Independence

When Ryder's professor sent him yet another email, he glanced around his cold, empty home. Faced with Seth's relentless provocations, Ryder made up his mind—he would leave Laura. With the wedding fast approaching, Ryder decided to give Laura the perfect ceremony—one that would please both her and Seth. His departure, however, would be the biggest surprise of the event. But after Ryder walked away, Laura looked at the groom standing at the altar, lost control, and destroyed the wedding in a fit of madness.

My husband sends me a photo of our obedient daughter holding a plate of food. He writes, "Thanks to my patient guidance, our sweetheart has finally made her first dish! We're waiting for you to come home and taste it!" The exhaustion I feel from work is swept away when I see that. No one expects that I'll reach home half an hour later and kill him.

Maude Ellington's fiance sends a message to his first love before their wedding. "You've always been the one I wanted to marry." With their wedding fast approaching, Maude watches him meticulously plan every detail with his first love in mind. She quietly lets it all go. Because she no longer wants the wedding. And she no longer wants him.

After dating Scott Kenta for 10 years, I said to him, "Scott, I'm pregnant." The file in his hands slipped and hit the floor. He frowned, clearly irritated. "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "This is a critical moment—my company's going public. I never planned on having a child." "It's fine. Your career matters more," I said, smiling gently. He didn't catch the meaning behind my words. I was pregnant, yes. But he wasn't the father.

At the wedding I've spent months planning, my usually stoic fiancé, Anthony Scott, is about to run off with his assistant, Erica Jones. To top it all off, she is wearing a wedding gown. Out of nowhere, his younger brother, Christopher Scott, grabs my hand and plans to pull me straight to City Hall. He disregards my panicking eyes. "Let's get married," he says, as if it's the most normal thing in the world. Then, the stage decorations suddenly collapse, revealing a room full of guests mocking and laughing at me. The two men who once swore to love me forever do all just to make Erica smile. The three of them clink glasses and drink a love toast on stage, completely lost in their own moment. "The wedding you planned was way too outdated. You should thank Erica for turning it into a bachelorette party!" "The real wedding will be this Sunday. Isn't Erica's idea amazing?" Anthony and Christopher were confident that I wouldn't dare leave them. But I quietly pick up my phone and type a message. "Let's set the wedding date for this Sunday, Levi."

My two childhood friends act like they don't see anything when their assistant locks me in a cold storage. They're filled with regret when I thoroughly vanish.

When I started college, my new roommate secretly used my phone to take a selfie. She sent it to the guy I was in an online relationship with and added the caption: [Baby, do you think I'm beautiful?] My boyfriend replied with a giant question mark, followed by a voice message full of curses. "Just thinking about dating someone with that face makes me want to puke!" "Let's break up, you ugly freak. Stay far away from me!" By the time I got out of the shower and tried to explain, I realized he had already blocked me. My roommate, holding her own phone, smugly told me, "The streamer I've had my eye on just added me. He says he wants to start an online relationship." When I looked at the account, I saw it was none other than my ex-boyfriend.

Astrid was aware that her daughter, Coco, loved her father. The problem was that the father, Isaiah, did not love her, nor did he love Coco; he only ever allowed Coco to address him as uncle. After Isaiah dismissed the three chances Coco gave him, she decided she was going to leave him for good. It was only then that Isaiah changed his mind and started pleading desperately, “My dear, I want nothing more than to hear you call me your father.”

My husband insisted that I wear high heels at the company’s annual meeting despite being pregnant. He compared me to his female secretary with a look of disdain. "Can’t you learn from Lucille? She’s eight months pregnant and still comes to work in full makeup, handling her tasks efficiently. If you don’t wear them, don’t go. I’ll be embarrassed!" He even tried to give the high heels to his secretary and take her as his date. Left with no choice, I forced myself to wear them. However, on the balcony, the secretary tripped me, spilling red wine all over me. Limping, I found my husband, only for him to sneer, "Tripping on flat ground? How clumsy!" Furious and pale with anger, I turned to leave. Someone urged him to chase after me, but he only got angrier. "How bad could it be? She’s so timid—she can’t survive without me! Just wait. When the event’s over, she’ll definitely be waiting in the car to drive me home." Alas, he was wrong. I turned and went straight to the hospital for an abortion.

After failing a bomb disposal mission, my wife, who's also a bomb disposal expert, gives my shield to her true love. I grab her hand and plead with her not to do it, but she shoves me away. "You're so selfish! You have a system that can revive you—why do you even need the shield? Jeremy is already weak, to begin with. He can't handle any impact and needs two shields to keep him safe!" She doesn't know that the system has only given me two chances to be revived. I used the first chance when she begged me to save Jeremy Sawyer. During a mission last year, I used the second chance to save her from the brink of death. It looks like I'm going to die today.