Maikling mga Kwento & mga Nobela

"Chels, you're turned on too, aren't you?" During a visit to the haunted house with my best friend, Chelsea Higgins, and her boyfriend, Ivan Benton, Ivan has mistaken me for Chelsea and has embraced me from behind. I can feel his warm palm slowly sliding up the hem of my skirt in the pitch-black darkness. At the same time, his hot breath keeps splaying over my nape and my earlobe. The most embarrassing thing is, I'm starting to get turned on by Ivan's actions for real.

My boss has started dating, and his girlfriend is already acting hostile toward me at the first meeting. She looks me up and down and says passive-aggressively, "You're Theodore's secretary, the one he's been taking special care of?" I'm left speechless for a moment, staring at her in disbelief. I am Theodore Grant's secretary—that part is true. When I graduated, my dad deliberately arranged for me to work under Theodore to learn company management. For over a year, I have been working overtime late into the night every day, handling stacks of documents that never seem to end. Everyone says that I'm the hardest-working workhorse in the company. So, why have I gone from being a workhorse to some kind of side piece the moment my boss gets a girlfriend?

On Alaric's wedding day, I brought a gift to the wedding feast. I had barely taken my seat when someone swung straight at my face. Alaric's bride, a transmigrator who called herself an expert in noble-household intrigue, glared at me in her wedding gown. "So you're the prince's former betrothed? How does a defeated rival still have the nerve to show up at the wedding feast? Have you no shame?" A palace maid caught her hand before the slap landed, and I studied her with a dark expression. Before I could speak, Lydia of House Leicester mocked me again. "What? Are you going to say you only came to offer your blessings? I grew up watching period dramas. Don't think I don't know what filthy thoughts a medieval woman like you is hiding. "You came here pretending to congratulate us while planning to ruin the wedding feast and make the prince change his mind, didn't you? Too bad Alaric promised me that I would be his only wife for life. Even if you were to strip naked and stand in front of him, he wouldn't touch you!" Then she raised her brow at the women behind her. The noblewomen and ladies who were friendly with her surrounded me, scorn on their faces. Then they reached out to slap me. "Exactly, you wench! How dare you provoke Princess Lydia? We'll make you pay for it today!" The courtyard fell into chaos. Insults and jeers came one after another. Just as the women were about to grab my hair, the chief steward Edwin quickly stood in front of me and shouted, "Enough! I would like to see who dares to show disrespect to the Grand Princess of this realm, Her Royal Highness Princess Sophia!"

In our house, owning a single unnecessary item is considered shameful. My room is bare, like a model home. It doesn't even have an extra chair. There are always only three sets of clothes in my closet. If I want a new pair of pants, I have to cut up the old pair myself before I can keep the new one. Every time I bring something new home, I have to get rid of something old. That includes my favorite pair of shorts with the little robot prints. Dad calls this "decluttering". He says it prevents the soul from becoming weighed down by objects, keeping it pure and light. Every time I grow a little taller, Mom's frown gets a little deeper. "Eddie, you're taking up too much space," she says. "The house feels crowded because of you." From then on, I do everything I can to make myself smaller. Even when I sleep, I curl myself into the tightest ball I can manage. I just want to take up a little less space. Then one day, a truck driver stops in front of me. He smiles and tells me his truck has a huge cargo compartment, big enough to hold all the things nobody wants anymore. I quietly climb inside. "Mom, Dad… I won't take up any space now. You'll finally be happy, won't you?"

My husband, Henry Gibbons, is a man with a heart of gold. He has sponsored Felicity Lambert, an impoverished female college student who has come from the mountains, and yet I've never seen this person before. During the New Year holidays, Henry has traveled to the mountains to give Felicity some well-needed resources, but he ends up getting trapped there because of a blizzard. My heart aches for him, so I've shared the local news while praying for his quick return. But that's when I come across a video clip featuring a comic convention on the trending list. Henry, who claims that he's trapped in the mountains, can be seen wearing a cosplaying outfit. In the video, he's kneeling on the floor while helping a scantily-dressed young woman tie the bells to her ankles. The woman titters as she pats him on the head. "Thank you, Henry!" The caption of the video reads, "Daddy's love is the salvation meant for me and me only." I tap into the uploader's profile picture. The pinned post is a photo of the luxurious goods meant to be flaunted to the Internet. A pregnancy report sits next to those goods as well. "Daddy has told me that once that hag of a wife dies, these things will be mine!" In the comment section, Henry's smurf account has responded, "Be patient, my little minx. Her time will be up soon." At that moment, I find myself staring down at the New Year's dinner that I've just whipped up. Then, I dump everything into the trash can without hesitation.

No one knew that I was the Thorn pack’s head Alpha’s soulmate. He and Carol, who had been best friends since they were kids, were very close. Everyone in the pack thought they were soulmates while I was just a mistress threatening their bond. To protect Carol’s reputation, Barnett lied to the pack, claiming Carol was carrying his pup. This made our child illegitimate. When I confronted him in pain, demanding why, he explained, “Carol is known for her gentle and quiet nature. If our packmates knew she was pregnant without a mate, they would shame her. She's too fragile to go through all this.” For the first time, I looked at the man I thought was my mate and questioned if the Moon Goddess had made a mistake. Later on, while Barnett was away gathering herbs for Carol, the elders forced me to terminate my pregnancy, branding our pup as a disgrace to the Thorn pack. By the time Barnett returned, our pup was gone, and so was I.

When Eric Sutton—my charming CEO husband—found out I handed a million-dollar project to his assistant Vivien Cheney, he figured his three months of radio silence had finally broken me. Suddenly, he's all, "Let's go to Iceland for our honeymoon!" Vivien heard and threw a fit. Threatened to quit. Classic. Eric, who treated her like royalty, freaked out. After three days of begging, he bailed on the trip—said it was for "work"—then handed her my ticket. Later, he shrugged it off. "Romance's petty. Work comes first. You're my wife. You get it, right?" Right. I just stared at Vivien's new post: a couples selfie—cheek to cheek, hands shaped like a heart. I didn't say a word. Just nodded. Eric thought I was finally playing the role: calm, supportive, mature. Promised an even better honeymoon when he got back. Too bad I'd already quit. Too bad he'd already signed the divorce papers. We were done.

As I casually opened the online forum, a trending post at the top caught my eye. [Share the wildest thing you’ve ever done.] I clicked on the second comment, which seemed to contain just one line. [Without a doubt, it was the night before my buddy’s wedding when I had his wife come over for a “quality check.”] However, the poster kept adding to the thread. [That night, the woman tricked that idiot into thinking it was a bachelorette party, but she actually spent the whole night at my place. [She said she didn’t want to sleep with just one man forever and needed one last wild night before tying the knot. [By the end of the night, her throat was nearly raw from all the screaming. [We kept going until sunrise, right there in the wedding car her husband was supposed to pick her up later that day.] [Not only that, but even after they got married, this fool kept bringing his wife over to my place for dinner. [He’d help me in the kitchen while I pinned his wife against the fridge and kissed her. [He’d be glued to the game in the living room while his wife knelt in the bathroom and took care of me. [One time, when he passed out drunk on my couch, his wife and I had our own fun on the carpet beside him. [Every time he rolled over, we’d both jump. It was the thrill of knowing we could get caught at any moment.] The image loaded, revealing the familiar interior of the wedding car. The lucky charm I had given my wife dangled from the rearview mirror. My fingers momentarily stiffened, and I nearly dropped my phone. A wave of nausea rolled in my stomach as a chill crept up my spine. Just then, a hand appeared in my field of vision, waving in front of me. “Calvin, what are you zoning out for? You’re at my place, and you’re still on your phone. Come on. Dig in while it’s hot.” Wyatt Preston, my friend, grinned at me. Yet, his eyes kept straying toward my wife, Queenie Jennings, who was sitting beside me.

My sister wanted to make a quick buck selling herself on a cruise ship. I tried desperately to stop her, but my entire family held me down and drowned me in the ocean instead. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the moment before she left. This time, I smiled while helping her with her makeup. "Let me send you off properly, sis." Later, her screams echoed through the nightmare aboard that ship. I stood safe in the arms of a mafia Don who held me close. "Figlia, your Papa finally found you." Meanwhile, my adoptive parents and sister were on their knees across the deck, begging me to spare their worthless lives.

On the day of my wedding, I stood on the stage, while my fiance, Jake Stevens, passionately kissed his assistant, Chloe Xanders, in front of everyone. He held her in his arms and said earnestly, “Chloe, don’t worry. Even though you’re not my bride, you’ll always have a place in my heart.” Chloe, who was overwhelmed with emotion, threw herself into his arms and wept as she said to me, “Lily, Jake and I are deeply in love, but fate just didn’t work out for us in this life. Please take good care of him.” Gossip instantly spread around us. Just as I was feeling helpless, my fiance humiliated me further and called me nothing more than a doormat. Watching the two of them clinging to each other, I could not take it anymore. I canceled the wedding on the spot and left for abroad the same night to join my best friend. The next time I met Jack, I had already moved on with someone new. When he saw me interlocking my fingers with my new love and kissing him passionately, his eyes instantly filled with burning jealousy.

On my second day after transferring to City Hall, I took over one of my coworker's cases. A young woman had come in for a certified copy of her marriage certificate. My coworker chuckled. "This is her ninety-ninth time requesting it. We already have all her paperwork on file, so it'll only take a minute." I blinked. "Ninety-nine times?" She laughed. "Yep. She married a wealthy older man, and every time they get into a fight, they tear up their marriage certificate. That's how they vent. "Only an older husband would tolerate that kind of childish behavior. I heard her husband is from the Hayes family, the wealthiest family in Havenbrook." I frowned at once. "Anyone from the Hayes family should know better than to behave like that. Are you sure her husband isn't an impostor?" My coworker immediately clapped a hand over my mouth, looking horrified. "For heaven's sake, keep your voice down. He's the real deal. Hunter Hayes, the head of the Hayes family." I froze. My phone slipped from my hand and landed on the desk. The screen lit up with a photo of me leaning against Hunter. The young woman in front of me suddenly went pale. She snatched my phone off the desk. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Why do you have a picture with my husband?"

On Christmas Eve, my uncle, Adam Stewart, took a sip of the expensive wine I bought and pointed at me, laughing. "A child’s nature really shows early. When she was little, she wet the bed. Now that she's all grown up, she's working as a content creator in her parents' store. "She can't compare to my daughter, Erin Stewart, who has a secure job with guaranteed income. Because you're running a small business, your family will starve if you were to come across the smallest hurdle!" All the relatives at the dining table laughed. Erin pretended to play with her phone, but she was grinning. My parents just smiled politely, at a loss for what to do. I looked icily at Uncle Adam. There were still six hours before the ice apocalypse arrived and the global zombie crisis broke out. In my previous life, Uncle Adam, who always looked down on us, pushed my entire family into the zombie horde to seize my parents' supermarket. This time, I would not let him get away with it. I had just grabbed the plate, ready to smash it over Uncle Adam's head, when a crisp notification rang in my mind. "Ding! Rage Points System has been bound. The host can obtain resources by retaliating. The more shameless you are, the stronger you become!" Looking at Uncle Adam's smug face, I laughed. "Yeah, I don't know anything, but I just recalled something. Uncle Adam, you were arrested by the anti-prostitution squad when you went to Los Anglos on a business trip eight years ago, weren't you? Does Aunt Leanne know about this?"

In the tenth year of being the secret lover of Luca, a Mafia Don, I died. When the bullet tore through my chest, I used the last of my strength to dial his number. “Luca, I’ve been shot… Please, save me…” On the other end, he let out a careless, mocking snort. “Eva, is this another one of your tragic‑act routines? Helena’s waiting for me to have breakfast with her. I’m tired of this game. Stop bothering me.” Then, the call cut off without mercy, and so I closed my eyes in despair. When I opened them again, I had gone back seven days before the shooting. This time, with trembling fingers, I dialed a number I hadn’t dared to touch in three years. “Marcus, three years ago, you said you’d marry me. Do you still stand by it?” The voice on the other end exploded. “Eva! You finally called me! I’m in Sicily, clearing out an enemy faction. I can’t get back right now. “Give me seven days. I swear I’ll come back to you in a blaze of glory!”

The day I go wedding dress shopping with my best friend, Alice Wilson, I catch her fiance and his female friend getting intimate inside the fitting room. I rush over to tell Alice, only to get a hard slap across the face. "I know you're jealous I'm marrying into wealth, but I never thought you'd make up such vile lies about my boyfriend! He and Fiona are just best friends. How could he ever do something like that?" Despite my desperate warnings and pleas, she marries Matthew Price anyway. She even posts about me online. "My best friend of over a decade turned out to be the one who couldn't stand seeing me happy." The post goes viral, exposing me to a barrage of relentless hate. Everyone brands me a toxic friend. Matthew holds a grudge against me for exposing his affair with Fiona and hires someone to ruin me. As I try to escape in a panic, I get hit by a car and die on the spot. When I open my eyes again, I am right back to the day I was helping Alice try on wedding dresses. From inside the fitting room, those same scandalous sounds ring out once more.

My fiancé is one of the country's top neurosurgeons. One day, he discovers that his childhood sweetheart has been diagnosed with cancer and only has a month to live. He wants to spend this time with her, so he feeds me a newly developed memory-wiping drug to make me forget him for a month. During that time, he throws his childhood sweetheart a wedding and goes on a honeymoon with her. As they stand amid an ocean of flowers, they vow to be together in another lifetime. One month later, he kneels before me in the rain. Tears stream down his face as he says hoarsely, "The drug's effects were only supposed to last for a month. Why have you permanently forgotten me?"

Everyone says Matteo only married me out of debt. My father took a bullet for him. Four years into our marriage, my separation anxiety hit an all-time high. As the Don, he never snapped. He canceled big meetings. He stayed every single time panic set in. At my worst, I held onto his arm all night. Even when it went numb, he never pulled back. He put up with it all. The late-night location checks. Going through his phone. He stayed until I thought we were solid. I thought it was love. Then the floating words started appearing. His soft chuckle and sweet "You're impossible" actually came with this: [When is this nightmare over?] His gentle "My girl is the prettiest" really meant: [God, she's so full of herself.] That was my wake-up call. His patience was never love. It was just a cold obligation. If I'm just a burden he tolerates, I'm out.

I accidentally wear the gown Miles Graham prepared for his childhood sweetheart. To my horror, he forces me to take it off in public. "I prepared this for Nora—do you think you're worthy of wearing it? Take it off! You're dirtying it!" He knows I have serious PTSD after almost being violated, yet he insults me with those words. I look at him tearfully and beg him not to say anymore. That's when the gown's zip bursts open. My PTSD acts up. I'm so overwhelmed that I collapse on the floor and have a seizure. Miles dismisses everyone and takes Nora out on a date. He leaves me lying there in humiliation. I call my mentor before being discharged from the hospital. "Ms. Gardner, I've decided to participate in the water conservation project in Affenheim."

In the fifth year of being married to Rick Duncan, I burned down our house. "Wendy Frost, don't think I'll forgive you so easily. I will never love you!" shouted Rick. I sat by the window and looked at him. "You'll regret this, Rick." The next second, a cloud of red mist appeared from the ground. I was left lying in a pool of blood. I suddenly opened my eyes... I was reborn. Three months later, Rick made a call late at night during the day of his wedding with Jennifer Frost. He was sobbing. "Mindy, I regret my decision."

I turned out not to be the biological daughter of a wealthy family. In my previous life, I had believed my best friend Vicky’s words and had stormed out on the day the real daughter, Lydia, returned. I never expected my biological father to fall ill with a chronic ailment that drained every bit of the family’s savings. I had nowhere to turn, and I worked day and night until I collapsed while delivering food in the middle of the night. Vicky became close to Lydia, and she used the chance to approach Peter, her brother, so that she could marry into a wealthy family. When I opened my eyes again, I returned to the day I had run away. My foster parents looked at me with worry, and Peter stood with his arms crossed. “You know your biological parents are so broke they can’t even afford food, so are you sure you want to go back and suffer?” In my previous life, they had pleaded with me, and all I had in my head had been Vicky’s manipulation. I had thrown out the words, “I don’t need your filthy money,” and walked away. I set my suitcase down without hesitation this time. I would never leave before I saved enough money.

As the daughter of a billionaire, I grew up in a world full of luxury. But when I turned 18, I gave everything I had to my brother's best friend, Nathan Gildon. He was the one my brother trusted most, the one he personally brought up. Nathan was smart and ambitious, and when he smiled, it felt as if he was handing you the whole world. I had had a crush on him for years. Last night, I thought he finally loved me back. I thought I wasn't just the girl who snuck glances at him across crowded parties anymore. I thought I was the woman he'd bring into his future. But the next morning, I heard him on the balcony, laughing with an investor friend. "Mavis is just practice. I need some experience before I pursue Claire. Besides, her family can open a lot of doors for me." I didn't cry, question him, or explain myself. I just packed my bags and changed my college applications. One week later, I was on a plane to Eltoria. And the man who betrayed me that night? He went crazy trying to win me back.