Scumbag Regret 단편 소설 & 소설

Maya Beckham was Oscar Francis's first love. After four long years abroad, she had assumed any feelings he once held for her had turned to dust. Yet when she returned to Elminas, he proposed. Everyone swore Maya was the love of his life—his one true love, his everything. Touched beyond words, she finally gathered the courage to say yes. …Until the day she discovered Oscar secretly marrying her half-sister, Diana Beckham. She stormed toward him like a woman possessed, her voice trembling with rage. "Explain." Oscar met her fury with infuriating calm. "You vanished without a word four years ago. Diana stayed. Now she's dying—this is her last wish. How could I refuse?" Maya's lips curled into a faint, unreadable smile. What Oscar didn't know? She was the one diagnosed with a difficult illness back then. Later, Maya got into an accident and forgot Oscar entirely. Oscar broke down. Day after day, he pounded on her door like a madman, begging her to remember.

The sales department organized a team-building trip and turned it into a killer-instinct trail race, with a $30,000 prize for the winner. I volunteer with a search and rescue team, and I stayed up all night mapping the safest route with supply points along the way. The new VP they had parachuted in tore up my map right before we set out. "What's the fun in a paved trail? We take the undeveloped Wildman Gorge. That's how you show real killer instinct! "To keep anyone from cheating with GPS, everyone hands over their communication devices." I pointed at the thunderheads on the horizon and tried to stop him. Wildman Gorge floods easily, and going in without radios was suicide. Instead, he smashed my radio to pieces in front of everyone. "You're just jealous that I got to lead this thing, and you want to keep everyone from taking home the prize money, right?" For that $30,000, my coworkers lined up to call me a coward who cared nothing about the team. Fine. I took off my shell jacket and volunteered to stay at base camp at the bottom of the mountain. A storm was coming. If this pack of office wolves wanted to take on a mudslide in Wildman Gorge, I would sit there with a hot cup of tea and wish them a triumphant return.

To pursue the goblin prince Cole Hutch, I devoted five years of my life. However, on the very day I'm about to marry him, dressed in a wedding gown, I overhear a conversation between Cole and his friend. "Cole, are you really going to marry Lilian?" his friend asks doubtfully. A shadow flickers across Cole's eyes. "Of course. The Heroic Alliance has been eyeing our kingdom for a long time, and now that Shia is pregnant with my child, the alliance elders are displeased with me. Marrying Lilian is the perfect way to appease them." "Aren't you afraid Lilian will find out you've been seeing someone else and go after Shia?" The friend asks again. Cole replied, "She won't. She's madly in love with me. She'll keep the secret for my sake. She's gentle and easy to control. As long as I marry her, we can at least delay a war against our kingdom, and Shia will be safe." My entire world shatters at that moment. In my daze, I get ambushed and gravely wounded. And when I finally wake up from my unconsciousness, I remember everyone, except Cole. So, when the leader of the Heroic Alliance contacts me to ask me to return for an arranged marriage, I immediately book a portal back seven days later.

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.

My relationship with my husband started when we were students. Even then, many people were envious of us. However, everything is ruined when I'm sullied after a drunken night. My reputation goes down the drain, as does my chastity. I've been caught red-handed—the man beside me in bed isn't my husband. I later find out that my husband is the one who set me up to take the fall. It's all because he wanted to save his true love—a woman he could never have.

At a company party, Taylor Kennedy plays a game of mouth-to-mouth cookie biting with his female assistant as everyone watches. I blend into the crowd and laugh along. The room instantly falls silent. The assistant bursts into tears and plays the victim. Taylor lets go of her, turns to me, and coldly scolds me in front of the entire company. He berates me for not knowing how to read the room and being a buzzkill. Then, without hesitation, he wraps his arm around the assistant and kisses her deeply as I watch. If this were before, I would've stormed over in a rage and ripped them apart. Then, I would've humiliated her in front of everyone, not caring whose pride I trampled. But now, I feel nothing. Not even as I watch them kiss. Not even though today marks my ten-year anniversary with Taylor.

During a fight with my husband, he shoved me. My stomach bumped into the couch’s armrest. Just then, his childhood friend called him, sobbing. “Caleb, hurry, come to Cloudpeak Hotel and save me! My boss got me drunk, and now he’s forcing me to serve our client…” I nearly blacked out from the twisting pain in my stomach. I begged him to take me to the hospital. However, my husband said, “There’s a life at stake here! Can you not be so cruel?” He left, slamming the door behind him. I had no choice but to call for an ambulance. That night, he spent the night with his childhood friend, while I lay in the operating theater, undergoing emergency surgery. Good news, Caleb Gordon! You'd never have children again! Weren’t you glad? You deserved it!

The day before the wedding, my fiancé James's childhood sweetheart had a severe depressive episode. Threatening to take her own life, she demanded the destruction of the wedding gown my grandmother had painstakingly made for me before her passing. To calm her down, James locked me in a room and stayed by her side, helping her cut the gown into shreds. Amid the mess, he spoke indifferently. "Be reasonable. It's just a wedding gown. Do you want to see her die?" Later, James's hot uncle approached me, asking me to carry on the family lineage. I nodded in agreement. But James, with reddened eyes, confronted me. "Are you really going to have his child? Have you completely given up on me?" Covering my slightly rounded belly, I replied, "Be reasonable. It's just a child. He’s your uncle. Do you want to see him with no heir to carry on the family name?”

I leave my boyfriend without a word when he's at his lowest. He later makes a name for himself and forces me to marry him. Our relationship goes viral online and becomes the subject of everyone's envy. They all say he's desperately in love with me, but he later sleeps with other women in our bed. I fall from grace and become the city's biggest laughingstock. I don't cause a scene. Instead, I move into the guest bedroom and leave the master bedroom for them. He's furious as he grips my neck roughly. He bites my lips, drawing blood. "Why aren't you mad?" Because I'm sick. I don't have the time to wait for him to see the error of his ways anymore.

Just because I left a window cracked for half an hour, my younger brother caught a cold and ran a raging fever in the middle of the night. Enraged, Mom locked me inside a freezing, thirty-below cellar. "How on earth did I give birth to a cold-blooded monster like you?! You won't be happy until you've killed your own brother, will you?! Since you love the cold so much, get your butt down there and cool off!" Down in the dark, I sobbed and begged Mom for mercy, but the biting cold slowly drained every bit of warmth from my body. Mom didn't care in the slightest. "I'm starving you for three whole days to teach you a lesson! This is what you get for being a jealous brat!" My brother's fever broke the very next morning. To make it up to him, Mom took him on a three-day trip to an amusement park. When Mom finally came back, standing at the top of the cellar to demand if I had learned my lesson, all she received was endless, deafening silence. Because I had already been dead for three days.

When my fiance's student argued with me, she knocked over a gas cylinder and caused an explosion. As the fire spread, my fiancé rushed into the lab wearing a gas mask. However, his priority was to carry his student to safety. As he left, he said, "Wait for the rescue team! A teacher should treat their students like how a parent treats their children. If something happens to Amanda, you don't deserve to be a teacher!" In the end, I inhaled too much toxic gas and died, never having waited long enough for the rescue team to arrive. Since I was the only one who had mastered the core data of the lab, no one could take my place. This meant that five years of hard work in the lab were destroyed, and Astran University was kicked out of a global research project. Later, William, the once esteemed professor of Astran University, became a pariah—someone whom everyone scorned and reviled.

Five years of marriage, and I was finally pregnant. I couldn't wait to tell Neil—until I heard his mom say: "When are you going to tell Angela? Cece's already showing. This family needs an heir." "Just give me a little more time. I'll handle it." I froze in the doorway, the ultrasound report burning in my pocket. Neil Schmidt, your promises mean nothing.

I'm about to give birth to my second child, but my husband wants to care for his true love. I snap, "Aren't you afraid of me dying in labor and taking the baby with me?" He says I'm being unreasonable. Then, he leaves without another look back. Later, the postpartum care center I'm at catches fire. My husband doesn't hear my cries for help. Instead, he carries his true love out of the fire. He subsequently loses his mind after learning of my death.

My boyfriend gave me away to his arch-nemesis because he lost a bet. On the same night, I was driven to his arch-nemesis’ house. Before leaving, he expressed remorse, “Anya, just bear with it for a bit. I will come to pick you up in a month.” That night, the man pinned me to the bed and started unbuttoning my shirt. As he traced his cold fingertips against my collarbone, he said, deep and seductively, “So that’s the scumbag you fell for? Why don’t you be with me instead? I can give you everything you want.” I leaned forward and kissed him right away. “Sure.”

Whenever Rachel Cooper loses it, I know I'm about to get divorced again. I close my eyes. "We are divorcing for the ninth time." Marcus Miller massages his temples and says regretfully, "Vivian, Barry died all of a sudden, leaving his wife and her unborn baby behind. I can't ignore them. Relax. Once the baby's born, we'll remarry. We won't separate ever again!" I remain silent. I already heard this promise eight times before. Barry Miller's sudden death is the reason for Rachel's breakdown. It also caused Marcus and me to divorce for the first time. Back then, Rachel was already pregnant, prompting Marcus to divorce me. He will remarry me once he has comforted her. Over the past nine months, we have married and divorced eight times. Everyone mocks me by calling me the Eight-Ring Wonder. I also find it ridiculous. After I accept the divorce certificate, one of the court staff secretly asks me, "When are you getting married again?" I answer calmly, "There's no next time."

It had been five years since I started dating Ross Jenner. His family invited my mother and me to their family home in Fellaton to discuss our wedding plans and to spend Valentine's Day together. It was past 10:00 PM when my mother and I landed, but Ross wasn't there to pick us up because his college junior, Laurel Elledge, had just arrived in Fellaton. He told me to figure out a way to get a cab to the house myself. In a strange place, unfamiliar with the area, it wasn't long before we found ourselves in danger. Just over ten minutes outside the airport, we were robbed. My mother was injured while trying to protect me, and she collapsed, bleeding heavily. Desperate, I held onto her, frantically trying to call Ross. Each call was abruptly cut off, and when I finally reached him, he sounded irritated. "Jennifer, you're an adult, so stop acting like a child. You couldn't even hail a cab on the street? Laurel just got to Fellaton and isn't feeling well. I need to take care of her." Without waiting for a response, he hung up. I tried calling again, only to find that I had been blocked. In the end, my mother's injuries were too severe, and she bled out before the doctors could save her. As I stared at her lifeless body, tears flowed uncontrollably. When I finally checked my phone again, the first thing I saw was a picture Ross had posted on Twitter. In the photo, he was kissing Laurel and holding a bouquet of roses. [Spending Valentine's Day with the one I love most.] I quietly threw the gifts I had brought from home into the trash. Then, I left a comment, which said, [Wishing you both a lifetime of happiness.]

Despite me being three months pregnant, my husband asked me to jump into the water to help his first love look for her necklace. I teared up and begged my husband not to make me do this . Yet his friends all criticized me. “He’s just asking you to jump into the water. You’re the only one who can swim here. Nothing will go wrong if you’re only in for a little while.” “Minerva, that’s the memento Violet’s mother left for her.” I tried to keep fighting against it and grabbed the hem of Shaun’s shirt. But he shoved me into the sea. I struggled against the water as I hoped to see any hint of pity in Shaun’s eyes. Yet he said, “Minerva, you’re an excellent swimmer. You’ll be fine.”

Mom dies of rage when she discovers that the bride at my wedding has become Nelly Johnson, Harvey Fisher's business partner. My wedding turns into Mom's funeral the moment she breathes her last breath. Despite that, Harvey insists that the ceremony continue as planned. He even orders me to put the wedding ring on Nelly's finger. "Hurry up and put it on! I'll explain everything to you tonight!" he snarls. I ignore him and leave the hotel with Mom's body in my arms. The wedding ends with a banging success at 8:00 pm. Nelly updated her social media with a post that's liked by tens of thousands of people. "I've finally married the light of my life! I'd like to thank a certain homewrecker for leaving after remembering her place." Harvey updates his social media with a similar post. "Those who are unworthy don't deserve to be loved." I like both their posts in the ice-cold morgue. I comment, "I wish you two a lifetime of happiness." Then, I head home with Mom's ashes. When I enter the house, I see Harvey holding Nelly tightly while making out with her.

At the wedding banquet, my fiancé arrived late with his first love in a best man's outfit, while the groom's suit was thrown on the sofa in a mess. "Quentin, today is our wedding..." "Natalie!" Quentin interrupted me sharply, his eyes full of warnings. "I think you should know what to say and what not to say. Be accommodating and don't make me hate you." I laughed bitterly. Just because Quentin's first love lost her memory, everyone was playing a game of finding memories with her, so we had to hide it from her and coax her, and not overwhelm her. In order to comfort me, Quentin came forward and hugged me, and whispered in my ear, "Nat, you can understand me, right?" I nodded to show my understanding, turned around, and took the hand of the real best man to join in holy matrimony. Later, when I was shopping in the mall while pregnat, he stopped me with tears in his eyes: "Nat, we were all acting, weren't we? How did you get pregnant?"

It was my 30th birthday, and my husband said he had a surprise for me. However, on the day of my birthday, he was nowhere to be found. I called him countless times, but no one answered. Just as I was about to panic and consider calling the police, I happened to see a post on the social media feed of his female secretary. “A typhoon hit, and my boss was worried about my safety, so he personally took me home. How wonderful! I’ve got a guardian angel for myself!” My anxiety turned to cold calm in an instant. I commented on her post: “Traveling during a typhoon is dangerous. Tell him he doesn’t need to come back.” Not long after I posted the comment, my husband called. “Kelly, I was only concerned about the safety of my subordinate, and yet you’re thinking such vile thoughts. “Birthdays come every year. Missing one won’t kill you!” You were right. Birthdays came every year. But there was no way I would celebrate them with you.