Cerita Pendek & Novel Male POV

A week before my wedding, my family decided to play a little guessing game. Everyone described the happiest thing that had happened to them, and then we took turns reading the answers aloud and guessing what it was. My parents' eyes were already glistening with tears as they said, "We've waited so many years for this. It's finally happening." My younger brother, Chad Baird, practically bounced out of his chair. "I get to be the best man!" My childhood friend, Davian Robbins, flushed slightly before saying, "A dream come true. I'm grateful to everyone." Hearing all of them speak, my chest tightened with emotion. For the first time, I thought maybe they really did care about me. I could not hold it in anymore, so I blurted out, "You're all talking about my wedding to Avery, right?" The entire table went silent. A moment later, Chad let out a snort. "Evan, don't flatter yourself. We're talking about Avery and Davian's wedding next week." Avery Bruce barely reacted. "Davian's grandmother has always dreamed of seeing him get married, so we decided to let him have the wedding first." Then she looked at me as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. "We all grew up together. You wouldn't want Old Mrs. Robbins to be disappointed, would you?" Meanwhile, my parents looked at Davian with so much warmth that anyone watching would have thought he was their own son. None of them noticed my eyes beginning to redden. Of course, I should have expected this. Whenever someone had to give way, it was always me. I had already given Davian my parents' love and attention, and now I was expected to give him my wedding as well. I thought, 'Fine, if that's what they want, he can have it all. I don't want any of it anymore.'

The night before our third anniversary, Camille Everhart canceled her flight to Norhaven at the last minute. She looked at me apologetically. "Someone leaked the company's sensitive data, and it's caused quite a stir. I have to stay at the office and oversee things for the next three days." To convince me, her business partner, Nora Sinclair, sent a photo of their employees working late in our shared group chat. "Tristan, I'll need Camille for a few days. Once we get through this crisis, she'll get you a luxury watch!" My mother-in-law, Naomi Blackwell, called too. She sounded cold and detached. "A woman has to put her career first. Don't act like a little boy, throwing a fit just because your vacation is canceled." Camille transferred $100,000 into my account and leaned down to kiss my forehead. "Get yourself a watch or two. When things at the office have settled, I'll take you on a trip around the world." I looked at the bank alert confirming the transfer and nodded obediently. "Okay." After she left, I turned around and transferred the $100,000 right back to her account, along with the household expenses we'd shared over the past three years. What they didn't know was that the so-called photo of everyone working late had a calendar in the corner dated last month. And the additional credit card Camille had linked to my phone just sent me a purchase alert. The purchase wasn't made at her office. It was made at a hotel. The charge was for an underwater suite and a candlelit dinner for two.

My girlfriend, Eloise Harper, sought efficiency in everything. She could barely tolerate anything she considered a waste of time. She decided that our wedding ceremony rehearsal was a waste of time and canceled it. When she found a long line forming at City Hall for marriage registration, she spun on her heel and left at once. On Valentine’s Day, I reserved a table for the two of us at a private restaurant known only to a few people. I arrived early at her company to pick her up. But I accidentally overheard her colleagues gossiping. "Have you heard? Ms. Harper deliberately took the service elevator every day to leave work with Mr. Pierce." In the elevator hall, I was shocked to find Eloise waiting at the back of the line. She was casually discussing work with her secretary, Matthew Pierce. Later, I caught up with them on the first floor. Eloise turned around and greeted me with a displeased frown. The reproach in her voice was obvious. "Andrew, we aren't even married yet. Are you really so desperate to show up here and taint my reputation?" I choked on her groundless accusation and could only shake my head in resignation. She had forbidden me from visiting her at the office, saying she wanted to avoid gossip. Today, I had not wanted to test her patience and risk having her cancel our date as usual, so I rushed all the way to her workplace to pick her up after work. Before I could explain, Matthew put on a panicked expression and chimed in. "I forgot my laptop. I need to go back to the office to pick it up." Then, he turned to Eloise and apologized, "I'm sorry, but it seems I can't drive you home today. You should go with him. No need to wait for me." She held his shoulder, her expression visibly softened. "I'll get it for you. Just get Andrew out of here now." Finally, she walked away and joined the crowd waiting for the elevator. At that moment, realization dawned on me. If she could not even be bothered to maintain our relationship, then we should end it now.

My wife and I had kept our marriage secret for three years. Then she became a fraud-busting influencer with ten million followers, and I was the first person she exposed. On her livestream, she sobbed that I was a freeloader who beat her, bled her dry, and even forced her to entertain men over drinks for money. The internet buried me in abuse. Delivery orders I never placed and funeral wreaths piled up outside my door. Her top donor announced he was going to break my legs to get justice for her. On camera, my wife was a fragile victim. Off camera, she was texting me threats. If I did not sign the thirty-million-dollar penthouse downtown over to her, she would burn my name to the ground. She thought that owning public opinion meant owning me. What she did not know was that her top donor, the man showering her with gifts every night, was one of my security guards. And when she brought New York's richest man onto her stream, intending to expose my supposed crimes, something else happened. The richest man in New York turned toward where I was standing and called me boss.

After three years in a long-distance relationship, I secretly traveled a thousand miles to give my girlfriend a surprise. That afternoon, right outside her apartment building, I caught her playing the claw machine with her first love. The girl I had always considered the perfect, completely devoted girlfriend was gazing at him with a bright, tender smile as he manipulated the joystick. The moment the plushie dropped into the chute, she threw her arms around him, her eyes brimming with delight. I clenched my phone and dialed her number. She answered almost instantly, her voice as soft and caring as ever. "Parker? Why are you calling right now? Did you miss me?" I stared fixedly at her from barely ten feet away, my voice tight. "Where are you? What are you up to?" While cooing into the receiver to reassure me, she attentively reached over and zipped up Benedict Wooten's jacket. Her tone carried just the right mix of fatigue and apology. "I'm still at the office, working late with my team to pull the proposal together. Get some sleep, okay? As soon as this crazy rush is over, I'll fly out to see you." The line went dead. On the street side, an electronic billboard was flashing a breaking news alert. [A major hurricane will make landfall tonight. All residents are urged to seek shelter immediately...] A sudden gale swept through the street, blowing away the last remnants of my wishful thinking. It turned out that her three years of single-minded devotion were nothing more than a masterclass in time management. Candace Richards wasn't loyal. She just wanted to have her cake and eat it too.

My CEO girlfriend promised to marry me if only I handed over my billion-dollar-worth project to her first love. I agreed without hesitation. Yet on the day we were supposed to make things official, she never showed up. I called her 99 times, but she didn't pick up once. Just when I was about to give up, I saw a post from her first love on social media, featuring a picture of them holding their newly issued marriage license. [From school uniforms to wedding vows. A love that never changes.] I quietly liked the post without making a scene. Moments later, my long-lost girlfriend finally called back. "Cyrus got into a car accident trying to save me, and he lost his memory. The doctors say he needs emotional stimulation to recover. Don't worry, though. Once he gets better, we'll get married. You're the one I love most." What she didn't know was that there would be no future for us. The moment she stood me up at City Hall, the system I'd bound myself to declared my mission a failure. I had seven days left. After that, I would be completely erased from existence.

Legend had it that Shaffer Mansion was haunted. Only I knew the stories were true, because I was born with the ability to see through paranormal illusions. When a reality show moved its production crew into the mansion, the only thing anyone noticed was a little boy in overalls. He looked innocent and harmless, but he was actually a puppet controlled by the demon lurking inside the mansion. Behind that innocent face was the most dangerous presence in the entire house. The first time I'd lived through this nightmare, I'd done everything I could to protect the girls I'd grown up with. I'd warned them to stay away from the boy and throw away every gift he gave them. Instead of listening, they had thought I was jealous of the child and accused me of bullying him. Eventually, the boy had left behind a letter claiming he couldn't take my abuse anymore and threw himself from the roof. When the filming had wrapped up, all of them had walked out of Shaffer Mansion alive. But then, they had joined forces with their fans, destroyed my reputation, and eventually dragged me back to the mansion. They had pushed me from the same building and watched me fall to my death. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back in time. This time around, I was quitting the show and letting them deal with the consequences of their own choices.

Three years into the apocalypse, my girlfriend, a captain of the Spark Sanctuary, kept me stuck living in the outer quarantine belt for 1,095 days. Every time I dragged my battered body to her with an entry pass in hand, she would put on a conflicted expression. "Shane, you're my boyfriend, so I have to avoid showing favoritism. These spots need to go to the families of fallen soldiers. Just wait a little longer. You don't have special abilities, so you're just regular muscle inside." I bought her excuses completely, turning right back around to risk my life fighting through swarms of infected. It wasn't until the day I accumulated my ninth entry pass, crawling back to find her while burning up with a 104-degree fever, that I caught her handing the last spot to her ex-boyfriend. She shielded him. "Logan's healing power is humanity's greatest hope. I have to look at the big picture." She snatched the blood-stained entry pass from my hand and tossed it into the trash can. In that instant, it all clicked. Her supposed "difficulties" and "big picture" were nothing more than convenient excuses to sacrifice me whenever it suited her.

On our wedding night, my new wife casually proposed an open marriage. "I'm pregnant. From now on, I'll spend Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with Finley, and Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at home." I forced myself to steady my trembling body and looked up at her. "When did this start?" "When you introduced us. We fell in love at first sight." A faint smile played at the corners of her lips. "The moment I met him, I finally understood what real passion felt like. With you, it was just familiarity after all these years. "By then, the news of our families' marriage alliance had already gone public. I figured I'd just settle for you and make the best of it. Then I found out I was pregnant." She rested a hand over her belly, her eyes softening with unmistakable maternal tenderness. "The baby needs a father. If you stay, you'll still be my husband. That won't change. But Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays belong to him. "If you want a divorce, that's fine too. House, cars, or whatever. Name your price. I'll give you whatever compensation you want."

My fiancee’s childhood friend, Harold Herb, loved playing pranks. Once, he dyed my custom-made suit fluorescent green. He blinked innocently. “Weston, I just thought white looked boring, so I wanted to add a little color for you.” The second time, he tampered with the engagement invitations. The wedding venue was changed from a five-star hotel to a cemetery on the outskirts of town. When I caught him, he said it was all about aesthetics. The eerie, spooky vibe would help the guests beat the heat. The third time, he slipped a powerful hair-removal cream into my shower gel. A week before the wedding, almost all my hair and eyebrows had fallen out. Each time, my fiancee would comfort me, saying he just liked to joke around and meant no harm. I put up with it all because I loved her. On our wedding night, Harold brought over a stained sheet as a gift. Lana Sidney brushed it off with the same old line, telling me not to take it too seriously. The moment I saw her standing in front of Harold to protect him, I knew it was time to put an end to this relationship.

I was accompanying my mother-in-law to our family-owned hospital for a follow-up appointment. She had developed a lifelong gynecological condition from complications during my wife's birth. A muscular man passed by, recoiled in disgust, and shuffled to the other side of the aisle before shouting for a nurse. "What kind of hospital is this? You just let any filthy person sit in the waiting area? This old hag reeks. Is nobody going to do anything about it?" The nurse hurried over and recognized my mother-in-law. She held up her hands. "Sir, this patient is here for a scheduled follow-up. We can't turn her away." The man lost it. "What part of that don't you understand? Take this old hag and get out! My wife is Giselle Bedford, the CEO of Bedford Medical! You think people who sell themselves for a living can afford to cross her? "One word from me, and she'll have every last one of you blacklisted. That old hag can rot from her filthy disease, screaming in agony, and not a single doctor in this city will dare touch her!" I stood frozen. Giselle Bedford? The same woman who had texted me half an hour ago? Giselle: [Does Mom need me to send a driver for her appointment?] When did she become this man's wife?

To honor my late girlfriend's final wish, I tracked down her younger sister, Nancy Coleman, who had been missing for years, and brought her home from the slums. I enrolled her in the best school, spent hundreds of thousands on her birthday party, and even gave her my black card without a second thought. Before long, everyone in our social circle thought I spoiled Nancy rotten. At first, Nancy was cautious and reserved around me. But as time went on, she got more and more spoiled and demanding. She once made me fire an executive just because he didn't greet her properly. Another time, she made me abandon a project worth over a hundred million just so I could take her shopping. I did everything she asked. Then, a week ago, she started dating my sworn rival and demanded half of my company's shares as a congratulatory gift. For the first time, I refused. Nancy threw a fit and disappeared for two days. I wasn't concerned in the slightest. I just watched the three-day countdown on my phone. It was counting down to Nancy's graduation. It was also the final day of the promise I'd made to my late girlfriend to look after her sister.

Lynette Kensington's rules took effect on the second day of our marriage. "Your monthly spending is capped at 2,000 dollars. For any single purchase over 100 dollars, photograph the receipt and send it to me for approval. It's not that I'm cheap. I'm helping you learn how to budget. You've never had any discipline with money," she claimed. I thought she had a point. So for three years, buying a single jacket meant budgeting for half the month, and replacing a pair of contact lenses meant waiting for her approval. Then, last month, I found a supplementary card statement tucked inside the pocket of her trench coat. The cardholder was Jayden Scott, her Administrative Director. The transactions from the previous three months: A luxury menswear boutique: 17,400 dollars. A high-end annual golf membership: 6,400 dollars. A Michelin-starred restaurant: 2,800 dollars. The total amounted to more than a year of my living expenses. I carefully refolded the statement exactly as I had found it and slipped it back into the same pocket. That night, Lynette came home and found me sitting with the ledger. "How much did you spend today?" she asked, barely sparing me a glance. I didn't look up. "25 dollars. 13 dollars on groceries, and 12 dollars on utilities." She gave a satisfied hum and walked into the study. But what I wrote on the last page of the ledger wasn't a number. It was my name, my signature on a divorce agreement she hadn't seen yet.

When the bullet train tickets to Kellmore went on sale, Elaine Hartwell did what she always did and booked two, one for herself and one for Bradley Collier. She turned to me once the order went through. "Leo, did you get your ticket yet?" I froze for a moment. On the screen, her seat and Bradley's were right next to each other. By the time I checked, the only seats left on that train were in the next carriage. I stared at the seat number and almost laughed, as something inside me clicked. From weekend trips out of Portmill to college move-in day, it was always the same. The three of us traveled together, but they were always a pair, and I was always the one trailing behind. Not long after, Bradley sent a rental agreement in our group chat. The co-tenants line listed his name and Elaine's. He tagged me with a grin. [Leo, Elaine figured the dorms would make more sense for you. [You can come over to our place for dinner on weekends.] "Our place." The words pricked at my chest like something small and sharp. So even before college had started, I had already been written out of their future. Elaine messaged me privately. [Don't overthink things. [Bradley's living off campus alone and no one's looking after him. I'm just keeping an eye on him for his parents. [Don't throw a tantrum over something this small.] I stared at those last three words, then slowly opened the admissions portal. My acceptance page for Alderton University was still sitting there. I closed it and pulled up the late-enrollment page for Pennington University instead. This time, I did not pursue their train, and I did not pursue Elaine's life anymore, either.

The day my entire family attended my girlfriend's wedding to my stepbrother, I laid in the bathtub and contemplated ending my life there and then. Just as the cold blade touched my wrist, my phone suddenly began ringing nonstop. It was a scheduled call my late mother had left for me. "Happy birthday, Casper!" After a moment of silence, I climbed out of the bathtub, got dressed, and secretly left the country. In the five years I was gone, I changed my name and phone number to cut off all ties with my home country. Everyone thought I was dead. They believed I had died on the day my girlfriend married my stepbrother. For five whole years, fresh red roses had been laid at my grave every single day. Five years later, I returned home to visit my mother's grave. At the floral boutique outside the cemetery, I happened to run into my ex-girlfriend, who had come to buy red roses. After a moment of shock and awkwardness, we finally greeted each other. "It's been a long time." I smiled at her politely. She stared at me without looking away. The red roses in her hand pricked her fingers until they bled. Just as we were about to part, she suddenly asked, "Why didn't you come looking for me in the past five years?" I smiled but didn't answer. After all, we weren't a couple anymore. She had married my father's illegitimate son, and I had a three-year-old child of my own. There was no going back.

On the morning we were supposed to leave for our elopement trip to the stunning Calistia Mountains, my girlfriend, Jeanie Portman, was nowhere to be found. Worried something had happened to her, I drove to her family's house to look for her, only to find the whole neighborhood strung with wedding banners and streamers. A big outdoor reception was underway, the tables loaded with food. Jeanie stood there in a white gown, leaning into my foster brother's arms as she poured him a toast. Relatives showered the two of them with compliments, calling them a perfect match, while my father sat at the head table, grinning so wide he could barely close his mouth. I nearly lost it and started toward them, but my mother yanked me into a corner before I could get there. "What's gotten into you, making a scene like this? His birth parents died saving your father and me. Handing Jeanie over to him is the least we can do to pay that debt back." My voice shook as I demanded to know why no one had told me sooner. My mother just gave me a flat, dismissive look. "Because you're a teacher, and you've got too sharp a tongue for your own good. If we'd told you ahead of time, you'd have blabbed it to the whole world, and then how were the two of them supposed to have a proper wedding? "That's enough. Don't make a scene. "You've got a stable job. You won't have any trouble finding someone else. Don't ruin our family peace over some woman." I looked past my mother, toward the red carpet where Jeanie and my foster brother stood glowing with happiness, then at the relatives cheering beside them. Something inside me went hollow.

On day forty-three of the end of the world, my fiancée, Selena Reed, injected me with poison herself and left me outside the shelter. She was wearing my hazmat suit, curled against Damian Hale, the man I had trusted like a brother. Damian took my storeroom keys and smiled down at me. "You had everything handed to you from the day you were born. Too bad you were never any good at reading people." Fallout rained down. Mutant beasts closed in through the black rain. I watched helplessly as they shut the iron door and survived on the supplies I had gathered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back seven days before global nuclear war broke out. This time around, Damian still played the concerned friend, offering $2.4 billion for my stake in the group, a stake worth $3.8 billion. Selena still talked to me sweetly over the phone about selling the company and taking her around the world. They thought I did not know that the two of them had betrayed me long ago, and that together they had killed my father. I did not call them on it. I only signed my name on the contract. Seven days later, the company, the stock, and the mansions would all be worthless. Only cash could still buy food, medicine, weapons, and a fortress. They took the shares and started planning the wedding of the century, waiting to watch me go broke. I used their money to clear out warehouses and turn a hilltop estate into a nuclear-proof fortress. On the night of the wedding, the city's elite stood outside my door and laughed at me for hoarding canned food. A second later, a strategic alert tore through the night, and the first warhead detonated high above the city. Selena threw herself at the closing steel gate, covered in blood. "Noah, save me—" I watched her through the blast glass. This time, I am your god!

Ten years ago, a wildfire along Interstate 5 just outside Portland, Oregon, rewrote everyone's fate. In that disaster, my parents died in the flames after risking their lives to pull young Claire Hart from the back seat of a trapped car. After that, Claire's parents, James and Victoria Hart, took me in when I had no one, raised me, and covered every dollar of my tuition and living costs. Everyone assumed that Claire's life and mine were already bound together, that we would go to college together, grow up side by side, get engaged, and eventually marry. Then, late one night after graduation, I came across a Reddit post written by Claire ten years in the future. One line cut straight through me: "If I could choose my life all over again, the first thing I'd give up would be the person my parents forced on me." She said my existence was a constant reminder that she had gotten two people killed, and a constant reminder that she would spend her whole life paying off a debt. Later, she fell in love with Logan, my best friend. At our engagement party, she controlled the financial guarantee for my grandmother's surgery and threatened to withdraw it unless I ended the engagement. I took off the ring and begged her not to take away the money keeping my grandmother alive, but she turned away and cut every tie between us. My grandmother's heart condition needed long-term treatment and the bills were enormous. I had never imagined that ten years from now I would sink that low, or that the two of us would come to hate each other. I reopened the Leiden University acceptance letter I had set aside for so long. A full scholarship. An engineering program that suited me perfectly. The funding was enough for my grandmother and me to leave the country and start over. This time, I would not hold myself hostage in the name of gratitude or keep living as the burden she was desperate to escape. Some bonds are debts from the moment they are formed. Leaving was the only way to set us free

The day I get my sight back just happens to be my birthday. I plan to drop the good news on my wife, Mya Murray, during the birthday party she is throwing for me. Instead, I end up discovering a "surprise" she prepared for me first. Wrapped in a layer of gauze, my eyes are useless as Mya carefully takes my hand, leading me into the second-floor banquet hall. She whispers thoughtfully in my ear. "Honey, I know how much you love surprises, so I had a batch of roses flown in straight from overseas to build you a flower bridge and hired your favorite live band. "Every business titan and prominent media outlet in Hartwell is right here in this room to celebrate you. Do you like it?" She stands on tiptoe to press a kiss against my cheek. "Don't worry. I promised you that even if you never see again, you'll still get everything you deserve." She has no idea that my vision is back and that I can see every single thing in the room as clear as day.

After begging my dad for the 100th time to let me come back home for school, he finally gave in. Before the semester started, he warned me repeatedly. “There is an underground clique around campus. Every year, they single out one freshman who attracts too much attention and make that person their punching bag. “They are careful about covering their tracks. We’ve looked into them for a long time and still have nothing solid. Keep your head down and watch your back.” I nodded, then I remembered that I had recently joined the incoming-freshman group chat. I opened it and intended to ask if anyone knew anything about the clique, only to discover that someone had tagged me. [Damn, we found our first poser already? @Henry] I frowned and tapped on the guy’s profile. The username was “PoserPolice.” The guy was one of the most active people in the group chat. [Henry? Of course the poser has some old-money-sounding name.] The completely unprovoked hostility made my face darken. [My parents gave me that name. What’s your problem?] He ignored my reply and posted a photo in the chat. [Well, well… Nice flex, man. Which influencer did you steal this pic from?] It was just a random photo he had dug up from my social media, except he had circled the Porsche barely visible in one corner. [Steals a luxury-car pic, then tries to act all low-key about it. Dude, you aren’t fooling anyone.] By the end of the day, every freshman in the group knew who I was.