Historias cortas de Independence Imagination y novelas ambientadas en Workplace

My boyfriend's childhood sweetheart bound herself to a transfer system: everything she ate would be redirected straight into my stomach. She opened a streaming account and broadcast herself eating for twelve hours straight. She earned a fortune. Meanwhile, I collapsed with acute pancreatitis and was rushed to the hospital. When I explained the situation to my boyfriend, he only stared at me like I was insane. "How could something that absurd exist? If food could really be transferred, no one in the world would ever starve. You're just jealous that she's making money from streaming." After that, every time his childhood sweetheart went live, I ended up hospitalized again. I kept hovering between life and death. I sought medical help, but the doctors couldn't explain my condition. Some even wanted to commit me to a psychiatric ward. Then, one day, in order to outdo her rivals in a PK match, she devoured ten pounds of rice in a single sitting. At that very moment, my spleen and stomach ruptured, and I bled to death on the spot. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day of her very first livestream. This time, I was prepared. I rushed out and bought twenty takeout meals. "This time," I said, "I'll eat first."

A new intern at the hospital claimed that she had excellent medical skills. Even without anesthesia, her treatments never caused any pain. The truth was that she had transferred her patients’ pain to me. After she went viral, many patients rushed to the hospital to see her. Some of them even had to bid for a slot to receive surgery from her. However, I was in excruciating pain due to all the surgeries she had carried out. I could no longer work and received complaints from the patients. In the end, the hospital fired me. I gradually discovered that I even experienced some of the side effects of the surgeries she had carried out on her patients. My hair started to fall, and I became as thin as a skeleton. Even walking caused me excruciating pain. I went to the hospital to question her. Everyone thought that I was jealous of her and that I had gone crazy. She calmly put on her surgical gloves as she faced my wrath. “Please don’t make a scene. I’m about to conduct brain surgery on the daughter of the wealthiest man in the city. I don’t have time for your nonsense.” After she entered the operating theater for five minutes, I suddenly suffered from an aneurysm and died on the spot. When I opened my eyes again, I had been transported back to the day when she had gone viral. I took out all my savings and bid for one of her treatment slots. “I’d like to try your painless gastroscopy.”

I am a miserable nurse. During the Halloween season, there was a three day break but I was not given any days off. Upset, I decided to join a game featuring a haunted hospital. There was an old man wrapped in IV tubes chasing after a player. I sprinted forward and shoved him into the chair. After effortlessly jabbing the IV line back in him, I told him off, "It’s just an IV drip, not an action movie. Sit. Down. Move again and I’ll strap you to the chair!" The old man did a double take before blinking in a flustered manner. "Sorry for causing you trouble, ma'am." At night, children ghosts began to run and laugh wildly in the corridor. I grabbed one in each hand and hauled them up. "If you’re not going to stay put in the ward, I’ll give you an injection!" Why did I still have to work in a game? I was so tired. The other players cried out, "Clem! That's a ghost. Are you not scared?" I sneered, "Sorry, but burnt-out workers hold more grudges than ghosts ever could."

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…

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?”

Everyone in our neighborhood knew me as the meek full-time housewife. I had no income and no social life. Every hour of every day went to the kitchen, my child, and my hypercritical mother-in-law, Sofia Carter. Yet when I woke up, I had somehow swapped bodies with my insufferably smug husband, Kevin Carter. My phone lit up as he sent one mocking message after another: [Olivia, you act like having a baby entitles you to lie around at home all day, watch the kid, and throw together a couple of meals.] [For your information, this swap is permanent. I can finally get some rest.] [Don't run your mouth at my office. That management job is way beyond what a brain that never even made it through college can handle.] When I finished reading, I stared at the stubble-covered man in the bathroom mirror and burst into tearful laughter. He had no idea. My meekness and numbness had been bought with my health. From the day I married him, I never got more than five hours of sleep. At twenty-two, I suffered a severe hemorrhage during a difficult delivery. At twenty-four, I developed severe tendinitis. At twenty-six, after years of exhaustion and Sofia grinding me down, I was diagnosed with moderate depression. To him, I was never a wife. I was a live-in maid he didn't have to pay, someone he could take his temper out on whenever he pleased.