Cerita Pendek Familial Bond & Novel Hypocrisy System

I was a housewife with severe OCD and a serious cleanliness obsession. I accidentally entered what I thought was a wholesome parenting game where I beat the crap out of my rebellious son, smothered my adorable daughter with love, and ripped out the corpse-stitching on my husband to sew him back up. On the day I cleared the game, the three of them tearfully sent me off. Only during the final settlement did I learn the truth: my husband was the ultimate boss of the horror game. My son was an infamous demon who left no players alive, and my daughter had crushed the skulls of a hundred players. Wasn't this supposed to be a parenting game? Turns out, I had walked straight into a horror game.

After completing my mission in conquering Audrey Hayes, I choose to stay behind in this other world for her. Before the system checks out, it warns me that I have burned through every single point to keep her alive. If I ever find myself in danger again, I won't have the points to bail me out. I don't care, mostly because Audrey has held my hand and given me her word. "I'm a doctor. No matter what happens to you down the road, I'll be the one to save you." But ten years later, my twin brother and I are caught in a car accident. When Audrey rushes onto the scene, she walks right past me as I lie bleeding out on the pavement, choosing instead to load my brother onto the ambulance for nothing more than a few superficial scrapes. "I know all about those weird abilities of yours!" she snaps. "You aren't going to die, but Owen might." Watching her leave, I close my eyes in absolute despair, only to hear the system's mechanical voice echo in my mind. "Host, your vital signs are dropping rapidly. In light of your exceptional past performance, a new option has been unlocked. If you can collect enough regret from your family, you'll be granted a chance to return to the real world. Do you accept this mission?"

My brother had bonded with an Academic Prodigy System, and its mission was simple: get into Northbridge for graduate school. If he failed, the system would erase his intelligence and leave him permanently disabled. To save him, my parents told me, "Aaron, you're smart. You still have options, but your brother doesn't." So they secretly switched my guaranteed admission file and gave my place to him. My fiancee, Vivian Harkins, a professor at the university, personally helped him forge the records. She touched my face with the same tenderness she always used. "Aaron, everything has an optimal solution. Sacrificing one year of your time to protect this family is worth it." My brother held the admission letter with his own name on it and became the star of the celebration banquet. I stood in the corner and watched the system panel in front of me as the [Hope Value] hit zero. The cold voice in my head asked, [Host, you have reached the threshold for extreme injustice. Confirm activation of the death program?] I watched Vivian, with her own hands, fasten the pair of cuff links she had once promised me onto my brother's sleeve. I smiled, swallowed the taste of blood rising in my throat, and said, "Confirm." "Use my life to trade for the rest of theirs... beyond redemption."

After successfully completing the mission, I return to my original world. I awaken from my vegetative state to find my now-grown children waiting at my bedside. My husband pulls me into a tight embrace. My parents and mother-in-law are overcome with tears of joy. Just as I'm about to say goodbye to the System and choose to remain in my original world, a woman who looks almost exactly like me pushes open the door. My children rush over to her, calling her "Mommy" affectionately. Everyone looks at me awkwardly. The woman gives me a provocative smile. I stop the System. "Let me think about whether I want to stay here."

Just before the college entrance exam, I accidentally overheard my cousin's inner thoughts and discovered that she'd bound herself to a system that stole the rewards of my hard work. The harder I studied, the higher her scores soared. "Ella, all your hard work is worthless compared to my natural talent!" Little did she know that I had a system of my own, one that could shut hers down on the day of the exam.

The night before the college application deadline, my parents said they wanted to throw me a celebration dinner. I had a pretty good score on my SAT. However, the moment I reached the restaurant entrance, a few lines of text suddenly floated in front of my eyes. [Don't go in.] [Tonight at dinner, your parents and your guidance counselor are going to get your account verification code out of you.] [They're going to swap your application to a top out-of-state university for the local teachers' college, the one that locks you into teaching here after you graduate.] [Your counselor will log in from the school's computer lab and make it look like you confirmed it yourself.] [Once the admission results come out, your dad will tear up your ID and lock you in the house until you accept your fate.] [From then on, your paychecks will go toward your brother's downpayment first.] [You'll be stuck in this town forever.] I stood outside the building, chilled to the bone. A second later, my phone rang. It was Mom. "Callie, why aren't you up here yet? Mr. Ormsby said the application portal tends to lag tonight, so it's better to confirm early and be done with it."

After six years of working as a corpse porter, I finally saved enough money to treat my sister, Maeve Xander, for her liver cancer. Maeve, however, casually refused the surgery. “I’m not actually sick. Mom and Dad aren’t dead either. I staged that car accident. You’re the only one who ended up seriously hurt and disabled.” Then my wife, Laurel Jinks, also confessed, “I’m not bankrupt. Every time I said I had to work late, it was because I didn’t want to cram into that filthy basement with you. I was going back to my mansion. I originally planned to punish you for three more years, but you reek of dead bodies. Maeve and I just can’t take the smell anymore.” A wave of pure absurdity washed over me as my body froze with the hand holding my credit card still in the air. Maeve snatched the card from my hand and tossed it into the trash. “That card is empty. I gave all the money you made carrying corpses to homeless people. Think of it as doing good deeds for the child you lost. After all, taking money from the dead is cursed. It’s bad luck all the way down. We shouldn’t touch that filthy money.” A chill ran down my spine. I did not understand why they treated me this way. Then, I saw my parents. They were standing far away from me, as if I were a plague. I completely broke down. “You bullied Cameron because you are the only son of the Xander family, so we wanted to teach you a lesson. If you promise to never bully Cameron again, we’ll still consider you our son. If you do not promise, we’ll cut you off, and you’ll be dead to us.” Just as my heart sank and I fell into despair, a sympathetic voice from the system sounded in my mind. [Jude, do you wish to abandon this mission and leave this world?]