After Death Romance 단편 소설 & Face Slapping 소설

I'm the neglected real son of the Duncans, Austin Duncan. By the time my family finally brings me home, the fake heir, Edward Duncan, has already been carefully groomed into the perfect successor. I'm nothing more than a country bumpkin. Edward goes through with a prestigious arranged marriage and becomes the son-in-law of the powerful Cooper family. As for me, I'm unceremoniously married off to Clara Prescott, the illegitimate daughter of the Prescott family, whom no one acknowledges. Everyone looks at me with contempt. I assume Clara is no different. But she smiles at me and says, "Austin, we aren't free to choose for the first half of our lives. But I'll protect you from now on." I truly believe she's different. But when she emerges victorious in the Prescott family's power struggle and becomes the CEO of Prescott Group, the very first thing she does after taking control is force the Cooper family into bankruptcy and bring Edward back to her side. Only then do I finally realize that Clara is no different. The one she loves has always been Edward.

I was the 99th High Priestess to serve the Temple of Aubin. Through a potent, forbidden ritual known as Soulforging, I could rewrite a person's fate in exchange for a fragment of my life and soul. In the first year we were together, I used Soulforging to save Emile Albrecht from certain death after an arrow pierced his heart. The ritual's toll bleached my hair white. In our third year together, I used Soulforging again to save him from the executioner's blade. He was named heir apparent. In return, I lost my sight. In our sixth year together, Emile brought the woman who had once saved his life by shielding him from that arrow years before. He ordered me to perform another Soulforging ritual to save her. I shook my head and told him I could not perform it again. My soul had almost been exhausted. One more ritual would erase me completely. He seized my wrists and forced me closer despite my struggle. "You survived that ritual twice already! Why would saving a mortal from danger suddenly kill you? "You know what I think? I think you're just throwing a tantrum no one asked for. You're trying to be dramatic about it costing your 'soul!'" I performed the ritual, suppressing the blood that threatened to spill from my throat, and saw it through to the end. The next day, Emile petitioned the king to name me his future queen. As my hands slowly turned transparent, I felt my way out of the palace. I would never be your queen, Emile. Seven days from now, Undine of Cracht would cease to exist.

On the night I get dismembered, my girlfriend, Victoria Hewitt, announces her marriage to the world. Clad in the wedding dress that I've personally designed, she soon marries her first love, Joseph Danford, happily. When Victoria receives the news of my death, she merely smiles before claiming that I'm a pathological liar. But what she doesn't know is that I've died for her sake. Later on, Victoria constructs a sculpture out of my bones. She develops a habit of hugging it every day since then.

Ten years ago, a fire broke out at my school. I saved four friends, but the flames left me an idiot. The four of them stood beside my hospital bed and cried, swearing they would spend the rest of their lives making it up to me. They were afraid I would get bullied, so they gave up their spots at two of the country's top universities and went to community college with me instead. They were afraid someone would trick me into leaving them, so the other three pushed Joshua Summers to confess his feelings for me. I had once said I envied people who lived in houses that didn't leak, so all four of them saved every cent they had and bought me a house for Joshua and me to live in after we married. Then came the party the night before my wedding to Joshua. When I returned from the bathroom, I heard everyone inside playing a round of Truth. The topic was "Secrets Loretta Doesn't Know." Curious, I pressed my ear to the crack in the door. Calvin Dawson's drunken laughter drifted through. "That little idiot has no idea tomorrow's wedding is actually for Nisha." I froze. After a moment of silence, my sister picked up where he had left off. "Loretta doesn't know that when Josh confessed to her, he only did it to spite Nisha. Who would've guessed she'd say yes? This wedding was supposed to be Nisha's from the start." My best friend's eyes reddened. "If my family hadn't forced me into marriage, I never would've taken Lori's wedding from her. I only want the ceremony. She can keep the title. As long as she's happy, my own happiness can wait until the next life." Joshua's eyes flickered. With a resigned expression, he revealed the final secret. "This morning, I got worked up enough to consider sending Loretta to her death, but I gave up on it in the end. We owe her a life anyway. Let's call this one paid off." I didn't know how long I stood there before I finally stumbled back to my room in a daze. I opened Joshua's bag, and there it was: an opened bottle of pills. My heart shuddered. The happiness I had cherished for ten years had never been anything more than repayment for a debt. Through my tears, I put the pills into my mouth one by one. There was no need to wait for the next life. In this one, I would give them the happiness they wanted.

I was once the best undercover agent in the police force. But during the final raid of my career, I was betrayed and killed by my husband's first crush. From that moment on, the world believed I was a traitor. My name, my honor, everything I had fought for, was erased. Now, even in death, I watched as they lived the life they stole from me. And I was left with one burning question: how had I ever fallen so far?

Mom and Aunt Denise Taylor fell off the balcony in the midst of their heated argument. Dad rushed in just as they hit the ground, each with a broken arm. Without hesitation, he left Mom behind and hurriedly took Denise to the hospital instead. Later, Mom filed for divorce. Dad's face twisted in anger as he yelled, "Enough, Nicole! So what if you broke an arm and can't hold a scalpel anymore? What's the big deal? Dee is a genius designer. If she had lost her hand, her life would've been over! Of course, I had to save her first!" Watching all this in my ghostly state, I couldn't help but laugh. Did Dad really think that Mom had only lost the use of her hand? Mom didn't just lose her hand. She lost me. After all, I had severe heart failure, and the only person who could perform the life-saving surgery was Mom, the medical master herself. But none of that matters now, because I'm already gone.

The year my ex Lucas Brooks almost went bankrupt, I took half a million from his mother to marry another man. Eight years later, he made a triumphant comeback, forcing me to stay by his side while refusing to grant me any title. By day, I was his private secretary. By night, I was his old flame, summoned and dismissed at his whim. Many women rotated in and out by his side. Every single one of them walked away with townhouses and diamonds. As for me, I had to drop to my knees and beg for his approval just to take a half day off for the hospital. When I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I asked him for ten grand—just enough to get myself a decent burial plot. Yet Lucas ripped the check into shreds. “Was that half a million back then not enough? How dare you ask for my money again?” He froze my salary account and forced me to coordinate the wedding preparations for him and his new socialite bride. On the day of their wedding, I stood coughing up blood as I fastened the veil over the bride’s hair. Lucas swept past me with her on his arm, not glancing back once. He said: “Once the wedding is over, we’ll talk about you faking an illness.” I only shook my head with a faint smile. I feared I couldn’t possibly wait that long.

When I found Silas Pembroke, he was carefully untangling a strand of another woman’s hair from his tie clip. The two of them were wrapped around each other, far too close to pretend otherwise. He let out a mocking laugh. “Jenna, what exactly are you going to accuse Sienna and me of this time?” Sienna Vale smiled sweetly. “Mrs. Pembroke, you stayed away longer than usual this time.” I steadied myself and said, “I’m not Jenna. I’m her twin sister, Summer Sinclair.” Silas burst out laughing. “What is this, your latest stunt?” Then his expression hardened. “Keep pushing me, and I can’t promise you’ll stay Mrs. Pembroke forever.” I only looked at him and said quietly, “Silas, my sister left three keepsakes behind for you.”

I have been dating my manager boyfriend, Caleb Frost, for five years. He calls off our wedding 52 times for Gina Lowe, an aspiring actress on the set. On the day I am ready to give up on him and walk away, Gina falsely accuses me of using expired makeup on her that caused an allergic reaction. So Caleb shoves me into a sealed cellar and locks me inside. As he pushes me down, his face is twisted in disgust. "It's one thing to pick on Gina, but to use expired makeup on her and cause an allergy? Do you know how important an artist's face is? "Stay down there and think about your wrongdoings." With that, he drags the crying Gina to the hospital. The cellar's air vent is blocked. Every breath I take grows harder until I suffocate to death inside. Three days later, Caleb remembers me only after attending a gathering with Gina. But little does he know, I am already dead from the lack of oxygen in that dark cellar.

Three days after I died, my fiancé got a call to ID the body. He just scoffed. "She's dead, so what? Call me when she's in the ground." The cops, out of options, hit up my backup contact—my childhood friend. He actually laughed. "She's really gone? Not my problem. Burn her or whatever." Then my body hit the internet— And suddenly, both of them looked like ghosts.

When my boyfriend, Caleb Steele, loses his family and everything he has, I walk away. After he makes a comeback, I come to see him every year. The first year, I hold my daughter, Claire Sutton, in my arms. Caleb throws fifty thousand dollars at me and tells me to stay away. The second year, I bring my late-stage cancer diagnosis, and he doesn't even look at it. Instead, he gives me a hundred thousand dollars and tells me to disappear for good. In the third and fourth years, I vanish just as he wants. Then, in the fifth year, he gets a call from Claire. "Mommy, when are you bringing me dinner? I'm hungry."

On the day I'm set to go into labor, I plead to my husband, Timothy Langford, to take me to the hospital when I'm two centimeters dilated. However, a pissed-looking Timothy orders his men to lock me up in a sauna room that's heated to 356 degrees Fahrenheit. This is all because my estimated labor date is one day earlier than my widowed sister-in-law, Natalie Thornton. Since Timothy is bent on making Natalie's baby the oldest grandson of the Langford family, he instructs his men to inject me with 100 labor-suppressant injections. No matter how much I beg Timothy to spare our baby, he remains unmoved. Having received 99 injections, I feel a world of pain crashing down on me, seeing as I'm already suffering from contractions to begin with. But Timothy is the one who injects the final labor-suppressant injection into my huge pregnancy bump. As he gazes at my agonized and writhing form, he says coldly, "It's already difficult for Natalie to survive in this world after losing my older brother. As her brother-in-law, I'm merely fulfilling her wish to become a mother. "Still, you refuse to spare her. It's not enough for you to force her to survive overseas on her own; you even plan on receiving labor-induction injections just to give birth to your baby on an earlier date! "It seems that I've spoiled you far too much for you to have the guts to pull this stunt off! The doctor already told me that once I've given you the labor-suppressant injections and leave you somewhere extremely hot, it can stop you from giving birth. You're only allowed to give birth once Natalie is out of labor." At that moment, I've completely given up on life. The moment Timothy witnesses Natalie's baby being born, his eyes are filled with tears of happiness. He sets off firework after firework to celebrate the grand birth. Later on, as Timothy gazes at Natalie's newborn, he finally remembers me and our unborn baby. When he's about to order his men to take me to the hospital, he receives a phone call from his assistant. "The hospital has called to inform you to take Mrs. Langford's body away."

At Greg Jenson’s birthday party, an obituary suddenly created a huge ruckus in our school year’s group chat. “Oh my God, Luanne Lee is dead” “It’s got to be fake news. A bad thing never dies. How could a malicious woman like her die so easily? Back then, she literally took Greg...” Sitting at the head of the table, Greg twirled his phone in his hand, his eyes dark. “It's fake. I just got a call from her this morning. She said she was coming to my birthday party.” However, someone hesitantly held up their phone, showing the screen to the room. “If I'm not mistaken, this person really is Luanne. The memorial service is at the funeral home in the neighboring city. Should we go check it out?” On the screen was a photo of a funeral hall, and there I was, lying peacefully right in the center. Greg’s expression turned to panic. He bolted upright and headed straight for the exit, but the moment he opened the door, he froze dead in his tracks. The deceased ‘me’ was standing right at the doorway. Looking into those deeply familiar eyes, I smiled and said, “Greg, it’s been ten years. I'm here to wish you a happy birthday.”

After losing his entire retirement savings to a scam, my father-in-law, Kyle Knight, tried to kill himself by overdosing on pills. I frantically called my husband, Joshua Knight, a psychology expert, hoping he could talk his father out of it. "Dad lost his entire retirement fund to a scam. He left a suicide note, and he's trying to kill himself. Come home!" Instead, Joshua snapped at me for making such a big deal out of it. "Your dad's made plenty of bad decisions before. Maybe this'll finally teach him a lesson. Don't bother me with stupid stuff like this again. I'm trying to watch a movie with Vanessa." For a second, I thought he hadn't heard me clearly. I was about to tell him that the man dying was his own father. Then Vanessa Morgan's voice came through the phone. The horror movie scared her. Joshua immediately turned to comfort her. Later, he casually told me to put together a PowerPoint on how my dad got scammed so he could use the case in one of his anti-scam livestreams. I swallowed everything I was about to say and obediently said, "Okay." After all, the person who scammed Kyle out of his retirement savings and drove him to suicide was Vanessa's mother.

On my wedding day, I had just stepped onto the aisle when a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd. "Take it all off, and she's got a body on her! Look at her face, like she's enjoying it!" I turned toward the voices and saw my ex-husband's photos of me blown up across the giant screen. They kept changing, one after another, explicit and impossible to ignore. All around the room, phones were already coming up as people started taking pictures. My hands began to shake. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother collapse. Behind Leon Coleman, Allison Fleming slapped her thigh and raised her voice, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Oh, wow. Leon showed these to the guys yesterday, just messing around. Guess they accidentally put it on the big screen. Gemma, you're not gonna make a big deal out of it, right?" The groomsmen laughed. "Come on, Allison. Leon always lets you get away with anything. Gemma had to beg for this wedding. There's no way she'd dare complain." With all those eyes on me, Leon reached for my hand and held it, his tone easy. "Allison's one of my closest friends. We joke around like that. She didn't mean anything by it, so don't take it personally. It's just a few private photos. I'll have someone take them down. It's our wedding day, so just bear with it for now."

Everyone around us knows I'm in love with Ryland Wood. But from his 21st birthday on, he despises me. It takes three years and my accidental death for him to finally be free of me. When I open my eyes again, I find myself reborn, right back on the day of his 21st birthday. This time, I choose to run. Now, I refuse to be the lovesick fool, and I refuse to cling to him.

After my younger sister suffered an allergic reaction from eating the food I cooked, my husband flew into a rage. He grabbed a whole crate of red wine from the house, pinned me down, and forced it into my mouth. "You should feel Rosie's pain too!" Soon, red rashes spread across my body, and my throat began to swell. On the brink of death, I begged him to call an ambulance, but he locked me in the room instead. "Take your time and enjoy it. Only when you suffer enough will you stop hurting others." In despair, I felt my throat closing, and my skin itching unbearably as if pierced by needles. I scratched my skin until there wasn't a single patch of unbroken skin left. Three days later, he finally decided to show mercy and make it up to me with a candlelit dinner. "I bet you have learned your lesson. As long as you behave from now on, you'll still be Mrs. Henderson." However, he would never see me again. By then, my body had already turned to ashes.

My cousin, Kaylee Langford, pushes me down the ski slope when there's an avalanche. My boyfriend, Atlas Ferguson, lifts her into his arms and leaves. He seems to have forgotten that I'm buried underneath the snow mountain. He leaves me stranded at the valley for seven days. He's furious when he finds me. "You should be glad nothing went wrong with Kaylee's arms. Otherwise, the only way you could atone would be to die on this mountain! Our wedding is canceled—we'll have it once you realize what you did wrong." He thinks I'll cry or kick up a fuss, but I merely nod and say, "Okay." He doesn't know that I've made a deal with the Moon Goddess. In six days, I'll be giving up the things that mean most to me—my love for Atlas and my memories of him. Once that happens, I'll forget everything about him and start afresh somewhere new. What does a wedding matter when the Ember Sloane who loved him is now dead?