Emotional

My younger twin sister, Emma Lawson, is everyone's favorite because she is sickly. A snowstorm traps us on the mountain and the rescue helicopter arrives with room for only one more. I have terminal cancer and am ready to let Emma take my place. Then she suddenly clutches her head and cries that she feels dizzy. My whole family rushes to her side and together they push her into the cabin. My husband, Leon Ziegler, touches my fractured arm and says, "Sarah, you'll have to wait for the next helicopter." My daughter, Daria Ziegler, even throws a snowball at me. "Aunt Emma is sicker than you. Stop trying to take her spot." Only when the helicopter takes off do I see Emma pressed against the window, smugly sticking her tongue out. She has been lying the whole time. When I am finally rescued, the doctors tell me I have three days left to live. I decide to trade everything I own for a small piece of my family's affection.

In my past life, I was trafficked and gave birth to a son. When Noah Barrett turns six, I plan to take him and escape from the mountains. On my first attempt, I map out the route in advance and prepare to flee with him. But in the morning, my mother-in-law, Ruth Whitaker, blocks me at the door. She ties me up and locks me inside the shed. Then, she starves me for three days. On my second try, I secretly buy sleeping pills from an unlicensed village doctor and slip them into dinner. At the table, Ruth flips the table without hesitation and beats me until I am half dead. The third time, I take advantage of a village meeting and escape with Noah again. We hide in a concealed mountain cave. Neither of us makes a sound, yet Ruth finds us with ease. I am dragged back and locked away in the pigpen. Ruth takes a shovel and strikes me with it again and again. "You filthy bitch. You dare run off with my precious grandson!" Her eyes are bloodshot. With the final blow, she uses all her strength and smashes the shovel into my head. I collapse to the ground. My consciousness fades. My blood drains away, and I die. When I open my eyes again, I am back on the day I plan to escape the mountains with Noah. Suddenly, I can hear Noah's thoughts, his voice clear and dripping with viciousness. "Mom can't be allowed to run. Grandma says Mom is our family's slave. She's supposed to serve us for her whole life."

I paid the ultimate price in my last life for being too polite to refuse others. During a summer vacation, four children ended my life. "Talia, we’re already on the way to your place. We should be there in about two hours. No need to prepare anything special. Just keep things the way you normally do. Don’t fuss." I stared blankly as the voice came through my phone. The agony of my skin being scalded raw by boiling-hot stew was still vivid in my mind. When I had struggled and begged for help, those children had dragged me back together. In the chaos, I had fallen from the seventh floor and died with my eyes wide open. I glanced at the calendar on the wall. I had been reborn. In my previous life, my sister-in-law, Vanessa Mercer, had dumped her four kids at my home for the summer and left. I was forced to care for six children alone and was pushed to the brink of collapse. Simply because I wouldn’t let my nephew, Jaxon Mercer, play on his tablet for hours on end, and because I told him not to wander around the house in nothing but his underwear, the conflict escalated until it led to that horrifying death. My whole body trembled at the memory. I rushed into the bedroom, grabbed my identification documents, and fled toward the high-speed rail station with my two daughters, Kaia and Nova Mercer. "Mom, where are we going?" "I'm taking you on a trip. We’re going to have as much fun as we want!"

When my fiance's childhood sweetheart, Jenna Gray, gets assigned to a rural work program, he, Austin Bell, volunteers to go with her for three years. Before leaving, he holds my hand and tells me a promise. "Save up while I'm gone and build our wedding fund. We'll get married as soon as I come back." Save up my ass. The moment he leaves, I start living my best life. A year later, Austin, who's supposed to be miles away in some rural village, shows up at our door with Jenna in tow. They're here to ask for money. What he sees when he walks through the door is me, eight months pregnant, lounging on the couch and watching TV. His hands tremble as he points at my pregnant belly. "I've been away for a year… How are you pregnant?" "You're early. If you'd stuck to the plan and come back by then, the kid would already be old enough to run errands."

While preparing for the SATs at the library, my brother is accidentally shot and injured, causing him to bleed profusely. I pass by this scene but turn a blind eye and quicken my pace to leave. This is because in my previous life, when I saw him, I rushed him to the hospital in a panic. He had intracranial hemorrhaging, and he urgently needed surgery. I quickly called my mom, the top neurosurgeon in the city, begging her to come to the hospital as soon as possible. However, she thought I was jealous that she had taken my adopted sister to the beach instead of spending time with me. She also believed I had fabricated the story about my brother's injury, and thus refused to return. By the time my dad and the rest of the family hurried to the hospital, it was too late for rescue efforts—my brother had passed away. The whole family blamed me for his death. They were convinced that I had deliberately misled my mom and delayed his critical treatment. When my mom returned from out of town, she lost her composure and pushed me down the stairs, watching coldly as I bled to death. After opening my eyes again, I had returned to the day my brother was shot at the library.

My sister pulled a knife during a robbery attempt, and we got into a brutal fight. My mom, an auxiliary police officer, arrived at the scene but totally ignored my injury. As I lay in a pool of blood, begging for help, she just cradled my sister and yelled at me, "You're so desperate for attention that you'd hurt your sister? How did I raise a heartless monster like you?" She branded me as the aggressor, ignored my pleas, and rushed my sister, who had mere scratches, to the hospital. I was left alone to die miserably in that deserted alley. When the news of my death arrived, my mother dismissed it as another one of my lies, pointing at my body and demanding I get up to apologize to my sister.

My in-laws were hit by a car crash. I called my husband, begging him to give me some money to pay the hospital bill. He said, "Oh, if you want money, just come out with it. That excuse is terrible!" He hung up on me. Despite how unfair it felt, I had to call him again. This time, a voice I was familiar with hit my ears. A woman's voice. "Chris, I got a bit too much sunscreen on my hand. Can I smear the rest on your abs?" Lovingly, my husband said, "You little troublemaker." His parents died that night. Overseas.

A burglar breaks into our home, taking my mother-in-law and me captive. He stabs my mother-in-law's eyes, blinding her. Then, he slices her tongue and strips her, even putting on a live stream to air the whole thing. He claims that he'll auction my mother-in-law's organs if we can't pay the ransom of ten million dollars. The live stream infuriates the Internet, and everyone starts searching for my husband, the city's wealthiest man. No one knows he's on a luxury cruise ship, holding an engagement ceremony with his childhood friend. He snarls, "What a dumb excuse to trick me out of my money! I'll burn the money for them when they're dead!"

As soon as I graduated from university, I suggested to my three roommates that we should rent a place together. The place I found was near our workplace, and it was cheap as well. It was much better than the house they used to rent in the suburbs. During the first three months of renting the place together, everything seemed fine. One day, I got off work early and heard them talking in the living room. "I did some research online. The rent of the houses in this area is at least 2 grand a month. But ours is only 800 dollars a month. How about we rent the master bedroom out for 800 dollars? That way, we won't have to pay any rent." "Alright, I'm in! Why does Jessica always get to sleep in the master bedroom? Even if she covered all the bills of this house, how much would that cost anyway?" "I've had it with her arrogant attitude. Thinking of her being homeless makes me want to laugh!" I laughed inwardly. 'You want to see me homeless? But I'm the landlord!'

In the third year after my death, my mother finally remembered me. But it wasn't out of longing—it was because my younger sister's leukemia had relapsed, and she urgently needed a bone marrow transplant. Clutching a donation agreement, my mother made her way to the basement I once lived in. She kicked open the door and was met with a floor slick with blood and scattered medicine bottles. "Cassidy, what game are you playing this time? Do you really think a self-inflicted act of suffering could fool me? Why are you so selfish? Why won't you save your own sister?" Her voice roared with anger, echoing through the space. From the crowd that had gathered to watch, a ragged little boy stepped forward. "Are you talking about Cassidy Porter? She… she died three years ago of organ failure… she vomited so much blood…"