After My Family Died for Their Country, Everyone Bullied Me—Wasn’t the Nation Supposed to Protect Me?

With the holiday season approaching, I had just finished working overtime until midnight and walked out of the company when I ran straight into Tyler Brooks. When he saw me handing over the USB drive containing the year-end financial report, he immediately flicked the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth into my face. “Didn’t I say ten o’clock? How dare you make me wait out in the cold for two whole hours!” Sparks from the cigarette butt scattered across my face, and I sucked in a sharp breath, instantly wide awake. Before I could say a word, the two thugs standing beside Tyler kicked me to the ground. I was already numb to it all, so I merely covered my head and curled my body into a ball to avoid being seriously injured. Things like this happened every so often. Tyler acted like the company’s little tyrant because he had been placed there by one of the company’s executives. It was all because I hadn’t offered him a drink when he first joined the company, and that had made me his target. He not only led our coworkers in isolating me at work, forcing me to shoulder the entire team’s workload by myself and work overtime for a full month, but also brought street thugs to beat and insult me whenever he was in a bad mood. He claimed that his uncle was the police chief, and whenever he bullied me, he made sure to choose blind spots outside the security cameras, so there was nothing I could do to him. A sharp pain shot through my chest, and my eyes filled with tears. The next second, one of the thugs grabbed my hair and forced my head up. “Hey, look at this! This useless coward is actually crying!” “A grown man crying? What a disgrace!” As soon as he finished speaking, they tried to flick the cigarette butt into my mouth, so I struggled desperately, and the jade pendant hidden beneath my collar slipped out. Tyler’s eyes lit up, and he bent down to yank the pendant from my neck, holding it in his hand and examining it. “This pendant looks pretty valuable. It’s mine now!” “No!” I twisted my body with all my strength and glared at him with reddened eyes. “That belonged to my family. You can’t take it!” But he merely sneered, then threw the pendant onto the ground right in front of me and crushed it beneath his shoe. Apparently, that still wasn’t cruel enough for him, because he ground his foot against it several more times until the round pendant had turned to powder and could never be repaired, and only then did he slowly lift his foot. Tyler’s expression was incredibly arrogant. “That’s disgusting. You actually carry a dead man’s junk around with you. What if it brings me bad luck? Do you think I won’t kill you?” I stared wide-eyed at the pendant he had crushed and roared, “You animal! I’m going to kill you!” The moment the words left my mouth, a burst of strength came from somewhere inside me, and I slammed into the thug who had been holding me down before driving my fist into Tyler’s face. My grandfather had placed that pendant around my neck with his own hands. He told me that it had accompanied him through the war and even saved his life, making it his good-luck charm. He had given that protective charm to me, hoping it could stay by my side in his place for the rest of my life. On countless lonely nights, whenever I missed my family, I would take out the pendant and hold it in my palm, feeling its warmth slowly spread through my hand, as if I were holding my grandfather’s hand. But now, everything was ruined. Tears blurred my vision as I crouched down and carefully gathered the fragments from the ground with both hands, trying to piece the pendant back together. But it was useless. Tyler hadn’t expected me to fight back, and my punch sent him staggering two steps backward. Once he recovered, he ordered his thugs to grab me and declared that he was going to teach me a lesson. “If you walk out of this street in one piece today, I’ll take your last name!”I didn’t have time to think, so I turned around and ran toward the office building. The company was swamped with work at the end of the year, and I had seen the HR manager still on the phone when I left work earlier. I refused to believe that Tyler and his men would actually dare beat me to death in front of the HR manager! As soon as I ran out of the elevator, I saw the HR manager, Ms. Jessica, carrying her bag and preparing to leave. “Jessica, help me!” Jessica stopped and frowned when she saw how battered I looked. “Ethan, what happened to you?” Before I could answer, Tyler and the two thugs chased after me, stopping two steps away while panting heavily. “Jessica, this is a private matter between Ethan and me. Why don’t you stay out of it?” “They ignored the company’s rules, forced me to work overtime for them, and even attacked me. Jessica, does the company really not care? Would it still not care if someone ended up dead?” Everyone put their own interests first. If something happened to me there, Jessica would certainly be held responsible as well. Hearing that, she frowned and pulled me behind her. “Tyler, I’m not trying to lecture you, but fooling around at work is one thing. How could you let things get this out of hand? If something really happens, I won’t be able to protect you.” I let out a heavy sigh of relief. Just when I thought I was finally safe, Jessica patted Tyler on the shoulder. “There aren’t any cameras in the hallway over there. You understand what I mean, right?” My eyes flew open, and my heart shot into my throat. While I stood frozen in place, Jessica suddenly seemed to remember something. She walked back over to me, pulled a red packet from her pocket, and stuffed it into my hand. “Oh, look at me. I nearly forgot your year-end bonus. You’ve been working late and wasting the company’s water and electricity, so this year you’re getting one penny. Work harder next year!” I pinched the weightless red packet in my hand while the laughter of Tyler and the others rang in my ears. “Team Leader Ethan is so devoted! He’s paying out of his own pocket to give his team a raise!” Only then did I realize that my year-end bonus hadn’t been reduced to a single penny. The four of them had divided it among themselves. They were all cut from the same cloth! I stared at Jessica in disbelief, my voice trembling. “You actually led people in encouraging this kind of corruption at the company and pocketed an employee’s bonus? Aren’t you afraid I’ll report you?” Jessica’s face hardened, and she looked at me impatiently. “Go ahead if you’ve got the guts. Go complain to the general manager and see whether he’ll believe your unsupported accusations or believe us.” The faces of the four people before me looked utterly vile beneath the shadows. I watched them leave arm in arm while discussing how they were going to spend my bonus. I clenched both hands, the taste of blood filling my mouth. Of course I was going to find the general manager! I would never let those people off the hook! I looked at the security camera blinking red in the corner of the office and silently made up my mind. Afterward, I returned to the company entrance and picked up the broken pieces of the pendant. The sharp fragments cut into my palm, and bright red blood dripped onto the ground, but I acted as if I couldn’t feel the pain and gripped the pendant even more tightly. As if the pain could keep me clearheaded and remind me that I wasn’t alone. My grandfather and my parents were my strongest support, and I was going to get justice for myself!Early the next morning, I took the office security footage straight to the general manager. After listening to me explain everything that had happened, the general manager merely glanced at me. “Finished? If you’re done, get back to work. It’s the end of the year, everyone is busy, and I don’t have time to listen to you make up stories here.” “I’m not making anything up. Everything I said is true, and I have proof! If you don’t believe me, you can access last night’s office security footage yourself.” I hadn’t slept at all. I had spent the entire night thinking about how to seek justice, so I was fully prepared. But in the next second, the general manager picked up the internal phone. “Have security delete last night’s office footage. Don’t leave any backups!” The moment I heard that, I lost my composure. “No!” I instinctively reached for the phone, but he hung up first and looked at me with open impatience. “What are you doing? Are you trying to attack your superior? Believe me, I can fire you right now!” I glared at him furiously, and at that moment, a voice inside me was shouting, “Do it! Beat him senseless!” But I managed to hold myself back. Violence was the stupidest way to solve a problem. The general manager seemed to think I didn’t dare attack him, and he smiled as he patted my shoulder. “Ethan, I know you’re a smart man. You know what should be said and what should be done, don’t you?” The implication was clear: he wanted me to shut up and continue enduring Tyler’s abuse. I shrugged off his hand and said coldly, “I quit. I’m done.” As I turned to leave, the general manager’s contemptuous laughter came from behind me. “You think you can just leave because you say you want to?” Before I could react, a sack was suddenly pulled over my head. I struggled with all my strength, but all I got in return was two vicious kicks. Then they carried me into the freezer. When they pulled the sack off my head, the freezing temperature made me shiver uncontrollably. Tyler folded his arms and looked down at me. “Kid, if you quit, who’s going to do our work?” “You can stay here and reflect properly. I’ll let you out when you finally learn to obey.” After saying that, Tyler jingled the keys in his hand and turned to leave. The freezer door slammed shut, and I curled up in the corner, my upper and lower lips trembling uncontrollably from the cold. I felt as if every drop of blood in my body had frozen, and even my breath quickly condensed into droplets of water. I dug my fingers hard into my thigh, trying to keep myself conscious. I couldn’t die here. But I had no idea how much time had passed, and I felt as if I couldn’t hold on much longer.