เรื่องสั้นแนว Feel-Good Story Imagination และนิยาย Mistress ในฉาก Regret

On the day of my wedding to Christine Moore, strange floating comments suddenly appeared before my eyes. [LMAO, the real young master still has no idea the bride is fake! Christine is at the hospital accompanying the fake heir Troy Bolton right now!] [It doesn’t matter who the bride is anyway. Christine only agreed to the marriage for the Shane family’s investment. The fake heir is her true love.] [Serves this villain right for driving our poor Troy away the moment he came back. In the end, the female lead destroys his entire family, and honestly, he deserves it.] I hid the shock in my eyes and finished the wedding as if nothing had happened. I refused to become a stepping stone in someone else’s love story. And I definitely refused to die as their disposable villain. If she did not want to marry me, then fine. I would make the fake wedding real, and marry someone else instead.

In the twenty years I was bound to my host, this was the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time I had watched him argue with Vivian Hale. The meal he had carefully prepared was smashed all over the floor. His eyes were red as he nearly shouted at her. "Why do you choose him every single time? You divorced him, remember? I am your husband!" Vivian remained calm, as if she had known all along that my host would make a scene. "So what if we divorced? I have a child with him. I cannot just ignore him." That one careless sentence left my host sitting frozen in place for a long, long time. Long enough for the sky outside to go completely dark. There had been countless moments like this before, but he had always gritted his teeth and held on. I thought this time would be no different. Until my host suddenly asked me, "What happens if I abandon the mission?"

Ten days before our wedding, I discovered that Luna Sterling had been keeping another man in secret. She spent her days with me and her nights in the arms of her lover who was a wedding planner. I went to find her and call off the wedding, but by chance, I overheard the truth. Luna had been bound to a system that granted her unlimited reincarnations. "Host, this is already your ninety-ninth reincarnation. Haven't you had enough fun yet?" Luna answered without a care, "This is the last one. Once I complete my hundredth conquest, I'll settle down and live a good life with Julian." Later, the system came to me. "Mr. Prescott, would you like to bind yourself to the Reincarnation System? The only way to reincarnate is through death. The system will activate only after all signs of life have ceased." "Yes," I replied. "But I have one condition." I wanted Luna to lose her endless chances at reincarnation. And from this life onward, through every lifetime to come, she and I would never meet again.

My mother spent three hundred million dollars to build a fake ancient city. She tricked my father into going inside by telling him it was a time‑travel experience. Inside, people sold him to an entertainment house. They broke his legs, and he lived as a slave for three years. Three years later, my mother removed her human‑skin mask. She looked down at him as he knelt on the ground and smiled. “Three years ago, you sued for divorce and had people online smear Sean as 'the other man'. You almost drove him to suicide from depression. How did it feel to live as a slave all these years? Did you learn your lesson?” My father pressed his forehead to the ground. His voice sounded flat. “Everything is up to you, madam.” My mother paused, then smiled with satisfaction. I cried and threw myself into my father’s arms. He held me tightly. His tears fell against my neck as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Jayden. Dad has to go. I’ll make sure everything is arranged for you before I leave.”

When Chloe said yes to my proposal, I could hear her thoughts. ‘Once Gavin finds out I’m marrying Owen, he’ll regret breaking up with me, right?’ That was when I realized she had only agreed to be with me to get back at her ex. What I thought was mutual love had been a joke from the very beginning. In the end, I decided to give Chloe the one thing she had always dreamed of—a grand wedding beyond comparison. On the wedding day, the moment she saw that I was not the groom, she panicked...

The real heiress, Alicia Grant, gets reunited with the Grant family and is scheduled to marry Cory Dawson, who's supposed to be my fiance. On the very same day, I, the vile fake heiress, get kicked out of my home. When I'm about to take my own life out of despair, I go through an awakening all of a sudden. It turns out that I'm just a vicious supporting character in a sappy romance novel whose tragic fate is already penned by the author. After I die, Alicia decides to adopt my daughter out of "kindness", only to let her get bullied from a young age. In the end, my poor daughter dies tragically in an alley. I throw the knife away immediately. With stumbling steps, I whisk my daughter into my arms and quickly immigrate elsewhere. As a supporting character, my life is already filled with misfortune. I mustn't let my daughter go down the same path as well. Initially, I thought I wouldn't see the Grants anymore. Unexpectedly, when I step into Carmont five years later, I end up bumping into them again.

My husband, Calvin Ziegler, recently bought a lifelike silicone doll. He says it's a companion to help relieve work stress. In the middle of the night, a faint noise wakes me up. I discover him holding the doll tightly, his expression unusually focused. Suddenly, a series of strange comments appears before my eyes. "Dorothy Sanders is using the resonance system again tonight to transfer her consciousness into the doll's body. Sneaking around right under Laura Halliwell's nose is so thrilling!" "Calvin and Dorothy really know how to have fun. That idiot of a wife probably has no idea what's going on. Haha!" I look at the doll on the couch. The corners of its mouth are curled into an eerie smile. I smile too. Since you love being a doll so much, I'll make sure you stay one forever.

Ten years after I accidentally crossed into the modern world, the system finally detected the glitch that was me. It was ready to send me back to the era I belonged to, but it gave me three days to say goodbye. On the first day, Corinne Whitford asked me to step aside so her childhood sweetheart could take my place at the altar. I did not cry or make a scene. I just smiled, slipped off my ring and handed it back to her. On the second day, she brought him home. She told me she was giving him a home. I did not argue, just stepped aside and let it happen. On the third day, she wanted to take him on a honeymoon to Wyndmere, the one place I had always dreamed of going. I helped her arrange everything, gentle as ever. When she stepped onto the train bound for Wyndmere, I turned and walked toward the road that would take me home. This ten-year dream had run its course. It was time to wake up.

"Honey, the soles of my shoes are made of sheepskin. I can't get them wet, so come pick me up right away." Just as I send a WhatsApp message to my wife, Cora Harden, a barrage of floating comments explodes in front of me in the downpour. "I really can't stand a high-maintenance second male lead like Allen Brandt. Cora, the female lead, is a billionaire CEO, and yet she lets him boss her around like a lapdog." "The male lead has already joined the company. Once Cora sees how sweet and thoughtful he is, she's dumping that loser Allen for good." "This is hilarious. After the divorce, Allen can't do anything, so he'll end up as some cheap thirst-trap live streamer." Staring at the screen of venomous insults, I clench my fists in anger. Just then, Cora arrives with an umbrella, half of her bespoke dress soaked from the rain. Noticing my whitened knuckles, she pauses for a moment, then timidly tugs at my sleeve. "Sorry, darling. If I had driven any faster, I would have been speeding."

My girlfriend took one of my kidneys to give to her first love—and then she discovered that my organs regenerate infinitely. Not only that, but they're compatible with absolutely anyone. So she started harvesting my organs. Over and over. To sell them. For five years, she bled me dry, and it made her a fortune. She and her precious first love became the wealthiest power couple in Rageane City. On the tenth anniversary of our relationship, she said to me, "I'm taking all your organs this time. I need them to replace Adrian's damaged ones and extend his life." I didn't fight her. I lay down on the operating table without a word. What she doesn't know is that I'm a clone. That's why my organs keep regenerating—I can produce new ones indefinitely. What she really doesn't know is that her real boyfriend died years ago. Before he passed, he created me—his clone—to stay by her side. And now? I have eight hours left to live.

For ten years, I raised the finest bodyguard money could buy, and for a nanny's daughter, he turned his blade on me. I didn't spare a thought for the years between us. I had his tendons cut, his skills stripped away, and I threw him out of Meridian City. The live comments practically caught fire. [Somebody help, Celeste Ward has gone too far! Julian protected her for ten years, and the one time he didn't put her first, she's going to ruin him?] [This is the kind of love that terrifies me — if she can't have him, she'd rather destroy him. What did Julian even do wrong, trying to save the woman he loves?] [Run, Julian! A viper like her doesn't deserve your loyalty. Go to Amber — she's the one who can actually save you!] Me? Going too far? A traitor who turns on his own mistress for an outsider — if anything, I went easy on him. I gave a cold laugh, tore up his lifetime contract in front of everyone, and had every last one of his belongings burned. Then I went straight to the underground fight club and picked out the meanest, most reckless guy I could find. A month later, word reached Julian. He fought his way through every guard at my gate, half-dead by the time he made it to the door. He dropped to his knees in front of me, eyes rimmed red, clutching the hem of my skirt. "Miss Ward," he said, "that mongrel covered in tattoos — what does he have that I don't?"

In my eighth year married into the Cavell household, my wife brought home her first love. He was polished, good-looking, and knew exactly when to be bold and when to hold back. Despite the mountain of debt on his shoulders, his warmth and charm easily won over every last member of the family. My wife rekindled things with him and hung onto his every word. My own son and daughter decided that this kind, attentive man would make a better father than me. I was not heartbroken. If anything, I was glad. It meant that my storyline in this novel had finally run its course.

Three minutes before the college application deadline, I receive a video from the future. The person in it is me from 15 years later. "Macey changed your college applications to the local community college. She and Eric had already been dating for a long time. "She only did it because Eric told her he didn't want you hanging around her anymore. "Even though you worked your ass off and eventually got a graduate degree, you still never got the chance to work in aerospace." I sit frozen on the couch, clenching my phone as I stare at the man on the screen. "But you could've made it up there. You were supposed to make it up there." When the video ends, I rush back to my bedroom, fingers trembling as I open the college application portal. My applications had really been changed to that community college. I close my eyes for a moment. Then, I change my application to the National Institute of Defense Engineering.