After Death 단편 소설 & 소설

My older brother, Ethan Earnhart, was the Alpha of the Shadow Pack. Right now, he was slicing my chest open with a silver surgical blade. Beside him, my adopted sister, Sara, had tear-filled eyes. "Elina went as far as faking her own death just to escape the loan sharks. She even used the body of a disfigured rogue." Ethan's gaze was filled with disgust. He pointed at the bruises covering my body, marks left when I was alive, and explained calmly to the young healer beside him. "Look. This is what happens to a traitor who betrays the pack and sleeps with filthy rogues. Elina, being the liar she's always been, even found a stand-in for her little performance." My wolf soul hovered beside the operating table and watched in despair as he handled my body the way one would process prey. 'Ethan, that really is me. I was trying to retrieve something you lost. That was why they–' "Check the stomach contents," Ethan said flatly as he cut open my stomach. Unexpectedly, there was no food residue. Instead, there was a single ring. It was corroded black by stomach acid, but the emblem engraved on it was unmistakable. It was the Alpha heirloom Ethan had lost five years ago. I had swallowed it just before I died. I had to protect that secret even if I were dead. Ethan's hand trembled violently while holding the forceps. He tore into my facial flesh like a madman. "Elina?"

After I'm forced to climb to an altitude of 15 thousand feet, my parents, Brian Parson and Mona Holcomb, abandon me halfway up the mountain while I suffer from altitude sickness. "Sunrise is only an hour away. Your sister has been looking forward to seeing the sunrise illuminate the mountains for two months. We can't let you ruin it for her." The moment the car door shuts, Mom's voice cuts off. By the time I reach the hospital at the foot of the mountain, an hour has already passed. The doctor says I'm barely conscious and could deteriorate at any moment, but they need a family member to sign the consent form before they can administer oxygen therapy. My vision goes black, and it takes me several tries before I finally manage to dial my parents' numbers. Five minutes pass. As the phone continues to ring without an answer, I gradually struggle to breathe. Perhaps Mom and Dad can't answer while driving, so I try calling my older brother, Jared Parson, who has left before them. "Jared, I'm at the hospital. I have altitude sickness—" Before I can finish, he cuts me off impatiently. "You're already at the hospital, so why are you telling me this? I'm busy taking photos of Ida. If there's nothing else, I'm hanging up now." Just before the call ends, I hear Mom shouting in the background. "Change to the side angle. Ida says the background needs to look a little more interesting." My ears goes numb from the incessant beeping. As the call screen disappears, a new message pops up in the "Forever Family" group chat. It's a group photo of my parents, Jared, and Ida standing with the mountains glowing golden in the sunlight behind them. The message before that is my own message about being unable to reach them while suffering from altitude sickness. An hour passes, and not a single person responds.

My pup Asher had been sick for six months. Every time I personally cared for him, he became even sicker. I finally believed the witch's prophecy: I was cursed. My very existence would harm my own pup. I went to the moon temple and prayed that the moon goddess would lift the curse and ensure my pup's safety. From then on, my Alpha mate Damon brought Asher up the mountain every day to see me. Hundreds of miles of mountain road. They made the trip over a thousand times. Our bond never faded with the distance. Until today. A group of rogues broke into the Sanctuary and pushed me down the stone steps. I called Damon all night. No one answered. Then I received an anonymous video. Damon knelt in front of a woman, kissing her swollen belly. Asher stood next to them, grinning ear to ear. "I'm gonna have a brother! Aunt Serena, your pregnancy must have been so tough. Me and Dad will be your knights forever." He turned to Damon, his young face bright with pride. "Dad, I faked being sick pretty well, right? Pretending to feel awful every day, tricking Mom into taking me to the Healer over and over. They never found anything wrong, and she really believed that curse stuff. Went up the mountain all on her own." "But what if Mom finds out? Won't she be mad?" Damon didn't seem worried. "Don't worry. I've got the whole mountain sealed off. She won't find out." Only then did I understand. Everything had been a lie, planned by my mate and my son. I turned around and knocked over the Hope Flame that I had lit for Asher without hesitation. This flame was lit at the cost of my wolf’s strength, offered to the Moon Goddess so that she might bless Asher with health. Through the flames, a familiar figure sprinted toward me.

We have an old rule in our town. Any family with twins must choose one to make an example out of. That is the way to discipline one’s children and ensure they grow up well. Born four minutes before my brother, I became that example. When my brother snuck out to swim in the river, Mom didn’t scold him. Instead, she pressed my head into the river again and again. She finally stopped when my brother cried, yelling that he would never go to the river again. When my brother forgot to switch on the rice cooker, Mom came back home from work only to realize that the rice was still uncooked in the pot. She then served me two bowls of uncooked rice. “Finish them and don’t leave a single grain behind.” Chewing on the hard rice filled my mouth with blood. She stared at my brother throughout the entire ordeal. When he finally cried, she took the bowls away. I was made an example for 16 years. Until that day when our town received a red alert for an incoming hurricane. Everyone had to evacuate overnight. My brother only came back at dawn after playing a fool with his friends the entire night. He was completely drenched when he came back, smiling gleefully. Mom stuffed him into an evacuation vehicle before turning to look at me, saying very calmly, “Stay here. After the hurricane, your brother will learn his lesson and come home earlier.” Everyone in town left. Roof tiles started flying in the wind. Mom, you like to make an example out of me. This time, I'll die because of that. Are you happy now?

On the third day after my death, my body was sent to the police station in different packages. Jonathan Walsh, my husband, and Frank Stone, my junior at work, saw my corpse and frowned. “If only Elena were here, she would have been able to find some clues.” Frank sighed as he stared at my horribly mangled remains. “Don’t mention her. She’s not even worthy of being a forensic scientist!” I stared at my husband with a conflicted look. He analyzed each part of my body and deduced the manner of my death with familiar ease. “The murderer is a monster…” Frank’s face turned pale, and he sighed again. Jonathan calmly used all that I had taught him and perfectly pieced out the entire process of my death based on the clues from my dismembered body. I could not help but feel proud. Unfortunately, he was still a little off the mark. He did not manage to figure out that this body belonged to me, his wife.

Everyone in my family knew I was a Bond-Seeker with ninety-nine lives. And still, not one of them loved me. During the holiday, I woke up early making breakfast for my family. My mother threw it all angrily. “You filthy little curse. Don’t dirty my kitchen.” When my father was hospitalized after a car accident, I stayed by his bed for three days and three nights. The moment he woke up, he grabbed the IV bottle beside him and smashed it against my head. “Was killing your twin sister not enough for you? Now you want me dead too?” I used my scholarship money to buy my elder brother a brand-new laptop. He threw it straight off the balcony and watched it shatter on the ground below. “I’m not using anything bought with a cursed girl’s money. I don’t want it shortening my life.” On my eighteenth birthday, I handed a love letter to Ethan Whitmore, the boy next door I had secretly loved for years. He tore it to pieces right in front of me. “What, were you hoping to trade my feelings for points? Get lost, Natalie. I don’t want you getting me killed.” In the end, the System ruled that my bond had failed. Then it took my life back. I thought no one would grieve for me. But before it disappeared, the System spent the last of its energy broadcasting every memory I had across every major platform.

By my third year at the Arctic research station, the endless cold had pushed my body to its limit. I went to Carl Tillman, our team captain, to submit my application to return home, but he turned me down. "I've already given the placement to Susan," he said. "Her health's too delicate for weather this harsh." Susan Farrow had only been here three months. I'd been here three years. Three years was the absolute limit any researcher was allowed to stay stationed here. I stared at him, unable to believe what I'd heard. "Carl, my complications are getting worse. I can't feel my legs anymore, and my eyes are going blurry. If I don't go back now, I'll die out here." He looked me over like I was making a scene. "You've always been strong as an ox. Are you really going to make things up just to compete with Susan for my attention?" He wrote Susan's name in the return slot and threw me out of his office. Outside, the wind and snow lashed at a face that had already gone numb. My husband of ten years had taken away my only chance to live—so he could dote on another woman.

Savannah Cox was my husband's first love. When she got divorced, my husband, Alex Stewart, was the lawyer who handled her case. Then he moved her into our home after getting rid of Mochi, my cat, because she was allergic to cats. Because she lost a necklace, he forced a pregnant me to jump into an icy pool to retrieve it. By the time I lost our baby and ended up in the hospital, Alex was posting Savannah's prenatal checkup report—the first post he'd made all year. "The cherry blossoms are blooming at Cherrywood Park. She arrived with spring." I quietly liked the post, feeling unwell and numb with grief as I spent the day in silence. Alex only looked at me with disgust, a cruel sneer creeping onto his lips. "Autumn, people like you deserve to lose their children. If you love kids so much, why don't you go die with the baby?" What he didn't know was that I was already dying.

After my divorce, I went to the southwest mountainous regions to volunteer for rescue work, where two years passed in the blink of an eye. One day, our daughter gets diagnosed with aplastic anemia, and her life can only be sustained through a bone marrow transplant from me. It's only then that my ex-wife thinks of me. She heads to the mountains with a group of bodyguards and searches everywhere, but she can't find a trace of me. She thinks I have deliberately hidden myself from her. "As long as you're willing to donate the bone marrow, I'll promise you visitation rights to see our daughter in the future." However, the townspeople tell her that I have long since passed away. She frowns slightly, her expression full of impatience as she says, "I never thought that, after all these years, he would still play these childish games." In the end, she searches high and low, only to unearth my bones.

I suffer from a rare lung disease and depend on a ventilator to stay alive. My dad, Wesley Lowe, works three jobs and saves up enough money to replace my old machine with an imported one. The new ventilator is already relatively very quiet. Even so, my mom, Keira Sheeran, still thinks it's too noisy. She says the sound keeps waking her up at night and reminds her that I am like a bottomless pit. One day, my newborn baby brother, Jasper Lowe, won't stop crying. The doctor says newborns are sensitive to noise. Mom immediately breaks down. Her eyes are red with tears as she rushes over, points at me, and screams, "Can't you just die already? Your cousin can't afford to get married because of the burden you put on our family, and now your little brother can't even get a good night's sleep! "Can't you turn it off for just one night so the whole family can finally have some peace and quiet?" After saying that, she takes Jasper and goes back to her parents' house. I look at the "Happy Family" cross-stitch embroidery hanging on the wall. Slowly, I unplug the ventilator. "Mom, Dad, it's quiet now."

I was dying of kidney failure. Henry Colombo—the ruthless Mafia heir who once swore he’d burn the world to keep me alive— found me a donor. But the price… was her. Susan Miller, the woman who’d always lingered between us, smiled as she set her terms: “Be mine for one month. Pretend you love me—and I’ll save her life.” He agreed. He said it was just to save me. But every lie, every kiss, every photo she posted online was another nail in my coffin. Each time the surgery drew near, she invented a new delay—a fever, a nightmare, a tender bruise. And Henry believed her. He always believed her. The night my heart flatlined on the operating table, he was across the city, feeding her grapes under candlelight, whispering her name—the name of the woman who had let me die. When he finally learned the truth—that every tear she shed was rehearsed, every promise she made was poison— he destroyed everything. Her lies. Her wealth. Her family name. His own empire. But none of it brought me back.

I asked my husband for a divorce during the most difficult year of his life. Everyone condemned me, calling me heartless, but I still forced him to sign the divorce papers. Later, he overcame his struggles and rose to become a powerful CEO. I avoided him for two years, believing I’d never cross paths with him again—until he caught me at my most wretched. His eyes brimmed with hatred as he stared at me. In front of everyone, he humiliated me and relentlessly forced me to down a bottle of vodka. I vomited uncontrollably, blood gushing from my mouth in thick streams. He mocked me, telling me it was the retribution I deserved for betraying him. I didn’t argue. I let him torment me. After all, I was already dying. If that made him content, so be it.

My parents, the wealthiest couple in the country, were famous philanthropists. I had to ask them for permission if I wanted to spend more than five bucks. The day I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I asked them for 100 dollars, but instead of helping, they yelled at me for three hours. "What kind of disease could you get at your age? If you're going to ask for money, at least come up with a better excuse." "Do you know that 100 dollars could support children in poverty-stricken areas for a long time? Your sister is more sensible than you." I dragged my sick body for miles, back to the small basement I called home. But as I passed the mall, I saw my parents, live on a huge screen, spending a fortune to rent out Disneyland for my sister. I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. A hundred dollars wouldn't even cover one round of chemotherapy. I just wanted to buy a new outfit and leave with some dignity.

My parents died when I was ten years old, but a big shot in Jade City adopted me. It was rumored that Sean Graham was a cruel and violent man, but he doted on me for nearly ten years. He booked the advertising screens in the city to celebrate my birthday and promised to marry me when I got drunk and pestered him about it. I called him Uncle Sean at his request. Fear gripped me when I woke up in his bed every morning, but I kept it a secret. Yet one time, we accidentally slept with each other. I got pregnant with his child and wanted to keep it, but I knew I would not live for much longer. One day, I heard his conversation with a servant. “Clean up Zella’s room for Yulia.” “But Mr. Graham, Miss Cooper has been staying there for ten years. Didn’t you design it for her?” “No, I only let her stay there because Yulia had gone abroad.” I touched my belly as disappointment gripped me. It turned out that the man who had promised to provide me with a home as long as he lived wanted to drive me away.

The day my cancer treatment failed, I secretly signed the paperwork to donate a kidney to my fiancée, who was suffering from kidney failure. But my parents' adopted son stole the credit, then told everyone I had abandoned her because I didn't want to be dragged down by her illness and had run off with the money. Even my own parents called me heartless. They did everything they could to push my fiancée and their adopted son together, hoping the two of them would finally end up together. Then, on the day my fiancée was about to accept his proposal, she received a call from the funeral home. My ashes had been sitting there unclaimed for three years and were about to pass the storage deadline. And the only thing I had left behind was an anonymous kidney donation form. In the recipient box was her name.

The one I've loved for ten years hates me to his core. He comes up with various ways to hurt and belittle me. He even deliberately lets me hear him having a steamy night with someone else. "You're the unsightly blemish that marred my otherwise perfect life," he says. The thing that he regrets the most in his entire life is getting to know me. In the end, I die. However, he regrets it dearly.

On the road, I met a woman unlike anyone I had ever seen before. Her name was Janet Smith. She seemed slow and almost childlike, yet she had been wandering alone for two years without ever going home. Even with one leg crippled, she had forced herself to climb the Highveil Mountains. This time, however, she was caught in a blizzard. Injured and stranded, she could no longer make her way down. As her vision blurred and her strength slipped away, tears covered her face. She placed a pair of small handmade clay dolls in my hands. "I'm probably going to die here," she murmured. "Please give these to my adoptive brother, Chester Graham." She was clearly at death's door, yet her smile was soft and unexpectedly serene. "Tell him I've seen enough of the world. I don't love him anymore. And tell him he doesn't need to worry. I'm not so foolish now. I won't cause trouble for anyone again." Chester? At the sound of his name, I stood rooted to the spot. In Riverton City, everyone who worked at the harbor knew him, the so-called Ship King. Right before I left for the mountains, news of his engagement had been everywhere.

My husband, Leon Hobbs, calls me to tell me that his grandma, Phoebe Reid, has forgotten to bring her blood pressure medication, so he wants me to deliver it to her. "Hurry up, Elsie! Grandma's blood pressure is spiking again! You're the one who's closest to her right now!" With the medication in hand, I've just reached the corridor when comments pop up on my phone out of nowhere. "Don't go! The old lady will die in the living room ten minutes after you enter the apartment!" "The blood pressure medication has been swapped out for poison, and your prints are on the bottle! Everyone will think that you're the one who poisoned the old lady!" "Your husband and your mother-in-law have left the apartment purposefully so that you'll be the only one facing the old lady's corpse! Then, they'll use the assets that you and the old lady have left behind just to buy a new home for your husband's pregnant mistress!" I remain rooted to the spot as I stare at the bottle of medication. Leon had passed it to me last night, claiming that it was a bottle of newly prescribed medication. He wanted me to keep it for Phoebe for the time being. My fingerprints are all over the bottle at this time. Three seconds later, I turn on my heel and head toward the nearest pharmacy. Then, I place the bottle of pills on the counter. "Please help me check whether or not this bottle of medication fits the label."

"Ms. Clarke, you have successfully purchased a Final Memories recording package. We have arranged hidden cameras to record you anytime and anywhere. From this moment on, no matter where you go or what you do, everything will be secretly filmed until the day you pass away." The staff member handed the contract to Lila Clarke and asked her to confirm everything one last time. Without hesitation, she signed her name. The reason she ordered Final Memories was because she had been diagnosed with cancer. She had no more than one month left to live.

My elder sister, Alice, was a white wolf. A witch had foretold that my power would devour hers, that the moment I shifted during our coming-of-age ceremony, she would die. The only way to save her was to suppress my power, let her shift first at the ceremony, and break the curse. To save her, my parents spent eighteen years breaking me. And the night before our ceremony, they followed the witch's orders and locked me in the basement with silver-banded iron chains. "Be good, Maria. The silver will only delay your shift. Just get through tomorrow, and your sister lives. Then we can all stop suffering." The chains pressed against my chest. I could barely breathe. But something was wrong. My shift was starting, early. I slammed my fists against the door. "Mom, it's starting. I'm shifting now—" "Don't lie to me." Her voice cut through, sharp and loud. "The witch said both of you shift on ceremony day. Or are you really that eager to watch your sister die?" Footsteps faded down the hall. The pain hit, searing, ripping through every bone. I curled into the corner, feeling my wolf slip away.