Short Campus Stories & Novels

Even though it has become customary for all the heirs of wealthy families to study abroad, my father has specifically chosen a local university for me, saying that he would miss me far too much if I left the country. He also donates a new building to the school so that I would not be mistreated by anyone on campus. The semester soon begins. Not wanting my roommates at the dorm to be intimidated by the economic disparity between us, I decide to dress more simply. But when I arrive at the dorm room, I see that someone else is using the bed I chose. My bedding and belongings now lie scattered all across the floor. Just as I'm about to speak, the young woman proclaims, "I want this bed. You can use a different one. Oh, and I bought a handbag for all of my female classmates, so you can take one as compensation." "But I arrived before you and chose that bed already," I say with a smile. All she does is look me over and scoff derisively. "Who cares if you arrived first and chose it? Since I want it, it's mine now. My dad is Calvin Stuart, the chairman of Lumina Corporation! If I want something, no one in this city dares to protest!" Lumina Corporation? Isn't that the company that reached out to my father this morning to ask for an investment?

During the mandatory freshman orientation camp, my skin had flared up with a severe allergic reaction, so I didn't use the plastic washbasin the school handed out. Instead, I opened my suitcase and took out the custom silver basin I had brought from home. My roommate, Louisa Carter, immediately made a snide remark, drawling, "You're really something, huh? Kids from broke families like us are lucky to have any basin at all." I didn't bother responding. I simply pulled out my facial essence to do a cold compress, but she immediately rushed over, slapped the bottle out of my hand, and jabbed a finger at my face. "Bet you get tens of thousands a month for living expenses. You have a sugar daddy, don't you? Don't you feel guilty making your folks work their fingers to the bone back on the farm? People like you don't deserve to be at our school. I'm reporting you to the student counselor." I laughed in disbelief and slapped her. … The next morning, the family photo I'd left on my desk had been slashed to ribbons. Across the back, carved in ink, were the words: 'Daughter of a homewrecker. Go to hell.' I went straight to the police. While officers pulled the dorm security footage, our student counselor and the university president rushed in. The moment the president saw the man whose face had been cut apart in my photo, his legs nearly buckled. He almost dropped to his knees.

I've decided to hire Queenie Sullivan, an impoverished student with excellent grades, as my tutor in my studies. However, she asked me whether or not she could bring another student named Timothy Dunn with her to the tutor session. After I turned her request down politely, Timothy left while looking crestfallen. But he got into an accident immediately afterward. Queenie continued to tutor me. Gradually, we started dating, and we got married later on. Life was amazing after our marriage… or so it seemed. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer. On the night when my cancer tormented me to no end, Queenie locked me up at home and watched as I painted the floor with the blood I hacked out. "You owe Timothy this much, Zachary. It's your turn to have a taste of despair." Only then did realization dawn on me. It turned out that Queenie had been hating me all these years. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Queenie has asked me if she can bring Timothy along with her to the tutor session.

During freshman boot camp, my roommate covered herself from head to toe in her homemade sunscreen every day. It made her skin fair and soft, and made her smell so sweet that she drew the attention of countless young men. Even my rich boyfriend led the campaign to crown her campus beauty queen. But only I knew the fragrance she added to her sunscreen was toxic. It would make her skin rot if she used it for a long time. I said nothing. Instead, I quietly applied to switch dorms. In my last life, I had warned her out of kindness. She cried in front of everyone and said I was trying to isolate her. All the young men called me jealous. My boyfriend broke up with me in anger, then pursued her instead. It didn't take long for my roommate's skin to really start rotting, and I rushed to apply the salve made from an old family recipe. The wounds healed, but her skin turned dark and rough. She went from campus beauty queen to campus joke overnight. My boyfriend dumped her, and the other young men avoided her like the plague. She blamed everything on my jealousy. On the day she was forced to withdraw from university, she tied me up on the top floor of a university building. Then she poured a bucket of sulfuric acid over my head. "It's all because of your accursed salve that everyone's laughing at me! You ruined my chance to marry into a rich family!" I died from the torment. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the first day of my university's freshman boot camp.

After taking our graduation photo, I break up with Philip Lutz. "You're doing this just because I stood behind Mandy and not you while we were taking our graduation photos?" he asks. "Yes," I merely reply. "Sure," he says with a smile. "You'd better not come crying to me or begging for us to get back together later." Having known each other for ten years and dated for four, Philip is certain that I'll never leave him. However, he's unaware that the graduation photos are just an excuse. If I'm capable of taking my graduation photos alone, I can walk my future path alone. Once I've gone abroad, the sky's the limit for me. I no longer need him to stand behind me either.

I used an anonymous account to send a video chat invitation to my crush, a senior who had always been aloof and reserved, but he agreed. Throughout the video chat, I had on a black mask, and I modified my voice to conceal my identity. At my command, he took off his clothes one by one, revealing his solid abs. While I was admiring his toned body, he smiled devilishly and said, "It's your turn now..."

I forgot to bring a No. 2 pencil, so I filled out my SAT exam with a red pen. The proctor warned me it would count as cheating, and I just shrugged and told him it didn't matter. Tyson Jenkins, the school heartthrob who ranked near the bottom of the class, suddenly got anxious. In my last life, we went back to school to pick up our acceptance letters. I already had a guaranteed spot at Kingsford University. And yet, I was the only one who didn't receive a letter. Tyson had used a system to swap our exam scores. Because my score showed up as zero, Kingsford University revoked my guaranteed admission. I demanded a review of the scoring, but Tyson, who had suddenly become the top scorer out of nowhere, sneered at me. "Kieran, couldn't cheat your way through the exam this time, huh? Everyone knows you only got that guaranteed spot by cheating. You've got some nerve playing the victim!" I went to our homeroom teacher to clear my name. I never expected her to cry on camera and say, "I tried to talk Kieran out of it in private. It's not fair to the other students if he does something like that, but he used his family's influence to pressure me into staying out of it." Overnight, I was at the center of a storm. Before I could even explain, a group of fanatics dragged me up to the roof and shoved me off. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day before the exam.

As a low-income student who's specifically recruited by the elite college this year, I can still feel my hands trembling as I clutch the letter that tells me I get to study for free. Not only are my tuition and miscellaneous fees waived, but I also get to receive 30 thousand dollars' worth of student grant per year. I even get to have free access to the leather seats inside the library, the equipment inside the gym, as well as the aerial garden on the roof. The best surprise for me has to be the cafeteria. All low-income students get a 50% discount on their meals, but the quality of their food doesn't decrease at all. Best beef is used in the steak dinners offered by the cafeteria, whereas a seafood platter showcases the entire huge lobster. Even the most basic mac and cheese meal has different types of freshly grated cheese baked into it. As I sit in the brightly lit classroom and look at the rich students around me, who wear custom-made uniforms and have branded watches latched around their wrists, all I have is one thought. I must be on good terms with them. But my seatmate, who's also a low-income student, isn't as thrilled as me. In fact, she just looks at the people around her with disdain in her eyes. After the first lesson, a rich student arrives at our table. He might not sound polite at all, but at least he's not putting on airs. "Do any of you have time to head over to the cafeteria and buy me breakfast?" I'm about to respond to him when a shrill voice booms out next to me. "You're so annoying! What, you think you rule the campus since you're rich? Had I known that this classroom is filled with useless scions like you who just waste their lives away on nothing, I wouldn't have enrolled in this college in the first place!"

The day before the SAT, Lewis Sutton, the most popular boy in class, volunteered to help everyone verify their test centers and organize two charter buses for everyone. Just before departure, he suddenly stopped me. "Finley, I just realized your test center is Easthaven. Both buses are headed to Westbrook." Everyone thought it was no big deal. "Just take a cab. We can't risk missing the exam for you." When I asked Lewis for the transportation list, Cerys Moore stepped in front of me. She lowered her voice to insist, "Lewis is already exhausted from coordinating logistics for the whole class. Why are you kicking up such a big fuss over nothing? "If you're this petty now, you're going to give him a harder time in college. "I'm warning you, either don't apply to Northbridge University or Blackwell University, or intentionally skip one of your exam subjects, so you won't end up attending the same school as us. Otherwise, our engagement is over." Too fed up to argue, I simply hailed a cab and headed to my test center alone. When I arrived at the Easthaven test center in the nick of time, our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Leah Williamson, was standing outside, sweating profusely from anxiety. "Why did both buses go to Westbrook? The entire class is supposed to take the exam in Easthaven!"

Half an hour before I receive my degree certificate, Lionel Simmons, my boyfriend as well as the class president, tells me that my graduation will be getting delayed because I need to retake my exam on a major course. Meanwhile, Vivian Crosby, the campus belle who often ranks last in exams, is eligible to receive certifications on her courses. Lionel quickly shields Vivian from me while looking very unapologetic. "In this course, every class requires a certain quota when it comes to the retakes. Since Vivian has bad grades, there's no way she's passing the retake. That's why I submitted your name instead. "Unlike you, Vivian doesn't have excellent grades and a boyfriend who actually gives a damn about you. Even if your graduation gets delayed, it won't affect our future plans at all. Amelia, you should make some sacrifices for your fellow classmate's sake." After I strongly object against that decision, my classmates mock me for being petty and uncaring toward Vivian. Fine. Since they obviously lack empathy for me, I don't hesitate to call my uncle, who's a member of the university board as well as one of the invigilators of the final exams. "I got into the top three ranks of the final exams, and yet I can't graduate on time because I have to retake my final exam instead. Does this mean the remaining hundreds of students bribed you to not fail their exams instead? "I want everyone's graduations to get delayed alongside mine in half an hour, no matter what!"

After pulling an all-nighter to finish a group assignment, I wanted only one thing: sleep. I did not even get 10 minutes. My roommate, Ronda Jones, burst into the dorm, raging about class. She shouted into her headset and turned our room into a storm of insults and keyboard slams. When I quietly asked her to keep it down, she turned on me instead. Then the power went out, and a 5-dollar electricity bill became the excuse she had been waiting for. I refused to split it. That single decision set everything in motion.

Jenny Shaw, my roommate and belle of the campus, had been stealing my skincare products for four whole years. She even used them to fake a wealthy and beautiful persona, becoming a million-follower influencer and bagging a wealthy heir. Right before our graduation defense, her face suddenly erupted in severe lesions, completely disfigured. Jenny immediately accused me, claiming that I was jealous and vicious enough to lace the skincare products with poison! In an instant, I was branded online as the Poison Queen and a dangerous figure. Facing the police, I simply smiled at them and showed them my thesis. [Molecular Deconstruction Analysis of Herbal Medicinal Materials: Skin Regeneration and Reconstruction.] "Poisoning you? That's like a pot calling the kettle black. But thanks for providing me with experimental data!"

During an elective class, the campus belle, Jemima Ford, who is our senior, describes her ideal type with everyone egging her on. She says, "My future husband has to be at least six feet two inches tall. His parents must be college professors, and his grades should be top three in his major…" The room buzzes with teasing chatter and gossip. At the same time, I snap up my head in surprise. Why does Jemima's description of her ideal type sound like my boyfriend, Elijah Sanders? The next second, the professor standing by the podium smiles obsequiously and says, "Very well said. If Eli hears this, he'll definitely be very happy! Later, the two of you can meet. That way, he won't get tricked by some naive girl into going abroad." Amid the burst of laughter from the class, I lower my eyes and look at the message my parents sent me. It reads, "Sweetheart, are you really going abroad with your boyfriend? There'll be no one left to inherit our company with you gone."

I suffered from a skin condition. I scratched myself in the library, and millions of netizens spammed my private inbox. Only then did I find out that a girl accused me of harassing her. I took out my diagnostic report to defend my innocence, but the girl cried pitifully. “You really know how to make an excuse for yourself! How could someone innocent like me frame you?” Even my elder brother spoke up for her! “Why would she frame you of all people? Can’t you take a look at yourself?” I could not bear the cyberbullying, and I died from a sudden heart attack the day before the court hearing. My grandfather could not accept my death, and he collapsed into a coma. My parents cut off ties with my brother before they committed suicide at home. Meanwhile, the girl did not just successfully make her way into graduate school, but she also dug open my grave and used my ashes to make fireworks. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day when she had asked me to reserve a seat in the library.

Everyone thinks Jimmy Hudson, my college roommate, is the typical brutally honest and socially clueless guy who just has zero filter sometimes. A friend and I meet up to go boxing and practice our hooks, but he calls it a hookup when texting the group chat about it. He even nonchalantly says he won't be deleting his message. When I meet my boxing buddy, he says I'm meeting my hookup buddy. He even has the nerve to say, "It's just a joke. Don't be overly sensitive and read so much into it." Thanks to a few more of his dirty tricks, my reputation is ruined, and the entire class ostracizes me. But Jimmy doesn't stop there. He slips sleeping pills into my drink, which leads me to miss an exam. Later, he claims it was just a careless mistake and blames it on his scatterbrained tendencies. Eventually, he dumps crushed cherry pits into my water bottle, which ends up poisoning me to death. This all happened because our campus belle, whom he has a crush on, helped me with my luggage on our first day on campus. All of a sudden, my eyes open again. I've returned to the first day of my freshman year at college. This time, I'm going to let Jimmy get a taste of what it's like to have his life ruined with a helping of some social cluelessness of my own.

The results of the arts entrance exam have been released. All seven colleges that my best friend, Nicole Porter, applied to have rejected her. If she wants to get into college, she'll have to work hard on her general admission exams. So, I seek out my boyfriend, Preston Nolin, who's the top of our year, and ask him to tutor Nicole. However, Preston, who has always been mild-tempered, seems extremely reluctant to do so. "Fi, you've helped Nicole out far too many times over the past few years. When she couldn't pay her school fees, you were the one who paid them for her using the prize money you won from the competitions. "When Nicole's sexist parents caused a ruckus at school, you were the one who called the police on them. But because of that, her family got their revenge on you and almost left you blind in your left eye. "Now, Nicole can't even get into any of the seven colleges she applied to. Since she's not book-smart, she should just drop out of high school and find a job. This outcome is the best for everyone involved." Preston and I have been in a relationship for three years. Yet, this is my first time getting mad at him. "Nikki is my best friend as well as the most important person in my life! You're not allowed to badmouth her like this! Since you don't want to help her at all, then we might as well break up!" In order to avoid breaking up with me, Preston has no choice but to comply. Later on, Nicole's grades keep improving by leaps and bounds. I've also worked hard in my studies, resulting in me getting pretty decent grades in my College Entrance Examination. In fact, I've hit the threshold where I can attend one of the most prestigious colleges in the state with Preston. But when there's barely a minute left before the deadline is up, Nicole changes my dream college to the top college in the country, one that I'm definitely not qualified for. As for Preston, he just watches Nicole tamper with my application without showing any intention of stopping her.

I had been the top student the school recruited with a full scholarship, while my younger sister, Chloe Stevens, had gotten in through money despite being a poor performer. In my past life, during the college entrance exams, Chloe, who had always ranked at the bottom, suddenly made a miraculous turnaround and got into Royalton College, just like I did. Right after that, she marched straight to the admissions office and reported me, claiming that I had copied all my answers from her. That was impossible. I had a score above 1480 on every single test. The admissions office and teachers did not believe her either. Then, Chloe accused me of using some kind of black magic, saying that whatever answer she wrote down, I would somehow know and copy it. The admissions office made us retake the exam, and somehow every single one of our answers came out identical. I could not defend myself, got arrested by the police, and spent the rest of my life rotting in prison. After being reborn, I studied harder than ever and secured an early admission to Royalton College. Now, sitting in the exam room, I deliberately scored zero on every single test. I wanted to see just how many points Chloe could get without me.

My boyfriend, Nathan Linden, refuses to participate in buy one, get one free promotions with me, so every time we go out on a date, my best friend, Candace Lane, always ends up joining us. "Buy one free one at Lucky Star Beverages! Don't miss out!" Nathan immediately calls Candace, then places his order first without missing a beat. Candace doesn't take long to arrive and accepts the iced coffee Nathan passes her. The straw is already stuck into the drink. The pair begin to talk about a mutual game they play, getting into a heated discussion that causes their faces to flush red. I tighten my grip on the receipt I'm holding. The milkshakes are clearly on promotion too, yet every time, I'm the odd one out and have to order for myself. By the time I receive my milkshake, Nathan and Candace have already exited the shop. I hurry over to the cinema across the street to meet up with them, only to see the two of them arguing. As it turns out, Nathan's credit card allows him to enjoy 50% off if he buys two tickets, but he has no intention of giving that second ticket to me. When Candance spots me, she urges me, "Lily, quick! Go buy a ticket for yourself. The movie's going to start in ten minutes." Then, she shoves a bucket of popcorn into my arms and adds with a shy smile, "Here, the popcorn was buy one, get one free too. You can have this bucket all to yourself since you eat so much. Nate and I can just share this one bucket." I pause and glance between the two. Their movie seats are next to each other, and their favorite drinks, phone casings, and even the keychains hanging from their backpacks are all the same. Suddenly, an epiphany crashes over me. Since they love buy one, get one free promotions that much, I'll just back out of this relationship.

My mom died giving birth to me. They couldn't save her. My dad? He dumped me outside a prison and ran. Didn't even look back. It was five degrees. I was basically frozen. Barely breathing. Later, a guard said the whole max block lost it that night. One hundred eight inmates—death row, life sentences—went crazy. Slamming doors. Smashing windows. Yelling they wanted to keep me. In the end, they filed a letter. Not a breakout plan. A custody request. Somehow... it got approved. From that day on, I had 108 dads. But growing up, I found out the truth. They weren't criminals. On paper, they were dead—killed in the line of duty. In reality, they were still out there, serving. Eighteen years later, I got into one of the top high schools—with the highest score in the State of Ashford. On the fifth day, I beat the rich girl, Vivian Cobbley, by one point on a mock exam. Next thing I knew, my name was all over the bulletin board: [Riley Ray, daughter of murderers!] Vivian cornered me in the bathroom and shoved my head into a toilet. "Your dads are killers. That filth's in you too." She beat me so hard I dragged her down when we went over the second-floor railing. When I woke up, the Dean of Students was right in my face, finger in my face. "No surprise you're violent. It's in your blood. Call your criminal dads. Now." I shook. "Mr. Todd... you sure you want me to call them?"

On the last day to submit our college applications, my childhood sweetheart, Jose Hanson, changes my major from medicine to mortuary science. Meanwhile, he applies to the same college as the girl next door, Rachel Thorne. When I confront him, he answers casually, "I saw the diagnosis in your room. You have Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis." I freeze. Jose looks at me with disgust. "Vicky, your mom took me in 12 years ago. I've spent 12 years playing the role of your childhood sweetheart. Now, it's time for me to pursue my true love. As for you, you might as well start learning how to arrange your own funeral." But… I look at him holding hands with Rachel. That diagnosis isn't mine. It's his.