Plot Twists の短編小説 & Male POV Detective 小説

The empire's most beloved princess suddenly fell victim to a mysterious illness, slipping into a deep coma that no physician could cure. In the end, the royal astrologer delivered a chilling prophecy: only the man destined to be her true soulmate could awaken her with a kiss of genuine love. In the first lifetime, my eldest brother, plain-looking and desperate for the enormous reward promised by the crown, volunteered to go to the palace and kiss the princess awake. However, the moment she opened her eyes and saw him, she let out a horrified scream. Calling him a fraud, she ordered the guards to drag him into the royal fountain and drown him alive. "You liar! How could someone who looks like you possibly be my fated one?" In the second lifetime, my second brother listened carefully to the warning left behind by our reborn eldest brother. Determined not to repeat the same mistake, he sought out an underground black-market surgeon and took on the face of the most handsome man in the entire country before going to awaken the princess. This time, everything seemed perfect. The princess fell deeply in love with him, and for an entire year they lived in bliss. However, on the day their child was born, she took one look at the baby and completely lost her mind. In a fit of rage, she ordered my second brother to be beaten to death on the spot. "How dare you deceive me? Die!" By the third lifetime, after witnessing the horrific deaths of both my brothers, I hid silently in the corner, too terrified to say a single word. Unfortunately, the queen had other plans. She ordered her servants to forcefully hold me down and make me kiss the princess awake. I never expected that on the very night of our wedding, the princess would suddenly go mad, rush out of the castle, and accidentally fall into the lake, where she drowned. The queen was furious beyond reason. Believing me responsible for her daughter's death, she ordered my public execution, leaving not even my bones behind. Then came the fourth lifetime. Once again, the Royal Chamberlain arrived at our home with a line of armed guards surrounding the estate. "The astrologer has confirmed it," he declared calmly. "The princess's destined soulmate is one of the three sons of the Lynch family. "You have three days to decide. Whoever succeeds in awakening the princess will marry into the royal family and enjoy limitless wealth, power, and honor." This time, the three of us only exchanged uneasy glances. The fortune and status being offered were enough to tempt anyone in the empire, yet not a single one of us dared take a step forward.

During my senior year of high school, I moved into an old house just to save money. Something about the place felt off. At first, it was just things I casually put down disappearing without a trace. Then, random objects that didn't belong to me started appearing around the house. One night, I finished my homework and was about to go to sleep when a girl's tank top suddenly fell from the ceiling. I froze for several seconds. Just as I was about to throw it away, I heard someone cursing out of nowhere. "Who's there? Darn it! What kind of creep steals a tank top?"

I sat in the driver's seat as the GPS chimed, "You've arrived at Northpoint Corp. Check-in successful." I looked up. Graves. Nothing but graves. My phone buzzed. My boss tagged me in the group chat: [Zane Zander, system says you checked in ten minutes ago. Where the hell are you? The whole company's waiting. Learned how to spoof your GPS to slack off?] Cold sweat slid down my back. I stared at the fresh headstone outside my window. My photo was on it. My hands shook. I tried to send my boss a video—no signal. Just dead bars. No service. So how did I check in? Worse— In the rearview mirror, someone in my exact outfit rose slowly from behind a dirt mound. Could it be... Was I already "dead"?

Over Memorial Day weekend, my parents took my younger brother Max Blair on a hiking trip. I wasn't in the mood to go, so I stayed home and spent the day on the couch. By the time night fell, I still hadn't heard from them. None of them answered their phones, and a growing sense of dread settled over me. Around midnight, an emergency alert from a local news station flashed across my screen. [A landslide struck the Mount Highmoor area earlier this evening. Search and rescue crews have confirmed that three hikers were killed. Authorities are still working to verify their identities.] The victims shown in the report were my parents and Max. I was still trying to process the news when someone suddenly knocked on the front door. "Adam, open the door! We're back from our hike!"

After waking up from a car accident, I realize that I've lost some of my memories. My wife, Samantha Ross, embraces me immediately and says in a choked-up tone, "The doctor said that you've hurt your manhood in the accident. You… might not be able to perform in the bedroom anymore." My father-in-law, Edmund Ross, sighs heavily as well. He tells me that even if I can't get Samantha pregnant anymore, I will always be the only son-in-law who's married into the Ross family. Everyone compliments me on marrying into a wonderful family. After all, Samantha refuses to abandon me, and Edmund completely understands my situation. But I know for a fact that my kidneys aren't busted at all. Also, I already had a son with Samantha a long time ago. The thing is, where on earth is that child now?

After coming home from work, I see my favorite dishes laid out all over the table. The liquor is warmed up, and its aroma is the type that I like. But I don't feel the slightest bit grateful toward my thoughtful and gentle wife. My gaze passes through her and lands on the wall behind her. There hangs a memorial portrait of her…

After the SAT, my daughter turned into something I didn't recognize. She repeatedly stabbed her grandmother, who had raised her, until the old woman bled to death. She pushed her little brother from the tenth floor and killed him on the spot. My wife and I tried to talk her down, our voices shaking, but she only laughed. "Grandma and Caleb were too good to me. That's why they had to die! And you two worked so hard to raise me. You paid for my education and gave me everything. You were too good to me, so you have to die!" Then she set us on fire. I closed my eyes in despair. When I opened them again, I was back one week before my daughter's SAT. This time, I installed a hidden camera in her bedroom. I didn't care what it took. I was going to find out why she killed us. When my wife and I watched the footage later, neither of us could say a word.

I'm a cheapskate, so I decide to rent a haunted apartment at a low price. On the first night of moving into said apartment, the taps turn on by themselves. I yell angrily at the empty apartment, "You'd better pay the water bill, then!" The water stops flowing immediately. It has me thinking that this is the beginning of a long, arduous battle between humans and the supernatural… Unexpectedly, I see a piping hot meal on the dining table the next day.

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.

My cheating wife suffered brain damage in a car accident. Her entire vocabulary shrank to "yes" and "no." She couldn't say another word. Better yet, every answer had to be true. Someone up there was watching over me! I asked her, "Were you cheating on me with my friend?" Her face went pale, but she couldn't stop herself from saying, "Yes." "Did you transfer any assets?" "Yes." "Is your bank card PIN your first love's birthday?" "Yes." Thanks to her inability to lie, I got my friend sent to prison and took all her assets. She couldn't even curse me out. Then one day, a pretty barista hit on me while making my coffee. I turned to my wife, who just stared blankly. "Are you even my wife? Doesn't that make you jealous?" She blurted out, "No." I froze and stared hard into her eyes. A long moment passed before I asked, "Then is my wife, Shannon York, dead?" "Yes and no."

I was sheltering from the rain beneath an awning when three strangers surrounded me. "Marty?" one of them asked cautiously. They had the wrong man. But they were covered up from head to toe, and they were holding knives. They looked dangerous enough that staying alive seemed more important than correcting them. "Yeah," I said. Someone immediately offered me a cigarette. "You still remember the plan, right?" "First, we stake out Sebastian Kessler's company. Then we follow him until he's alone, kidnap him, demand a fortune in ransom, kill him, and sneak out of the country!" I managed a stiff nod. "I remember." "But does anyone here actually know what Sebastian Kessler looks like?" They exchanged blank looks. They all wore the same look of pure, wide-eyed cluelessness. For God's sake. I was Sebastian Kessler. It was bad enough that they'd mistaken me for someone else. Now they wanted me to help kidnap myself?

My long-term relationship has finally paid off. At the wedding venue, my fiancee, Dakota Young, has just begun sliding the ring onto my finger when her first love, Kyle Robinson, calls her all the way from the country he's currently studying in. All of my friends know of Dakota as the woman who loves me more than life itself. But this very same woman doesn't hesitate to bolt in the airport's direction with red-rimmed eyes after answering the phone call. My hand is left frozen in mid-air. That's when I suddenly start seeing live comments before my eyes. "Holy hell! I just took a glimpse at the profile picture of her first love! He looks exactly like the corpse who's delivered to my department!" "Seriously? Don't go around scaring me right now! I believe in the power of science!" "Either he has a twin, or you just got the wrong person! Stay calm!" My jaw goes slack, yet I can't utter a word after a while. I know who Kyle is. That man used to be her classmate back in college. But I also remember very clearly that he's the only child in his family…

After my younger brother died, my parents and grandfather all killed themselves. Each of them died in a different way, but they shared one thing in common: Before their deaths, every one of them had read my brother's suicide note. And in that note, there was only a single sentence. Reporters fought for a chance to interview me. The police interrogated me overnight. Countless people wanted to know what that sentence said. But I never told anyone. Until the tenth anniversary of my brother's death, when I saw a figure standing in front of his grave. At that moment, I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement. Because I knew my turn had finally come.

One night, as I was making my way to the bathroom around 3 a.m., I saw my dormmate, Yvonne, squatting in front of our door. She was rearranging all our shoes so that their tips were pointed inward. I thought it was funny, so I rearranged them to have their tips pointed outward. The next day, I found that all of them had been positioned inward again. This kept happening for a week, and I continued to scramble things up, hiding the shoes, even, or tying the shoelaces together. But they always ended up being repositioned neatly inward. I started observing my dormmate and found her mumbling to the shoes while squatting at the door. I ranted about it online, only to have my first reply send chills down my spine. [Do you also get the weird feeling that something paranormal is happening around you? You have to move out before it’s too late!]

There are certain things one should never mess with. Like someone else's final exam revision notes, for example. Or a life-saving online calculus course. And a chicken curry meal ordered by a college student who has been starving for eight whole hours.

My roommates have booked booth seats at the New Year Countdown Light Show at the price of five thousand dollars per ticket. Soon, they begin urging me to transfer them my share of the payment on the group chat. I just send them a screenshot of the remaining balance in my bank account. "You guys have fun. I'm still saving up for my college tuition fees." Everyone just spams me with laughing messages instead. One of my roommates, Zane Lawson, even uploads a screenshot of our conversation to his social media feed together with a caption that says, "The first step of ascending to the next tier in social hierarchy is to stay away from party poopers like this." But as soon as 12:00 am is over, my roommates send me a photo of the light show. "It's such a shame that you aren't here." I'm still confused by the photo when I receive a phone call from the counselor, who sounds very anxious over the phone. "Did you buy tickets for your roommates to the light show? The organizers claimed that they never checked in at the entrance! Now, they've gone missing!"