เรื่องสั้นแนว Plot Twists Rebirth และนิยาย Bias

Xena Xander returned to the past and found herself back in 1989. That year, she was thirty. Her husband, Julian Zane, was thirty-five. He had just become the youngest academician at the National Academy of Sciences. He was a national talent, and his future looked exceptionally promising. They had a pair of ten-year-old twins. Everyone said she was lucky. She was so lucky to have a good husband and sweet children. But the first thing she did after returning to the past was consult a lawyer and prepare two divorce agreements. She called Julian’s office. When the assistant realized it was her, the response was brief. “Xena, Professor Zane is busy. He doesn’t have time.” She went to the research institute to look for him, but the guard stopped her at the entrance. “Sorry, Professor Zane is unavailable right now.” After three days, she took the divorce agreement and went to see Julian’s first love. She placed the agreement in front of Moon Jensen and calmly said, “Please have Julian sign the divorce agreement. From now on, he and the two children belong to you.”

At the factory, my arm is pulled into a machine. After the surgery, the factory supervisor tells me it's my fault. Because of my arm, the machine has to be shut down for repairs, and every day of downtime will cost them millions. "Someone has to take responsibility for this, Zachary," the supervisor tells me. "It wouldn't make sense to demand millions from you, so just compensate us with 300,000—that's all." Under their threats—and my family's desperate begging—I sign the IOU for 300,000. With one arm gone, I can no longer find a job. All I can do is collect trash to repay the debt. While picking up bottles outside a restaurant one day, I hear the factory supervisor laughing and bragging inside. "Actually, that one-armed guy didn't violate any rules. In fact, the HQ gave three million dollars in compensation. My house and car? All bought with that money," he said. "I mean, who'd ever find out? With that debt hanging over him, he's probably already run off somewhere." Shaken by the news, I stagger onto the street. A truck roars out of nowhere, slamming into me and throwing me 16 feet across the road. When I open my eyes again, I had returned to the day I lost my arm.

The night Gloria Leach—my husband's ex—died in the rain, he floored it and drove us off a cliff. That's when it clicked. Evan Patterson had always hated me for getting between him and Gloria. Then I woke up, I was back on the wedding day. This time, he didn't even pause. Ditched the rings. Ran straight to her outside the church. I didn't cry. Didn't make a scene. I just called it off. While they turned their reunion into a show, I said yes to someone else. In this life, Evan and I were strangers. Until eight years later. An auction. I placed a no-cap bid on the final item—sapphire cufflinks. Won. I was leaving when Evan stepped in front of me, scowling. "Robyn, stop embarrassing yourself. Even if you bought every cufflink on earth for me, I still wouldn't love you. Gloria's the only one in my heart." I didn't even look at him. Just reached for the little girl beside me. "Sweetheart, say hi to the gentleman." He saw her face—mine, copied clean. His eyes went red, and his grip snapped around my wrist. "She's our daughter?"

I had funded Tilly Jenkins for five years—and spent those same five years chasing after her. Just when I thought I had finally won her heart—when I believed she was ready to spend her life with me—I discovered the truth: the one she had loved all along was her childhood sweetheart, the boy who had grown up by her side. I, on the other hand, to her, was nothing more than a privileged elite who used money to grind her pride into the dirt. A few years into our marriage, she secretly transferred my assets away—and even had a child with that childhood sweetheart of hers. In the end, I died filled with resentment, trapped in a raging fire. The flames reflected the sight of the three of them together, smiling like a perfect family, while I cried myself to death in despair. After I was reborn, Tilly's childhood sweetheart shoved me hard, sneering with open contempt. "What do you take us for? Toys for rich people like you?!" I slipped my bank card back into my pocket at once. "Sorry, having money doesn't mean I'm brain-dead. I'm not interested in trashy toys like that."

My little sister Willa? Always played the noble princess—even during the freaking apocalypse. She was pregnant and still trying to look like some graceful queen. I told her to end it. Safer that way. She slapped me. "Shut up. How can you be so heartless?" Meanwhile, I skipped meals so she and her rescue-pet gang could eat. When I collapsed from hunger, she snorted. "Drama queen. Think of it as a free weight-loss plan." I dragged her to the base, the safe zone, and nearly died doing it. She snatched the last of my rations. "The baby and I are good. Give the rest away." I died from my injuries—frozen, starving, forgotten. Willa? She got crowned a saint. Even landed the baby daddy—the Deputy Governor—and kicked off her perfect little fairytale. Then I woke up. Back to the moment she asked me to swear I'd protect her and the baby. This time, I laughed in her face. "Die for all I care."

My older sister was always kind-hearted, while I was born a natural troublemaker. When the intense heatwave struck, our family stocked up on supplies and stayed indoors. My sister saw a little boy, who seemed about seven or eight years old, crying and asking for help. She decided to take him in. “We’ve plenty of supplies anyway. One more person won’t make much difference. Besides, he’s just a child.” I warned her that the boy looked oddly mature and might not be as innocent as he seemed. I suggested we observe him a bit longer. She said I was a cold-hearted troublemaker by nature. Then, she went and let him in anyway. Not just that, but she also convinced our mother to force me to share a room with the boy. That night, the scheming “little boy” secretly climbed into my bed. I was brutally assaulted. Yet my sister told me to let bygones be bygones and marry him. To force me to obey, she locked me out on the balcony at over 140 °F. Enraged, I set a fire and killed everyone. When I opened my eyes again and saw my sister safe and unharmed, I smiled. This time, I would show them what a troublemaker really was.

During a family dinner, I, Ingrid Sutherland, bring up divorce. My husband, Samuel Ziegler, lets out a cold laugh in exasperation. "Are you mad just because I peeled a banana for Whitney two days ago? I can't believe you're still throwing a tantrum over that now! She's my sister-in-law. What's wrong if I show her a little bit more care?" He did the same thing in my past life. Ever since his older brother, Charles Ziegler, got seriously hurt, Samuel always put me last and prioritized taking care of the supposedly weaker Whitney Lovette. Whenever I voiced my dissatisfaction, he would criticize me while standing on an irrefutable moral high ground. He would say, "Why can't you be more understanding and cut Whitney some slack?" When it was Whitney's birthday, she proposed going on a skiing trip. But then, an avalanche hit us. Samuel protected her the whole time and led her down the mountain. However, he left me to die in the avalanche. It was then I realized that Whitney was not just his sister-in-law, but also the one he loved. When I remain silent, Samuel chuckles derisively. "You'd better not regret it." It's like he's sure I'm just throwing a tantrum. In one fluid movement, he glides a pen across the bottom of the page, confident and composed. But this time, I'm really giving up on him for good.

Due to an accident, my wife and I lost our lives in a massive fire. When we open our eyes again, we find ourselves back on the day we registered our marriage. In our last life, everyone thought we were the perfect couple. Little did they know that my wife, Queenie Lloyd, refused to consummate our marriage. Right before my death, I found out that I was nothing but a replacement for her first love. Queenie had intended to remain chaste for him for the rest of her life. After being reborn, neither of us speaks of the past. By an unspoken agreement, we get a divorce that very day and go on to live separate lives. Eight years later, she attends an industry summit holding her childhood sweetheart's arm. She's now a rising star in the business world. I am dressed in plain clothes. When she notices me, she walks over with a champagne glass in hand. "Mr. Lawrence! Even if you still have feelings for me, you didn't have to disguise yourself as a waiter just to approach me. Are you still trying to convince me to get back together with you?" she sneers. I ignore her and smile as I wave at someone nearby. My son runs over to me and tugs on the corner of my shirt. "Mommy said she's tired, Daddy. She wants to know when you're coming to pick us up," he tells me. Upon hearing this, Queenie's face stiffens immediately, and she almost drops her wine glass.

I stand before the judges at the jewelry design competition and admit to plagiarism. Then, I announce my withdrawal from the contest, along with my resignation as Design Director of Fairchild Group. My fiance, Caleb Fairchild, shoots daggers at me. "If you walk away from this competition, our engagement is off!" My father follows up by slapping me across the face. "First, you plagiarize your own sister, and now you're breaking off your engagement with the Fairchilds? Are you trying to ruin our family?" "Oh, I'm not just calling off my engagement. I'm also cutting off my ties with you," I respond apathetically. I make this decision because I have been given a second life. In my previous life, my stepsister and I competed in this contest. First place earns the title of the nation's top jewelry designer and 50 million dollars from Fairchild Group. However, round after round, her designs are exactly the same as mine, and she submits them before I do. The judging panel gives me a pass because of Caleb and lets me advance to the finals, but not without a warning to never plagiarize again. I refuse to believe it. I switch to a brand-new computer, lock myself in my room, and pour everything into a new design. Yet, when the final designs appear on the big screen, history repeats itself. In the end, my sister takes first place and walks away with everything that should have been mine. The reputation I painstakingly built is ruined, and my name is dragged through the mud online. My parents are ashamed of me. They knock me out and sell me off to the countryside to marry an old man. Ultimately, I die after endless abuse. When I open my eyes again, I'm back at the semifinals. Everyone is pointing at me as they stare at the two identical designs.

During my legal aid work, I run into a pitiful village girl. Her brother is abusing her, and she has nearly died from his fist. As a lawyer, I can't stand aside and do nothing. So, I help her. After she wins the case, I help her get a job as a janitor at my law firm. A few days later, she becomes pregnant and disappears. I assume she has found a family. However, she returns with a baby and accuses me of raping her. Then, she demands I compensate her. I believe she is just spouting nonsense. But the paternity test comes, and it states that I am the baby's biological father. From that moment on, I become a pariah. I am labeled a disgrace and treated as the scum of the Earth. My girlfriend breaks up with me. Meanwhile, my parents can't bear the shame and commit suicide. Then, a self-righteous fool pushes me off an 18-story building. Even as I die, I still can't understand how she became pregnant with my child. Using her identity as the baby's mother, she inherits all of my assets upon my and my parents' deaths. She then goes on to live the life of a wealthy socialite. When I open my eyes, I am back at the moment I see her getting beaten by her brother.

On our wedding day, my wife's first love, Hank Scott, threatened to slit his wrists. She ignored him and went through with the ceremony anyway, until news arrived that he was dead, his blood staining the ground. From that moment on, Shirley Lowell withdrew into a convent, becoming the cold, distant woman everyone knew. In the name of atonement, she forced me to copy the Bible a thousand times and kneel in endless prayer, grinding me down until I was crippled. Bound to a wheelchair, I asked her for a divorce. She refused, saying we owed Hank a debt and had to atone for it together. She used my family to threaten me, keeping me by her side and tormenting me for the rest of my life. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on our wedding day. This time, I chose to push her toward Hank. I would become the first love in her heart, the one who led her onto the path of devout faith.

I am the only son of the richest man in Fairmont. Before my coming-of-age, my mother selects nine girls for me, one of whom I am to marry when I turn 18. I choose Ruth Lonsdale, the girl who had grown up by my side since we were kids. But on our wedding day, Ruth secretly leaks my whereabouts to kidnappers and takes every single bodyguard my mother had assigned to protect me. After I am abducted, I call her and beg for help, but she answers with a cold laugh, "You're still acting? You had a bunch of thugs go after Jack, and I haven't gotten even with you for that yet! Anyway, I only took your bodyguards to protect him and make him feel safe. Don't make such a big deal out of it." She then hangs up. Enraged, the kidnappers stab me repeatedly before throwing my body from the rooftop. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the day I'm supposed to choose my bride. This time, I didn't even glance at Ruth's photo. I point to the most ordinary-looking girl of them all and say, "I choose her."

In my previous life, my three sons told me they wanted to set up a Family Bond Fund for me. Each of them would deposit three thousand dollars every month. I cried with gratitude, truly believing that decades of sacrifice had finally paid off. One of them even said, "Mom, you've given us so much. It's our turn to take care of you now." However, eight years later, I was told I have uremia. That was when I discover that the bank card, which supposedly held the fund, couldn't even cover the dialysis deposit. Soon after, my eldest son video-called me. He said he wanted to buy a better apartment in a good school district. He was short of 150 thousand dollars for the down payment and asked if I could lend it to him first. My second son came to the hospital with his wife and daughter. He didn't ask about my condition at all. Instead, he kept showing off his daughter's piano competition trophy, hinting that he needed 50 thousand dollars to enroll her in a prestigious international piano program. My youngest son was even more straightforward. He said he had his eye on a limited-edition pair of sneakers and wanted me to pay 30 thousand dollars for them as a birthday gift. The moment they realized the bank account didn't have enough money, their faces fell. "We each put in three thousand dollars every month. Over eight years, that's at least eight hundred thousand dollars. Mom, are you hiding the money from us?" To force me to reveal my savings, they took turns pressuring me, switching between sweet talk and threats. They even told relatives that I had dementia and had been scammed out of my money. Unable to take it anymore, I yanked out my IV late one night and walked out of the hospital, only to be hit by a car, dying instantly. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day of my hospital checkup.

Clara Black, a wealthy heiress from Glenford, openly declares that she only dates men for a month at a time and never gets emotionally involved. Men eager to climb the social ladder line up across the city, hoping for a chance. After all, when she is in a good mood, she rewards them with a villa. When she isn't, she still gives them millions of dollars when the relationship ends. People in Glenford laugh at me, calling me the most humiliated live-in husband they've ever seen. They're convinced that I'll endure it for the rest of my life. That is until Clara brings home a college student named Leonard Frost. Leonard looks ordinary, yet he becomes the first man to break her one-month dating rule. Clara then gives me two options. One option is to accept an open marriage and let Leonard have equal footing with me. The other is divorce, with half of her assets given to me and a clean break afterward. Her close friends watch from the sidelines, certain that I'll keep enduring everything for the sake of money. Yet I choose the second option without hesitation. In my previous life, I chose to endure, only to have Leonard take advantage of me even more. He forbade Clara from touching me and refused to let her bear my child. In my old age, I could only look on with envy as Leonard enjoyed a household full of descendants. Even after Clara passed away, she didn't mention me in her will at all. Every part of her estate fell into Leonard's control. I kept the title of Clara's husband, yet I lived my entire life completely alone. Now that I have been reborn, everything is clear to me. I will take the money and walk away, severing all ties with her for good.

When the factory director’s son dragged my drunk fiancee into the supply warehouse, I pretended as if I did not see them. I just turned around and walked away. In the past, I had ruined my own future by rushing in and beating the factory director’s son up. I was even framed for stealing the supplies from the warehouse. When the warehouse keeper came over with the police officers, my fiancee deliberately ripped her own clothes. She cried and said that she came with the director to stop me from committing the crime, but I beat her up and even defiled her. Everyone despised me, and I became a criminal. My fiancee’s parents could not bear the rumors, and they forced me to marry her. But that marriage was only the start of a hellish life. She lived like a queen at home, yet she told everyone I was starving her. When she got pregnant, she deliberately pushed her belly against the corner of the table. Then, she stood in the courtyard and cried. She claimed I had abused her, and I wanted to kill my own baby. My parents felt bad for me, so they borrowed money from everyone they knew to get her a job. But when she landed on the job, she framed my father for stealing the steel from the factory. Half a year after my father was imprisoned, he passed away in jail due to an illness. My mother could not bear the stress and fell severely ill. She also passed away soon after. When I was pinned under the collapsed brick wall at the construction site, she did not call for help. Instead, she picked up a brick and smashed it into my head. “If you were not so nosy, Jeremy and I’d have been together already. We wouldn’t have wasted so much time!” My head bled, and I was buried beneath a pile of rubble. When I opened my eyes again, I was at the entrance of the supply warehouse. From inside, I heard my fiancee’s soft, teasing murmurs.

The male housekeeper turned our entire home upside down. Every woman in the house—my mother, my sister—fell completely under his spell. They gave him everything, even the business my dad had built from the ground up. The betrayal went deeper. My own girlfriend turned on me, stabbing me in the back to win his favor. Their schemes finally went too far. They arranged a "car accident" that took my dad's life and mine. But fate had other plans. We were reborn.

When my wife, Melanie Sanders, and I were on our way to undergo IVF treatment, we ended up losing our lives in a car crash. Then, we both get reborn at the same time. She complains to me, "I want nothing more than to become a mother! It's a shame that you can't impregnate me at all!" Hence, she gets married to a wealthy scion. Having lost my hope in Melanie, I decide to let her go. After that, I marry another woman and build a family with her. Soon, we lead a happy and comfortable life together. That is, until I end up meeting Melanie again in the future. As she lays her gaze on my daughter, she comments disdainfully, "Oh? So, you're a stepfather now! I suppose only an impoverished loser like you deserves to raise children who aren't of your own blood!" I gaze back at Melanie's daughter as well, a cold smirk curling on my lips. "I suppose the rich really know how to enjoy themselves. After all, your daughter isn't of your own blood, either." After that, I lead my daughter away while laughing joyously.

Gilbert Pierce, my wife's male trainee, bragged that he could disarm a bomb just by relying on his senses and with his eyes closed. However, he misjudged it and triggered the bomb's secondary detonation sequence. I stepped in at the last second and used the most dangerous method available, liquid nitrogen flash cooling, to save the entire building. Gilbert was pulled off frontline duty and placed on suspension for review. My wife, Jasmine Clem, tried to speak up for him, but I stopped her cold. "If you defend him now, you won't save him. You'll just get dragged down and suspended alongside him." Unable to handle the pressure, Gilbert blew himself up in an accident. In his suicide note, he accused Jasmine of choosing self-preservation when he needed her most. Jasmine said nothing. She only locked that letter away in her study. Years later, Jasmine became a nationally renowned bomb disposal expert. During a terrorist attack, I was captured and strapped with a timed explosive. Jasmine came to the scene personally to defuse it, but right in front of me, she repeated the exact same mistake her trainee had made years ago. She watched the countdown and smiled lightly at me. "See? He was just nervous back then. If I had encouraged him, he'd be a hero now." The bomb detonated, and I was blown apart. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the moment she was about to defend Gilbert. She didn't know that inside that building sat the nation's most classified core servers.

My best friend, Sydney Cox, is a troublemaker by nature. She thinks everyone around her owes her a good life. During summer break, she insisted on working in a factory. I was worried that she might get tricked, so I let her work in my family's factory out of the kindness of my own heart. In fact, I even gave her the easiest position with the lightest work. But I didn't expect her to think that her salary was lower than that of the veteran employees in the factory, leading to her setting fire to my neighborhood. The blaze was far too strong. Even though the firefighters came as soon as possible, my family and I still ended up dying in the fire. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day before Sydney's first day in a factory.

During the heatwave apocalypse, I didn't die due to the heat, nor did I die in a conflict. My younger sister, Amber Carter, has a "heart of gold" by nature. She couldn't bear to see the people suffering in the apocalypse, so she gave away all the food in our cellar. After we ran out of food, Amber forced me to go look for food outside in the heat. That was how I died—from the heat outside. In this lifetime, I'm going to enjoy my ice-cold watermelon while watching Amber dig her grave with her own hands.