Lounging in the Shadows
By @john1208
Tarnstead in 1979 is a damp, fog-choked town brimming with sinister secrets and ambitious locals. Ovidia Gable couldn't care less. After an ordinary morning of brewing instant coffee goes terribly wrong - interrupted by a bleeding wall and a screeching aunt - Ovi realizes she is trapped in a thriller, and decides she is entirely opting out of her family's gothic drama. Her solution? Marry Mercer Hayes, a brooding, gigantic outcast rumored to be a dangerous cryptid, just to escape the estate. To the town's horror, Mercer doesn't murder Ovi; he bakes her fresh scones, scrubs the floors, and ensures she never lifts a finger. Told in alternating third-person perspectives between the shameless slacker and her intensely domestic husband, their quiet life thrives. While the hardworking local heroine, Enid, exhausts herself investigating the town's curses, Ovi’s lazy demand to buy a 'quiet, cursed swamp' for her hammock accidentally sits them on a fortune in rare medicinal truffles. Mercer becomes a wealthy tycoon to fund his wife's lounging. But Tarnstead's shadows are restless. With Ovi's fiercely loyal best friend Leta harboring a treacherous secret, can Ovi survive the town's real mastermind without ever having to get out of bed?
2
A Sun-Drenched Vengeance
By @john1208
"I am far too kind for my own good," I told myself as Rong Xueli, the ambitious educated youth, humiliated me before the entire commune for having zero work points. Instead of fighting back, I smiled, surrendered my city-return ticket, and traded my grain rations for the barren Whispering Crag. All I wanted was a quiet place to sleep with my fat badger, Daodao. My cold revenge? Letting Xueli exhaust herself working the "prime" East Fields she stole from me, knowing full well the soil was a toxic sinkhole. My nemesis, the terrifyingly strict Team Captain He Zhenting, publicly lectures me daily about my laziness. Yet, every afternoon, I wake up to find malted milk candies secretly left by my pillow. While Xueli works her fingers to the bone trying to escape to the city, I am perfectly happy napping. But when my useless crag cracks open to reveal a priceless vein of jade - and the missing state artifacts Captain He has been hunting - my lazy life is turned upside down. Will I ever get a full eight hours of sleep again?
1