiral out of control. Cheng Yao hadn’t expected what she’d assumed would be a simple child support dispute to have such a tangled backstory.
“So out of that gamble, you kept the baby?”
Lin Fengjuan nodded, choking back tears. “Ah Min loved this baby so much already, I thought heaven would surely help me, surely it would turn out to be his.”
Pinning her hopes on heaven—that really was as insubstantial as it got.
“After the baby was born, since it was a boy and looked like me, Ah Min didn’t think anything of it, and I was happy too. The baby would stop crying the moment Ah Min picked him up, and I felt certain it had to be his.”
“So how did your ex-husband find out he wasn’t the father?”
“When the baby was born, the hospital did a blood type test during the checkup, and it didn’t match Ah Min’s.” Lin Fengjuan said with difficulty. “After that, Ah Min never came home again, never came to see me or the baby again. He was like a completely different person.”
Tears streaming down her face, Lin Fengjuan continued, “After that, both our families completely fell apart over it. Ah Min filed for divorce, told me that if I’d cuckolded him like this, even the court would rule for divorce. I felt guilty too, I knew we were finished, so I agreed to a divorce by mutual consent.”
“It was only after the divorce that we discovered the baby had a congenital heart condition, and a severe one, requiring surgery, with expensive follow-up care too.” Speaking of the baby, a look of tender attachment crossed her face. “I know I did wrong, but this child did nothing wrong. He’s so small, so lovely, I can’t just let him go. But I’m still on maternity leave now, my base salary isn’t high, and once leave ends, I’ll probably have to quit to take care of him. Both my parents are in poor health too, no income coming in at home, and since I was the one at fault in the divorce, I left with nothing. Now, to properly treat him going forward, I can’t keep relying on kind strangers donating money…”
“So you want to seek child support from Lu Jian?”
Lin Fengjuan nodded. “The child really is his, and his family is quite well-off…”
“Have you talked to Lu Jian about this?”
At this question, the pain and helplessness on Lin Fengjuan’s face deepened. “I messaged him on WeChat, only to find he’d blocked me at some point without me even knowing. I don’t know if he changed his phone number too—he won’t pick up when I call, doesn’t respond to texts. I don’t even know where he works or lives. I had no other choice but to sue.”
Cheng Yao seized on the key point. “Litigation takes a great deal of time and energy—by the time the whole process is done, it could be a year. The baby’s medical costs can’t wait that long. The sooner the better. If we can settle this through negotiation, that would be ideal. Here—give me Lu Jian’s contact information, and I’ll call him myself.”
The moment she had the number, Cheng Yao called right then and there.
Lu Jian picked up almost immediately. “Hello?”
So he hadn’t changed his number—he’d simply been ignoring Lin Fengjuan’s calls.
Cheng Yao briefly explained the entire situation, but Lu Jian was having none of it. “I already told her, no way! Absolutely not! I’m about to get married, I don’t want my fiancée seeing any of Lin Fengjuan’s messages and starting trouble, that’s why I blocked her early on! At first I thought those texts were just some kind of joke and ignored them! And now, even after all that, she’s still trying to pin this on me! Enough is enough! Keep harassing me and I’ll call the police!”
Before he could hang up, Cheng Yao cut in firmly, “If you refuse to cooperate proactively in resolving this matter, I will send a formal lawyer’s letter directly to your employer’s HR and legal departments on behalf of my client. Then you’ll find out for yourself whether this is malicious harassment or legitimate rights protection.”
Though this was just a bluff on Cheng Yao’s part, Lu Jian’s tone softened noticeably at those words. However reluctantly, he finally agreed to meet.
Without delay, Cheng Yao arranged for them to meet that very day, sending Lu Jian the address of the café where she and Lin Fengjuan were sitting.
Lu Jian’s location was quite close to the café. Ten minutes later, he arrived, his face grim, looking harried. He was a bit slick and overly groomed, but with his height, long legs, and rather regular features, he’d pass for handsome by current standards.
Having grown accustomed to Qian Heng’s face, though, Cheng Yao was long since immune to this kind of run-of-the-mill good looks. She thought objectively to herself that his presence didn’t hold a candle to Qian Heng’s.
Even as she judged him internally, her hands were already busy—she discreetly switched on her voice recorder.
The moment he sat down, Lu Jian checked his watch, visibly impatient. “I only have ten minutes. Say whatever you need to say, fast.”
Lin Fengjuan, incensed by his attitude, immediately raised her voice. “Hanhan is your child too! He’s lying in the hospital right now, waiting for money that could save his life! He’s a living person! And all he’s worth to you is ten minutes?”
Lu Jian grew angry too. “Lin Fengjuan, did having a baby cost you your brain? I heard you found out your kid has a heart condition and started asking classmates about my family’s finances, and once you found out I have money, you decided to shake me down. Dream on. I will absolutely not accept a ‘surprise fatherhood’ scam like this. Sure, you had a sick baby and got dumped by your husband, that’s rough, but that doesn’t give you the right to make false accusations. What do you mean my child? What does he have to do with me?”
“He’s yours.” Lin Fengjuan’s eyes blazed. “It’s not my ex-husband’s, so it has to be yours. The timing lines up perfectly.”
“Sure, I slept with you.” Lu Jian admitted it readily enough, though his tone dripped with mockery. “But who’s to say you didn’t sleep with someone else too?”
“You!” Lin Fengjuan choked with fury. “Besides my ex-husband, I’ve only been with you! If it’s not his, of course it’s yours!”
“Of course you’d say that. If the baby hadn’t turned out not to be your ex-husband’s, would you still be telling him you’d only ever slept with him your whole life?” Lu Jian said dismissively. “You’d only just gotten married and you were already cheating with me behind your husband’s back—a woman that loose, who knows how many other men you’ve cuckolded him with. I bet you’re saying it’s my kid just because I’ve got the best financial situation out of whoever else was involved!”
Only then did Lin Fengjuan truly grasp the cruelty of the man in front of her.
She remembered clearly how, that night when she’d been tipsy, Lu Jian had held her and murmured softly, calling her his eternal first love, his forever unattainable ideal, saying he only regretted that by the time they’d reunited she was already married, otherwise he’d have fought to win her back. He’d said his current girlfriend was nothing but the product of a family-arranged marriage, that in his heart there was only ever her. Every sweet nothing he’d whispered that night was still vivid in her memory—how he’d coaxed her, saying he just wanted one last taste of the past with her. Then came the kissing, the touching, and then, and then everything had spiraled out of control.
After Ah Min discovered the baby wasn’t biologically his, Lin Fengjuan had regretted not secretly terminating the pregnancy back then, so none of this would have come out. But only now did she feel true regret, from the bottom of her heart—regret for having believed Lu Jian’s sweet lies, for having betrayed Ah Min.
And now this vile man was throwing all the blame right back onto her.
Lin Fengjuan’s eyes reddened. “Since you think I’m the kind of woman who’d sleep with anyone, and that the child couldn’t possibly be yours, then go get a paternity test with me directly. If it comes back that the child isn’t yours, I’ll apologize without a word of complaint, and never bother you again.”
“Why would I do a paternity test?” Lu Jian snapped too. “First, you can’t prove anything happened between us. Second, you definitely can’t prove when it happened. Honestly, we barely knew each other, hadn’t spoken once before that reunion. Why should I have to do a paternity test with your kid? And if I did, and people found out, what would they think of me? Even if there’s nothing between us, people would gossip like there was. You may not care about your reputation, but I still have to live my life!”
With that, Lu Jian had no patience left to continue. He pulled a stack of cash from his bag and tossed it in front of Lin Fengjuan. “Here’s three thousand. Consider it compensation for that night. We’re even now.”
“I… I’ll go to court and request a paternity test order…”
Lu Jian gave a mocking laugh, then looked at Cheng Yao, his eyes dripping with undisguised contempt. “Didn’t your lawyer tell you? Even the court can’t force someone to take a paternity test. If I refuse, there’s nothing you can do about it. Lin Fengjuan, I suggest you know when to stop. If you dare bring people to make a scene at my workplace, I, Lu Jian, absolutely have the means to make you regret it.”
With that, he didn’t so much as glance at her again. He checked his watch, picked up his bag with visible irritation, and left, leaving Lin Fengjuan staring blankly at the money on the table.
Cheng Yao was speechless at Lu Jian’s conduct. Wasn’t what he’d just said essentially implying he’d bought a night with Lin Fengjuan for three thousand yuan? How was that any different from treating her like a sex worker?
If Cheng Yao could see it, of course Lin Fengjuan, as the one involved, could see it too. Yet she didn’t leap up and throw the cash back in his face. Not until Lu Jian’s figure had completely vanished did she, trembling, put the three thousand yuan into her bag.
A hero brought low by lack of a single meal—when a person faces truly desperate circumstances, they lose the luxury of pride and principle.
Cheng Yao understood: Lin Fengjuan needed money. She needed a great deal of money, to save her son Hanhan.
Having taken the cash, Lin Fengjuan buried her face in her hands, weeping from extreme embarrassment and shame. “Lawyer Cheng, I… I really do need the money.”
Cheng Yao patted the hand Lin Fengjuan had resting on the table. “I understand. You don’t need to feel ashamed. I’m your legal representative, and I will do everything in my power to protect your interests, to stand by your side.”
Lin Fengjuan looked at Cheng Yao almost as if pleading for rescue. “Lawyer Cheng, is what Lu Jian said true? Is it really true that even if we sue, the court can’t force him to do a paternity test with Hanhan?”
“That’s correct.”
Lin Fengjuan slumped. “Then… then what can we do?”
Cheng Yao smiled and held up her recorder. “He just admitted, at the very least, that he had a relationship with you. That means there’s still a chance Hanhan is his child. Even though the court can’t compel a paternity test, if there’s evidence suggesting the child is likely his, and he still insists on refusing the test, then he bears the consequences of failing to provide counter-evidence. If we can find additional supporting evidence—the timing of your hotel stay compared against the baby’s birth date, his blood type, whether the baby shares any hereditary traits with Lu Jian, and so on.”
Cheng Yao continued, calm and unhurried. “In short, I’ll help you gather every piece of relevant evidence and submit it to the court. As long as the chain of evidence is strong enough, even if Lu Jian refuses the paternity test, the court can still infer that a parent-child relationship exists.”
Hearing this, Lin Fengjuan’s eyes lit up. She seemed to find hope again, her earlier doubts about Cheng Yao completely gone, thanking her sincerely. “Thank you, Lawyer Cheng! Thank you so much!” As she spoke, she pulled a portion of the cash back out of her bag, trying to press it into Cheng Yao’s hands. “I know taking my case means no money for you—this… this is just a small token of my appreciation!”
Cheng Yao politely pushed it back. “We have a case subsidy.” She thought for a moment, then smiled. “And I have a private subsidy too.” At Lin Fengjuan’s puzzled look, she added, “In short, I’m not short on money, don’t worry about it. A ten-million-yuan case is a case, and a legal aid case is a case too. Every client is equally important to me. I’ll do everything I can and should do.”
She looked at Lin Fengjuan. “So all you need to do is take care of what you should—your baby’s waiting for you at home. I’ll get you a car. I’ll be in touch the moment there’s anything new.”
After sending Lin Fengjuan off, Cheng Yao organized her thoughts and the information she’d gathered, then headed back to Junheng.
Although Lin Fengjuan’s case was only a legal aid matter, it hadn’t turned out to be the smooth sailing Cheng Yao had originally anticipated. How to prove the paternity relationship without Lu Jian’s cooperation remained a real challenge.
Yet despite the difficulty of the case, Cheng Yao felt a deep sense of fulfillment inside.
This was the first time since striking out on her own from Qian Heng that she’d faced a client entirely independently, thinking through her case strategy entirely on her own—and in a short time, she’d managed to improvise and find a workable angle. For a moment, even Cheng Yao felt a little proud of herself. All those hours she’d spent poring over classic cases, listening carefully to colleagues’ discussions, humbly asking for guidance—none of it had been wasted.
Some efforts might not show results in the short term, but someday, they always paid off.
She always remembered that line from Malcolm Gladwell—
<cite index=”2-1″>people considered geniuses aren’t simply born more talented than everyone else, but rather owe their achievements to sustained effort, with roughly ten thousand hours of practice as the threshold required to go from ordinary to world-class mastery in any field.</cite>
As long as she kept working hard, as long as she put in her ten thousand hours, or even twenty thousand, surely one day, slowly but surely, she’d catch up to Qian Heng. Surely one day, she too would be able to stand beside him as an equal.