Face-Slapping12 min read
My Strange Second Chance—and the Little System Named Gia
ButterPicks13 views
I remember the instant my world folded: Drew Jorgensen hit the tiles and the sky seemed to fall with him.
"Is he—" I barely got the question out before a woman in scrubs pushed by. "We need consent. He needs an emergency craniotomy. Sign here, pay here."
"Save him. Please," I begged, fumbling the pen. "He'll be—"
"Stay calm," the doctor said. "Calm helps."
I signed. I called everyone I could think of. We scraped together fifty thousand in a blur. I watched the red light above the operating room blink while my hands shook.
"Transfer complete," my phone chimed. A notification splashed across the screen.
"System bound: Super Bloom." I muttered, "What the—"
A chalk-dust sting hit my temple. Then the world snapped sideways.
"Adeline," said a voice I could only hear in my head. "Wake up."
I was sitting in a high school classroom, the kind I hadn't seen in over a decade. There were math problems on the blackboard. A woman at the front—my aunt, Petra Mahmoud—glared at me.
"Adeline," she snapped, "you were asleep again. Solve this."
I stood, my head still throbbing. "I don't remember—"
"Do it," she said, and something like an answer slid into my brain. I wrote fast, heart pounding, sweat cooling on my palm.
"All right, sit down," Petra said after checking my work. "Don't let me catch you dozing in class again."
"Sorry, Auntie," I murmured, and a boy next to me—Finbar Thomsen—elbowed me.
"Nice," he mouthed with a grin.
When the desks emptied at lunch, a tiny girl—no more than three—floated into my vision. She had butterfly wings and a crooked crown and a ridiculous smile.
"Host," she sang, "I'm Gia, system spirit of the Attraction Law. Call me Gia."
"Attraction what?" I whispered.
Gia's tiny wings fluttered. "The universe answers wishes that are truly wanted," she said. "You wanted money. We bound because you wanted it so badly. Tasks, rewards, punishment. Flower powers and spending. Let's bloom."
"My husband—is he—" The memory of Drew's fall was a raw wound.
"Stable," Gia said briskly. "But don't dither. Tasks have timers."
A chime: Main quest: Spend 10,000 within this week. Reward: 1 attribute point, 10,000, 1 system coin. Failure: hair loss. Timer: 58:13:08.
"I can spend ten thousand," I said, astonished, and a deposit pinged.
"Transfer received: 10,000. Balance: 10,604.02," my bank app told me.
"That's all?" I laughed nervously. "This is insane."
"Spend money," Gia said, sitting on my shoulder. "And earn me energy."
I went home that day with a padded stomach and an impossible humming in my head. My aunt—Petra—drove me home, fussing.
"You're pale. Are you sure you're well?" she asked.
"Fine," I lied. I had a plan for the money and for Drew. I had a system and a tiny winged toddler named Gia who promised rewards if I spent.
"Don't tell your mother," Gia advised when my hands trembled with the receipt. "Small minds spread secrets."
"Of course," I promised. But at home I told my mother everything.
"Adeline, if this is real—" said Autumn Williamson, my mother, and she sounded like she hadn't allowed herself hope in years.
"It is," I said. "We will be okay."
Gia fluttered. "Host, special task unlocked. Spend 10 million in three hours. Reward: 10 attribute points, 10 million, 1000 coins. Failure: bad luck aura for 24 hours. Timer: 2:59:59."
"Are you kidding?" I laughed aloud and then cursed. "Gia, what do you mean ten million in three hours?"
"Special tasks pay energy fast," Gia sang. "Big risk, big reward."
I called Eaton Yamamoto—he was the polite sales intern I had met at the luxury development, who had come across as steady the day I bought an apartment I had no business buying. He arrived within an hour.
"Eaton," I said, "how good are you at paperwork and driving?"
"I'm good," he smiled. "What do you need?"
"Assistant. Five thousand a month." I lied. "Now. Help me."
He blinked. "Five thousand?"
"Five hundred thousand," I corrected after seeing his breath catch. "Prepaid. Come in."
He agreed. He was twenty-two and kind and he didn't ask questions I couldn't answer.
We bought a flat—one with an unreal view—then an orange BMW, a tablet, a phone, a bed, a headboard that cost more than the rent I had once paid in a month. I spent until a new notification sang.
"Special task completed. Rewards delivered," Gia chirped, ecstatic. She spun in the air and for the first time I touched something real—her hand, soft and warm.
When the dust settled, I had a thousand and one in the system. I had made Eaton my assistant with thirty thousand as a start. I had property. The main task—10,000 spent this week—was done.
"Level up," Gia announced later, chewing on a rim of a pastry like a child.
"System: Super Bloom lv.1," the panel read.
"Attribute points: 11," Gia squealed. "Spend them, boss."
I allocated them like a woman redesigning her life: three to looks, five to stamina, three to... a little vanity. The mirror thanked me.
"Real things matter," Gia said. "Also there's shop 'Mall of Wonders' unlocks. Skills: True Eye for artifacts. Store opens."
"Artifacts?" I repeated.
"Ancient objects hold time-energy. Collect them and you feed us," Gia explained seriously, an odd wisdom in that tiny face.
I spent the next days in a blur. I bought an upscale house in the same building. I bought new cars—Ferraris of my imagination—then filled rooms with things I had once only pictured in daydreams. I used the loyalty card—seen as a joke—to bind Eaton, the new housekeepers, and two women I hired as caregivers: Li and Wang. "Loyalty cards," Gia explained, "make them faithful during employment. They cannot betray or expose system secrets."
Two weeks later we opened a store: I snapped up a failing chain and rolled it into "Lekè Super." It felt glorious and terrifying.
"Low prices, good quality," I told the new manager, Curtis Cook. "Keep staff happy. Give people dignity. We'll expand fast."
"We will need serious talent," Curtis muttered.
"Then hire," I said.
We hired Ari Hassan—he had once started and sold a game company—and he took over acquisitions. We changed slogan and prices and people came. Lekè became genuine magic for a city that had forgotten small kindnesses.
"Why do this?" Eaton asked once as we walked through the new warehouse of food crates.
"Because people need it," I answered. "Because I once ate two bowls of instant noodles to avoid a dent in the grocery bill. I won't let others do that."
Eaton smiled. "You have a good heart, boss."
"Don't call me boss," I said. "Call me Adeline."
There were enemies waiting. Per Bonner—my mother's brother, my uncle—was the first to surface. He was the gambler who had once sold my family's roof at a pawn table. He had always been dangerous in a nervous, entitled way.
"Adeline," he said on the phone in a tone that pretended kinship. "I heard you bought a store. I thought family might—"
"Per," I said coldly. "You gambled away the house. You forced my mother into the street. You sold what wasn't yours. You are not family."
"That's not—" He protested, then fell silent, then tried to be casual: "I need help for my business, only a loan. You can help family, right?"
"Per," I said, and I felt sharp. "You hurt people for profit. No."
He came anyway. He and his wife, Belen Perry, walked into my supermarket with friends, pretending curiosity. I watched them browse overpriced chocolates, their fingers lingering like vultures.
"You two are welcome," I told Eaton. "Set a table. I want everyone served."
They ate. They pretended. Per's voice never dropped from the tune of entitlement.
That night a notification came: random task, half-hour to spend a hundred thousand. I tossed some cash into a livestream and tippers screamed. The internet called me "the mystery big spender." No one guessed I had a system on my shoulder.
Then the rumors came back to bite them. Per and his cronies had been sending people to find out the source of my new fortune. Per began to go on camera, pseudo-friendly, trying to lobby support and to extract. He missed the way Eaton watched him with a controlled fury.
"This is personal," Eaton told me over coffee. "He'll try to take advantage."
"Let him try," I said softly. "We will not give him anything. Besides, Gia—"
"—has a card," Gia chimed. "I can introduce 'mischief'."
I didn't want bad outcomes, but sometimes the world needed a hard lesson.
A public punishment had to be more than private humiliation. The rulebook in my chest—old scars and new power—said so. Per had taken from my mother. He would answer in a public place where his tribe could see.
"Make it at the Lekè grand opening," Gia suggested, eyes glittering. "So many witnesses."
"Fine," I said. "We will be fair. We will show the truth."
The grand opening was a carnival under our flag: banners, cheap flowers I loved, loyal neighbors laughing as they stacked carts with our launch discount. I signed an agreement with the city; they were happy. Journalists were invited. This would not be theater for petty revenge. It would be a reckoning.
When Per and his entourage arrived, the lobby hummed. He took in the crowd with animal confidence. He did not know the microphone I had procured nor the evidence in the folder on my lap.
"Welcome," I said into the public mic. "Today is about community and transparency. But I must address a harm."
He laughed—too loud. "What harm? The family drama? I thought you were above scandal now."
"Per," I said, steady as a sunrise. "This is public. You gambled away our family house. You used our grandmother's savings. You sold the roof over my mother's head. Today, I will read the record. You will listen. Then you will either answer for it, or you will leave."
There was a murmur. Per's jaw flexed. "You can't say—"
"I can," I said. "I have copies. Here is the contract he signed when he took out the 'loan' that pretended to be for a business and became collateral for my mother's home."
I projected the scanned documents on the big screen. There they were: signature matches, date stamps, photos of nights where he celebrated debts he'd won with drinks and men who took advantage of others.
"The person who signed this fled when the creditors arrived," I continued. "He left my mother in an alley in the rain. He told her, 'It's just money.'"
I heard someone gasp. Eaton's jaw set so hard it looked painful.
Per's face paled. "That's a lie," he spat. "I gave him—"
"You sold the title," I said. "You used my mother's name as collateral for a loan you defaulted on. You told her we'd move to a smaller place and then you took the money and drank it away. You left her with nothing."
Per's hands trembled in front of him. He straightened, attempting to brandish the calm of a man who had never been held accountable in public.
"Where is proof?" he demanded. "Where is the—"
"There is more," I replied. "Audio. Video. Witness statements." I hit play on a clip. It was him, bargaining at a table, cursing about 'the old woman's stubbornness.' His voice was thick with contempt. The audio played in the center of the hall. Per's face drained color.
You could see his smugness melt step by step, like a sugar sculpture in summer. At first it was denial.
"It isn't mine!" he shouted. "They doctored—"
"Stop," said my mother, stepping forward with quiet fury I had never seen in her before. "Per, you lied to our faces. You took from us. You brought my daughter to sleep on friends' couches. Why?"
He looked at my mother as if she had grown a set of claws. For the first time, he looked small.
"Not true," he whimpered. "I only did what I had to—"
"You gambled," I said. "You chose bottles over beds. You sold us."
Per shifted, looking for an ally in the crowd. There was none. The neighbors who had once nodded politely began to lean forward, mouths hard with anger and pity. Someone in the back snapped a photo. Another started a live stream.
Per's insistence crumbled into bargaining. "Please," he said, voice high with panic. "I didn't mean— I'll pay it back. I can—"
"Pay back?" My voice was steady but my chest burned. "Pay back what you ripped from us? You put my mother in a hospital bed once to... remember? Bills—"
He reached out toward me, pleading, a mimicry of remorse that had never existed at family dinners.
"Don't touch me," I said, and the crowd hissed like a wave. "You will not touch us."
Per's face contorted: first proud, then incredulous, then collapsing into something like a child who finally understood fear. He backed up until his foot caught on a crate of our discounted rice. He fell to his knees, hard, his suit creased. For a moment he was only a small man in a big neighborhood, humbled beyond the reach of his arrogance.
"Please," he begged, voice breaking. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can— I'll fix it. I'm sorry."
"Fix it in public," I demanded. "Acknowledge what you did in front of these neighbors you humiliated. Promise to make amends. Sign a binding statement. And then—" I looked at the press and at the streaming devices already waving toward us. "—then you will apologize to my mother, and to the people here."
He stammered, then, in a panic filled move, produced a paper and a pen. The cameras rolled. He scratched his name. He put 'I, Per Bonner, publicly declare that I stole from my family and I pledge to make financial amends'—or something to that effect—on paper. His handwriting trembled. He dropped to the floor, literally lowering himself before the assembly.
"Please," he said again, sobbing. "Please forgive me."
People around the hall had varying reactions. "Shame!" someone called. Others clicked photos while murmurs fluttered like birds. A woman took a video and thrust it toward a reporter. Voices rose—some yelled for restitution, some for mercy.
He knelt on the linoleum, suit knees sweating, voice shaking from easy bluster to genuine pleas. His friends had already moved away. A circle grew around him: no applause, only the cold, assuring presence of witnesses.
"This will be in every paper," Gia whispered in my ear, small and satisfied.
"It will be," I said.
The humiliation was not an end but a beginning: Per had to face the weight of being watched. He had to stand in the light he had avoided.
"That's enough," my mother said finally. "You will clear our name, pay back what you owe, or we will take every legal step. This is your chance."
Per's face crumpled. He begged and sputtered and tried to bargain for mercy. He tried to make excuses, then to deny, then to confess. The arc was public and ugly and perfect.
The crowd's response moved from shock to shaming to the cold attention of justice. Someone took a picture that would be posted a hundred times that week. Someone else recorded the scene for a daytime show. A dozen phones flashed in unison as Per's knees hit the ground and his pleas echoed.
"Please," he repeated. "Please."
There was no cheering. Only a steady, undeniable witness. He would be judged—by law, by community, by the slow grinding gears of obligation. He would kneel in court too, perhaps. He had to live with the cameras that day, the video that would follow him.
When it was over he was escorted out under the weight of humiliating breath. He was still sputtering apologies, but they had lost heft. Around the hall, people whispered; somewhere a child asked why someone would do such things. The local reporter said, "This will run on the evening news."
"Good," I said to Gia quietly. "Let the story wake him."
"Energy gained," Gia hummed. "Five points."
The punishment lasted longer than a few speeches: it rippled. Per's creditors called. Prior buyers pulled back. His friends' eyes grew cold. He tried to gather support for a truth that had evaporated under fluorescent lights. His denial was loud, then small, then painfully private.
Afterward, my mother sat with her hands in her lap.
"You did well," she said. "Not for revenge. For truth."
"I did it because I remembered how it felt to sleep without a roof," I answered.
"Good. Let that be your compass."
The weeks that followed were a clatter of good things and new stakes. Lekè expanded. We bought land at auction—two pieces, one in a developing district for a new corporate headquarters, another by West Mountain that I planned to make a private refuge. Ari and Curtis handled the deals like professionals. Eaton handled my calendar, which had become a rope of responsibilities I pulled like a ship's captain.
"Don't forget school," Eaton reminded me the day before classes started. "You promised."
"I promised myself," I said. "And I owe a little to the girl I used to be. I will go every morning. Come back to spend afternoons. I won't lose myself."
School was a surprise of a different sort. People whispered. Lennon Santoro hugged me in the hallway, eyes widened.
"Adeline, you look—" Lennon marveled.
"New," I answered, and the truth was soft: I had shifted, but my spine was the same.
There were skirmishes—Su's lies, a teacher quick to judge—but those too played out, and in front of the school I did what I had learned to do: speak, show proof, and put truth where gossip had been. My mother was furious and fierce; she had become a shield as much as a person. The headmaster made a public apology; the rumor machine coughed and died.
At night, Gia would curl at the base of my pillow and hum while I read a math problem I had almost forgotten how to love.
"You've got tasks stacked," she said. "And you spend beautifully."
"I'd rather buy books than bling," I told her.
"You have both," she purred. "And we will collect time."
Some nights I thought of Drew and the drip of hospital machines and the way life can be split in an instant. I would go to the old restaurant where we had once been young, where I had once been overlooked, and I would look for him.
When I found him—alive but softer around the edges—he blinked at me like someone who had been given back a road.
"Adeline?" Drew whispered. "Why do you look like—someone else?"
"I came back," I said. "I'll help. But not the way you remember. We will rebuild, not from pity but from plans."
He took my hand with a shaky, grateful pressure. He was not a villain. He had been kinder in truth than in memory. He would have his second chance too.
I still had tasks to finish. There was a year-long quota that made me smile and sigh: spend a hundred billion. The system's bar blinked like a distant star: "Random task: 100 billion in one year. Reward: 10 attribute points, 10,000,000,000; penalty: shrink twenty centimeters. Timer: 364 days."
"That's... comfortable," Gia said, delighted.
I laughed. I would not be the same girl who slept through her chance. I would not forget the tightness of hungry nights. I would balance generosity and caution. I would let the city breathe again. I would make sure Per's humiliation was more than spectacle: it was a lesson.
That night I wound a small old pocket watch my grandmother had once touched. It ticked like the old world and the new. "Tick," it said in the dark. "Tick."
"Don't spend it all at once," Gia sang.
"I won't," I promised, and because I was me—Adeline—I put the watch into the drawer, with the system window open, with Eaton's phone by my side, and with Gia's light little laugh like a promise.
And in the morning the city would wake, and the supermarket's light would open like a flower—and somewhere, in the crowd, Per Bonner's name would be in every headline and his knees would remember the floor.
The End
— Thank you for reading —