Short Emotional Realism Stories & Novels

It was the holiday season, so I took my foster daughter, Megan Delgado, to our mansion for a vacation. However, I found out that the property had been occupied by someone else. The woman who opened the door looked at us with an impatient expression. “What do you want? You’re interrupting my daughter’s birthday party. Are you asking for trouble?” For a moment, I thought I might have the wrong house. That was until I noticed the clothing and jewelry the woman was wearing. Every piece was an exact match with what I kept in my wardrobe here. The timing could not be more telling. Just a week ago, my husband, Richie Delgado, said he was planning a surprise for me and Megan. He asked for the spare key to the mansion. I glanced past her at the crowd of party guests in the living room. “So, you’re saying you’re the lady of the house?” She sized me up and noted my simple outfit. “Who else if not me? You? You’ve ruined my daughter’s party. You’d better beg for her forgiveness now!” she said in a condescending tone. When I did not move, she warned, “My husband will be home any minute now. Do you know who he is? He’s the CEO of Beran Corp! A nobody like you can’t afford to cross him!” They were using my mansion to throw a birthday party for his illegitimate daughter. It was quite the surprise indeed!

On the day we decided to get a divorce, I saw Miranda’s account book while I was packing up my stuff. Aside from our daily expenses, Miranda had also set up a scoring sheet for me. Miranda had taken notes of all the things I had done ever since we started dating. Some of them were such miniscule things that even I had forgotten. She took note of them all with a red pen, and she scored them by either awarding me points or deducting them. However, the further down the sheet, the more points were deducted. In the end, I saw Miranda add one line in black ink. [He’s no longer the Henry Jones who used to love me: -100]

To defuse the bomb strapped to the hostage, I had no choice—I cut off all her clothes. My clueless new wife, Dana Poole, blasted it online. She cried as she faced me. "Why not at least leave her underwear on? You were saving her, I get it—but did you have to take everything? Doesn't a girl's dignity matter? With cameras everywhere, how is she supposed to live after this? You couldn't even cover her up?" The backlash exploded. The unit benched me to calm things down. So I stopped caring. I followed procedure, no improvising, no extra effort. Then one day, at the busiest mall in the city, Dana's mom got strapped into a brand-new linked bomb. This time, the whole unit panicked.

A week after my engagement, I was delivered an unusual engagement gift. My phone chimed. I glanced down and saw a push notification from a social app. [Fell in love with a female livestreamer right before my engagement. I feel guilty toward my older girlfriend who's about to become my fiancée—how should I deal with this?] The user ID was "SimonLovesClaire." The profile picture showed a melancholy side view of a man wrapped in a gray scarf. I recognized him instantly. It was my fiancé, Simon Aldrich. That limited-edition scarf was the birthday gift I had given him last year.

My sister leaves some last words before committing suicide, and everyone who sees those words die. My grandmother is the first to go, and then my father. In the end, even my mother jumps off a 30-story building. The reporters fall over themselves trying to score an interview with me, and the police interrogate me. Countless people want to know what my sister's last words are. However, I keep my silence until my sister's tenth death anniversary. I see a figure before her grave, and I'm agitated beyond imagination. I know it's time for death to take me.

My younger sister, Joey Crawford, and I have taken the exam 20 times in a row. Yet, our answer sheet shows the exact same answers every time. No matter how fast I complete the exam, Joey is able to turn in her paper one second before me. My homeroom teacher, Mr. Harris, has spoken with me three times regarding this matter. At the same time, I receive my first warning for cheating on the exams. Whenever my classmates see me, they say to me, "Hey, cheater! You got busted this time, huh?" The thing is, I've never even touched Joey's paper. How can our answers be exactly the same? During the college entrance exam, I suddenly awaken to the ability to see the live comments dangling in midair. "The female lead is the chosen one! It must feel amazing to have awakened the mind-reading ability and all!" "She relies on reading the side character's mind just to obtain all the answers. So what if the side character excels in her studies? Her role is to become the female lead's stepping stone to success!" It turns out that Joey has been stealing my answers by reading my mind this whole time. As I flip the exam papers over, I start singing the alphabet song mentally. "A-B-C-D-E-F-G…"

My wife, Maeve Sinclair, has a weird fetish. She loves roleplaying as other characters. In her scripts, I'm always the OG husband who gets abandoned by the heartless wife. Today, Maeve will be the domineering CEO who's fallen in love with her assistant. Tomorrow, she will be the professor who has the hots for her student. Every time, she will make me sign a divorce agreement. The next day, she will laugh while ripping it apart. "Darling, this is just a game." But when my dad gets into a car accident and requires 200 thousand dollars just to undergo a life-saving surgery, Maeve is playing the role of a broke woman. "I'm a penniless woman who's gone broke, Neal. I don't have any money for your dad's surgery at all." I can only watch as my dad breathes his last on the sickbed. On the day of his funeral, Maeve approaches me with a young and handsome university student clinging to her side. "Darling, I've fallen in love with my student. Let's get a divorce." Then, she pulls out a document from her briefcase and passes it to me. This time, I refuse to wait for her to rip it apart.

The property manager, driven by greed for kickbacks, rallied the residents to dig a deeper underground parking garage for profit. But as a geologist with a decade of experience, I saw the danger immediately: a high-pressure underground river lay beneath our community. Any construction would cause the entire building to collapse. In my previous life, I went door to door, warning the residents of the risks, only to be dismissed as a lunatic. Desperate, I alerted the authorities, halting the project and averting disaster. But the property manager turned the blame on me. "That meddling geologist! She's jealous of our wealth and sabotaged our chance to get rich!" Incited, the residents mobbed my home. In the chaos, the property manager grabbed my son and ran to the balcony, letting him fall from the tenth floor. The residents, in unison, lied to the police, claiming my son had been playing and slipped. My family ruined, I succumbed to despair and took my own life. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at that fateful homeowners' meeting. This time, as the property manager pushed for the excavation, I stood up and clapped. "Neville is right. Not only should we dig, we should dig deeper. Let's do it all at once and get rich together!"

In my previous life, I inherited the family's steakhouse, while my sister asked our dad to get her a job that paid 75 hundred a month. To her shock and surprise, the heir of a rich family and I fell in love at first sight when he came over for a meal. I became his wife, and everyone envied me for marrying the richest man in Imperia. My sister lost both her legs during a work accident. Jealous of my great life, she set me up and killed me with her own hands. We were both reborn at the same time, back to the moment where we would make the decision that would change our lives forever. Right before our father, she told him she wanted to inherit Shaw's Steakhouse. I heard everything, and in a corner where no one could see me, a sneer curled my lips. Poor thing. She had no idea at all. Her nightmare would begin the moment she met Jonathan Landton.

Three years after graduation, I was waiting tables at a restaurant when I happened to run into some of my old classmates having a private dinner there. The moment they saw me carrying trays, they burst out laughing. My old rival Elliot sneered that I was a useless nobody, then pulled out 50 bucks and tossed it in front of me, telling me to lick his shoes clean. "Clean my shoe, and that fifty's yours!" Even my ex-girlfriend joined in to humiliate me. "I can't believe this is what you've become three years after graduation, Chase. Good thing I dumped you when I did—I'd hate to be the girlfriend of some broke loser." Elliot and a few others pinned me to the floor, forcing me to kneel and even bark like a dog. My ex clapped her hands, laughing. "Chase, you really do look like a dog when you're on your knees." Then, the restaurant manager rushed in. The moment he saw me, his face went pale with shock. "M–Mr. Levine… are you all right, sir?" Blood dripping down my forehead, I pointed at everyone in that room. "No one leaves this room tonight."

I was sound asleep the night before the wedding when a video call from my best friend, Eve, came in. “Aisling, my wedding’s starting in half an hour. Where is my maid of honor?” I pulled back the curtains and stared in resignation at the still night at one in the morning. “Eve, what are you talking about? It’s not even dawn. Who gets married in the wee hours? You’re working overtime as my alarm clock.” It was a pause on the line until Eve’s camera shifted to the blue skies behind the groom. “Are you still asleep, Aisling? It’s morning. “Our families have arrived. Everyone’s waiting on you. Get here quickly.” The call ended, and I snapped awake. Judging by the family members caught in the frame of the camera, it didn’t seem like a prank. The wedding venue was downstairs in the hotel ballroom, so the time difference didn’t make sense at all. Just in case, I put on my maid-of-honor dress and made haste to the venue. Right after I stepped out of my room, a drunk guest mistook me for an escort. During a struggle, he stabbed me to death. When I came to, I was back to the moment just before Eve FaceTimed me.

After the fake heiress, Melina Langston, falls into the water, her already fragile health becomes even worse. My brother, Elio Langston, blames everything on me. In the dead of winter, he forces me to stand in the freezing swimming pool all night. I end up with pneumonia from the cold. When I return from the hospital, I see him holding Melina in his arms and looking at me with unconcealed disgust. "If you ever bully Melina again, don't ever come back!" I look at Elio without saying a word and return to my room. Then, I board a plane that will never fly back.

On the morning of the day my fiance, Anton Solomon, and I are scheduled to start our destination wedding trip, he finally rushes to the airport straight from the office. Just seconds before boarding, he receives an urgent message from his female secretary, Callie Lawrence. "I'm sorry, honey. A major project just came in, and I need to be there to approve it. "Could you go ahead and start the trip on your own? I'll join you as soon as I wrap things up in a few days." Despite feeling a twinge of regret, I understand that work comes first, so I offer him my full support. After he leaves, I tear up my boarding pass and turn around. I decide to return to the office and see for myself. I want to see which blind, brainless company is negotiating a major project with a company I acquired hours earlier at dawn, and how it has the nerve to bypass me, the current CEO. They have chosen to approach a man who is nothing but a CEO in name only.

After passing five rounds of interviews, I secure an offer from Larson Group based on my own abilities. I can't wait to share the good news with my boyfriend, Noah Gardner. However, he reports me to HR, causing me to lose the job. "Isabelle can't find a job and is really anxious, so I gave the position to her. You can just send out a few more resumes. It's not like a few extra days matter," he said nonchalantly. After Isabelle Buchanan starts working at Larson Group, everyone showers her with praise. I laugh in exasperation and call my older brother. "Mr. Larson, can our company hire me as the CEO's executive assistant?"

My daughter, Emma Blackwood, was sick. We were thirty thousand short of the treatment that could save her life. My husband, Nathan Blackwood, looked devastated, his face tight with guilt. "Honey, I'm sorry. This is my fault. I don't have the money to save our daughter." To pay for Emma's treatment, I worked four jobs daily, but during a restaurant shift, I saw Nathan rent the entire place to wine and dine another woman. With a bright smile, she poured him a drink. "Mr. Blackwood, you are generous. You spend tens of millions like it's nothing. You can have any woman you want, so why marry some broke, low-class woman?" Nathan slowly blew out a stream of smoke, his eyes full of contempt. "You wouldn't understand. Marrying a poor woman like that makes it fun. "Watching her humiliate herself over a little money, working herself to the bone. It's entertaining." My body went cold. I could barely breathe. So Nathan had been a wealthy heir all along, pretending to be poor and lying to me from the start. What he didn't know was this: I was the long-lost daughter of the richest family in the country. And with a single word from me, his entire world could be destroyed.

After my breakup, my best friend encouraged me to join a cycling club. I quickly came to realize that this was no ordinary cycling group. To my shock, I stumbled upon my friend, caught up in a moment on her bike, doing something that went far beyond anything I'd anticipated. Surprisingly, instead of running away, a thrill of anticipation flickered within me. Because, truthfully… I'd been waiting for a moment like this for a long time.

In my previous life, my best friend gave me a lock-shaped good-luck pendant. I never expected that once I put it on, it would never come off. Soon after, I came down with a fever that lasted seven days straight. When I finally woke up, everything in my life began to fall apart. Misfortune followed me everywhere. That was when I discovered the truth—I had swapped fates with her husband. He would get my wealth while I would get a short, ill-fated life. From then on, the two of them lived a life of effortless wealth, making money without even lifting a finger. Meanwhile, I sank into poverty, plagued by constant bad luck. I struggled through life and did not even make it to 30 before I was killed in a car accident. As I died, my mentally disabled younger brother cried out and rushed in front of me to shield me. However, he could not stop the incoming vehicle, and we died there together. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn back to the moment she was about to put the pendant on me. I let out a cold smile and pondered. Since she was so desperate to steal my wealthy fate, then she could have a XYY husband instead.

My husband's ex-girlfriend left behind a cat that could nurse my daughter like a woman. I turned on my camera and livestreamed this horrifying scene. The stream instantly went viral, and people approached me offering high prices for the cat. When I agreed to sell it, my husband went crazy, clutching the cat and screaming that it could not be sold. Even my sister-in-law, who had always doted on me, furiously yelled at me for being brainless. In my previous life, I accidentally discovered the cat in our house nursing my daughter. I was terrified when I saw my daughter's satisfied expression! What made me feel even more horrified was that the cat's chest area had no fur at all. It was smooth and delicate, like a nursing woman's. Moreover, this cat usually either bared its teeth at me or scratched me with its claws. Every night, it slept in my husband's arms. Thinking of all this made my skin crawl, and I immediately decided to throw the cat out. Unexpectedly, my usually gentle and refined husband became incredibly frenzied. "I raised this cat with my own hands. It's no different from my child! If you dare throw away my cat, then we're getting divorced!" My sister-in-law also urged me to keep the cat. She even gave me sleeping pills, claiming I had been under too much stress lately. That night, my daughter died in my arms, and I also died in bed from excessive grief. Only after my death did I learn that the cat was my husband's ex, and my daughter was the medium for her life exchange. Their true purpose was to steal my body. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day I was just discharged from the hospital.

In my previous life, I was sponsored by a wealthy man and even ended up marrying his daughter. My younger brother, however, struggled at the bottom rung of society. He was jealous that I lived a worry-free life and that I even had a beautiful wife by my side. Meanwhile, he was drowning in gambling debts, constantly having to hide and evade detection. With bloodshot eyes, my brother drags me to the rooftop but accidentally falls down with me. We get reborn on the day the wealthy man selects candidates. This time, he rushes forward and kneels at the wealthy man's feet. "Shane, in this life, the family fortune and the heiress are all mine!" What he doesn't know is that despite having all the money in the world, it doesn't guarantee he'll live to spend it.

When I went to register my son, Cody Vantor, for medical insurance before his first year of kindergarten, I was told I wasn’t his biological mother. "Are you sure this is your child? The system shows a different woman listed as the mother." I said nothing. I quietly snapped a photo of the unfamiliar home address, then followed it to the neighboring complex. When he saw me, my husband, Dorian Vantor, froze. His hand instinctively moved to block the doorway. "So you found out. But making a scene won’t change anything. I haven’t treated you badly these past three years." I looked past him, and my body went cold. The woman behind him was my younger sister, Summer Walsh, fresh out of college. She handed him a glass of water and gave me an apologetic smile. "Don’t blame me, Lennie. The doctor said I have postpartum depression. I can’t handle hearing a baby cry. Thank you for raising Cody for me all these years. I really am grateful." Just then, Cody, who had been waiting in the car downstairs, ran up. He rushed into Summer’s arms like it was second nature, then turned to look at me. "Aunt Lenora, don’t cry. Mommy said you’re a good person. That’s why she asked you to help. Daddy said if I behave and call you ‘Mom’ at your house, I can come back on weekends to see my real Mommy."