Feel-Good Story Short Stories & Hypocrisy System Novels

I was only one final background check away from securing my future. That afternoon, I grabbed my document folder and prepared to drive to my fiancée’s place to pick up a statement that verified our family relationship. Yet the moment my fingertips touched the car keys, several pale-gray lines of text appeared before my eyes. [Do not touch the car. At 7:20 tonight, someone will die on the West Ring Road service lane. The car that hits them will carry your license plate. Three days later, the victim’s daughter will stab you during your background-check interview.] I stood frozen in the entryway, and cold sweat spread across my back. At that moment, my phone rang. My fiancée’s gentle voice came through the receiver. “Reid, just drive over here. There’s a bunch of paperwork, and I can help you look everything over again.”

My company has dispatched me on a one-week business trip to another city. When the trip is over, I drive home in a hurry just so I can celebrate my mother-in-law, Marianne Jones' birthday with her. But when I'm waiting for the traffic light to turn green, rows of live comments suddenly appear right in front of my eyes. "Do not go home no matter what! If you do, that crime will be pinned on you!" "The moment you step through the front door, Marianne will jump off the building!" "Your fingerprints are all over Marianne's body! When the time comes, you won't be able to defend yourself at all, and you'll end up receiving a death sentence! After your husband receives a hefty insurance payout, he and your best friend, Kathie Wilbury, will live a luxurious and happy life together!" I'm stunned by the information. But a few seconds later, I decide to believe the live comments. In that case, I might as well make a huge gamble. As soon as the green light is on, I start the car and stomp down on the gas pedal. Then, I veer my car toward the concrete barrier on the roadside and crash into it.

The day my fiancé returned from deployment, he invited me to the celebration gala held in his honor at the Prescott family estate. My younger half-sister begged to come because she hoped to meet an eligible man, and I brought her without hesitation. At dinner, my future mother-in-law laughed and said, "That stubborn son of mine is finally going to marry the woman he loves." I blushed and turned to find Major Adrian Prescott staring directly at me. The moment I caught him, he lowered his head too quickly, took a drink, and nearly choked. His fellow officers teased him while my half-sister leaned close and whispered that she envied me. I believed my future could not have been brighter. Then words made of golden light appeared before my eyes. [Within one hour, Delia Langford will be found half-dressed beside Adrian Prescott.] [The guests will believe they caught them together. Adrian will be pressured to marry Delia, accept a permanent overseas posting, and never return to Ravenmere.] Ice filled my veins. Delia was the innocent-looking half-sister sitting beside me with her arm linked through mine. ...

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."

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.

The system transports me into an alternate historical world. After waiting for ten long years, I am finally notified that I can leave this world. Before my departure, the system grants me three days to say goodbye. So, during those final three days, I become the person that the empress, Bella Barrett, has always wanted me to be. When she hands the royal seal to Harry Johnston, I smile and present it to him myself. And when she decides to build a shrine in his honor, I support the project wholeheartedly. Later, I go to the treasury and select a few precious treasures to take with me. One of my attendants asks curiously why I need so many valuables. I smile and answer, "I'm going home." Bella suddenly turns toward me. For the first time, panic fills her eyes. "But Josiah, aren't you an orphan? Other than your home here with me, where else could you possibly go?"

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 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?"

On the day I return to court in triumph, my fiancee, Isabel Hartwell, welcomes me at the city gates. My career is flourishing, and I'm about to marry the woman I love. As far as I'm concerned, my life can't be more perfect. A victory banquet is held in my honor. By the time I'm pleasantly buzzed, Isabel's mother, Katherine Mercer, raises her glass to me with a smile. "Nicholas, my daughter has waited three long years for you. Now, you're finally back!" The entire room bursts into laughter. My ears burn as I search for Isabel through the crowd of guests raising their glasses. She lowers her head, trying to hide her smile. Perhaps sensing my gaze, she looks up. Our eyes meet, and hers crinkled with delight. My heart skips a beat. I quickly lower my head and take a drink to hide my embarrassment, only to nearly choke on it. My fellow soldiers immediately begin teasing me. Even my younger half-brother, Stephen Aldridge, leans over with a smile. "Congratulations, Nicholas. You'll soon be the Hartwells' son-in-law. When you make it to the top, don't forget to help me out." I ruffle his hair, warmth filling my chest. My career is thriving, the woman I love will soon be my wife, and I share a close bond with my family. What more can I possibly ask for? Then, I look up and freeze. A golden prophecy appears out of nowhere, hovering in midair. "In two hours, Stephen will be found lying beside Isabel with his clothes in disarray. Everyone will catch them in a compromising position. Isabel will be forced to marry Stephen, and she'll eventually succumb to depression and die." I sober instantly as a chill sweeps through me. After all, Stephen is none other than my younger half-brother, who has just raised a toast to me.

After the Ritualist declared that Amber would not live past 18, I, a perfectly healthy girl, became the Misfortune Vessel. When Amber broke a leg, my left leg was crippled. When Amber tried to kill herself with shards of glass, the tendons in my hand were severed. I could no longer hold a pen. From childhood to the present, every wound meant for Amber landed on my body. She never stopped testing how far she could go. Skydiving from two miles up. Chasing sharks in deep water. Survival expeditions to the extreme North. Every choice courted death. I cried. I screamed that it hurt. My brothers refused to allow it. "Enough already. It's just a small injury. How could it hurt that much? You're too delicate." "If it hurts, then endure it." So I endured until the day I turned 18. That was when the Shared-Sense System found me. I enabled family sharing, and every single one of them went insane.

The first thing I do after being reborn is secretly keeping six stunning male models behind my wealthy husband’s back. I seduce them and sleep with them for 999 days to get myself pregnant. I do all this because in my past life, my husband found out that he had asthenozoospermia and married me because I am known for being fertile. He wants to carry on the family line so that he will have a successor to inherit the family fortune. I try everything I can to get pregnant, but nothing works. Conversely, my infertile best friend gives birth to twins and triplets within two years after marrying a 70-year-old man. When my wealthy husband hears that my best friend is blessed with children, he is immediately captivated. They get together behind my back and even arrange for someone to run me over with a car when I find out the truth. After my death, I discover that my best friend has bound herself to the child switch system. Any child I am impregnated with is transferred into her womb. My best friend's infertility is transferred to me in return. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day when my husband married me and brought me home. I smile happily when I think about all the things that took place in my past life. My best friend wants lots of children, doesn't she? If so, I will make her experience the joy of having 18 babies in one pregnancy!

I was the greediest stand-in in high society, and my motto was simple. As long as cash kept coming, my dignity could take a back seat. For Frederick Jameson, I played the role of his obedient pet, so when his true love accused me of stealing her necklace, I just bowed and apologized. With Samuel York, I served as his lab rat, testing drugs meant for his sweetheart's condition until they left me with a bleeding ulcer. And for Theodore Xander, I acted as a scapegoat, getting pushed out to take the blame of extortion for his crush. They all assumed I was hopelessly in love with them, even forcing me to sign a confession at their joint engagement party. That was when the system's voice chimed in, "Host, the portal home is now open." I wiped the blood from my lips, splashed my wine into their faces, and grinned brightly. "Game over, losers!" Right in front of everyone, I leaped straight into the sea. Later, word spread that the three big shots scoured the entire ocean just to find my body.

My wife's first love was bound to an "overachiever" system—every ounce of exhaustion he racked up from grinding away at work got transferred straight to me. He pulled seven straight all-nighters to land a multi-million-dollar deal and became a legend in the industry. Meanwhile, I ended up in the ER with heart failure. When I tried to explain it to my wife, she shot me a look of pure disgust. "You're just born lazy," she snapped. "You can't stand seeing him succeed at such a young age, so you make up some sick fairy tale to accuse him." After that, every late night he pulled chipped away at my body. First came nervous exhaustion, then organ failure—until I was hanging on by a thread. I went to the hospital for tests, but the doctors couldn't find a thing. A few even hinted I might be suffering from paranoid delusions. Then, to get his company listed on the stock exchange, he locked himself in his office for two weeks straight. I wound up dead from overexertion in my own room. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night of his very first all-nighter. This time, I bolted the door, pulled out a full strip of sleeping pills, and smiled. "Time to sleep."

My deskmate, Sierra Langford, handed me a throat lozenge. I turned around and melted it into the school cafeteria’s "Top Scholar Soup", letting all four thousand students share a taste. Because this time, I’ve been reborn. In my previous life, Sierra had a system that could steal other people’s exam scores. As long as I ate something from her, my grades would automatically transfer to her. She was a rich girl, already set to study abroad. Stealing my college entrance exam score was just a joke to her. On the other hand, I was poor. The exam was my only chance to change my fate. After three mock exams, my scores kept dropping for no reason, and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find out why. In the end, I failed the college entrance exam. Lost and broken, I was hit by a car. After I died, my soul hovered in the air and overheard Sierra laughing with her best friend, Hailey Monroe. "Who would’ve thought Vera Collins could’ve ranked first in the entire city? Well, that title’s mine now! Someone like her deserves to rot in the mud forever." This time, I’m back. So, she liked stealing people’s scores for fun? Then stealing just mine would be too boring. This time, the entire school’s exam scores would be a surprise for her.

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.

In my sixth year as a body diver, I finally tracked down my son's body. My husband had just come back from the construction site. That was when he calmly told me the truth. "Asher never died. I was the detective who lied and told you I couldn't find him. "I was also the city's richest man—the one who refused to pay your ransom to save him. "I never went bankrupt, either. Every time I told you I was off hauling bricks at some construction site, I was really just back at the mansion, hiding from the smell of the dead on your skin." It hit me like a blow to the head. I stood there, numb. My brother, Rick Forrest, was the one who spoke next. "That best friend you've been pouring your heart out to online this whole time—that was me. I'm also the one who made you think you'd gotten the kidnappers angry and gotten your son killed. "That's not all. Our parents didn't die in that kidnapping, either. The truth is, they were the kidnappers." Cold flooded through me. Not until I saw my parents standing there, alive, did the pain finally tear a sound out of me. "Why—" My parents' brows furrowed, distant. "It's because you made such a scene! You knew Valerie's position as a false heiress was already humiliating enough, and you still let her get into that car accident that left her unable to have children. "You owe her this much. As long as you stop going after Valerie, we can still be a family." I stood frozen where I was. Right as the pain peaked, a long-unheard chime sounded in my mind—the System, back after all this time. [Host, do you wish to abandon this redemption mission and leave this world?]

On April Fool's Day, my husband sent me an intimate photo of himself and his secretary, Claire Bennett. "I've actually been with Claire for three years. Our child is already two years old. "I'm planning to fake my death in a car accident and then move overseas with her and our daughter." The look of shock on my face made him burst out laughing. "Got you. It was April Fool's Day. You didn't actually believe that, did you?" I had just breathed a sigh of relief when he casually added, "But the part about Claire and me having a child is true." I said nothing as I looked at the smug, provocative grin on his face. What he didn't know was that I'd possessed a Lies Come True System since childhood. Whenever someone sincerely told me a lie, that lie would come true. And the death he casually joked about would become reality just three days later.

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?]

Before I married Gavin Whitaker, his mother put me through a so-called premarital obedience test. She made me kneel and serve tea to the entire family, so I knelt. She made me walk barefoot across a reflexology path to prove my "resilience". I went through it. She made me sign a prenuptial agreement stating that if we ever divorced, I would leave with nothing. I signed. Throughout it all, Gavin watched coldly from the sidelines. All he said was, "Sienna, don’t make a big deal out of this. Just bear with it. These are our family’s rules." I smiled and nodded, even as tears slid down my face. The final test came without warning. His mother slapped me hard across the face. "If you marry into this family, you need to understand what humility means." I didn’t move. However, upstairs in the study, where Gavin was in the middle of a video conference, he suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed. He clutched his face and stared at me in terror. [System Notification: You and Gavin Whitaker have successfully bound to the Empathy Sync System. From this moment on, all harm inflicted upon the host will be experienced in full by the other party.]

On Christmas Eve, I made a wish for a miracle: a round, perky, Kardashian-worthy butt. That night, I actually dreamed about Theodore Blake, the ice-cold captain of our college hockey team. He braced one hand on a desk, caging me in as he stared at a glowing screen flickering above it. [A dream you can't escape until you've built the perfect 'XXX'?] He raised an eyebrow. “What's the missing word?” It was only a dream, so I made something up. “It's... 'body.' Who doesn't want the perfect body?” He nodded, though he still looked skeptical. From then on, he appeared in my dreams every night, putting me through a grueling workout routine. He wouldn't let me sleep until I was drenched in sweat. Ten days later, my butt was still nowhere near peach-perfect. Mission failed. The bedroom in my dream suddenly shrank until there was only room for a single dorm bed! He was six-foot-three. I was five-foot-three. And there we were, trapped together, looking utterly helpless. We stared at each other awkwardly. My face burning, I turned away. His eight-pack pressed right up against my back. Wait a second. Why can I feel his skin? And why is he so warm? When I woke up the next morning, I was wrapped up tight in my comforter. After the hockey game that day, Theodore, the campus bad boy, pinned me against the locker room door and glared at me. “Listen, from now on, stop hogging the blanket at night! “And tell me. What the hell does that damn 'XXX' mean?”