Funeral Favors and Clockwork Fortunes
By @john1208
At their grandfather’s lavish funeral, Ruta dramatically throws herself onto the casket, claiming a 'karmic vision' gives her the right to swap betrothals. She steals the brilliant Dr. Ignas, leaving her shy cousin Laima with Captain Jurgis Ruzgas - a disabled, depressed war veteran and Laima’s former bitter academic rival. Ruta knows Ignas is destined to invent a panacea, while Jurgis is doomed to perish in a tragic scandal. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between Laima’s overthinking panic and Jurgis’s cynical bewilderment, the satirical timeline quickly derails. Ruta’s frantic impatience to become wealthy forces Ignas’s slow-brewing research to market early, resulting in a toxic disaster. Meanwhile, a stubbornly shy Laima refuses to let Jurgis accept Ignas’s 'charity' treatments, unknowingly saving Jurgis from his past-life fatal mistake. To survive, Laima secretly funnels her botanical patents into Jurgis's mechanical designs, convinced she must meticulously follow the strict, punishing rules of the city's 'Karmic Destiny' ledger to avoid exile. Together, the bickering rivals accidentally build a billion-cog prosthetics empire. But as Ruta’s stolen marriage implodes, Laima is about to realize the oppressive 'rules' of destiny she’s been stressing over were a complete fraud fabricated by a gossip-mongering undertaker. Will her newfound empire survive the hilarious truth?
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