Scumbag Feel-Good Story 단편 소설 & 소설

When I was struck by a stomach illness, my boyfriend, Charles Fischer, was busy blowing out birthday candles with his assistant, Beverly Wagner. I lay there in excruciating pain, but he didn't even glance at me. Instead, he affectionately stroked her nose.  “Bev is a year older! Make a wish, birthday girl!” Later, after I had fainted and was rushed to the hospital, I called Charles, only for him to ignore me.  Meanwhile, Beverly posted a photo on Instagram. Gifts filled the screen, with the caption, [Yay! Charles is the best ever! Charles and Bev, together forever!] When I confronted him, Charles didn’t care at all. "It's Bev’s birthday. Were you expecting me not to spend it with her? If you can't handle it, we're done!" This was the umpteenth time he'd threatened to break up with me, always confident that I wouldn't dare to leave him.  Not this time.

On the same day we were registering our marriage, my boyfriend, Levi Salfolk, had someone throw me out of the clerk's office while he led his childhood sweetheart inside. He looked at me nonchalantly. "Rosalie's child can't be illegitimate. I'll marry you once we get divorced." Everyone thought that the lovestruck me would wait for him for another month. After all, I had already waited for him for seven years. However, I went overseas that night, accepting the arranged marriage my family had set up for me and disappearing from his world. Three years later, I accompanied my husband back home to pay our respects to his ancestors. Something came up, and my husband sent someone from the local branch office to pick me up. Unexpectedly, I met Levi, whom I had not seen since I left. "Enough with the fooling around. Come back. Rosalie's child is starting preschool soon. You're in charge of picking up and dropping off the child."

In the third year of our marriage, my husband's first love got a divorce. He gave her the forty-five thousand dollars we had saved for a house because she was left with nothing and struggling to make ends meet. I urged him to ask for the money back, but he pointed at my face and angrily shouted, "You used to be so gentle and virtuous—what happened? Why are you so selfish, so shallow now?" "Is forty-five thousand dollars really worth you making a fuss over?" "Chloe is starting over with nothing, raising a child on her own. Don't you feel any sympathy for her?" Fine. He was noble, he was merciful. I did not argue further, because the one who needed money for cancer treatment was him, not me.

After Nathan Seville stands me up for the seventh time we're supposed to register our marriage, I finally cut all ties with him—completely and on my own terms. If he shows up at a gathering, I don't go. If he's invited to perform at the college anniversary, I leave early. The moment my company decides to work with him, I resign on the spot. Even on Christmas Eve, when he shows up at my house with gifts, I make up an excuse about needing to visit someone. Calls? Blocked. Socials? Deleted. My strategy is simple—cut it all off. I don't reach out, and he has no way of finding me. For the first 30 years of my life, I spent most of it loving him with everything I had. I cared for him, supported him, and waited for him. But after being left hanging for the seventh time at the City Hall, I finally wake up. I don't want to live like this anymore. Even if I end up alone, it's still better than spending night after night waiting in an empty house that never feels like home!

I'm severely allergic to many things, so my husband buys a separate villa for me. It's supposed to be sort of a nursing home. When my future daughter-in-law learns about this, she thinks my son is cheating on her. She breaks my bones to vent her anger. When she finds out I'm her future mother-in-law, she caresses her belly and looks at me smugly. "I'm already pregnant with Shawn's child. Think about whether you want this child to make it into this world." What she doesn't know is that the Ziegler family's fortune belongs to me and that Shawn Ziegler is only my adoptive son.

"Miss Jackson, are you certain you want to undergo hypnosis? You should know that once the hypnosis begins, it cannot be reversed. Your body will be controlled by an alternate personality, and you will fall into a sleep from which you will never wake up again," the doctor asked in a grave tone from the other end of the phone. "Yes, I'm certain," Nina Jackson replied calmly.

At graduation, I invited my classmates to attend my engagement party, but what I didn’t expect was the total meltdown one of my classmates had when she saw my engagement photos. She strutted over, full of herself, and demanded that I take off my dress so she could use it to polish her shoes. I blinked in confusion, thinking she must have lost her mind. I laughed and suggested she head over to the campus clinic to get checked out. Instead, she exploded, pointing a finger right in my face as she started yelling. “You leech! How dare you wear something so expensive?” she screamed. “You’ve been spending all of my boyfriend’s money on your filthy clothes! Have you no shame? Get down on your knees and apologize, or I guarantee you'll regret it. Who knows where you'll end up tomorrow? Maybe in the hands of some trafficker?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Who would’ve thought that my fiancé, whose tuition fees I paid for, had the nerve to keep a secret mistress behind my back?

My girlfriend called me frantically out of the blue, saying her mother's water had broken. She begged me to take them to the hospital. But I lazily hung up the phone and turned away, buying myself an ice cream bar instead. In my previous life, her mother had also gone into labor late in life. I had risked everything to rush her to the hospital, running twelve red lights, pushing my car to the limit until the fuel gauge nearly burst. Yet, despite all that, her mother had lost the baby. Worse still, she turned around and accused me of killing the baby. My girlfriend had hated me for it, blaming me for her mother's inability to have children again. That very night, she and her shameless relatives took over my family's house, forcing my parents into such anger and despair that they ended up in the hospital. My company went bankrupt, and as if that weren't enough, I was beaten so severely that both my legs were broken. In the end, I fell into a deep depression and took my own life. But when I opened my eyes again, I found myself reborn. This time, I uncovered the secret her mother had been hiding.

When I touch someone else's personal belongings—things they have had direct contact with before—I can hear the items voicing their owner's thoughts. The day of my grandma's funeral, I clutch the emerald bracelet she wore for over 30 years and hear it shout, "The house mustn't go to Michael! He hit me!" Michael? That's my uncle's name, and right now, he's bawling his eyes out in front of Grandma's casket, seemingly grieving even harder than everyone else.

I was head over heels for Jonas Hayes, the cold and aloof scholarship student who saw me as nothing more than a walking wallet. He took my credit card but refused to let me get close. "Get lost. The sight of you and your filthy money makes me sick." Using my wealth, he showered Clara Dove, the stunning campus bella from a humble background, with luxury gifts and even threw her a lavish birthday party at the city’s most exclusive hotel. Everyone envied him, believing he was a self-made billionaire. But I didn’t care. I stayed hopelessly in love. After graduation, I poured my entire inheritance into building a life with him, convinced I could win his heart. During our honeymoon, he watched as I drowned, his voice ice-cold as he said, "Every time I think of how you used your money to control me, I wish you’d die sooner." When I woke up again, I was back in my college classroom—the day Jonas asked me to top up his card. This time, I wasn’t the desperate fool he remembered. I slapped him across the face with the card and sneered, "Even beggars know how to kneel and ask. What are you, a weed?"

Two weeks before our wedding, Jonah Alston suddenly wants to postpone it. He says, "Sasha says she's having her first exhibition on that day. She'll be alone during the opening, and I'm worried she'll get stage fright. I have to help her. We're just going through the motions with the wedding, anyway. What does it matter whether it's a day earlier or later?" This isn't his first time postponing our wedding for Sasha Lester's sake, though. The first time he did it was because he claimed she missed having homecooked food after undergoing surgery. He'd flown abroad to care for her for two months. The second time was because he said she wanted to head into the mountains to get inspired. He'd gone with her out of concern for her safety. Now, this is the third time. I hang up and look at Austin Everett, my childhood sweetheart. He sits across from me, looking leisurely as he taps his emerald-embedded walking cane on the marble floor. I ask, "Do you need a wife?" On my wedding day, Sasha holds up her glass and waits for Jonah to clink it with his. However, his eyes are red as he watches a livestream—it's the wedding of the scion of Everett Group, the country's largest property development company.

One day, in the school's group chat, I accidentally revealed that I was the daughter of Sanfiric Inc.'s chairman. Out of nowhere, Sally jumped in with a scathing remark: [Do you have no shame? Clinging to some random man and calling him ‘Dad' just because you're desperate to be an heiress. Have you lost your mind?] Her accusation left me completely baffled. I didn't even bother responding, but she wasn't about to let it go. She bombarded the chat with photos and videos, all claiming to prove that she was the real heiress. In a video she shared, she was clinging to my father's arm, acting sweet and coy. I stared at the screen in shock, my mind reeling. Before I could even process what I was seeing, the school advisor kicked me out of the group chat entirely. "How could we have such a vain and shameless student? You're a disgrace to the school!" Furious, I whipped out my phone and called my dad. The moment he picked up, I exploded, "Roger Burberry, do you have another daughter I don't know about?!"

A year after Easton Carter turns down my 99th proposal, he calls me in the middle of the night, crying like his world's falling apart. He says his grandmother is dying and her last wish is to see him married. He tells me he's finally ready. He's already ordered the dress and booked the venue. But when I show up at the venue in my wedding dress, his friends burst out laughing. "You actually believed that? And you even swapped the cheap dress he ordered for a custom-made one? You're the queen of pathetic!" Then one of them yells, "Look, the groom's side piece showed up to crash the wedding!" "Security, come get this homewrecker!" Guests turn to stare like they're watching a joke unfold. Easton doesn't even look at me. He turns to the woman he loves and says, "I told you I'd ruin this wedding for you. I meant it. If you can't have him, no one will!" She gives him a satisfactory smile. Then, he finally glances at me. "Tina said you did her a favor today. When we get married, you can be the bridesmaid, and you can still spend time with us after that." So, he brought me here just to help his sweetheart ruin her crush's wedding. But when Easton finally looks up at the wedding banner and realizes that I'm the bride, his eyes flare with rage.

On the eve of giving birth, my world turned into a nightmare. My husband’s sworn enemy broke into our home, seeking revenge. I was brutally cut open and my baby was ripped from me. Yet, I made the chilling choice not to call my husband for help. In my previous life, desperate and terrified, I begged him to return home. He abandoned a Valentine’s dinner with a scholarship student to rush back. That night, the student was preyed upon in a bar, leading to her tragic suicide. My husband’s wrath was unrelenting. Blaming me for her death, he locked me in a kennel, leaving me to be savaged to death. “This is the pain Wynne endured because of you. Now it’s your turn to suffer!” Given a second chance, I resolved to make a different choice. This time, I let him stay for his romantic Valentine’s evening with her. But when I returned home, he had spiraled into madness.

I saved the current queen with my medical expertise and ability to save patients from the clutches of death itself. To fulfil my long-time wish, the queen intended to order that I was to marry the son of a marquess, Eldwin Gennings. However, I fell on my knees and begged her to let me marry a notoriously useless rich heir instead. The queen was shocked. After all, everyone in the Royal Capital knew that I had been in love with Eldwin since we were young. I had even said several times that I would not marry anyone but him. In my past life, I had indeed married Eldwin, just as I wished, but on the night of our wedding, he left me waiting alone in our bedroom. The next day, he married my half-sister as his second wife. I was bullied and framed by my half-sister. As a result, Eldwin cut my wrist tendons and damaged my arms permanently. In the end, my wounds got infected, and I died. When I opened my eyes again, time had rewound to the day the queen ordered me and Eldwin to be married. This time, when he found out that I wanted to marry someone else, he went mad and begged me to take him in.

Overnight, an electronic notification sounded in the minds of all office workers. It was from a "Performance-Share System". The rules: employees who paired off could split their year-end bonuses 50/50. I was a junior associate at Summit Financial, one of the biggest wealth management firms in Manhattan. In my previous life, I agreed to pair with my manager, Jared, and the intern he brought in — Stephanie. By the time the project went into its crunch phase, they'd shoved every garbage task and every blown deadline onto me. I pulled all-nighters for months. My body was running on fumes. When the one promotion that could have saved me came up, they cut me out of the team without a second thought. In the end I was fired for "burnout and poor performance." I couldn't make my mortgage. I jumped. They took the work I'd done with me, walked out with million-dollar bonuses each, and flew off on vacation together. Then I opened my eyes again. I was back, on the exact day the pair-binding system went live. This time, I'm not just keeping every cent of what I earn. This time, I'm putting them in prison.

My nephew, Jason, came to live with my family for three years while he went to high school in the city. I took care of him the best I could, never once thinking it was a burden. The day he got accepted into a top-ranked university, he went live online. He told thousands of strangers about his miserable life living under someone else's roof. "I know I shouldn't say this, but I really suffered through it. "Those days of depending on others… I never want to think about them ever again. "I just want all parents to know this. No matter how poor you are, keep your kids with you. Even eating scraps together is better than watching another family of three enjoy a feast while you sit alone in the corner." He became an overnight sensation, so did I. The people on the internet dug up everything about me. My name, my job, my address. I was doxxed. I died depressed from the online bullying. However, I somehow got to do it all over again. This time, I was not going to be the saint anymore.

Our pack’s pups were born with weakened wolf spirits. I paid for their treatment out of my own pocket, only for their mothers to drag me online.They accused me of using the free wolf treatment I provided for their pups to test serums on children from the contaminated zone, making poor families' pups bear the risk for Alpha pups. What they didn't know was that the pack was badly contaminated. Without treatment, those pups would die. To save their wolves, I brought in the best healers and used the best medication and treatment protocols. Care cost more than eight thousand dollars per pup every month, all of it out of my own pocket. Now the entire internet was accusing me of experimenting on pups and doing the Alpha elite's dirty work. So I made up my mind and sent a pack-wide announcement: "In response to the mothers' request for autonomy over their children's treatment, Moonbridge will suspend the free wolf treatment program, effective immediately." "Starting today, eligible wolf moms will receive a monthly childcare subsidy of two hundred dollars." The moment the announcement went out, every one of them lost it. Now they were all crowded outside my office, begging me not to stop.

My cousin, Jeffrey Coleman, whom I haven't gotten in touch with for years, suddenly shows up on my doorstep. "Chris, if I remember correctly, you have a Toyota Crown parked in your garage, right? Lend it to me as my wedding car, alright? "We're cousins, so I'll pay you 500 dollars. Aren't I generous?" The Toyota Crown Jeffrey has mentioned is an original model from the 90s. It's still coated in the same paint it was produced in. My grandpa has left it to me. Over the years, I've already sunk in more than 100 thousand dollars just to renew every part. And now, Jeffrey thinks he gets to drive the car after paying me 500 measly dollars? I turn him down tactfully. "The car's far too old, Jeffrey. I'm worried that it might break down halfway to the wedding venue and cause a delay on your big day." Unexpectedly, the moment Jeffrey gets home, he's quick to issue everyone in the family group chat e-invitations. "I've already booked the wedding car! It's a Toyota Crown that's produced in the 90s, and it's still in its original glory! This car is definitely better than Porsche and Mercedes! "On the big day, this car will be in charge of picking up the bride and groom twice! Of course, the newlyweds get to ride this car. If there are any other relatives who want to share the ride, leave a message here!" Everyone is quick to praise Jeffrey for his quick wits. To think that he's capable of borrowing something vintage from the older generation! On Jeffrey's wedding day, he shows up outside my garage with a dozen or so people. "Open up, Chris! Where's the car key? We're in a hurry, you know!" Soon, the garage door is opened from the inside. The Toyota Crown isn't there. Instead, a police cruiser is parked in its place. A traffic officer can be seen crouching on the ground while taking photos for evidence. "You guys plan on driving the Toyota Crown? Someone has reported this car for not meeting the qualifications, and that it's suspected to be used in an illegal business. I'm going to need all of you to make a trip to the police station with me." Jeffrey panics immediately. "We didn't even get to drive it yet! How is this illegal?" The traffic officer glances up at him. "The report has included tens of hundreds of conversation screenshots. You've publicly posted the routes and even invited people to ride with you in the group chat. "Please explain to me what your actions mean, if not advertising your ride to get more customers."

On the first day of work, the company president said that I looked like his long-lost daughter and gave me a salary of 100 thousand dollars, on the condition that I ate together with his wife every weekend. Once my boyfriend heard this, he yelled at me in front of my colleagues, “How could you believe such a cheap lie?! It’s just an excuse for him to pay you for dirty favors! If your mother learned that you got yourself a sugar daddy after graduation, she’d jump off a building!” So, I rejected the president’s offer. Someone told the department manager that my boyfriend and I insulted the president, and he fired us. My boyfriend was really shocked by this. He stayed at my place and loafed around instead of working. When he no longer had any money left, he asked my mother for money. After that, he asked me to sell my organs. After I said no, he knocked me out with chloroform and sent me to an unlicensed clinic. The doctor there did not use the standard procedures, so I died from the pain. When I opened my eyes again, I returned to the day I met the president. This time, I shouted, “Sir, you look just like my father, even though we are not related at all!”