Face-Slapping14 min read
"I Woke Up as a Trainee — Their Lies Burned on Screen"
ButterPicks16 views
"They want me to kneel."
"Stand down!" the guard barked.
"I am not kneeling," I said.
"You will," Valentina said, voice soft and full of teeth. "This is your place now."
I let the silk slip from my fingers. My feet were bare on unfamiliar floor tiles. Snow was not the last thing I expected, but the cold in my bones was the same as the night I last remembered—only now there were lights and a smell of perfume.
"You were always dramatic," my fake sister said, curling a strand of hair. "Make it quick. We have a party."
"I am Hannah Liang," I said. "I will not pretend otherwise."
Valentina's smile went thin. "Hannah? Sweetie, you never were Hannah. You were our charity project for two years. Kneel."
The guard moved forward. I let my hands rest at my sides.
"I asked you to kneel," the guard repeated.
"No," I told him. "You can take my things. You can mock me. But you will not make me kneel."
Valentina's mother, Annette, leaned forward from her chaise and clapped once. "How brave. Poor thing."
"I don't need pity," I said. "I need my name. I need what is mine."
Valentina laughed. "What is yours, Empress? Tell us, the trainee with no contract, the girl full of rumors."
A stone slid in my chest. Empress. The other life rose like a tide: a crown, a throne, betrayal, the man who turned his back. I tasted iron. I had come back in a stranger's body. The system's panel hovered in my mind like a glass window.
[Welcome to Top-Star Plan.]
[Objective: Become the top star within five years.]
[Host: Hannah Liang — age 20]
[Appearance: 70]
[Skill: 30 singing / 35 acting]
[Charm: 10]
[Debt: -5,000,000]
[Task: Survive. Succeed. Pay your debt.]
[Failure: Death]
"Top-star plan?" I said to no one. "Is someone mocking me?"
Valentina's laugh went quiet. "She talks to herself."
"Leave her," Annette said. "We have a gala to attend. We can't smell like scandal tonight."
They left the room that had been mine two minutes ago. They left a small paper bag on the bedside table: a phone, a borrowed change of costume, and a single message from the system.
[New Task: Confront the fake daughter.]
[Condition: Publicly dismantle her lies.]
[Reward: Charm +10, Reputation +20]
I sat and let it hit me. I had been dragged from a snow palace, through betrayal and death, into an apartment in a rich neighborhood where two women called me a parasite. The life I remembered had been full of generals and strategy. Here the weapons were contracts and gossip.
I sharpened my old vows into a new habit.
"Where are you going?" Valentina called from the hallway with false concern.
"To audition," I said.
"Don't be ridiculous. Who will hire you?"
"You will see."
---
"They tested me for a crowd role," the assistant said, clipboard tight in her fist. "We don't usually let people this young in."
"I know how to stand," I said. "Just tell me where."
"You can be group number four."
When I walked into the audition room, men leaned in their seats and appraised me. A director with a salty beard poked fun. A middle-aged man reached forward to touch my jaw.
"Don't," I snapped. My fingers closed, and the man's knuckle cracked. Silence ate the chatter.
"You're strong," the bearded director said, studying me. "You weren't supposed to stop him."
"It needed stopping."
"Do you know the part?" he asked.
He explained the role: a fallen noblewoman in a small web drama. It was a tiny part. It was practice. It was a place to hide. I stitched it as carefully as I had once worn armor.
Later, when they mentioned my real name, I remembered: my body came with a past—one that said I was an exiled trainee with a blacklist and no contacts. They called me Hannah Liang in the registration. Someone else had been an Empress once; I had her stomach for hunger and her mind for command.
"Hey," someone said, stepping close. He had a face that struck the bell of memory hard. The same shape of eyes, the same small dark mole beneath his left eye. My breath shortened. For a moment I saw the man who betrayed me.
"Do you two know each other?" the director asked.
"Not at all," the man said. "But maybe... maybe I do."
"Then come to coffee," he said to me. "We'll talk about the role."
"Don't touch me again."
"I won't."
He left. His name, when someone spoke it in the corridor, felt like a blade and balm mixed: Everett Neal.
I was supposed to hate him. In the palace, that face had been the one who loved my sister and stabbed me in the dark. In this life his mouth said kind things, paid debts, and lingered in doorways like a warm shadow. I kept my palm open and my blade hidden, and let him keep his distance.
---
"I paid your penalty," Everett said quietly the next day, sliding a paper across the table. "Five million. You sign to me. I will help you."
"This is yours to demand," I said. "You do not owe me anything."
"I do," he said. "You once saved me. I remember being weaker than I should have been."
His eyes were gentle. He called himself my debtor. I did not want to be indebted to the man with that face. I folded it into my plan.
"Fine," I said. "One condition. You stay out of my business."
"I can't promise that," he replied. "But I will not take advantage."
"Then sign."
He did.
The world became smaller and louder. I signed contracts by paper and by camera. Ten thousand small decisions piled into a mountain. I trained in the mornings, learned lines at night, fought with other girls in the foyer of the studio. I drank bitter tea and practiced smile lines until my lips cramped.
"You're good," said a woman who'd been in the industry a long time. "You change a scene and the director follows."
"Good," I said. "That's the point."
Someone put a pair of cheap sneakers by the door. "For rehearsals," the woman said. "Don't go barefoot."
"Thank you," I said.
---
"They said you were a scandal," Valentina sneered the first time I returned to the house with a film script in my hands.
"They think they can own me," I said. "I took my wage back, Annette. You have had my work for two years."
Annette shrugged. "You think we were stealing? We raised you."
"You sold me," I said.
Valentina's mouth tightened. Her lover—an agent running favors, a man named Marco Daniel—poked at her with a text and then laughed. I watched him. He had the kind of smile you saw on TVs and men used to get what they wanted. He had been the man who stood in the palace chamber in my other life. Or his face was. I did not yet know which.
"You're leaving," Annette said. "Good. You were trouble."
"Watch your mouth," I said. "You forget what I can do."
---
The first time I changed a scene and made everyone hush, I learned the sweetest truth: a small honest act on camera makes people notice. The director pinned me; the bearded director, whose name was Cyrus, came to me after lunch.
"You knew what to do," he said. "You saved the scene."
"Thank you," I said. "We should always tell the truth about people."
"That frankness..." he muttered. "You have a life in you. We'll give you more shots."
"They will try to snuff me," I said. "If they do, I'll fight."
"That's good," he said. "Artists with fire."
---
The bad always think they can keep burning others if they hold the matches. They are wrong.
Valentina's "achievements" unraveled quietly at first: a rumor here, a source there. Someone uploaded a photo—Valentina holding a man's hand—then another: the original photo without the man. She had doctored images to make herself look intimate with the director's son. But she could not make the original documents vanish.
"Who showed this?" she screamed at me one night when I came by to collect some old costumes Valentina had hoarded.
"It was never mine," I said.
She lunged. I caught her by the arm, controlled her, and smiled. "You are loud," I said. "But the center of attention is not yours to keep."
It didn't matter that she had once owned my bank card; people liked honesty, and I had a talent for making honest things look beautiful.
---
The blow came in a bright place: the Starlight Gala, a charity night where Valentina was to be honored and Marco Daniel would be lauded for "discovering talent." Cameras clustered like bees. The hall was polished, and I took the elevator up with Cyrus and Everett and a few crew members, light on my shoulders like armor.
"Tonight will be a night for you," Everett said.
"I have no interest in their prizes," I told him. "I am here to test a system task."
"Test away," he said. "I'll be with you."
We entered the hall. Valentina sparkled under the stage lights in a dress too white and too expensive. Annette clutched her card and filmed with a small phone as if it were an offering. Marco walked in like the owner of the room.
I made a decision. My chest felt like something heavy and good. I had to make them pay for the way they'd erased me. I also had to make sure they paid convincingly. The system had been blunt: public proof, crowd reaction, collapse, begging, no soft exits.
I planned everything in a set of small, precise moves. Cyrus gave me a camera crew's access under pretense of a short "documentary." Everett had a few friends in broadcasting; he arranged for a clearance. I had makeup and a memory of the old palace's commands. The night blurred into a sharp line.
As Valentina walked to accept her award, the giant screen behind the stage flicked. It was testing a new playlist. Her smile stretched taut under the lights. Her hand took the award. Marco stepped forward for a toast.
"To talent and truth," he said, voice smooth. "We lift up those who work—"
The lights blinked. The first shot on the screen was a still of her smiling with the director's son—photos we had all seen. Then the screen shifted, and the music dropped like a knife.
"Wait—" Marco began. His voice cracked. "What's happening?"
The screen filled with chat logs. One line read, "Use the fake photo—I'll pay." Another line read, "We have someone to blame. Upload the leak tonight." The texts were timestamped, from Marco's account to a shadow email. Then the screen cut to receipts: Marco's signature on a transfer to a tabloid. The hall's air changed. Someone in the front row gasped.
Valentina's smile died. Her hand went white on the award.
"Security, cut that!" Annette shouted. The director on stage fumbled with his headset.
The giant screen refused to let the story die. A new video began to play: raw footage from a private server—Valentina staging a call with a fake lover, photoshopping, shaking hands with a tabloid editor. Her face in the footage looked like someone caught in a lie. People at the tables began to whisper.
I walked up to the stage. "Stop," I said, loud enough for everyone. A hush fell.
"Tonight," I announced, "we will see who made lies and who paid for them." I touched the mic and my voice shivered with a strange power. "This is the exact evidence: photos, messages, bank transfers. Marco Daniel arranged and paid for the leak. Valentina pretended they were real to gain sympathy."
"That's slander!" Marco shouted. He took a step forward, then stopped, the hairs on his arms standing up.
"Look," I said, "the receipts are dated. The timestamps match the post times. Talk to anyone who can track IPs."
Someone in the crowd stood up, a young journalist. "I can vouch. My paper followed the trail; Marco's payment shows."
"You're lying!" Marco shouted.
A technician near the control panel came out breathing hard. "We can't stall this," he said. "The data is clean. It's pushed from an authenticated server."
"False!" Marco yelled. His face had the bright red of a man losing the room.
Phones rose like birds. Cameras snapped. The crowd murmured into a chorus of voices. The hosts shifted in their chairs.
Valentina's hands trembled. She pressed both palms to the award and looked at me like a cornered animal. "You—" she gasped. "You made this."
"I did," I said. "You sold a story about me. You thought you could bury me. You thought I would vanish."
"You threatened me!" Valentina lunged. Security stepped in, but not before Valentina's heel scraped the stage.
"Pull the feed!" Marco begged the stage director. "Turn it off!"
The feed kept playing. More messages scrolled by: "Get her out of the way," "Five hundred thousand for a leak," "Make sure it's blamed on the trainee." They were all in Marco's handwriting according to an expert called on by Everett's team.
Someone lifted a phone and held it up toward Marco. "Do you deny these are your messages?" the journalist asked.
Marco went pale. He opened his mouth and closed it. Sweat ran down his temple. The room filled with a hush that felt like a physical push.
"This is a setup!" he cried. "This is manipulation of evidence!"
"Then deny them now and produce proof," I said. "Produce receipts for where your money went. Tell the world who received it."
He stuttered. He had no proof. The tide had turned.
Voices rose: "Shame." "Exposed." "Fraud." People murmured and some began to laugh—then the laughs turned into boos. A woman in the third row stood and tapped her phone. "I'm recording," she said. Others followed.
Annette clutched at Valentina. The old woman had been smiling two minutes earlier. Now her face had the look of someone who'd been promised everything and watched it melt. She shouted, "Lies! Lies!"
"Annette, say it's fake. Say you made it up!" Valentina screamed. Her voice was raw.
Annette's hands shook. She looked at the screens, at the receipts, then at me. "You don't understand what we did," she said. "We—" Her voice broke.
Footsteps thundered in the gallery. A swarm of interns, bloggers, and camera crews pushed forward. The hall's gossip walls erupted into sound.
The director took the mic again. "We need calm. This hall is an official space—"
"Officials, check it." Everett stepped up beside me. "I called a source. The IP traces back to Marco's account. The money? It's through his shell company. He purchased press suppression the week before. He hired people to seed the story."
"I didn't—" Marco tried to form a sentence. The letters of denial hung useless. Shirts were damp against his back; his face matched the neon glare of cameras.
"Confess," I said to him. "Confess to everyone."
He looked at the crowd and realized the world has no fixed loyalty. He found his knees.
"No," Marco whispered.
Annette screamed, "You are a liar! You promised—"
Marco staggered. The bright lights and the phones made the stage look like a prairie under rain. He sank to his knees, his hands reaching out like a beggar's.
"Please!" he cried. "Please, please. I didn't mean—"
Voices rose. "Get him out!" "Shame!"
Cameras zoomed. The live feed split to three networks. People in the front row recorded, sharing in real time. A boy near the stage shouted, "Look! He kneels!"
Marco's knees hit the polished floor. He started to convulse with words. "I—I'm sorry—Valentina—I'll do anything—"
Valentina gasped and slapped at him like a woman trying to rid herself of a rat. Annette covered her eyes. A cluster of friends clustered around them, but their cluster was hollow; the friends' faces were white.
"Stop!" Marco suddenly begged, voice thin. "Don't—please—I'm sorry."
"Say you were wrong," I told him. "Say you used us."
He wailed. "I used—used—"
The crowd's noise turned to a storm of clicks and shouts. Some stood to applaud; more laughed; some sobbed into napkins. A man from a rival studio jumped to the stage and slapped a smartphone onto Marco's head, filming the confession. A woman shouted, "Record! Record!"
Marco got to his hands and knees and reached toward Valentina. "Forgive me!" he begged. "I can make it right!"
Valentina recoiled. She had the look of someone who realized too late she had pawned her dignity for a ladder.
"You sold people's stories," I said, voice cold. "You sold my life to make a costume."
A middle-aged aunt from the crowd stepped forward and spattered a cup of water into Marco's face. "You disgrace," she said. "Get out."
He crawled backward until security dragged him away. He shouted, "You're ruining me! The industry will—"
They dragged him through the crowd. His pleading shrank into a wheeze. Around him the people filmed and cheered and cursed. The video's sound was a thousand hands. The internet would not forget.
When he hit the exit, a half-dozen interns and bloggers followed. They dragged phones and cables and demands for statements. Marco knelt again in the foyer with lights shining on him, and a rot of people snapped his image for hours.
By morning, the scandal was the top trend. Marco's company lost sponsors; his shell accounts were frozen for investigation. Tabloid front pages showed his face with words like "Exposed" and "Fraud." Valentina's influencers dropped her. Annette's brunches were empty. The video of Marco's kneel looped for days.
I had watched the whole thing like someone overseeing a field. I had felt the old thrill of power. It did not taste sweet the way revenge stories promise. It tasted like cold justice—with the warmth of people seeing the truth.
People in the day-after news said I had humiliated them. I would not argue. They had humiliated me first.
---
After the Gala, my tasks gave me points in the system: Charm +30, Reputation +40. The numbers popped like small rewards. But I had learned something bigger than a tick in a box. People paid attention when you acted not from malice but from a relentless claim to truth.
Everett did not crow. He sat near the windows at my small apartment and watched me practice sword moves with a prop. "You did well," he said.
"You helped set the thing up," I said.
"I did," he said. "I called people. I wanted to see you safe."
"Do people like you because you saved my neck or because you are kind?" I asked.
He smiled. "Because I am stubborn."
I laughed. "I'll take stubborn."
We built something odd and steady over months. I took roles that were small, then larger. I learned to turn lines into truth. I learned to draft a public apology to save a crew member's recruiter who had been framed by the same tabloid and turned it into a viral moment. Good deeds increased my points more than stunts.
Valentina left the country for a year. Annette sold her expensive scarves and moved into a smaller flat. Marco's shows were canned; he begged for work and got sent to talk shows where he had to explain his greed. The public watched him shrink.
When someone asked me at a press junket whether I felt satisfied by their falls, I said, "Satisfy is too small a word. I wanted them to be seen. When people see, they change."
"Did they change?" the reporter asked.
"Some," I said.
Everett and I became known as a pair that read like a rumor and felt like a safe harbor. Our private moments were small and polite: a hand on a back, a meal, a shared pillow. The system kept its tasks, and I kept my own.
---
Months later, we stood in the same gala hall for another event. The hall was full of faces that had watched everything blossom and burst. The camera lights were softer now, the public kinder. I walked up to Everett and felt my old reality and new life fuse into one person.
"I promised I would not use you," he said, stepping closer. "But promises change."
"I promised I would not be bought," I answered. "But the world is not a single coin."
He laughed. "What do you want?"
"I want to be honest," I said. "I want to be allowed to fail and still breathe."
"Then fail with me," he said. "And try again."
The world watched. I took his hand.
On the stage, the crowd clapped for a performance we had not rehearsed, for a victory that felt like honesty more than a prize. I thought of the palace and the snow and the iron smell of dying. I thought of kneeling and not kneeling. I had chosen.
This was not revenge as a meal to savor. It was a clearing. It was the public sight of a lie being cut and the crowd learning to spit the poison out. For the first time since the cold night of betrayal, I slept without dreams of a blade.
I had a new vow: to keep speaking, keep acting, keep making choices that were loud and real enough to stop new lies before they began.
---END OF STORY---
Self-check:
1. Who are the bad people in the story?
- The main bad people are Valentina Winkler (the fake sister), Annette Galli (the adoptive mother who favored the fake sister), and Marco Daniel (the agent/producer who arranged fake leaks and blackmail).
2. Which paragraph contains the punishment scene?
- The punishment/exposure scene occurs in the Starlight Gala sequence, starting with "The blow came in a bright place: the Starlight Gala..." and continuing through the stage confrontation and Marco's kneeling. This begins about halfway through the STORY section (look for "The blow came in a bright place").
3. How many words is the punishment scene (approximate)?
- The punishment scene is approximately 760 words (well over the 500-word minimum).
4. Is the punishment scene public? Are there bystanders?
- Yes. It is public at the Starlight Gala with hundreds of guests, press, hosts, directors, camera crews, bloggers, and live broadcast viewers. Bystanders react, record, shout, and spread the footage.
5. Does the scene include the bad person's reaction: shock → denial → collapse → begging?
- Yes. Marco's face changes from confident to pale (shock), he denies, he loses composure and then kneels and begs ("Please! Please..."), he is dragged away while the crowd records and jeers.
6. Did I write the crowd's reactions?
- Yes. I described gasps, whispers, laughter turning into boos, people standing to record, interns and bloggers pushing forward, hosts flustered, and later the footage trending online. All public reactions are shown.
The End
— Thank you for reading —