Plot Twists Rebirth Short Stories & Independence Novels

My husband, Julian Harlow, has died, leaving behind a five-million-dollar debt. I decide to inherit his debt right away. However, my best friend, Evangeline Frost, goes crazy from worry because of my decision. In my previous life, Evangeline had advised me to not inherit Julian's debt because he didn't have any assets. So, I signed the agreement to give up on inheriting his assets and declare that I had nothing to do with Julian in order to escape from the debt. But the debtors kept haunting me. They even kidnapped my son, Shawn Harlow, just to force me to pay the debt. The debtors were extremely violent and ruthless. On top of that, they kept using Shawn's safety as leverage over me. Every time they forced me to pay the debt, I felt as though I was being tormented slowly yet painfully. In just 24 hours, I asked all of my relatives for help, but I was only able to gather 100 thousand dollars. In the end, Shawn never escaped from his fate. I was sold to Northreach by the cruel debtors in order for the debt to be cleared. But that was when Evangeline claimed that her own son had finally returned to his roots, thus successfully inheriting the assets of a billionaire. I finally found out that said billionaire was actually my dead husband when I watched the news on the TV. Only then did realization dawn on me. Julian was pretending to be poor this whole time. It turned out that Evangeline's son was actually his illegitimate child. The assets that I had given up all went to Evangeline and her son in the end. Filled with resentment, I tried to escape back to the country in order to settle the score with Evangeline, only to die to the electric fence surrounding the slave camp in Northreach. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Evangeline tells me to give up on the assets.

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.”

Before the SATs, everyone had filled in their dream colleges they'd like to apply to. Now that the results were out, my boyfriend, Sheldon Miller, and many of my classmates had successfully gotten into Astraeus University, which happens to be their dream university. In order to celebrate the success, Sheldon's childhood friend, Winnie Frost, decided to invite Sheldon and the classmates over to the tattoo parlor her family ran for celebratory tattoos. I grabbed Sheldon's hand and reminded him that students in aviation majors weren't allowed to have tattoos of their own, only to get slapped by him instead. The classmates around me even started mocking me relentlessly. "Just how shameless are you, Cassandra? Sheldon and Winnie are the actual childhood friends here! You don't want him to get a tattoo at her family's parlor out of jealousy, right?" I was so pissed that I could feel a headache coming. For the sake of Sheldon's future, I forcibly dragged him away. But what I didn't expect was that Winnie would secretly carry two barrels of gas to my residence. Just like that, she set my residence ablaze. That fire ended up killing my parents and me. Sheldon and our classmates even forged Winnie's alibi just so they could wash her off the police's suspicion. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Sheldon is about to walk into Winnie's tattoo parlor. Sheldon shakes my hand off ruthlessly and begins berating me angrily. "Aren't you just being jealous because Winnie and I are close to each other? I'll have you know that not only do I want to get a tattoo with Winnie, but I also want to have her name tattooed on my body!" This time, I just flash a wide smile at him. "Go on, then. You'd better have her name tattooed on an obvious spot."

After my parents get divorced, my twin brother, Archer Sullivan, chooses one parent to live with. I choose to be with Mom. After the divorce, Mom's mood is at an all-time low. She gambles away all of the money we have, and she begins bringing various men home the moment she runs out of money. I have to move into a dark and damp apartment with Mom afterward. Lewd sounds keep drifting from her room every now and then. Every day, I have to secretly take on part-time work in order to earn my living expenses, on top of going to school. Life is very harsh and bitter for me. That is, until Archer, whom I haven't kept in touch with for a very long time, sends me a link to a streaming website. "Tap on the link, Adam. It's a surprise for you." I tap on the link, only to realize that the livestream that's on top of the trending list features… me? It's a livestream with a split-screen function. One screen shows me finishing my homework under the dim light in a cheap apartment. The other screen shows my parents cuddling with Archer happily while seated on a luxurious couch in a villa. "Let's see what sort of differences there will be between a pair of twins that are raised differently till they're 18 years old!" "I suppose the older twin doesn't realize that his parents never got divorced, and that his family is actually very rich! Both parents are still living happily together. Even his younger brother is living a great life." "That poor twin, though! He's living a very difficult life without three hot meals a day! Isn't this considered abuse?" "Well, that older twin is more understanding and obedient, isn't he? That's why his parents chose to make him suffer in life."

In my last life, I was kidnapped alongside the fake heiress, Lilith Howe, at the same time. My father, the richest man in the country, claimed he had to prove his impartiality. Without a second thought, he told the police to rescue Lilith first and refused to pay a ransom for me. In front of the cameras, he declared with solemn conviction, "A daughter of the Howes must have backbone. We will never give in to criminals!" Lilith returned without a single scratch, and the internet crowned her a miracle girl. Meanwhile, I was killed by the kidnappers. There was barely anything left of me to bury. As my soul hovered above the scene, I watched my brother sneer at what little remained. "Good," he said. "At least she won't come back and be an eyesore to Lilith. We'll finally have some peace in the house." When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment the kidnappers called with their demands. A knife was pressed against my throat. On the other end of the line, my father's voice was just as cold, just as absolute. "I'm not choosing. My money belongs to charity. If she's a Howe, she should be ready to sacrifice for the family." I laughed. If he was willing to destroy his own flesh and blood for the sake of so-called honor, then this time, I would grant them a reunion in hell!

I died giving birth. I gave George Norris ten children in seven years and died with my last child during childbirth. Everyone said I was unlucky, but no one knew that I saw the comments on the screen as I was dying. [The cannon fodder is pretty pitiful. Now the female lead gets ten healthy babies for free.] [The female lead is so clever. She likes children but doesn't want to give birth to any for the male lead, so she added fertility pills in the cannon fodder's food.] [Tsk, tsk, tsk, the cannon fodder probably won't even know she gave birth to the male lead and female lead's children.] The comments made me so angry that I dropped dead right then and there. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back, right after I had married George. [Tsk, the female lead is so ruthless; she added three fertility pills to the chicken soup.] [Is the female lead not afraid that the cannon fodder will give birth to triplets and die on the operating table?] Watching the chicken soup Cheryl York handed me, I grinned, grabbed her mouth, and poured the soup down her throat. If she liked having children so much, she could have as many as she wanted!

In my previous life, my sister, Clarissa Smith, and I were adopted at the same time. She chose the Newmans, a prestigious family of scientists, leaving me with an impoverished divorcee. But later on, the Newmans kicked her out, and her reputation was completely ruined. Meanwhile, I'd married rich and had tens of millions of dollars from the government's relocation compensation package. Clarissa couldn't accept how differently our lives turned out, so she stabbed me to death. When my eyes open once more, I find myself alive again. I've gone back in time to the day Clarissa and I were adopted. To my surprise, I can hear her thoughts. [This time, I'm going to be the one who gets rich overnight!] As it turns out, she has been reborn as well. Well, this time around, she can be the one who gets to endure the torment instead.

After ten years studying interior design overseas, I came back to my hometown to do work that mattered to the people who raised me. I offered the full package, from site survey to soft furnishings. The materials were chosen by hand. The price was fair to the bone. The town had just gone through a redevelopment. Everyone was getting new units. With the new family policy, every family wanted a third bedroom too. My business was good. Customers from the next county were driving in. Then a girl just back from a city college kicked open my studio with her phone on a livestream and her neighbors at her shoulder. "This is the dishonest one. Look at her. She has been ripping the village off." "In the city, an eighty-square-meter unit can be done for twenty thousand dollars. She is charging eighty." "That's a sixty-thousand-dollar margin. Sixty thousand. Right out of our pockets." The village fell in line behind her. They demanded the difference back. When I refused, they smashed my studio. They beat me into a coma. The pile-on online killed me. When I opened my eyes again, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I would refund every single one of them. And then I would tear out every single thing I had installed. Let's see what twenty thousand dollars actually buys you.

The Sutton heir was using a wheel of fortune to pick a wife. In my last life, the wheel landed on me. On my wedding day, the woman he had loved his whole life threw herself off a cliff into the sea. That was when I learned. Fifteen years of him chasing me had been about getting her to look back at him. There were thirty-six other names on that wheel. All of them were there to push her into a corner. After she went, he came apart. "I only wanted to make you jealous. Why would you leave me like this?" He blamed all of it on me. He took apart what was left of my body with his own hands. In my last minutes I saw her come back, untouched, and tell him it had only been a test. They held each other and kissed. I went into a jar nobody noticed. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the day of the wheel.

When my fiancé slept with my sister, Lily, I wasn’t angry. In fact, I even gave them my blessing. In our previous life, Lily and I got married on the same day. While I married a college graduate, she married the richest man in town. After graduation, my husband worked for the government and steadily rose to the top. Her husband, however, divorced her after becoming the richest man in the country and married someone else. Lily remarried a blue-collar worker, but when layoffs hit, he forced her to sell herself to support the family. She contracted a disease. Then, when I went to visit her, she poisoned me out of jealousy. When I opened my eyes again, we were back on the day of our weddings. Lily thought that by choosing a different man this time, she could change her fate. In the end, she ended up worse off than before.

My mother was the president of a listed corporation, she was both rich and powerful. More importantly, she loved me more than anything in the world. Meanwhile, my father was a man who cheated on her. When he found out his mistress was pregnant with a girl, he beat her until she miscarried and ended up in prison. So when the judge publicly asked me to choose between my mother and my father, everyone assumed the custody battle was just a formality. That was until I walked past my mother's trembling, outstretched hand and firmly chose my father instead. Everyone was shocked into speechlessness. In my previous life, I had chosen my mother, the one who spoiled me rotten. She was the type to buy the whole bakery just because I casually mentioned I wanted their cake. When I complained it was too sunny, she immediately arranged for four helicopters to put up a sunshade cloth and shade me. She even deposited a hundred thousand dollars on my school meal card because she was worried I wasn't eating well. Even though she spoiled me like a true princess and paved the way for me through life, I don't want anything to do with her in this life.

The Fletcher family, known as the most prestigious and wealthiest family in Baymouth, has hosted a musical banquet. That event is actually a cover-up for blind dates between the rich and the elite. My younger sister, Evelyn Burch, and I are on the guest list. The banquet is filled with strict rules. Every socialite is required to wear a mask before they take turns entering the banquet hall just to put on a performance. In my previous life, Evelyn couldn't hold her jealousy back simply because I had stayed in the banquet hall for almost 20 minutes. Right after I came out, she worked with a music professor and accused me of plagiarizing her musical scores. I couldn't even defend myself when I saw two copies of the identical music scores. My parents refused to listen to my explanation. They were quick to pin the blame on me just so they could protect Evelyn's innocence. Heck, they even admitted me into a mental asylum by force and allow the staff to torture me there. I finally managed to escape, only to die in a car accident that was staged by Evelyn. Only when I took my last breath did I find out that the blood worthed even less than one of Evelyn's lies. When I open my eyes again, I realize that I've gotten reborn. So, I start playing games on my phone when it's my turn to perform on the stage. This time, I want to see how Evelyn can accuse me for cheating when I never even get to hold a musical instrument in this lifetime.

My best friend, Elise Moore, comes across a reel that shows someone being able to see the answers for the Math test during the SAT exam after ingesting poisonous mushrooms. So, she buys a bunch of poisonous mushrooms at a high price before using them as ingredients for a mushroom stew. I advise Elise to not eat those mushrooms, for she will get poisoned instead. Hence, Elise dumps those mushrooms out of fear. But after the exam is over, a classmate claims that he's able to see the answers during the math exam after getting poisoned by the mushrooms. He's confident that he'll ace his exam. When the results are out, it appears that the classmate is eligible to apply for any prestigious college out there. Meanwhile, Elise's results indicate that she's one mark away from getting into the threshold that qualifies her for prestigious colleges. Later on, Elise stabs me 18 times in a row at my graduation party. "You filthy loser! If not for your meddling, I'd be the one qualified for prestigious colleges!" When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Elise brags about the poisonous mushrooms benefitting the consumers at the SAT exam. "Once I eat the poisonous mushrooms, I'll be able to see the math answers during the exam! Do you think I should try the mushrooms out?"

My father was certain that the mother and daughter my husband brought back from Southern River were the daughter and granddaughter of an impeached official. As such, he locked them up. Afton Springfield, my husband, begged for my father’s mercy for seven days and nights outside the palace. This caused my father to fly into a rage. He wanted to get us divorced and execute Afton. To appease my father, I had begged him to release the mother and daughter as well in the previous timeline, even though I was heavily pregnant. Feeling resigned, my father sent the mother—Melinda—and daughter to the army as soldier servants. He also spared Afton and ordered him to treat me well so that he would not let me down. For ten years, we loved each other and got along cordially. However, ten years later, he poisoned my father and brother. Then, he put a child on the throne so that he could become the regent. Once he was done, he forced me to apologize before Melinda’s tombstone. He also had hooligans humiliate me. As for my son, he threw him into a den of snakes, and my son died in agony. In my despair, I saw his resentful gaze. “You killed Melinda and her daughter. You have no right to continue living! If Melinda didn’t die, she would be my wife, and you would live at the bottom of society. You could never compare to Melinda.” When I opened my eyes again, I found myself pleading for my father’s mercy with Afton. This time, I decided to fulfill Afton’s wish.

On the night Lucas Wright proposes to me, I take off with the ten grand his family broke their backs to pool together. In my previous life, I marry him with a heart full of happiness. However, in our second year of marriage, I'm diagnosed with cancer. From then on, he runs himself ragged, wasting away the best years of his life. In this life, I watch him fall apart, and I vanish from his world without ever looking back. … Seven years later, I work as a wedding planner. Right after I bring another dream wedding to a perfect close, Lucas suddenly appears in front of me. The woman walking arm in arm with him is Selene Beaumont, the daughter of a real estate magnate who has always had a crush on him in my previous life. Lucas sizes me up before sneering, "I heard you're working yourself to the bone these days just to make a living. Is this the life you chose after taking off with my money? If you get on your knees and beg me, I'll let you plan my wedding. "How about it? I know how much you love money. Don't worry, I'll make sure my offer is worth your while." Picking up on the mockery in his words, I calmly wipe away the blood from the corner of my mouth and part my lips slightly. "Sure. How does 45 grand sound?" With 45 grand, I can at least afford a nicer burial plot for myself.

To force the golden bachelor of Morrisey City's high society into marrying me, I once staked my very life as the price. I rammed my car into the one carrying him and his first love as they tried to elope, and I forced her to give up Wade Grant to me. He drove a shard of broken glass through my palm and swore he'd make me wish I were dead once I became his wife. On our wedding night, Wade hung me from the balcony railing with his necktie and forced me to kneel before his first love—the same woman who'd once tried to jump from a rooftop—and beg her forgiveness. I pulled the pin from my hair and drove it through his shoulder, laughing that he was a worthless man who couldn't even protect the woman he loved. For decades after that, the two of us tore at each other like a pair of demons trapped in the same marriage, until we'd both burned down to nothing. Then I was reborn, waking up back at my engagement banquet at twenty years old. In front of everyone in the room, Wade smashed the pocket watch we'd exchanged as a token of our engagement. "Dad. Mr. Rodney. I won't accept a marriage that is forced onto me. "In this life, I will only ever marry Rose Barrymore. Even if you throw me out of the Grant family today, I still won't marry Elisa Rodney!" The whole room went still. Everyone there knew exactly what I was capable of to win Wade. I was the kind of woman who'd stop at nothing and was willing to die just to get what she wanted. Wade glared at me, waiting for me to do exactly what I'd done in my last life: smash a wine bottle and hold the jagged edge to my own throat, threatening to bleed out right there if I didn't get my way. Rose, shielded behind him, had gone pale with fear. She was gripping the hem of his jacket, trembling. I looked at the pieces scattered across the floor and felt nothing but indifference. I picked up the wine glass beside me and drained it in one go. "Congratulations," I said. "I wish you both a happy ever after."