Contos e Romances com Freak e Face Slapping

I ran into my boss when I was complaining to my best friend about how he actively made the workplace hostile for me. He fired off a barrage of questions, "Where's the annual report? Where's the script for the speech? I can't believe you have the gall to enjoy a meal when you have a mountain of work to do!" That was it. I slammed the table. "It's due tomorrow! What's the rush? Are you going to hold a funeral for yourself tomorrow?" My boss stormed off in a huff. I asked for the bill, but the waiter came with two. My table came up to 60 dollars, but the other ran up to 3,750. "Your boyfriend said you're paying for both. Cash or credit, miss?" Shawn Goodall put that impossible bill on my tab and called himself my boyfriend? Unbelievable! I called him, utterly incensed. Yet, he had the gall to say, "Get the receipt and claim it from finance." Then, he hung up. The waiter was going to call the cops if I didn't pay up, so I had no choice but to accept this bitter defeat. I was trying to claim the money the next day, but the cops arrested me instead. "Shawn Goodall died at midnight and was found in his house. You're his girlfriend and the last person he met. You're coming with us."

On Valentine’s Day, I went skiing for fun. I never expected my younger sister, Fiona White, to get into an argument with our parents and run away. She came to find me. The hotel receptionist made her register as a guest despite sharing my room. I said, “She’s my sister. She ran away from home after an argument and did not bring her driver's license. She’s only staying one night. I’ll send her home tomorrow.” However, he looked at us menacingly. He gave Fiona a lewd wink and acted like he knew what was really going on. “Sure.” He smiled. “It’s Valentine’s Day, so I get it. No need to be shy.” Seeing how tired Fiona was, I took her upstairs without making a fuss. However, I found a post online later that night. [Some men are really so brazen. He brought a prostitute to the hotel and denied it when I called him out. He insisted that she’s his little sister. Does he think I can’t tell?] Some netizens questioned him and told him that maybe he was wrong in his assumption. [I’ve been in this field for more than a decade. I know what I saw! He didn’t dare to register her. That means he was afraid his wife might find out about his actions! I’ll go to their room and record just how loudly that woman moans. I’ll livestream it!] I was stunned. I thought it was just a coincidence. I clicked on the photo the receptionist had sneakily taken and froze. That was me! Did he think Fiona, who was lying on the couch, was a prostitute? But she was really my little sister!

I’d just left a creative meeting when a TikTok video popped up on my feed, slamming my company. The title: "Stay Away! This Austin startup is incredibly cheap. The perks are a joke." The video showed off the pour-over coffee from Austin's hottest independent cafe and pastries from a top-tier French bakery. The same ones I’d just had my assistant, Sam, hand out. I frowned. In the company's Slack channel, I tagged everyone. "@here Any suggestions for this afternoon's Happy Hour?" Leo, the new Gen-Z intern, replied instantly with a voice note. “Asher, with all due respect, these snacks with gluten and dairy are so unhealthy.” “A truly visionary company would hire a private chef to customize raw, vegan bites for everyone's dietary needs. That's what respect looks like.” I laughed. It was an angry laugh. The company's daily snack budget was $25 per person. For an Austin startup, that was top of the line. I typed back: "Since it's impossible to please everyone, the snack perk is canceled. I'll convert the budget into a cash bonus for all of you." Less than five minutes later, the TikTok caption was updated. "UPDATE: Y'all, I can't make this up. I made a suggestion about dietary inclusivity, and my toxic boss just canceled all the perks! This is how toxic bosses act. Can't handle a single piece of feedback!"

My roommate, Keith Kavanaugh, calls himself the "Holy Son of Frost". On the very first day we meet, he insists that the air conditioner in our dorm room must stay on until October, and the temperature can never go above 50°F. He claims, "A mystic says I'm the Holy Son of Frost, so I have a rare physique. I can only live in cool environments of 50°F at most." He even starts live-streaming, and his "special condition" instantly attracts a huge following. Meanwhile, I'm sitting right in front of the AC vent, so I'm shivering all over from the cold. I quickly turn the temperature up, but he immediately turns it back down and even locks the remote in his cabinet. "We're all educated college students here. Why are you so selfish?" he questions. Faced with his unreasonable accusation, I hold back my anger and try to reason with him. "We're in the north region. The weather here is cool enough in September. There's no need to set the AC this low. But if you insist, I can switch spots with you…" Keith cuts me off impatiently, "Are you crazy? Who sleeps right in front of the AC vent? What if I get sick from it? No one else has a problem. Why are you the only one making a fuss? Let me warn you—I'll melt from the heat. If you make me uncomfortable during my stay, I'll have you kicked out!" I realize there's no reasoning with him, so I plan to contact the dorm counselor to switch rooms. But Keith beats me to it! He goes to her first, records a video, and even posts it online. He accuses me, a local student, of being selfish and bullying him, someone who is from out of town. Just then, a new post suddenly appears on the campus forum. The poster writes, "My roommates are too wasteful. One guy washes his hair every day, and he even uses running water. He even takes a shower after every training session! Meanwhile, I can wash my whole body with just one damp towel. "And the worst part of this is that they want to kick me out after I made an itemized bill to split expenses. These cheapskates are always taking advantage of me. I'm looking for a high-quality dorm to take me in." My eyes light up instantly. He's the one!

After guarding the nation's border for ten years, I return home only to see my younger sister, Piper Wright, being trampled under someone’s foot. "Where did this country bumpkin come from? How dare you show up at a place like this?" The man in a suit throws an invitation in her face. "Take a look at yourself. What do you think you are? My sister is Velda Mercer, the top socialite of Hyporion. If you offend me, I will have your whole family thrown into the river!" I smash his nose with a single punch. I help Piper to her feet and dial Velda's number. "Velda Mercer, if it were not for me back then, you would still be begging for food. How dare you bully my sister?"

A young woman showed up at my door, saying she wanted to become my wife to repay me for saving her life. She drove my younger sister out of the house and wanted to transfer the family property to her parasitic parents in my name! I immediately reported her. How could someone be so bold as to commit robbery right at my home in a society governed by law?

At the company's annual gala, the CEO announced that this year's top sales performer would receive a two-million-dollar year-end bonus. I was the top performer. However, my manager called me into his office the very next day and explained that the company was cutting costs and improving efficiency. As a result, my bonus had to be reduced. I initially assumed everyone's bonus was being cut. Then, I found out I was the only one getting shortchanged. Even worse, they handed my position to a useless coworker who could barely do the job. I understood everything immediately. 'So this is how it is. You're tossing me aside after you got what you wanted from me.' Fine. I stopped putting in any effort from that day forward. I clocked in, did the bare minimum, and watched the company slowly fall apart. Sales began to drop month after month. Even the major clients I had already secured began withdrawing their investments. That was when the CEO finally panicked. He showed up at my front door, begging me to fix things. I kicked the door open and looked down at him. "You think a garbage company like yours deserves my help?"

During a holiday, I returned to my hometown to visit my family. My family’s private jet was under maintenance. The newly hired housekeeper mistakenly booked an economy-class ticket. While I was boarding, I ran into my first love, Brooke Smith, and her new boyfriend, Simon Xanders. They mocked me for flying in economy class. They laughed at me for being a country bumpkin heading to Nework. I ignored them. Then, I accidentally discovered the pilot, Lucas Wallace’s secret. His wife had been cheating on him. It turned out he had been raising another man’s child for over a decade. He wanted to take the entire plane down with him. I knew how to fly a plane. I urged everyone to subdue the pilot and let me make an emergency landing. Yet they mocked and humiliated me relentlessly. Then, the plane plunged sharply toward the ground. Only then did they finally panic.

The Lombardos' long-lost son turned out to be some "scam-busting" influencer. He stormed into the company with my fiancée, cut me off mid–quarterly report, pointed straight at me, and went live. "Drop a comment if you're watching. Blow this up. I'm exposing a fake heir who stole someone else's life!" His crew dragged me offstage, ripped my suit, and shoved me into a neon vest stamped with "FAKE." "A fake's always fake. Never real. I'm ripping off your mask. If you're smart, get on your knees, hand over the CEO seat, and get lost!" I glanced at his parents—faces drained—and gave him one warning. "You don't get to call me a fraud. For their sake, apologize now, and I'll let it go." The room buzzed. Everyone thought I'd snapped, waiting for the "fake heir" to crash and burn. They had no clue. I wasn't the fake. I was the one the whole family answered to.

Dominic Langdon, a gang boss, is about to host his birthday banquet soon. He specifically tells everyone that he wants bluefin tuna and premium abalone as the grandest dish in his banquet. That seafood comes to a total of 80 thousand dollars. But my uncle, Steve Cutterson, gives me 800 dollars and tells me to carry out the task. I head toward the garbage dump of the farmers' market immediately. Soon, I return with a cartload of canned sardines and crayfish. After calculating the transportation costs, it comes to a total of 800 dollars. When the cheap-looking seafood is served, Dominic is so pissed that he flips the table on the spot. "How dare you pocket my money! You must have a death wish!" Steve quickly makes me the scapegoat. "Mr. Langdon, Caleb is the one who bought the seafood! He must have embezzled your money! Caleb, you'd better grovel to Mr. Langdon and pay him back right now!" I just show everyone the magnified version of the transfer record of 800 dollars with a stony expression. "Take a good look, Uncle Steve. Do you really think you can afford bluefin tuna with just 800 dollars? Did Mr. Langdon give you the money purely out of charity purposes?"

While I'm enjoying a promotional set that I've ordered from a restaurant, my best friend sends me screenshots she has taken from someone's social media feed. "I just met a weird customer who's clearly impoverished but acts like she isn't. How can I make her realize that she has no right to be dining in such a fine establishment?" The screenshot's descriptions grow even more familiar. "One has to spend an average of two thousand dollars in this fine dining restaurant, and yet this broke loser has the nerve to order the cheapest promotional set instead! On top of that, she's shameless and pathetic enough to make me take a photo of her that makes her look very fancy! "Seriously, I want nothing more than to post that ugly and unedited photo of hers on my social media feed and pin it there, just so I can humiliate her to no end!" Someone in the comment section tells the floor captain of the restaurant to watch her behavior. "She's a customer at the end of the day; your restaurant's reputation will suffer from a blemish if things get out of hand. "You should know when to stop. After all, you're in the hospitality industry, so you shouldn't act too arrogantly." The original poster has the guts to respond to that comment. "I will never show respect to those who can't afford a 14-thousand-dollar meal! The fact that I have the balls to post the entire thing on my social media means I'm not scared of that peasant at all! What can she do to me anyway?"

I bought an apartment during a market slump, $30,000 below what others had paid for the same layout. I had just finished moving in when Linda Carver, the neighbor across the hall, stormed over. "Same unit, same building, yet you paid $30,000 less than we did. You need to make up the difference!" I froze for a second. She took it as fear and raised her voice, "If you had the guts to snap it up cheap, you’d better be ready to compensate the rest of us. Otherwise, don’t expect to live here in peace." I looked at her, so self-righteous it was almost absurd, and I laughed. I had just been discharged from a psychiatric hospital. Threaten me? If anyone wasn’t going to live in peace, it was her.

When the hospital director called me for the tenth time, I was still stuck in traffic on the winding mountain road leading into the city. A pink Polo driving inexcusably slow was wedged in the middle of two lanes and obstructing my path. The "New Driver" sticker on the rear of the car seemed to insult me. I took a deep breath before slamming on the horn. That was when the car jerked to a stop. A man in a floral shirt stepped out of the car, marched to my car, and pounded on my window. "What's with the rush?! Can't you tell by the sticker that I'm a new driver? If you cause an accident, you're going to have to pay up!" I gripped the steering wheel so tightly that veins bulged on the back of my hand. The director's desperate cries were still echoing in my ears, "Dr. Leigh, the boy is dying! The only information we have is that his father's name is Ronald Baker!" Upon noting my silence, the man smiled smugly before smacking the hood of my car. "Go ahead, drive over the barrier to bypass me if you want! Even the police have to slow down for me!" With that, he slammed his brand-new driver's license against my window. "Look closely, I just got my license yesterday! I'm a legal driver!" I quickly glossed over the driver's license. What stood out to me was his name printed on the license. Ronald Baker.

I've founded a company that doesn't encourage overtime shifts, pays everyone on time, and doesn't impose performance evaluations on the employees at all. My employees are free to bring their pets to work. All of their applications for leave will be approved immediately. Heck, they have unlimited leave as well. I originally think that my employees will like me a lot thanks to these benefits. But I never expect my company to be featured on the Internet one day. It even gets labeled as a sweatshop, much to my shock. "Guys, I can't believe I got hired by a sweatshop company. The boss is extremely stingy who pays us low wages while pretending to be a nice guy this whole time!" My company is then shown in the video. The narrator's voice has been edited, so I can't tell whose voice it is. As I stare at the tranquil office scene in real-time, I find myself falling into deep thought. Meanwhile, the video is still going on. "Let me tell you how evil my boss is. Every other company tends to distribute gifts during the holidays that like food and luxury items. But my boss doesn't bother giving us any of the gifts. He uses the excuse that our company is a very flexible and humane company, so we don't do any gift-giving at all. As if! "He also claims that we don't have to undergo any performance evaluation. In other words, that means our wages aren't transparent at all. Maybe he's been secretly docking our pay behind our backs this whole time! "Being paid thousands of dollars for this job is already bad enough! To make things worse, I'm forced to listen to my boss boast about everything in the world! Do I look like I have that much time on my hands to listen to him blabber? I'm not his mom, for crying out loud!" Everyone in the comment section doesn't hesitate to lash out at me. "Holy shit, I can't believe such soul-sucking companies still exist! Poor you!" "Why are you still staying in that stupid company? Hurry up and leave! If I were you, I wouldn't be able to stay there for a minute longer!" "That's right! That boss of yours is an evil capitalist! He deserves to die!"

I get cyberbullied by the elderly people in my community. Apparently, they've uploaded videos, claiming that my charity kitchen that sells one-dollar meals not only sells bad food, but I've also sold them at ridiculously high prices. During the first year of the kitchen's establishment, I've sunk 420 thousand dollars and given it my all in running the kitchen. But all I receive in return is the Internet's backlash on me, which calls me for being a vile person. So, I decided to go along with the public opinion by shutting down the kitchen entirely. Then, I transform the venue into a card room that costs ten dollars per hour. As soon as the notice is posted, the entire community goes nuts. The elderly people's children soon show up on my doorstep and beg me to reopen the kitchen.

Before my grandmother passed away, she set up a will for the kids to inherit her pasta shop. My younger brother, Richard Lane, immediately pushed the responsibility to me so that he could take up a job offer that paid $4,000 a month. No one could have expected a fire to break out at the hotel during one of his trips, causing his entire face to be burned off. Meanwhile, things went great for me after I took over the shop. I fell in love with a billionaire's daughter and found my happily ever after with her. My younger brother poisoned me in a fit of jealousy. After we were sent back in time, my brother immediately chomped at the bit to take over the shop before I could do anything. I scoffed as I rolled my eyes. He was digging his own grave.

Outside the ER, a woman clad in luxury brands is in the middle of lashing out hysterically at a camera. "That stupid deliveryman is the one responsible for crashing my two-million-dollar Porsche! He even tried to steal my Hermès bag that was inside in the car! When I caught him red-handed, he tried to assault me, too! "If he doesn't pay me 500 thousand dollars today, I'll make sure that he spends the rest of his life in jail!" As soon as the woman is done, she collapses to the floor while clutching her chest. Obviously, she's faking her collapse. How can a mother this vile possibly exist in this world? Half an hour ago, that woman has locked her three-year-old son up in her car—that's exposed under the bright sun—just so she can go to a beauty spa for cosmetic procedures. In order to save the dying child, I have no choice but to smash the window. But that woman now paints me as the bad guy in this situation and insists on ruining my life. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't notice the action camera on my helmet.

As soon as I've moved into my new home, Rebecca Zangler, the white-collar office worker who lives across from my apartment calls the cops on me. Her reasoning is that I've been peeping on her whenever she's taking a shower because my unrequited love toward her has transformed into brimming hatred and resentment. When the police show up, Rebecca starts crying her heart out. Then, she begins berating me. "You pervert! Every night, you're the one peeping at me with your binoculars! You even uploaded my photos to the Internet! "I saw everything, you know! Those eyes of yours are nothing but lecherous! You really are disgusting!" My neighbors begin pointing at me while mumbling about me. Someone even comes over and starts roughing me up and calling me a scumbag. "Perverts like him should be chemically castrated!" "He looks decent at first glance, but you'll never know that he's actually a peeping Tom!" When faced against everyone's backlash, I take off my sunglasses quietly, revealing my cloudy eyes. "Officer, may I ask how can a blind man like me peep on others in the first place?"

My girlfriend and I had agreed that she would come home with me for Thanksgiving to meet my parents. However, the night before the trip, she canceled on me again. My older cousin, who had never liked me, immediately started throwing sarcastic comments my way. “Five years together and she still hasn’t met your family? Maybe she never took you seriously in the first place. And honestly, a man shouldn’t think too highly of himself. You might end up raising someone else’s kid without even knowing it,” he said. I ignored him and stepped outside to get some air, but then I found that the car parked in front of the neighbor’s house looked strangely familiar. My heart skipped a beat. Could this be a surprise from my girlfriend? I was just about to call her when my cousin clicked his tongue and pointed at the car. “Still, you’ve gotta admit Liam Crossby really knows how to live. He brought home a gorgeous and successful girlfriend. You? You’ve spent your whole life losing to him.” My eyes locked onto the license plate, and my fingers froze. Then, I dialed a hidden number I hadn’t used in years. “Bring the guys. Trash the car.”

My stepbrother, Terence Norman, had one goal in life: finding a way around the SAT and getting guaranteed admission. To pull it off, he deliberately staged an accident on the first day of the SAT, sending the daughter of the richest family in the country over the side of a bridge. The girl nearly drowned. Terence jumped into the river pretending to be the hero, even missing the SAT because of it. Not only did I not stop him, but I even contacted the media myself and made sure the story spread everywhere. Because in my previous life, after overhearing Terence's plan, I tried to talk him out of it. I told him the Lawsons might be the richest family around, but there was no way they could change SAT policy. That, and the Lawsons hated being manipulated more than anything. Terence listened to me. When the scores came out, he ended up dead last in the school. On the surface, he acted like he had accepted his fate. During the celebration for college admissions, he stabbed me to death. His face twisted with rage as he screamed at me. "If you hadn't stopped me, I would've saved the Lawson heiress and become her hero! They would've paid to get me admitted somewhere for sure. And maybe Mr. Lawson would've seen what a good person I was and made me his son-in-law! You ruined my life!" When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the SAT. This time, I wanted to see what would happen after Terence nearly killed Kendall Lawson, the girl most likely to become the top SAT scorer.