Freak Imagination Short Stories & Regret Novels

To pursue the goblin prince Cole Hutch, I devoted five years of my life. However, on the very day I'm about to marry him, dressed in a wedding gown, I overhear a conversation between Cole and his friend. "Cole, are you really going to marry Lilian?" his friend asks doubtfully. A shadow flickers across Cole's eyes. "Of course. The Heroic Alliance has been eyeing our kingdom for a long time, and now that Shia is pregnant with my child, the alliance elders are displeased with me. Marrying Lilian is the perfect way to appease them." "Aren't you afraid Lilian will find out you've been seeing someone else and go after Shia?" The friend asks again. Cole replied, "She won't. She's madly in love with me. She'll keep the secret for my sake. She's gentle and easy to control. As long as I marry her, we can at least delay a war against our kingdom, and Shia will be safe." My entire world shatters at that moment. In my daze, I get ambushed and gravely wounded. And when I finally wake up from my unconsciousness, I remember everyone, except Cole. So, when the leader of the Heroic Alliance contacts me to ask me to return for an arranged marriage, I immediately book a portal back seven days later.

My sister has awakened her mermaid bloodline, but it is incomplete. Her skin is her curse. A single touch, too hard, and it cracks. For her, everything hard in our house has been thrown away. I love to dance, but the hard tips of ballet shoes are forbidden. I love music, but the strings of a guitar or the keys of a piano are too dangerous. Every dream I've ever had has been strangled in its cradle because of my sister's condition. My brother, Liam, who raised us both, always looks at me with tired, pleading eyes. "Elara is fragile, Isla. You have to be understanding." But I was only eighteen the first time I truly understood. I came home from my high school graduation ceremony, the scent of sunshine and excitement still on my clothes. The moment I stepped inside, Elara's hand connected with my cheek. Hard. For no reason at all. Everyone rushed to her. Liam pointed a furious finger at me. "Look what you've done! You've hurt her hand! How could you be so careless?" He shoved me aside and rushed out with Elara to find a doctor. I fell back against the glass coffee table, the impact jarring. And then, a strange, cold pain bloomed across my back. I felt my skin... tear. It was then I remembered the doctor's words from my last check-up: "You carry the Siren's Gene, Isla. It could manifest at any time." As my vision blurred, my own blood pooling on the pristine white floor, I finally understood. The curse wasn't just my sister's. It was mine, too.

On New Year's Eve, my cousin and I went to the supermarket to stock up for the holiday when a cold wave hit out of nowhere. The temperature plummeted dozens of degrees, and the world plunged into an ice-cold apocalypse. In the blink of an eye, people froze solid into ice sculptures. I scrambled to grab winter coats and whatever supplies I could, but my cousin just sat there playing video games. He even posted his pentakill on social media to brag about it. I went through hell to snag him a down jacket, and he still insisted he was not afraid of the cold. "I'm a real man. You think a little cold scares me?" He refused to eat the compressed biscuits. He even used our scarce bottled water to wash his limited-edition sneakers, then threw a fit demanding freshly pan-seared steak. "It's called having standards, look it up. Even if I die, I'm dying tough and with style!" I scoffed. Since he wanted to die tough, he could go right ahead and freeze into an ice sculpture. Ice sculptures were plenty tough.