Emotional Inflammation

Three years after I ran away from home, my parents finally remembered me. The fake heiress, Kelly Horner, was not satisfied with her groom, so they came up with the idea of having me marry him in her place. When Mom saw the man who had eloped with me sitting in a wheelchair and picking up garbage, she felt extremely pleased. "She gave up being a wealthy heiress and even pushed Kelly off a building to run away. She must be regretting it now." Alex Cameron appeared absent-minded as he muttered, "She does regret it. She regrets ever going back to that home with you guys." Dad scoffed. "Enough with the fuss! Tell her to come back immediately for the wedding and we'll call it even!" Seeing Alex remain silent, Dad kicked over his wheelchair. "You cripple, where have you hidden my daughter?" I floated in the air, watching Alex writhe on the ground. My soul felt like it was being ripped apart. "Dad, Mom, I've been dead for three years. How can I marry in Kelly's place?"

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!"

My CEO boyfriend, Norris Chapman, whom I've been dating for five years, takes me to his childhood home to visit his parents during Christmas. After that, he proceeds to propose to me in the villa's garden, which was intricately decorated in advance. Happily, I accept his proposal. I wanted to wait till nightfall before telling Norris that I actually hail from a wealthy family as well, only that I ran away from home after fighting with my dad. But unexpectedly, Norris drugs me immediately after dinner. By the time I wake up, I'm already bound in ropes. "I'm sorry, Winnie. I don't have a choice at all. The debt collectors are about to show up on my doorstep soon. "It's your fault for looking just like the mistress Mr. Greven is looking for. Once I sell you to him, I'll definitely be able to clear my debt right away. "Since you love me so much, you won't blame me for this, right?" The moment I hear the words "Mr. Greven", I'm left feeling stunned. There's only one Greven family in the entire list of wealthy families in the country. It also happens to be my family. Could it be that… Norris plans to sell me to my dad?

My mother-in-law was rushed to the hospital with sudden chest pain and sent straight into emergency surgery. However, my wife, who was the head of the thoracic department, insisted that her clueless young male apprentice be the lead surgeon instead. The apprentice stood in front of the operating table. He couldn’t even recognize half of the surgical instruments laid out before him. He pouted and fidgeted a little. “I forgot again…” My wife just smiled indulgently at him. Even though the patient’s chest had been opened, she patiently spent ten minutes explaining the instruments to him before the surgery finally began. In the end, the apprentice’s hand trembled, and he accidentally punctured the tumor. Terrified, he let out a sharp scream and threw himself into my wife’s arms. To console him, my mother-in-law’s only chance at survival was gone, and she died right there on the operating table. My wife walked out of the operating room, supporting her badly shaken apprentice, and glanced at me indifferently. “Before you take your mother’s body away, provide an affidavit of non-prosecution to the hospital. Your mom couldn’t have been saved anyway. Anthony is still young. His future can’t be ruined because of your mother.” Only then did I realize that she thought the person lying on that operating table was my mother. I chuckled and said, “I'm afraid I'm not qualified to do that.”

I dropped by to help my younger sister revise her thesis, and while I was at it, I joined her research group for dinner. The moment I walked into the private dining room, a few girls blushed and called out to me. “Hey, handsome, are you single? Give us a shot!” My sister’s boyfriend, Eric Pensworth, looked at me with a faint smile. “Man, you look kind of familiar. You remind me of that pretty boy everyone’s been talking about on the forum. “They say you slept with Professor Alva Jackson and stole my direct-entry PhD spot.” I froze. The Alva Jackson he was talking about was the newly hired professor at Adams University, fresh back from overseas. Just as I was about to explain, he cut me off with an innocent look. “Maybe I got the wrong guy. You look way too respectable to be the kind of guy who lives off women. “But Professor Jackson’s nearly fifty. How could you even do it with her?” I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. Since when had I become a fifty-year-old woman? Was there another Alva Jackson at Adams University besides me?

After years of living abroad without children, I decided to return home to handle my inheritance matters. However, before I could step into my house, I was stopped by a group of people at the entrance. The woman leading the group pointed at me and started screaming. "I can't believe someone as young as you is seducing a man old enough to be your father! How disgusting can you be?" I watched her, noticing how much she resembled my older brother, and I was shaking with rage. They pulled out my fingernails, broke my ribs, and slashed my face, dragging me around the neighborhood as I begged for mercy. Yet, they remained indifferent to my pleas. Just as I was on the verge of losing hope, my brother, Edward Grange rushed over.  Through a mouthful of blood, I managed to choke out, "Ed, I’d rather die than let her inherit my inheritance…”

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.

At the annual company raffle, I had barely stepped onto the stage when my supervisor, Lily Smith, pressed a crumpled slip of paper into my palm. "A special reward for our top salesperson," she chirped. "Go ahead, open it. Let everyone see." Under the eager gaze of the crowd, I unfolded the note. Written in messy handwriting were the words: Clean the company toilets for three days. The room erupted in laughter. Lily folded her arms, cocked her head, and smirked at me. "Nice, right?" she said. "Everyone knows those sales of yours came from sleeping with old men. Dirty money. To keep things fair, the others get a break, and you pick up a little extra work. You don't have a problem with that, do you?" The laughter surged again, nearly lifting the roof. From the side of the room, my boyfriend, Seth Hoffman, the company's CEO, watched everything unfold. As usual, he said nothing in my defense. They all thought I would fall apart, cry, or make a scene. Instead, I simply gave a calm nod. The very next day, the company was hit with over three hundred property cancellations. Its cash flow collapsed overnight. That was when Lily and Seth rushed to me, demanding I go plead with the buyers. I smiled and said, "No thanks. I wouldn't want to help the company recover and end up with strong numbers again. That might make everyone even more uncomfortable."

My mom is a pathological liar who enjoys making herself seem like the victim. Unfortunately, I'm always the scapegoat. When I was little, there was one time when she went out to play poker with her friends. As a result, she forgot to go home and prepare dinner on time. After that, she slapped me in front of the entire family. "This brat ran off to god knows where earlier! I went out looking for her, which is why dinner got delayed!" Because of that lie, I had to kneel in the courtyard throughout the night. When I was studying, I had to take an extremely important exam. My teacher repeatedly reminded the parents to prepare all materials required for their children. But my mom didn't even prepare anything for me. After that, she even said in front of everyone, "I've already prepared the materials for her. She was the one who threw them away when she was on her way to school because she didn't want to take the exam at all!" Since then, all of my classmates ostracized me throughout my entire school life. After I came of age, my mom kept crying to me in the middle of the night. "Your father has been abusing me for so many years. I had to endure everything for your sake, you know!" I advised her to get a divorce, only for her to tell an exaggerated version of what I said to my father. "Your daughter egged me on to divorce you! She said she doesn't need a useless father like you! I couldn't stand it anymore, so I'm telling you this!" He flew into a fit of rage on the spot, which led to him accidentally pushing me down the stairs. I died on the spot from the fall. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day my mom cries to me about my dad for the first time.

My sister, Anna Hawkins, and I are twins, but I'm slightly heavier than her when we were born. Anna has always been weak and sickly since young, whereas I'm always active and healthy. When Anna was four years old, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Mom blamed me for stealing Anna's nutrients when I got born, so I needed to return the nutrients to her. When I got my blood extracted for the first time, a thick syringe was used on me. I was so scared when I saw it. Mom told me not to be scared. She gave me a magical pen, stating that whatever wish I wrote down with the pen would come true. I wrote, "It won't hurt." When the syringe was plunged into my arm again, Mom bought me a sweet lollipop. The pain never struck me again afterward. When I was five years old, I drew a strawberry cake on the paper while getting 1000cc blood withdrawn from me. That week, Anna could sit up in bed and play on her own. When I turned seven years old, I wrote down my wish that I'd like to go on a vacation. The next day, I was sent into the operating theater for the doctors to collect my hematopoietic cells. For the first time ever, Anna's cheeks became rosy. When I was eight years old, I wrote that I wanted to become the top student of my grade. But a day before my exams, my bone marrow was drawn from me. Anna finally got discharged by the hospital. She got to wear new dresses that I never got to wear. In the year I turn nine years old, my body is heavily depleted. With a trembling hand, I can only write down a line in messy handwriting. "I hope… that I won't become Mom's daughter in my next life."