Independence Workplace Maiikling Kwento at Nobela

The day before my wedding, my ex-boyfriend asked me to meet him in a hotel room. "I heard you're getting married," he said. "Could you meet me, just this once? There's something I need to tell you." I agreed, and that night I went to the address he gave me. But the person waiting for me wasn't him. It was my fiancé, his face like a storm cloud, and beside him, his self-satisfied childhood sweetheart, looking thoroughly pleased with herself. "See, Julian, I told you she wasn't being honest with you," she said. "She's finally slipped up." My fiancé's jaw clenched. He grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise. "Why?" he demanded. I lowered my eyes and answered calmly, "Because I don't want to marry you anymore. This is the eighth time you and your childhood sweetheart have tested whether my feelings for you were real. "I'm exhausted. Aren't you?"

The Fullerton family, which has dominated the business world for a century, abides by the rule that the strong prevail and the weak are eliminated. Thus, as the adopted son, I've spent 26 years clawing my way to the top. But during the succession ceremony, Dad takes Simon Fullerton, his biological son, by the hand. He declares, "Simon will become the rightful heir of the Fullerton family!" In that instant, every high-society guest in the banquet hall turns to look at me. After all, it is no secret that I gave my all to prove I could inherit the family business. I adhere to a brutal, cutthroat education regime from the very beginning. Simon gets suspended for getting into fights and acting out, while I skip grades and breeze straight through a bachelor's, master's, and doctorate at a top university. Having been given 50,000 dollars to start a business, Simon gambles his way into one million dollars of debt, while I exceed my business targets. He ends up going bankrupt and liquidating his company, while I expand mine into overseas markets, driving its market value well past ten million dollars. I believe I have earned the title of being the strongest between the two and become the one to inherit the family business. I even look at Simon—a hopeless piece of work—and shake my head. Dad, however, stands firm in picking Simon over me. I bite my tongue lightly as I look at Simon's taunting grin, the metallic taste of blood snapping me right out of it. I suddenly realize that I have spent 26 years proving myself for nothing. Dad will still choose Simon to inherit the family business, no matter how impressive my achievement is. I sneer inwardly, thinking that since they want to play dirty, they'd better not blame me for not showing them any mercy.

An overpass in Winfeld that's still under construction ends up collapsing, leading to the deaths of many. Family members of the victims are up in arms, demanding that the person in charge pay the price for the incident. As the quality assurance inspector, I'm brought to court. However, I am just an intern. The real perpetrators are out clinking glasses, celebrating a clean getaway and the fact that they have a new scapegoat. Out of nowhere, the court introduces a new trial system that involves the extraction of memories directly from one's mind. In the middle of this major incident, a terrifying truth emerges. Everything goes all the way back to my university days…

After being framed for cheating on the SAT and having all his scores invalidated, Sebastian Anglem spent five years clawing his way to the top, eventually becoming the youngest CEO in the history of an overseas unicorn company. He returned to the country on a business trip. The moment his plane landed, a friend called him in a panic and asked him to fill in as an interviewer at the branch office to screen potential hires. The instant Sebastian pushed open the meeting room door, every eye inside snapped toward him in shock. He quickly realized he had entered the wrong room. That was the candidates' waiting room, not the interview room. He turned to leave. "Sebastian? It really is you." A man inside spoke first, his voice thick with mockery. "Well, well. If it isn't our school's infamous cheating freak. This company happens to be a pretty big name here in Porteaus City. How do you even have the nerve to show your face for an interview?"

I got pregnant at the same time as a doctor from another department. But right after my nuchal translucency scan, the charge nurse came to see me. "The hospital is short-staffed. Leadership says only one female employee can be pregnant at a time." "This time, the slot goes to Dr. Valerie Stone. You need to terminate yours." I froze. "Dr. Stone and I aren't even in the same department. Our work doesn't overlap. "And I'm a nurse. She's a doctor. Our schedules are completely different." But the charge nurse only tapped stubbornly on my desk. "This is hospital policy. No one gets to be the exception. "Either you terminate the pregnancy, or you transfer to logistics. Your choice." A transfer to logistics meant my career would be over. No promotions. No clinical path. Just a rock-bottom base salary, barely above minimum wage. My fingers slowly tightened. I had worked at that hospital for eight years. I was one of the hardest-working nurses on the front line, and I won performance awards every year. Yet I was not even allowed to be pregnant. I took a breath and looked calmly at the charge nurse. "I agree to transfer to logistics." Less than a week after I left, the whole department fell apart.

The Nebula Algorithm I spent countless sleepless nights building single-handedly saved the company’s flagship project. Yet, when the annual promotion list came out, my name was nowhere to be found. Instead, a man named Julian Monroe, who had joined the company less than a month earlier, skipped several ranks to become my direct supervisor. When I marched into my boss Sebastian Carter’s office to ask why, he lashed out at me without hesitation. “You really think a community college graduate like you can compete with a master’s graduate from an elite overseas university?” I clenched my fists, raising my voice to fight back. “The employee handbook clearly states that engineering promotions are strictly performance-based, regardless of your degree!” He pointed a finger right at my nose, his eyes filled with unyielding disdain. “Rules are rigid, but people aren’t. “A community college graduate like you should be down on your knees thanking God for the base salary this company throws your way! “Know your place. This company will keep spinning just fine without you!” I turned around and handed in my resignation letter on the spot, taking my core algorithm with me. I couldn’t wait to see just how long his company would last without me, the “community college graduate.”

I was the A-list celebrity in the country, the youngest actor ever to win all three major acting awards, and the man Monroe family's heiress treasured above everyone else. Zara Monroe had not only founded a talent agency dedicated to promoting me alone, but had even set aside her status as the heiress of the Monroe family to work as my personal assistant for love. Everyone in the industry knew that crossing me meant crossing the Monroe family. Yet no one could have imagined that in the latest S-tier film production, the male lead I had been all but guaranteed to play would be snatched away by an obscure actor barely known beyond the industry's bottom tier. People across the industry all placing bets on how long it would take before Zara had this newcomer, Kyson Bentley, blacklisted across the entire industry. But instead of a public takedown, they got an official announcement from Monroe Media. [Welcome to our company's second signed artist, @Kyson Bentley! Mr. Bentley will be partnering with Monroe Media from here on out. His future is full of promise.] The entire industry was shaken. Everyone mocked me for having fallen out of favor. The award-winning actor himself was now expected to play second fiddle to a newcomer. On set, I watched Kyson deliver a painfully amateurish performance. My face cold, I followed the and slapped him using a camera angle that made it look as though I had hit him. But Kyson clutched his cheek and fell to the ground, accusing me of using the scene to get revenge on him. Zara ordered her people to pin me down and made the production team add a hundred more slapping scenes to my schedule. By the time they were done, I had been slapped until I lost my hearing in my right ear. My face was so swollen that I was barely recognizable.

On a holiday-weekend business trip, I fronted $13,000 for the company. The company's Gen Z finance intern had rolled out a new AI finance system, and it approved exactly one dollar of my claim. I laid the invoices, the itinerary, and the client's signed confirmation on the table. The intern glanced at them and threw the paperwork in my face. "The system approves what it approves. AI doesn't make mistakes. One dollar is all you get." "The client changed the hotel at the last minute. The flight was booked to close an eighty-million-dollar deal. "The system read it wrong. Do a manual review." She scoffed. "A manual review? AI is way more reliable than you. Who's more believable—a slick old-timer like you, or the system's data?" The conference room went silent. That $13,000 was on my personal credit card. And right then, the client was still at the airport, waiting for me to sign the last page of the contract. The intern opened the company-wide chat and posted a screenshot of my claim. [AI determination: textbook improper expense claim. All departments take note.] I started recording on my phone and stared at her. "Let me confirm one more time. The system got it wrong, and Finance won't review it or take responsibility. Correct?" "AI isn't wrong. If there's a problem, the problem is you." I hit save and made a call. "Hi, Dad. A company that trusts AI over finance professionals with actual expertise—are you sure it can keep its books straight?"

The boss' daughter, Pamela Thompson, returns from overseas to take over the family business. The moment she sees me growing vegetables in an empty lot on the factory grounds, she covers her nose in disgust and sneers. "Our factory is a flagship company in this industrial hub!" she barks. "What kind of riffraff grows vegetables here? Do you think this is your personal farmer's market? Fire him, scrape that patch clean, and pave it over with concrete!" "And you!" she snaps, pointing to another worker. "Aren't you getting a little too old? You don't exactly fit our corporate image. You're fired too!" I take off my work uniform, load up my bicycle with my homegrown harvest, and pedal away. Behind me, the workers are all dumbfounded. One after another, they strip off their uniforms as well and fall in line behind me. "Where Drew goes, we go!" This time, it's the spoiled heiress who's left staring in utter disbelief.

I see a post on the university forum asking for help with an entrepreneurship class project, so I join the group using my student account. Then my professor instincts kick in. I fix a few financial models, clean up their market strategies, and suddenly everyone in the group is losing their minds. Every day, they call me a genius, begging me to look over one more detail, one more revision, one more set of numbers. Two months later, the project is nearly flawless. And the group chat suddenly goes dead. Curious, I do a little digging and discover they've secretly made another one without me. "He's not even officially on the team. Why should we give him any of the prize money?" "Exactly. Only our names are on the roster. The finals are tomorrow. He'd better not show up and try to take credit." "That's tens of thousands more for each of us if we cut him out." I stare at the screen and laugh. So this was never a class project at all. Funny. Because tomorrow, when they walk into that final, I'll be the one sitting in the center of the judges' panel.

Last Christmas—in my past life—I was on vacation when the call came. It was Lucy, the family’s new pet capo, and she was in a panic. She’d blown the deal with the Colombians, she said, and now they were threatening to make us pay. I had to rush back and clean up the mess. I saved the deal, but it still cost us a shipment of hardware. And then Lucy, the one who caused the whole mess, pointed the finger straight at me. “It was Madeline! She gave me bad intel! She must’ve set me up!” The truth? The deal went south because she mouthed off to the Colombians and pissed them off. But Henry, the Godfather I’d served loyally for years, didn't want to hear my side. He just branded me a traitor. He kicked me out of the family and put the word out to every outfit that I was a rat. I had a price on my head. I died in some gutter, my body left for the dogs. When I opened my eyes again, it was just before that Christmas. This time, I walked straight into Henry's study and handed over my family signet. "I want out." This time, I can’t wait to see who’s left holding the bag with the pissed-off Colombians.

A gorgeous new lawyer named Charlotte Lowell joins our law firm and claims she has been reborn. One day, a publicly listed company offers us a massive ten-million-dollar case. Charlotte warns our boss, Levi Howard, that the company has major issues. If we accept the case, we'll lose in court and be hit with a huge payout. Levi isn't sure if she's bluffing, but in the end, he listens and passes. The next day, that very company collapses. And the rival firm that took the case is hit with a compensation claim worth tens of millions of dollars. To celebrate dodging the bullet, Levi asks me to book a restaurant. But Charlotte immediately tells him not to go to that restaurant because that place is about to have a gas explosion. Hours later, the restaurant blows up just as she mentioned. News of it hits the trending list. After those two incidents, Levi is all-in on believing Charlotte's claim of having been reborn. In order to keep Charlotte, he gives her the executive position that was initially promised to me. When I hand in my resignation, Charlotte urges Levi to stop me. "If Yelena jumps to another firm, she'll use the resources she gained here to crush us. A year from now, we won't even have a firm left." Upon hearing Charlotte's words, my boyfriend and colleague, Finley Smith, steps forward to back her up. "Charlotte's right. I saw a job offer from Vera Legal in Yelena's email. She's really petty. If she joins Vera Legal, we'll surely face her revenge." Levi believes them and rejects my resignation. I file for labor arbitration, but it's no use. In the end, I'm demoted to a janitor at the firm. Driven by resentment, I fall into depression and end up hanging myself at the entrance of the firm. When I open my eyes again, I've gone back to the day Charlotte claims she has been reborn.

My family is part of New York's Mafia, and we live by one rule: anyone still unmarried at 30 must accept a match arranged by the family. When I told my boyfriend of ten years, Klaus Brenner, about the rule, he finally agreed to a public engagement. I thought the man who had once taken a beating to protect me was about to become my husband. I thought my life was in my own hands at last. But when it was time for us to kiss at the engagement party, everything changed. In front of every guest, Klaus pulled Linda Moreau, the new designer, into his arms and kissed her without hesitation. Linda blushed bright red. The room erupted. "What kind of backward family in New York still arranges marriages? What century are we in?" He sneered. "Rebecca, I'll marry you someday. But not now, and certainly not because you cornered me into it." I stared at the smug look on his face and felt the last of my love turn cold. I slid the ring off my finger and tossed it to Linda. "Keep it. I don't want him anymore. He's all yours." What he didn't know was that the so-called old rule came from Vittorio Rota, the most ruthless of the five Dons who led New York's Mafia families. And the man I was being forced to marry was Ian Castellano, the heir apparent to New York's underworld.

“Sign this agreement. It extends your probation by three months and cuts your pay by forty percent.” Adeline Lancaster, the HR manager, casually filed her nails. She didn’t bother looking up as she rolled her eyes. “Don’t think this company can’t run without you just because you wrote the core architecture. “Tristan Rothwell has taken over all your code. You can pack your things and get out whenever you want.” I stared at her arrogant face and let out a cold chuckle. I had been with the company for three months and written every single line of the core codebase. Yet she had stalled my permanent position approval for over twenty days. She wanted to steal my hard work, cut my hard-earned pay, and use it to feed a connected slacker who couldn’t even parse basic scripts. Fine by me. Rip! I tore the agreement to shreds and slammed the pieces right into her face. Before she could scream, I pulled out my phone and tapped the screen once. I revoked every internal network authorization linked to my encrypted core scripts. “No need to wait,” I said. “I’m leaving right now.”

Dad has a stroke and needs money to save his life. I'm left with no choice but to borrow money from my secret CEO boyfriend of five years. Before I can even say anything, he frowns and tells me he's busy. Then, he hurries off to attend his childhood sweetheart's birthday celebration. He only remembers me the following day. "What did you need?" I hold Dad's death certificate and smile wanly at him. "Nothing. I just wanted to tell you that we're over."

While packing Ethan's flight bag, I found a custom solo wings pin. The engraving on the back read: For Lark, to celebrate your first solo. Beneath the box sat the receipt for Skyler's flight school tuition, paid in full by Ethan, along with a photograph. In the photo, she was sitting in the pilot's seat. Ethan's gloved hand rested over hers on the control yoke. Seven years ago, I had sat in that same seat. Back then, I was one step away from my first solo flight, but Ethan talked me out of it again and again, always claiming it was "for my own good." He said flying was dangerous, that someone had to stay home and take care of things. I put down my logbook, pressed the wrinkles out of every one of his captain's uniforms, and spent seven years living by his flight schedule. Only now did I finally understand. It wasn't that he didn't want to take anyone flying. He just didn't want to take me. What made it even more absurd was that the night Skyler first flew through the clouds, I was alone in a hospital, losing our baby. I called him over a dozen times. At three in the morning, he finally called back, his voice flat and indifferent. "I just took Lark through the clouds. Next time something comes up, give me a heads-up." I put the wings pin back exactly where I found it, then pulled the crumpled ultrasound printout from the bottom of the drawer and tucked it inside the logbook that had been gathering dust for seven years. This time, I wasn't going to wait for him to look back. He convinced me to leave the pilot's seat, then turned around and put another woman in the sky. So I would leave him and take back the sky that had always been mine.

Back home in Sicily, there’s a rule. If I’m not married by 30, I go back for an arranged marriage. When I told my boyfriend, Jax, he scoffed. "What century is your hometown stuck in? The Middle Ages? Arranged marriages? Alessia, I said I'd marry you. Stop trying to force my hand with this pathetic drama." He casually pulled out a pigeon-blood ruby ring and tossed it to his personal assistant, Bianca. She caught it, blushing. "I was going to propose tonight. But since you’re so desperate, I think we both need to cool off." The ring I’d waited years for. He just threw it to someone else. My heart froze over. Jax walked out of my office with a conqueror's smirk. Bianca pushed the ring toward me. I didn't even look at it. "Take it. It’s your size, isn't it?" The color drained from her face. I shoved her out the door. Right before I slammed it shut, I said, "Tell your boss we're done." He didn't know the "elders" forcing me into this marriage were led by the most ruthless Godfather in Sicily. And the "blind date" was an arranged union with the Don of the North American Five Families.

At the company’s quarterly awards ceremony, the CFO suddenly announced a new performance criterion. He produced a raffle drum decorated with lucky symbols. “Any employee who draws the grand-prize ticket will receive a quarterly bonus of $150,000.” After a few seconds of stunned silence, all my colleagues rushed forward, and somehow, every one of them drew a winning ticket. Yet I, the company’s top salesperson with a $60-million contract in hand, drew the only losing ticket. The CFO tossed a good-luck charm onto my desk. “Alex, you may be our top salesperson, but your luck is terrible. You’re going to drag the whole company down. “The company prepared this charm especially for you. Take it and get rid of your bad luck. Work harder next quarter, and maybe you’ll earn the bonus.” In an instant, all the colleagues who had once showered me with flattery backed away with mocking looks, as if I were some piece of trash that brought misfortune to everyone around me. I swallowed my humiliation and confronted my boss. He didn’t even bother looking up. “Mr. Lee is doing this for the company’s growth. As a veteran employee, you should understand. “Besides, it’s your own fault for having such terrible luck. Instead of wasting my time, why don’t you hurry to a church and pray?” I argued my case, but the security guards threw me out. Furious, I suddenly felt a strange sense of relief. I turned around and called our rival company. “I have the contract your company has been fighting us for. Would you be interested in making a deal?”

My colleague Rachel Stone always loved having her delivery packages sent to my desk and signed under my name. Today, the delivery man arrived lugging an exceptionally large cardboard box. "Nicole Sullivan? Your camera. That's four thousand nine hundred. Please sign here." Someone in the office instantly blew a whistle. "Not bad, Nicole! Upgrading your gear right after receiving your bonus?" "What kind of fancy camera costs that much?" I froze for a bit, catching sight of the brand logo on the side of the package. It was a recently released full-frame camera. Suddenly, several translucent lines of text floated before my eyes. "Don't sign it!" "Whatever you do, don't touch the package!" "This is the beginning of Rachel dragging you down into the abyss!" My hand holding the pen jerked to a sudden halt. I assumed I was suffering from hallucinations caused by staying up late too often recently. Yet the lines of text sprouted up even more rapidly. "She's already requested refunds on six of the orders for phones, tablets, and headphones you signed for earlier!" "Her reasons are empty boxes, incorrect items, or damaged goods." "The delivery records list you as the person who signed for every one of them!" "A week from now, the brand representatives will come here during work hours." "Rachel will burst into tears, claiming she only asked for your help and knew nothing about any refunds." "You'll be framed as the mastermind behind the refund scam. To protect its reputation, the company will suspend you that very day." "Even though the police clear your name later, your job is gone, and the scandal spreads through a bunch of company group chats." A loud buzz resonated through my head. The delivery guy looked at me in confusion. "What's wrong?" I slowly set the pen back down. "This isn't my package."

The company is short-staffed for one of our new projects. Despite everyone's objections, I, James Connor, fight to bring in three sidelined, former colleagues onto the project. And so, the four of us become the project's core members. The project's workload is fairly light and comes with a generous bonus. So, they praise and flatter me, calling me their lucky star. Three months later, the project is about to be submitted to the higher-ups. I happen to pass by the smoking lounge and overhear them plotting, wisps of smoke escaping from their lips. "The three of us contributed the most to this project. Why should James get an equal share of the bonus just because he recommended us for the job? He barely pulled his weight." "That's right. We should bring this up with the director. Tell him that we're the ones who laid all the groundwork and that James doesn't have the technical skills to be on this team. We'll ask to have him removed from the contributors list." "Just the thought of not having to split those hundreds of thousands of dollars with him is making me feel like I'm on cloud nine. Hey, let's go celebrate tonight!" I push the door open and am promptly greeted with their shocked faces. I merely smile at them as I think to myself, "You want to cut me out? Sadly for you, I'm the director who was sent here to evaluate all of you."