The heart attack happened at 2:47 PM on a Tuesday.
I know the exact time because I was looking at the clock. That's what you do when you've given the same closing argument a hundred times. You don't need notes anymore. You don't need to think. Your mouth knows what to say. So your eyes wander. To the clock. To the water stain on the ceiling of Courtroom 7B that's been there for fifteen years. To the jury, watching you, waiting for the moment you stop performing and start meaning it.
The jury was looking at me. Twelve faces. Eleven pretending to understand. One — the woman in the back row, third seat from the left — she actually was listening. I could tell. She had the kind of face that believed in things. In justice. In lawyers who told the truth.
Poor woman.
The judge was looking at his watch. He always looked at his watch during closing arguments. He had been on the bench for thirty years. He had heard every argument, every objection, every lie dressed up as truth. Nothing surprised him anymore. Nothing moved him. He was waiting for 3:00 PM so he could go home and drink alone, like he did every day.
And my client was looking at the floor.
She already knew she was going to prison.
I didn't blame her. The evidence was bad. The witnesses were worse. Her alibi had fallen apart on cross-examination — not because she was lying, but because she couldn't remember. Trauma does that. It scrambles time. It erases details. It leaves you sitting in a courtroom, trying to explain why you can't remember the color of the shirt your attacker was wearing.
The prosecutor had used that against her. Of course he had. That was his job.
My job was to make them forget.
---
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury."
I stepped out from behind the podium. No notes. No lectern. Just me and twelve faces and the weight of everything I was about to say.
"The prosecution has asked you to convict my client based on a story. A story about a woman who hated her husband. A woman who planned his death. A woman who waited until he was asleep and then —"
I paused. Let the silence stretch.
"But they haven't shown you a single piece of evidence that puts her at the scene of the crime. Not a fingerprint. Not a hair. Not a single frame of security footage. Because there is none."
I walked toward the jury box. Slowly. Letting them feel the distance closing.
"What they have is suspicion. What they have is assumption. What they have is a dead man and a woman who had the misfortune of being married to him."
The woman in the back row — the one who believed in things — she nodded. Just once. Barely noticeable.
I had her.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the burden of proof is not 'maybe.' It is not 'probably.' It is not 'she seems like the type.' The burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. And if you have one doubt — one single doubt — about whether my client killed her husband, then the law requires you to find her not guilty."
I stopped in front of the jury box.
"That is not mercy. That is not technicality. That is the foundation of everything we claim to believe in."
The prosecutor shifted in his seat. He knew I was good. He had known it from the beginning.
The judge looked up from his watch. Not because he was listening. Because I had been speaking for seven minutes and he wanted to know how much longer. And I intended to make sure he could go home soon. Win win is my motto.
I turned back to the jury.
"One doubt. That's all I'm asking for. One doubt, and you walk out of this courtroom knowing you did the right thing."
I let that sit.
Then I opened my mouth to deliver the final line — the one I had used a hundred times, the one that had never failed me, the one that made juries cry and defendants hug me and opposing counsel shake my hand and say "good argument" through clenched teeth.
"The truth is simple, ladies and gentlemen. The truth is —"
Then I feel it. Slowly, then faster. And my chest exploded.
---
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Something inside me tore open. Not like a cramp. Not like a pulled muscle. Like a wire snapping. Like a knot finally breaking under too much pressure. I felt it — hot, sharp, wrong — spreading from the center of my chest out to my shoulders, down my left arm, up into my jaw.
I kept talking.
"— is that my client —"
The pain hit again. Harder.
My hand went to my chest. My notes — the ones I wasn't supposed to need — slipped from my fingers. Paper scattered across the courtroom floor. Pages landing face-up, face-down, spreading like evidence of something I couldn't name.
The jury's expressions shifted. Confusion first. Then concern. The woman in the back row leaned forward. Her mouth opened. No words came out.
The man beside her — the one who had been nodding along to everything I said, the one who had already decided she was guilty before I opened my mouth — he reached for his water bottle. Not sure what he's gonna do with it.
Strangely, time seems to crawl slowly for me. Everything seems fine and not fine at the same time. Don't have the right words for it.
The judge's eyes widened. His mouth opened. His hand moved toward the bench, toward the button that called for the bailiff, toward the phone that summoned help.
Too late.
My knees hit the floor.
I didn't feel it. My body felt it. My body was already somewhere else, already shutting down, already sending signals I couldn't process. But I didn't feel it. I was still trying to speak. My mouth was moving. My lungs were empty. Nothing came out. But inside my mind, I said "Damn it." Yeah. Just these two words. That's all.
My client screamed.
I had heard that sound before. In this courtroom. In others. The sound of someone who already knew they were lost, hearing the final confirmation. She was looking at me. Her face was white. Her hands were reaching for me, but she wasn't getting up. She was frozen. She knew.
The bailiff was running. The court reporter was shouting. The jury was standing — all of them, even the woman in the back row, even the man with the water bottle.
I couldn't see them anymore.
The last thing I saw was the ceiling of Courtroom 7B. The fluorescent lights, flickering. The water stain in the corner that had been there for years. No one ever fixed it. No one ever would.
Then nothing.
---
I woke up in my office.
Same desk. Same chair. Same stack of case files I'd been meaning to organize since 2019. Same framed law degree on the wall — the one my mother cried over when I showed it to her.
"See? All that work. All those years. Worth it."
She was still alive. Somewhere. Waiting for a call I'd never make.
I stood up. Walked to the window. Looked down at the street.
People moved like nothing had changed. A woman carrying coffee, her heels clicking against the pavement. A man checking his watch — the same gesture the judge had made, the one that had annoyed me, the one I would never see again. A kid weaving through traffic on a bike, dodging cars like he was invincible.
Normal. Ordinary. Alive.
I turned back to my desk. Picked up a case file.
My hand went through it.
I tried again. Same result.
I looked at my hands. They looked normal. Same fingers. Same faint scar from a letter opener in 2017 — a case file had fallen, I'd caught it wrong, the edge had sliced through my skin. I had been so annoyed. I had a deposition in an hour. I wrapped it in a napkin and forgot about it.
Same ring I wore out of habit, even though there had never been anyone to marry.
I reached for the desk.
My hand passed through it like smoke.
"Oh," I said.
No one heard me.
---
I tried the door. My hand went through it. I tried again. Pushed harder. Focused. Nothing. I walked through it, and I was on the other side. Just like that.
The hallway wasn't empty. Lights on. The firm was busy. People walked past me. No one noticed that the man who had died in Courtroom 7B was standing in the middle of the hallway.
I stood there and screamed.
Nothing.
I screamed again. Nothing. I kept screaming until my throat was empty. No one turned. No one looked. No one heard.
I stopped.
The hallway was quiet.
I looked at the ceiling. The lights. The same fluorescent lights that were in Courtroom 7B.
Then something clicked in my mind.
"Ox-Head," I said. Nothing. "Horse-Face." Nothing. "Damn. So it's just a story."
Yeah, that's what I said. Damn.
I didn't know what I expected. The old stories. The ones my grandmother told me when I was young. The judges of the dead. The ones who came for you when your time was up, who weighed your heart against a feather, who decided where you spent eternity.
Maybe they only came for people who believed.
I didn't believe. I was a lawyer. I believed in evidence. In arguments. In things you could prove. There was no evidence for Ox-Head. No proof for Horse-Face. Just me. Standing in an empty hallway. Screaming at a ceiling no one else could see.
I went back to my office.
---
The first day passed.
I watched my firm move on without me. My partner, Zhang Wei, walked into my office. He stood there for a long time, looking at the chair. The files. The photo of my mother on the shelf. He didn't say anything. Then he left.
The next day, a paralegal packed my things. She was crying. I reached out to touch her shoulder. My hand went through her.
"Sorry," I said.
She didn't hear me.
---
The first week passed.
I learned the rules. No one could see me. No one could hear me. I could walk through walls, but doors were easier. Gravity still worked, though. Strange thing — I couldn't fly. In my mind I kept telling myself I am a ghost and ghosts should be able to fly. Ha ha ha. Guess that's just how it works in the stories and movies.
Good news is, ever since the day I crossed over, hunger and sleep never come. Can't touch the food. Can't sleep.
Worst news is the sex drive. Yeah, I even went to strip clubs. But nothing. Nada. Zip. Can't get it up. Feel nothing.
I tried to leave the building. Walked through the front door. Stood on the street. People walked past. Through me. A car went through me. I stood there for a long time. Then I went back inside.
---
I visited my mother.
She lived in an apartment on the other side of the city. It took me hours to find it. I didn't know how to navigate anymore. Streets didn't work the way they used to. Buildings blurred together. Time passed strangely.
I found her at three in the morning.
She was sitting in her chair. The TV was on. She wasn't watching. My photo was on the shelf beside her. The one from law school. The one where I was smiling. Where I still believed in things. In justice. In the system. In the idea that hard work and talent and the right words could fix anything.
She was crying.
I sat across from her.
"Mom," I said.
She didn't hear me.
"I'm here."
She kept crying.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry. For the calls I never made. For the years I spent chasing cases instead of coming home. For dying before I could say goodbye. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
I sat there until dawn. She fell asleep in her chair. The TV flickered. The photo stayed on the shelf.
I left.
---
The first month passed.
I learned more. If I focused, I could move small things. Paper. Pens. Anything light enough to pretend I still mattered. I could make sounds. A tap. A whisper. Nothing clear. Nothing useful. I could watch. Listen. Learn.
The firm hired a new associate to take my cases. He was young. Eager. He didn't know what he was doing. I watched him prepare for my old cases. I wanted to correct him. To tell him he was missing the key evidence. To show him the argument he should be making. He couldn't hear me.
He lost my first case.
They retried my client without me. The one I was defending when I died. She didn't stand a chance. Guilty. Twenty years. She cried when they read the verdict. I stood in the gallery. No one saw me.
---
The first year passed.
Then another.
I stopped counting. I stopped trying to talk to people. Stopped trying to touch things. Stopped leaving my office. Because every time I did, I ended up somewhere I didn't want to be. The courtroom where I died. The prison where my client was serving a sentence I failed to stop. My mother's apartment, where she kept waiting for someone who would never come home.
So I stayed. I read case files. Reviewed evidence. Built arguments no one would ever hear. Appeals no one would ever file. Justice that would never arrive.
I read the file of a woman who said her husband abused her. The judge didn't believe her. I read the transcript of her testimony. The prosecutor asked her: "If you were so afraid, why did you stay?" She didn't answer. Only silence and a blank face.
I stayed in my office for three years. Maybe I understood her better than I wanted to.
I was very good at my job.
I was very dead.
---
Then she appeared.
Three years after I died. Tuesday. 2:47 PM.
I was sitting in my chair — the chair I couldn't touch, but strangely it let me sit on it — when the air in my office changed.
Cold. Sharp. Precise.
A woman stood in the corner.
Mid-twenties. Dark hair. Pale skin. Wearing a white dress that might have been white once. She looked normal. Almost. But she was cold. I could feel it from across the room.
She looked at me.
"Are you a lawyer?" she asked.
Her voice was flat, felt a little numb.
"I am, and I was," I said.
She nodded. Her eyes moved across the room. Files. Shelves. Framed degree.
"I need a lawyer," she said.
I studied her.
"You're dead. Dead people need a lawyer too nowadays?" Yeah, I tried to diffuse the cold air by making a joke. But what I met was her eyes, saying your jokes aren't funny at all.
Hah. After that, I didn't answer. Because she was right. I was never funny.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Lin Yue."
"What happened to you?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I was murdered. And I was convicted for it."
I didn't move or say anything. Just waited for her to continue.
"I served three years," she continued. "They said I killed my husband."
She stepped closer.
"I didn't."
The room felt colder.
"The real killer is still alive," she said.
She stopped in front of my desk.
Silence stretched between us.
"I need a lawyer," she said again.
She looked at me and said:
"Please help me. My sister is going to be the next victim."
I looked at her, then leaned back in my chair.
"When did you die?" I asked.
"Three years ago."
Of course. Everything important seemed to happen three years ago.
I nodded once.
"Tell me everything."
She sat across from me. And I listened. Because dead or not — I was still a lawyer. And she needed one.