Short Stories & Novels

Julian Carter orders me to clean up his childhood sweetheart's new home when I'm still recovering from childbirth. "Everyone knows you're good at home economics! Things will be much easier for us with your help." I'm wrapping things up when I feel something dampen my pants. The discharge trickles down my leg and onto the floor. Nadine Stephens covers her mouth and cries dramatically, "What's that? It's so disgusting!" She even bends over and pretends to gag. Awkwardness and shame wash over me, making me want to dig a hole and hide myself. However, Julian grabs me and scowls. "I told you to come here to help. You're causing trouble on purpose, aren't you?" It's Valentine's Day, but he chases me out and tells me to go home. I wait for him for the whole night with our child in my arms. He only returns the following day with love bites on his neck. That's when I know we won't have a future together.

My husband is a rock climbing route setter. It's our wedding anniversary today, but he brings his female best friend with him on an adventure to discover uncharted territory. It comes about because his female best friend says life is so boring. We're trapped in the mountains when we encounter extreme weather, and the rescue helicopter can only take two people with them. They climb up the ladder deftly, leaving me to slowly grow colder in the rain. I shout his name with all my strength. "I have a heart condition! I'll die if I don't get to the hospital soon!" He throws a rope down at me without even sparing me a glance. "Luna has menstrual cramps—she never says she's in pain. You, on the other hand, are only good at acting. Think of a way to get down yourself." What he doesn't know is that his "good friend" has already sliced the rope he threw to me.

Because I loved him, I became Luke’s secret lover for five years, thinking he must have some feelings for me.  However, when someone kidnapped me, and I called him for help, he impatiently said, “Suzy Roland? I have no idea who that is.” Then, he turned around and flirted with another woman. As he wished, I cut ties with him and became a stranger. Yet now, he’s weeping and begging me for another chance.

"I can't take it anymore, babe. Faster! Oh, people from your country feel the best!" I hear weird noises coming from my son's bedroom in the middle of the night. I secretly push his door open to see him watching a movie in bed. He has a woman's underwear on his face, and his hand moves beneath the sheets. When I take a closer look, I see that the protagonist of the movie is my son. His female counterpart is his classmate's mother!

Eight years married, and my wife? She asked for a divorce 99 times. I thought it was just her usual drama—testing me. Then I found out she'd been wiring half a million every year to some dude. Always with the same note: ILU. When she hit me with divorce number 100, I finally signed. I pulled my money out of her little passion project and ghosted—moved my company overseas, wiped my tracks clean. Now she's out there losing her mind, trying to find me.

At a class reunion, I ended up getting together with my high school crush. However, one evening, as I was scrolling through a social media platform, I was suddenly bombarded with mentions tagging me in a shocking post. The content left me seeing stars. "My girlfriend has a car, a house, a great degree, and she's stunning. Yet, somehow, she's into me! Haha!" "To be honest, she's too exceptional, and it's kind of killing my sense of masculinity. Once I manage to get my hands on her assets, I'll have her give me two kids and then live life on my own terms. She won’t be able to control me then." "You guys can stay jealous. Not like you know her anyway, so what can you even do to me?"

I miscarry after happening upon my husband, Xavier Leeson, being intimate with someone else. He kneels before me and explains that his loyalty toward me has never swayed. I look at the man who's loved me for nine years and waited for me for five years. Ultimately, I still choose to believe him. After an arduous process of trying to conceive another child, I finally get pregnant again. That's when I accidentally overhear him complaining to his colleagues. "The thought of her being with her ex for five years makes me think that even the children she has are dirty." It shall be as he wishes, then. When he performs his next abortion, he's abhorred when he learns I'm the one he's operating on.

When I finally mustered the courage to confess my feelings to him, he just turned and walked away. When I finally emerged from the shadows and began a new chapter in my life, he was gone. Was it depression? I couldn’t believe it. I had to find out the truth about how he died.

I asked my husband for a divorce during the most difficult year of his life. Everyone condemned me, calling me heartless, but I still forced him to sign the divorce papers. Later, he overcame his struggles and rose to become a powerful CEO. I avoided him for two years, believing I’d never cross paths with him again—until he caught me at my most wretched. His eyes brimmed with hatred as he stared at me. In front of everyone, he humiliated me and relentlessly forced me to down a bottle of vodka. I vomited uncontrollably, blood gushing from my mouth in thick streams. He mocked me, telling me it was the retribution I deserved for betraying him. I didn’t argue. I let him torment me. After all, I was already dying. If that made him content, so be it.

When I return home on Christmas Eve, I find a stamp on my wife's body. She looks flustered as she explains that it's a mark every member of her family has. I sneer to myself. She has no idea that I'm a member of the Anti-Cheating Organization. With the help of a system, I can easily track my wife's whereabouts and see what she's done. She's my last target before completing my mission. Once I'm done with her, I'll get ten million dollars.

I only needed to transmigrate into the romance book and complete the mission in it to receive a reward worth tens of millions of dollars. I was so carried away by such an incredible opportunity that I registered without hesitation. After transmigrating into the book, I realized too late that my mission was to win the male lead’s heart, who happened to be my roommate. Additionally, something strange began to happen to my body. I was a man, but I developed abilities that only appeared in women after childbirth. One day, he cornered me in the room. When he saw my soaked top, he gulped and asked, “Can I try?”

When the fire broke out, I called my husband, Hector. He didn't answer. Instead, he ran straight into the flames—to save my sister, Emma. They held each other, clinging to life, while I was trapped in the basement, watching my calls go ignored until all hope burned out. Afterward, Emma played innocent, twisting everything. She told him, "Hector, don't blame Sienna. She didn't leave me on purpose... she was just scared." Her lie made me the villain, and everyone bought it. Fueled by hatred, Hector spat, "She's so vicious—why didn't that fire just take her?" Three months later, the police found my body.

I have just been discharged after leg surgery when Victor Clark, my wife's former colleague who resents her for taking his position, drags me up to the roof and stabs me repeatedly. My wife, Melissa Lane, is the captain of the rescue unit, yet she is busy mobilizing everyone to stop her depressed first love, Ethan Hayes, from setting his rental apartment on fire. I don't call her to save me. In my previous life, I begged her for help. She abandoned Ethan and rushed to rescue me. In the end, I survived while Ethan died in the blaze. Melissa never blamed me. She said that Ethan got what he deserved and even promised me a surprise for my birthday a week later. But on my birthday, she drugged me, tied me to a hospital bed, and drove a knife into me again and again. "You and Victor set me up that day, didn't you? Those stab wounds aren't even serious! You were never going to die! Since you like getting stabbed so much, I'll make it real for you!" When I open my eyes, I am back to the day Victor took me hostage. This time, I let Melissa go save her first love.

My marriage to Dante Moretti, the heir to the Moretti family, was arranged when we were kids. But after my father died, he publicly refused to marry me. Three times. Each time, he used his dead mother as an excuse, and I couldn't argue. The third time, I walked in on him with some starlet on the anniversary of his mother’s death, and I overheard him sneer: “A boring woman like Isabella? Who the hell would want her?” “So desperate to marry me. It’s pathetic.” I looked down at my white wedding dress, turned on my heel, and knocked on his father's door. Later, on the day I moved into the Moretti estate, I ran into Dante. He thought I was there to force his hand and ran his mouth. But he had no idea I was already his new stepmother.

The day before the piano competition finals, my boyfriend deliberately locked me on the rooftop to help his childhood friend win. He stared at me intently, his voice low and steady. "You'll have plenty more chances. Can't you just let her have this one?" Later, to secure her spot in the orchestra, he went so far as to break my fingers with his own hands. I confronted him in anger, demanding to know why he would do this when we were supposed to be in a relationship. He looked at me solemnly and said, "Susan, Miranda's mother saved me all those years ago, and now I have to fulfill this wish for her." What he didn't understand was that for me, losing the use of my hands felt like losing my very life. After I made the decision to stop loving him, he shattered his own hand, hoping to get my forgiveness.

When I was ten years old, both my parents passed away. My sister, Brianna, and I only had each other left. We were tormented at the orphanage before the Larsons adopted us. They doted on Brianna and me, and even allowed their daughter, Vivian Larson, to get engaged to me when I was 20 years old. It was a wonderful tale of love. Vivian didn't let any of us down. She would have given me the moon if she could, and she loved me with all her heart. During the ten years we spent with the Larsons, Brianna and I led a good life and never suffered at all. The night before we got married, Vivian took out a treasured bottle of vintage wine. It was to be served at our wedding. However, I poisoned the wine and killed everyone in the Larson family, including my own sister.

My boss, who made me work overtime every single day, finally got what was coming to him. Somehow, he got connected to my new keyboard. It was like he was synced to it. His face flushed red, his eyes brimming with tears. "Don't type anymore," he begged. I just smiled and nudged the mouse. "Don't move the mouse either!" 'Do you expect me to just stop because you said so? Wouldn't that make me look pathetic?' I thought to myself. I kept working until midnight. Just as I was about to leave, I glanced down. The carpet at my boss's feet was soaked through. I figured he must have knocked over his glass of water.

The night before our wedding, my fiancée let her so-called "best friend" butcher the gown my late mother had sewn, chopping it into a revealing mini dress. I rushed over with the ruined dress in my arms, ready to demand answers: only to catch their voices through the door: "Imagine him expecting me to wear something a dead woman stitched. What a curse!" Through the narrow gap, I saw my distant, frigid fiancée flushed with color, straddling his lap. "What we did at the bridal shop wasn't enough," she murmured. "Tomorrow, walking down the aisle in this tiny dress you made me, it'll be even more exhilarating." Their lips met. My hand froze against the door, and inside, something broke with a soundless crack. If she longed for thrills, I would grant her some.

I wake up one day to find that I've become the power bank of the whole dorm. When the percentage shown above my dorm mates' heads is low, they'll be tired, angry, and ill-tempered. My job is to help them recharge via all sorts of physical contact. If I don't do my part, my grumpy dorm mates will force me to charge them up anyway…

In the fifth year of my marriage to Jordan West, he cheats on me with a blind woman. She's young, pretty, and demure. Jordan scours the best hospitals in the country to treat her eyes. In the end, he fixes his gaze on me and tells me he wants me to donate my corneas to her. "They're just a pair of eyes, Hazel. Please help her. Can you really stand by and watch as she withers away?"