Feel-Good Story Imagination-Kurzgeschichten & Independence-Kurzromane

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?"

An overpass in Winfeld that's still under construction ends up collapsing, leading to the deaths of many. Family members of the victims are up in arms, demanding that the person in charge pay the price for the incident. As the quality assurance inspector, I'm brought to court. However, I am just an intern. The real perpetrators are out clinking glasses, celebrating a clean getaway and the fact that they have a new scapegoat. Out of nowhere, the court introduces a new trial system that involves the extraction of memories directly from one's mind. In the middle of this major incident, a terrifying truth emerges. Everything goes all the way back to my university days…

My lazy stepbrother, Derek Lane, suddenly becomes the hardest-working person in the village. He cuts weeds, carries buckets of manure, and works the fields. Nothing seems too difficult for him. But while he works, cuts suddenly appear on my hands. The carrying pole rubs my shoulders raw. Even the soles of my feet split open. I have no idea what kind of dark magic he uses, but every injury he suffers is somehow transferred onto me. After spending an entire day laboring under the blazing sun, he remains full of energy. Meanwhile, I collapse from heatstroke. I tell Dad to stop Derek from working in the fields. Instead of listening to me, Dad drags me to the village square and publicly lambasts me in front of all the villagers. He scolds, "You still think you're some spoiled boy who came from the city? Not only are you too lazy to work, but you're even spreading lies that Derek is using black magic!" From that day on, Derek works even harder. But at the same time, I can no longer work in the fields at all with my body covered in injuries. A week later, he's named the village's "Farmer of the Year". Thanks to that title, he earns the chance to head to the city and attend college. As for me, I collapse from exhaustion and die in the cornfield. Wild dogs feed on my remains. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the first day Derek is trying to steal my work points. There are 15 days left until the fall harvest. I have 15 days until I die in that cornfield. I snatch the carrying pole from Derek's hands and say, "I'll handle my own work."

Bad news: I'm dead. Good news: I transmigrated into a novel. Bad news: I end up in a peasant woman's womb, and I'm about to be born as a fake heir. Good news: My little sister, claiming that it's better to be safe than sorry because the novel's main character shares my name, has forced me to read this novel cover to cover. I already know that once the real heir, Isaac Reed, comes home, he'll use our parents' guilt toward him to set me up. He'll frame me at a family acknowledgment banquet, making it look like I've taken liberties with the family's precious only daughter, Kiana Reed. My adoptive parents will be so furious that they'll disown me and kick me out of the house. In the end, I'll die miserably in an alley on a rainy night. So, the year I turn five, I empty out my savings to hire a young beggar to show up at our door, claiming he's the real heir. When I'm eight, the second beggar enters the stage. When I'm ten, the third one arrives. By the time I'm 15, the manor is packed with eight so-called real heirs. These people in ancient times don't know that their supposedly reliable methods of testing kinship can be tampered with. All they know is that all eight boys seem to share blood ties with my adoptive parents, the Marquis and Marchioness of Eterna. I play it off as a miracle from the heavens. Then, when I'm 16, the real heir returns.

On my wedding anniversary, my three-year-old son gave me an alpaca as a gift. I turned right around and shipped it off to the circus, where I found it a strapping alpaca husband. All because I'd been reborn. In my last life, that alpaca was sweet and gentle with everyone—except me. Every single day, it spat on me. Determined not to disappoint my son, I tried everything to win it over, but nothing worked. My mind unraveled. I stopped sleeping. I started hearing things that weren't there, and every night I dreamed of that alpaca chasing me down to spit in my face. My husband called me vicious. My son called me petty. And the two of them only grew closer to that alpaca by the day. Worn down and broken, I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills and ended it. Floating above my own body after death, I watched in shock as it stood back up on its own. My son ran sobbing into "my" arms. "Mom, you're finally not an alpaca anymore!" My husband smiled and pulled them both into an embrace. "Nadia, you've been through so much. If it weren't for needing a healthy body to move your soul into, you'd never have had to suffer inside that alpaca for two years." That was when I finally understood. That alpaca had been Nadia Salem all along—the sickly impostor who'd stolen my identity for over twenty years.

Father is a seven-tailed white fox, and Mother is a five-tailed flame fox. By all logic, with those two rolling the genetic dice, the worst child they could get should be a six-tailed fox. But Mother has given birth nine times, and each baby is a single-tailed earth fox. The two of them think their cultivation simply isn't strong enough, so they train even harder. The truth is, every child Mother has given birth to is a nine-tailed fox. It's just that Father's subordinate, Oscar Brown, switches them at birth and strangles them to death. I'm the unlucky idiot who's died nine times. By the tenth time, I cry and scream that I'm done. The Heavenly Way is so sick of me kicking up a fuss that they say they'll help me solve the problem. I expect them to just strike Oscar and those fox cubs with divine lightning. Instead, they grant Father the ability to perfectly comprehend baby language. When I open my eyes again, Mother is crying to Father while holding a scrawny, dark-furred earth fox. "Darling, it's all my fault. Our child only has one tail again." Meanwhile, Oscar has hidden me in his sleeve. He's about to take me away to be disposed of. In my panic, I shout in my mind, [Father, save me! Your subordinate switched me! I'm in his sleeve!] Father, who is gently comforting Mother, freezes. He looks toward Oscar, who looks shifty, and says, "Stop right there. What's that in your sleeve?"

I'm a half-baked forensic examiner whose only redeeming quality is the ability to understand animals. The crime scene is inside a lavish villa. The lady of the house lies dead on the floor with a blunt-force injury to the back of her head so deep that her bone is visible. The safe has been pried open, and a million dollars in cash has vanished without a trace. Clear shoe prints mark the backyard wall, evidence that someone has climbed over it. "This one's clear as day. This is a textbook robbery-homicide. The suspect is likely a young male, around six feet tall, has a prior theft record, and knows how to cover his tracks. Check the surveillance footage in the area and look into places where he might've moved the stolen cash." The director of the forensic science center, Egbert Woodward, has been in the profession for three decades and is a widely respected authority. The officers at the scene nod in unison and begin taking notes. I'm the only one who stares at the 30 flies circling the ceiling for a full 3 minutes before taking a step forward and piping up, "Dr. Woodward, this isn't a robbery-homicide. It's a crime of passion. The murderer is the victim's husband!"

After toiling in the underworld for three hundred years, I finally earned enough merit to be reincarnated. Then the King of Hell got drunk. Instead of sending me back as a human, he accidentally dropped me into the animal realm, where I was reborn as a plump orange cat belonging to the Sterlings, one of the wealthiest families in Evermont. Feeling guilty, the King of Hell compensated me with a hundred-year lifespan and one bizarre bonus: I could understand babies. Since I was stuck there anyway, I embraced the easy life, growing up alongside Victoria Sterling, the Sterlings' spoiled young heiress. Over the years, she became my devoted meal ticket, and I became an irreplaceable member of her family. On the day she gave birth, I lounged outside the delivery room, happily crunching on my imported freeze-dried treats. A panicked baby voice suddenly echoed in my head. [Waaah! I don't want them to take me away! My scumbag father is swapping me with his illegitimate daughter!] [I don't want to end up in an orphanage! I don't want to leave Mommy!] Before I could process that, another baby's voice rang out sinisterly. [Once I become the real heiress, the first thing I'll do is poison that woman and that fat cat.] I froze mid-bite. Every hair on my body stood on end. [Meow. You really picked the wrong cat to mess with.] [Anyone who dares lay a finger on the girl I raised is about to learn a very painful lesson.] With one powerful kick of my hind legs, I launched myself like a furry cannonball straight toward the delivery room.

After my family and I are dragged into a roguelike horror simulation, they favor my cousin, Julian Clark, over me. In a lobby of blood-soaked players, he always manages to stay spotless, earning their praise as someone who has "kept his humanity". He's unlike me, the brute who willingly throws himself into melee combat and hacks down monsters just to keep everyone else alive. During one dungeon run, a terrifying entity targets my younger sister, Millie Larsson. I draw my blade and move in for the kill, but Julian stops me with a sorrowful smile. "Every creature has a soul. Gabriel, if you kill it, you'll only enrage it and burden Millie with the sin of bloodshed." Millie believes all the nonsense he says and begins resenting me for interfering. Later, when a veteran player steals Julian's life-saving loot drop, I nearly die reclaiming it for him. Instead of thanking me, he takes pity on the woman robbing him and hands the item back to her. He condemns me for being too ruthless, claiming I know nothing about showing mercy to women. Then comes the advanced raid. Cornered by the final boss, I beg Julian to activate the high-tier talisman I've given him, buying me just one second to escape. He recoils from my bloodstained hand in disgust and turns to my parents instead. "Gabriel provoked the boss himself. He's too violent. I can't risk wiping the whole party just to save him." In the end, I die in the boss' jaws. Julian steps over my shattered bones and blood to clear the raid, eventually becoming the server's most celebrated player for being the Untainted Saint. But fate grants me a second chance. I awaken once more in the game's central lobby, right before everything begins. This time, I want to see how long their precious humanity lasts in a world overrun by horrors when the blood-soaked blade that always carries their party is no longer there to protect them.

The day before the SAT, strange comments suddenly appear before my eyes. "In a while, your childhood friend, Savannah Dunham, will come to you complaining about a stomachache. She will ask you to accompany her to the restroom. "She'll give birth there, then accuse you of being the baby's father. Since you'll be at the scene and she'll personally identify you as the father of the baby, the police will arrest you on the spot. By the time the truth comes out, you'll have already missed the SAT." The very next moment, Savannah clutches her stomach and grabs my arm. "Benny, my stomach hurts. Can you come to the restroom with me?" Every word she says and every move she makes matches the comments exactly. Then, another comment appears. "Her boyfriend is Michael Crowley, the one who always comes second. If you miss the SAT, Michael will become the top scorer this year." I shake off Savannah's hand immediately. "I'm sorry. Ms. Kirkland asked to see me. She said there's a problem with my exam admission pass. You'll have to go by yourself."

An accident gives me the ability to hear people's thoughts. My wife, Keira Walker, is a chief cardiac surgeon, and my best friend, Gabriel Pearce, is her intern. Afraid I'll lose hope, they take turns caring for me, staying by my side even through rehabilitation. Touched by their devotion, I throw myself into recovery. Then one day, Keira peels an apple for me while Gabriel massages my withered legs. Inside my head, two voices ring out loud and clear. [How did that crash not kill him? I drained the brake fluid, but this bastard survived.] [Guess we need a new plan. Good thing I already swapped his meds. His body will give out on its own.] As I stare at the apple Keira offers, a knot tightens in my throat. The crash is no accident. Clenching my fists, I look up and smile at them. "Did I take my meds today?" They exchange a glance, and Keira nods tenderly. "Not yet. Let me feed you."

The day my pregnancy was diagnosed, the illegitimate daughter changed her usual tune and began showing concern for me. It was a far cry from her usual contempt for me. I was wondering where this sudden change came from when a child's voice echoed within my ear. "Don't fall for it, Mom! She knows you slept with the Quintons' heir! The Quintons only have one heir every generation, and I'm their only ticket to the top! "They set up a death trap for you after you gave birth to me in your previous life. That woman pretended to be my mom after you died. She used me to marry into the Quintons, to wealth! You need to call Dad and stomp these people straight down to hell!" I steeled myself, quietly shook her hand free, and went into my room.

The day after our wedding, my wife claimed she didn’t know me. I’d spent years working myself to the bone and saving every penny before I could finally marry the woman I loved. Between the house, the car, and everything I’d paid toward the wedding, I’d spent three million dollars. But the very next day, my wife stared at me in terror and insisted she was single. Worse, the county clerk’s office had no record of us ever getting married. The house and car were both in her name. Half a lifetime of savings had vanished overnight. Furious, I tracked down her friends, certain they could prove the truth. Instead, every one of them claimed they’d never seen me before. I stormed into the county clerk’s office demanding answers. The staff thought I was delusional and called the police. “You’ve gone crazy from wanting a woman that badly, haven’t you? You probably got married in a dream. What bride refuses to recognize her husband the day after the wedding?” After trying to mediate, even the police decided there was something wrong with me. Desperate to recover my house and car, I fought to take back what was mine. Instead, my wife accused me of running a marriage scam and trying to steal her property. Whenever I showed up, the building’s security guards beat me and threw me out. My wife posted videos of my breakdowns online, and the entire internet mocked me. Everyone believed I was insane. In the end, exhausted and tormented beyond endurance, I wandered into traffic and was struck dead. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day we were supposed to get our marriage certificate.

The apocalypse hits, and my entire family awakens superpowers, except me. I'm a total dud. What they don't realize is that I'm actually the family's Wi-Fi hotspot for powers. They're only superpowered as long as they stay within 500 yards of me. So, I stick to them like glue, and they cherish their one "powerless" family member like gold. Then my brother, Dylan Brewer, rescues a woman from a zombie horde who looks identical to Mom. That's when I learn I'm the fake heiress who has been swapped at birth. Once she joins the family, she awakens a spatial ability that lets her hoard endless supplies. During a supply run, she suddenly yanks me out of the safety circle and shoves me toward a supermarket packed with zombies. "You freeloading dud! Everyone's risking their lives! What gives you the right to hide behind us and leech off our hard work?" I break free from her grip and try to explain. "I can't go! If I die, your powers will—" Before I can say "disappear", a cold gun barrel presses against my forehead.

Although I'm the ace translator of my company, I let the receptionist, Janice Cartman, take charge of a translation project that's worth over 100 million dollars of my own volition. In my past life, Janice is the childhood friend of my boyfriend, Nicholas Sanders, who has dropped out of middle school. Yet, she suddenly masters eight languages overnight. Not only that, but she claims that she simply taught herself the languages. I need to research the technical terms beforehand every time I take on a translation project, but Janice is able to easily translate anything that she hears on the spot with 100% accuracy. Everyone praises Janice for being a translation genius while calling me a worthless loser in private. Janice stops me when I'm about to go on stage to fulfill my duties as the translator for the 100-million-dollar project. I've spent the last two weeks preparing for it, sacrificing sleep to ensure that I'm completely ready. "This isn't the time for you to show off, Giselle. This project will determine whether the company will become publicly listed. Your foundation isn't as good as mine, so I'll take your place!" Nicholas and my other colleagues fully support Janice's suggestion. I do everything I can to change their minds, but in the end, I'm still forcefully replaced. Janice's translations are flawless. She's lauded as the hero of the company. Meanwhile, I'm demoted to a cleaning lady under the pretext that my skills are lacking. I don't understand. I've spent the last decade working myself to the bone to hone my skills, yet I still lose to Janice, who becomes a translation genius overnight. In a daze, I accidentally lose my footing and drown to death. Seconds before I breathe my last breath, I find out that Janice's translations are a hoax. She simply repeats the words that she hears in my heart. When I open my eyes again, I realize that I've been transported back to the day when Janice claims that she's a translation genius who knows eight languages. This time, I don't stay up all night to prepare my translation materials. Instead, I start memorizing a funeral speech!

The courier delivered a crocodile beastman meant for a lab straight to my door. I thought it was the merman I'd ordered. I took good care of him, and as we spent time together, he gradually came to accept me. A month later, the golden-eyed giant crocodile was lounging comfortably in my lap. The doorbell rang. Outside stood a handsome young man. "Hello, I'm the merman you ordered. I'm so sorry for the delay—there were some issues with the shop." A wide shadow fell over me from behind. The tall man stood beside me, his powerful tail curling around my waist. His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. And when he spoke, his voice was low but sharp as a blade. "Care to explain who this is? Dear... owner."

On the day I nearly died, I was twenty-eight floors up, fixing an AC unit on an outside wall. My hand slipped as I was securing my safety line. All of a sudden, I had been pulled into a fantasy world. When I opened my eyes again, I was in a cave that was more like an ice box. There was an old man in a white robe next to me, poking me in the face. “Awake? Good. You’ll be one of the new students here at Icicle Mountain. You’ll get an allowance of two magic stones a month for sweeping up the cave.” “Wait, where am I?” “Icicle Mountain of Crylestia School.” “Can I make a suggestion? Your cave system has a ventilation problem. The cold air can’t escape and just keeps on making the place colder. I’ll get joint pains if I stay here too long,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy.

At the company’s quarterly awards ceremony, the CFO suddenly announced a new performance criterion. He produced a raffle drum decorated with lucky symbols. “Any employee who draws the grand-prize ticket will receive a quarterly bonus of $150,000.” After a few seconds of stunned silence, all my colleagues rushed forward, and somehow, every one of them drew a winning ticket. Yet I, the company’s top salesperson with a $60-million contract in hand, drew the only losing ticket. The CFO tossed a good-luck charm onto my desk. “Alex, you may be our top salesperson, but your luck is terrible. You’re going to drag the whole company down. “The company prepared this charm especially for you. Take it and get rid of your bad luck. Work harder next quarter, and maybe you’ll earn the bonus.” In an instant, all the colleagues who had once showered me with flattery backed away with mocking looks, as if I were some piece of trash that brought misfortune to everyone around me. I swallowed my humiliation and confronted my boss. He didn’t even bother looking up. “Mr. Lee is doing this for the company’s growth. As a veteran employee, you should understand. “Besides, it’s your own fault for having such terrible luck. Instead of wasting my time, why don’t you hurry to a church and pray?” I argued my case, but the security guards threw me out. Furious, I suddenly felt a strange sense of relief. I turned around and called our rival company. “I have the contract your company has been fighting us for. Would you be interested in making a deal?”

I used to be the cockiest rich kid in high society, but somehow I became the biggest simp in the whole circle. It was all because I was bound to a heroine conquest system. If I failed, I would be finished. To stay alive, I had no choice but to do everything Samantha said and constantly try to please her. Knowing I could give her anything she wanted, she took the sports car I gave her and went for a drive with her childhood friend, Charles Lindsey. Then she left me alone on the highway in the middle of a violent storm. "Samantha, my asthma is acting up. My medicine is in the car. Can you come back and get me?" She gave a cold, mocking laugh. I could also hear Charles laughing on the phone. "Walk home yourself. There’s no room in the car for you." With only ten seconds left to live, I finally snapped. "You stupid system! How can a woman this cruel be the heroine? I want to switch targets!" The system froze for a long moment before a notification appeared. "Target has seriously deviated from the assigned character profile. Select a new target within five seconds!" In a panic, I pointed at the thin, miserable-looking figure in the distance. "New target selected: Destined Villain. Confirm?" I shouted with all the strength I had left. "Her! I choose her!"

As purebred humans, my sister Lily and I arrived on the Beastman Continent with the Breeding System, meant to help the beastmen breed and secure their future.. The system offered two talent trees for us to choose from. Lily hated the idea of pregnancy, so she jumped first and picked the low-tier talent: Surrogacy. I got stuck with the high-tier one: Litter of Many. We ended up mated to the wolf alpha and the tiger alpha, respectively. Lily had a wandering heart and secretly slept around with all kinds of beastmen behind closed doors. But she was terrified that getting pregnant would expose her affairs, so she kept using her Surrogacy talent on me. Over and over again, I was forced to birth litter after litter of low-grade beast pups. The whole continent was buzzing with rumors about me—that I'd spread my legs for anyone. My so-called mate, the wolf alpha Tyron wouldn't listen to a word I said. He called me cheap, a slut, a whore. Every time I gave birth, he'd kill the pups. In the end, I was tortured to death. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the system was activated.