단편 소토리 & 소설

The day my wife slept with her terminally ill “male best friend” to take his virginity, I left a divorce agreement behind and walked out. Before I left, I commented under their hand-holding photo on Instagram. [Let's get divorced. I wish you and Theo a long and happy life together.] One minute later, she called me. "Logan, how did I end up marrying someone as selfish as you? Can you really let him die without someone to carry on his line?" I sneered and replied that she wasn't my wife anymore, so that wasn't really my problem. She panicked.

By the time I return home from a business trip, it is past midnight. However, my wife, Celeste Beaumont, isn't home. A man's shirt that isn't mine is lying on the couch. When I call her, she tells me that she's working late at the office. "Whose shirt is it on the couch?" I ask, cutting straight to the point. She playfully scolds, "Who else would it be? It's a gift for you, so hurry up and try it on." I skeptically put it on and immediately feel how tight and uncomfortable it is across my shoulders. "This is an L, babe. I've always worn XL." Celeste runs a clothing company. She's the one who handles all my clothes and even uses my body measurements for her menswear line. There's no way she doesn't know my size. The line goes quiet for half a second before she thoughtfully says, "It's from my new menswear collection. "I had pieces custom-made for you and Felix, so I must've grabbed the wrong piece. I'll swap it tomorrow." A beat later, her voice carries a little sob as she continues, "Babe, I've been so exhausted without you these past few days. I've missed you so much…" It's past midnight. As I listen to the undeniable weariness beneath her affectionate, playful words, my heart aches in distress. I can't help chiding myself for overthinking. However, after hanging up, realization hits me. Her brother, Felix Beaumont, and I are about the same build. He's always worn XL.

My girlfriend Chloe Bennett's childhood buddy, Daniel Miller, binds himself to a transfer system. Everything he eats gets sent straight into my stomach. He creates a live stream channel and eats nonstop for 12 hours a day to rake in money. Meanwhile, I end up in the ER with acute pancreatitis. I try to explain everything to Chloe, but she just looks at me like I've lost my mind. "How could something that ridiculous exist? If food could magically transfer, nobody would starve in the world. You're just jealous he's making money from streaming." Afterward, Daniel's every live stream triggers another pancreatitis episode, sending me back to the ER until I'm barely holding on. I get tested, but the doctors can't figure out what's wrong. They even want to admit me to psych. Later, in a desperate bid to outdo another streamer, Daniel downs ten pounds of mashed potatoes at once. The overload destroys my spleen and stomach, causing massive internal bleeding that kills me. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day of Daniel's very first live stream. This time, I rush out and order 20 takeout dishes before him. "This time, I'm eating first."

I decided to cut all ties with Julia Summers. She said she was busy with work, so I quietly packed my suitcase in our bedroom. Then she brought her so-called true love, Henry Stone, home. Right then and there, I asked for a divorce. In my past life, I’d poured my heart and soul into this family and nearly drained every last bit of our savings. Even then, on my fortieth birthday, my own children knelt before me, begging me to let Julia’s dying lover be buried in the Summers Estate. I looked at Julia and said, "You once told me you’d only ever love me. Have you really forgotten?" Her eyes turned red. "I’ll stay with you," she said, her voice trembling. "But Henry just wants a name. Why would you hold a grudge against someone who’s dying?" When I opened my eyes again, I was twenty-five. This time, I’d give them what they wanted and finally give myself what I deserved.

It has been a year since our mate bond formed, but my fated mate Damon Borden has never lost control around me. Even in the height of desire, he will only use toys to help me find release, but he always refuses to let me help him. Despite how much my heart aches, I plan to let him go. Even though he is my fated mate, he doesn't love me. I get a potion from Helena Craw, the witch. This potion will dissolve our mate bond. However, the night before I'm about to take it, I stumble upon Damon in the study, using my photo while venting his desire. He does it again and again while murmuring my name and saying that he loves me. I'm shocked. I want to record the scene with my phone, but I accidentally take Damon's old phone. I tap on his chat records with Helena. "I'm the fated mate of the woman I love, and I love her very much. However, I'm far too strong. What if I hurt her while making love to her?" "How can I restrain my desire and control my strength to please a female wolf?" "If my mate runs off with someone else, how can I overcome my possessiveness and continue to love her?"

At my son's tenth birthday, I unexpectedly gained the power to read minds. Standing before the candles, he made his wish. "I hope I score a hundred on my finals." Before I could commend his maturity, a second wish slammed into my ears. "I don't like Dad. I want Mr. Shaw to be my dad.'' My hands froze halfway through a clap.

I'm my brother's walking blood bank. Mom and Dad keep forcing me to go for blood transfusions to the point that I don't even weigh 80 pounds. Later, my brother's kidney fails. Mom and Dad want to gouge mine out to be transplanted into his body. At the peak of my despair, the thief who sneaks in from the ventilation hood secretly carries me out and helps me escape. He says, "I'm here for you. Don't be scared."

Jennifer Porter, the icy and untouchable CEO, never imagined that buying a simple jade pendant for her childhood friend would change everything. Because of that pendant, I divorced her and left with our daughter. After all, the jade pendant was my father's keepsake, and her childhood friend smashed it to pieces right in front of me. We met again three years later, at an international jewelry design competition. My ex-wife grabbed my wrist, fury burning in her eyes. "You've been gone for three years. Isn't your tantrum long enough? I'll buy you a hundred jade pendants, just come home with me." The next second, a small hand tugged at her clothes. "Excuse me, could you step aside? My mom needs to talk to my dad."

My wife, Christine Leigh, forced me to the brink of death all for her first love, Henry Carson. To give him a liver transplant, she sent me to the surgery table. I told her I had cancer and that the doctors had advised against the surgery. She just looked at me with an undisguised contempt, "Jason Lowe, stop with your petty tricks. Don't forget, you owe our family your life!" I lowered my head and smiled bitterly. I never left the surgery table.

At my own wedding, I find out the woman behind the veil isn't even the one I'm supposed to be marrying. Instead of getting mad, I give her the wedding of the century. It's all because of what happened in my past life. I'd exposed that she wasn't my bride in front of everyone and blew up the whole ceremony. That forced Jessie Clarke, who'd been at the hospital with her childhood sweetheart, Oliver Grant, to rush over reluctantly so we could still get married. Because of that, Oliver refused treatment and died on the operating table. When I heard he was gone, I told Jessie she should see him one last time, but she refused. All she said was, "Blame it on his bad luck." After we got married, we acted just as in love as before. I kept getting money from my family to save her company every time it was on the verge of collapse. But on the anniversary of Oliver's death, Jessie shoved me off the top floor of her company. I hit the ground hard enough to end up a broken, bloody mess. As I fell, I caught one last look at her face, streaked with tears. "If you hadn't forced me back to marry you, Oliver wouldn't have died! You get to keep me, but I lost him for good! Why do you get to live a happy life?" So that was it. She'd blamed me for Oliver's death from the start. She'd never loved me at all. The next time I opened my eyes, I was back at our wedding ceremony.

I’ve always felt the child that I’ve cared for the past three years was not mine. My mother-in-law told me I was overthinking and was just tired. However, I remember it clearly. My child had a birthmark on their left arm.   Even my husband said it was nothing more than a dream I had after passing out during labor.   Still, I began to suspect that my in-laws swapped my child at birth.  

How much did my wife love me? To marry me, she proposed ninety-nine times. I was not moved until the hundredth. On our wedding day, I gave her ninety-nine make-up cards. We agreed that as long as all of them were not used up, I would stay with her. Five years into our marriage, she used one card every time she went out to be with her crush. When she reached the ninety-seventh card, she suddenly noticed that I had changed. I no longer begged for her to stay. When she lost control because of her adorable secretary, I asked her, “If you don't come back tonight, can I use a make-up card?” She paused for a moment and then softened, which was rare for her. “Okay.” I nodded and let her leave. She thought she still had many make-up cards. She didn't realize this was his last chance.

I'm dressed in flip-flops and shorts when making an inspection of the five-star hotel my husband just acquired. When the front office manager spots me, she immediately calls for security with a disgusted look on her face. "The hotel's WiFi isn't meant for people like you to use. Hurry up and pay me 200 thousand dollars in Internet costs, then get lost!" I calmly tell her that I'm the owner of the hotel, but that only makes her sneer. "The owner of the hotel? Hey, old hag, you're putting on an act in front of the real deal! This hotel was a birthday gift from my husband to me. Aren't you fantasizing a bit too much?" Oh? Since when did Ian Lambert get another wife behind my back?

Don Fiorenzo Ricci saved me and brought me home, raising me for seven years. During the day, he was refined and restrained, treating me the way a true father would. At night, he was endlessly inventive, making me his and his alone. I drowned myself in this twisted love, naively believing I was the only one for Fiorenzo. Then he turned around and married another woman, made her the Madre of the mafia family, and forced me to watch them together. I was done being a piece in their twisted games. The first time I ran, he nearly killed the maid who helped me. The second time I ran, he shot the gardener dead on the spot. The third time, and the last, I jumped into the ocean right in front of him. I did it all for freedom, even if it was only the freedom of my soul after death.

After being reborn, I secretly switch the man I want to marry the most to the useless scion who loves flirting with me that lives next door. My dad, who's a high-ranking military colonel, is quite surprised by my choice, but he respects my wishes. In my past life, when Dad asked who I liked the most in the entire neighborhood, I had written down Damian Conrad's name. He nodded and told me, "This man has contributed greatly to the country despite only joining the army for three years. His future will definitely be a bright one. "A man as just and fair as him will undoubtedly be a good man who takes good care of his family and stays devoted to them." Dad immediately arranged for the two families to meet. Everyone thought that it was a rare and fated union. Our wedding was very grand and high-profile. Most of the people living in the military base came over to celebrate our wedding. But Damian set off for the frontier half a year after our marriage, with the excuse of wanting to contribute to the country. Not only did he leave me behind to take care of my in-laws on my own, but he also cut off all contact with me when Dad was severely ill. When I was finally done dealing with Dad's funeral matters, all I received was the bad news of Damian's death at the frontier. Crushed by the devastation and despair of the news, I fell into severe depression. Soon, I took my own life by jumping off the building. After my death, my soul refused to fade away at all. 40 years later, an elderly man and woman with graying hair showed up before my grave. With an arm around Heidi Myers' waist, Damian paid his respects to me at my grave. "It's my fault for lying to you back then, Carla. But Heidi doesn't have much time to live, so I can resort to desperate measures. Please let everything go and stop pestering her, Carla. If you really are resentful, feel free to come at me instead." It turns out that Damian loved Heidi this much that he was willing to fake his death just to trick me. But at the same time, they were so superstitious that they thought I was the one pestering Heidi, causing her to be afflicted with a terminal cancer. Now that I found out about the truth, I finally let my obsession go. When I open my eyes again, I realize I've returned to the day Dad asks me who I want to marry the most.

For ten years, I was Vincent's blood bag and his sharpest blade. I offered my rare blood to sustain his ancient power. I offered my loyalty to secure his throne as the Vampire Lord of this territory. I thought my devotion might earn me the eternal embrace of the turning. Instead, I received the announcement of his marriage to Lilith. A princess from a powerful European vampire clan. He said it was a necessary alliance. He said my blood was still precious. But when the sanctified silver tearing through the car,he used my body as a shield, to ensure his bride remained unblemished. That's when I knew. I was never his lover. I was just a consumable resource, a blood bag to be used and discarded. So, when I was ordered to become his blood servant under the title of his fiancée, I made a call to my father. “In seven days,” I said, my voice clear and final in the dark, “make the name Elena Rossi disappear from this city. From vampire’s world. Forever.” In seven days, when Vincent finds his precious living blood bank gone, he went insane. And this decade-long game of predator and prey… will have a new set of rules.

The intern secretly submitted a voluntary pay-cut application on my behalf. As a result, my salary dropped from $10,000 to $2,000. When I found out and confronted him, my boss and colleagues all defended him. "The company is not doing great right now. Oscar was just trying to save costs for us. Do you have to nickel-and-dime over this?" With my salary so low, I couldn't afford the special medication for my chronic migraines, and one day I passed out at my desk during an attack. But the intern snuck a video of me unconscious and posted it on the company's website. He even whipped up a detailed 100-page slideshow breaking down how I was slacking off on the clock and dumping all my work on him. Overnight, I was labeled a workplace bully. My boss gave me the cold shoulder, and my colleagues whispered about me. Even worse, some extreme "anti-workplace-bullying" activists tracked me down to my home, showed up with two cans of gasoline, and burned me and my parents alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on that very day when the intern had submitted my pay-cut form. In this second chance at life, I would make sure everyone saw the intern for who he truly was.

At the underground auction house, tonight's grand finale was billed as a 'premium wolf pet'. Inside the cage, a male wolf knelt with a bite-prevention muzzle locked around his neck. He was clearly a prisoner, yet his eyes held no trace of submission when he lifted his head. Instead, he looked like he was judging every single person in the room. His gaze cut through the crowd and locked onto me. My heart stuttered as excitement flooded my system. I finally knew what true attraction felt like. A well-dressed man in the front row raised his paddle. "$100 million." Gasps erupted across the venue. It was an astronomical opening bid. I smiled and slowly raised my paddle too. My voice brought the hall to dead silence. "$500 million."

My daughter was violated and killed, yet her death was ruled a suicide. After seven failed appeals, I kidnapped the chief prosecutor’s daughter. I tied the chief prosecutor’s daughter to an autopsy table and publicly addressed the prosecutor’s office in a live stream. “I performed the autopsy myself. My daughter didn’t kill herself. She was murdered. “I’ll give you seven chances. Release the actual evidence and name the murderer publicly. Each time a chance runs out, I’ll remove one of her body parts.” The chief prosecutor and his wife knelt on the floor. They begged me desperately to spare their daughter. “The evidence proves your daughter took her own life. Stop this madness now and let my daughter go. She’s innocent.” Viewers in the live stream called me insane. They said I had lost my mind with grief and was taking it out on an innocent person. I ignored their contempt. With a sneer, I picked up a scalpel and pressed it against the judge’s daughter’s abdomen. “The clock is ticking. Hurry up and reveal the true murderer now.” I knew perfectly well the real murderer was watching the stream at that very moment.

As floodwaters rushed into the garage, I called my boyfriend. "Wade, help me... I'm trapped in here! The emergency exit's locked!" He sounded annoyed. "Tia, stop. Mandy's cat is stuck in a tree—we're handling it!" Then he hung up, taking the rescue team with him. My last hope was gone.