Emotional

Past thirty, my usually serious husband suddenly developed a fascination with pink. The dark-colored furniture that had stayed the same for ten years was replaced with pink; even the utensils he picked up casually were pink. I stared at the line of pink pajamas, pink bow ties, and pink underwear hanging out to dry on the balcony, feeling something was off. "I thought you said you hated pink—that it was a color only women liked?" He was unpacking a new pink bed set and didn't even look up. "Oh, Jack and I made a bet. If I can replace everything in the house with pink, he'll give me his seaside villa for free. Honestly, after looking at it for a while, pink isn't that bad, don't you think?" I neither agreed nor disagreed. Instead, I called Jack, who blurted out, "What seaside villa? I don't remember ever buying one!"

My mother hated me, to the point that she wished I were dead. I knew I deserved to die. Sixteen years ago, if I hadn’t insisted on going out, my brother wouldn’t have died while trying to save me. Eventually, both of us got what we wished for. I got brain cancer. She had become a stranger to me as I forgot everything and went to die in blissful ignorance. Then, she went mad.

After joining the nation's top research lab as a sophomore, everyone assumes I've taken shortcuts to get there. Mom throws away the handmade gift I had spent days crafting and says with disdain, "I don't have a daughter who's this shameless." Andreas Fitzgerald, my fiance, doesn't hold back, either. He warns coldly, "Remember your place as Mrs. Fitzgerald." Later, when my younger sister, Elaine Wilde, destroys my left hand, they all pressure me to drop the matter. I wake up in the hospital, pain crawling up my arm, and I know exactly what I have to do. Without hesitation, I dial my mentor, George Landon's, number. "I'm ready to join the classified national rocket program."

My brother Mitchell sided with his dream girl when she accused me of bullying her. Despite being the only family member I had left, he exploded in anger and sent me away to a boarding school for so-called reformation to learn how to become a meek and obedient little sister. In time, I became exactly what he wanted—a docile sibling who never fought back, never argued. But everything changed the day he saw my medical report. He lost his mind. "Nora, I'm begging you—forgive me and let me be your brother again!"

After my rebirth, I avoided my family and my boyfriend like the plague. When they tried to throw me a birthday party, I faked an urgent business trip to dodge it. When my parents pleaded with me to move back, I secretly bought my own house that very night. When my boyfriend popped the question, I spun on my heel and married someone else. In my previous life, my sister and I were swept away in a raging flood. By sheer luck, a jagged tree branch snagged my clothes, saving me from the depths, but my sister drowned in the merciless current. My parents, consumed by grief and rage, gripped my throat and screamed, "If it weren't for you, Andrea would still be alive!" My boyfriend acted like it was no big deal, offering half-hearted comfort before we tied the knot. But on our wedding anniversary, during a family cruise, they cornered me on the deck and shoved me overboard. "Time to taste drowning yourself!" they hissed. It turned out they had never gotten over Andrea's death. My boyfriend had never forgotten about her. When my eyes fluttered open again, I found myself back on that fateful day. This time, I vowed to live for myself, reclaiming the joy they'd stolen from me.

My father-in-law tossed a credit card across the table and looked down at me, demanding that I divorce his daughter. In my past life, I had refused with everything I had. But this time, I picked up the pen and signed the divorce papers without a second thought. Because right then, I remembered what had happened last time. In that life, I found my wife after she had lost her memory. To support her, I worked myself to the bone, delivering 200 food orders a day. But when her memories came back, she realized she was actually the daughter of the wealthy Harretts. She saw our marriage as a stain on her perfect life. To get rid of me, she pretended to have amnesia again. She said, "Since you saved me once, I'll give you some money. But after this, don't ever show up in front of me again." I refused. I stayed by her side, enduring her insults and beatings. But in the end, she ordered our son to set the fire that killed me, just so she could marry her first love. Now that I had been given another chance, I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

The day of my wedding photoshoot, my family's adoptive daughter tugs my veil off and asks loudly, "Aren't you our family's adoptive daughter? What are you doing here? Today's the day Ian and I are supposed to have our wedding photoshoot. Aren't you going to disgrace Ford Group by being here?" In the past, I would've run away in tears. Unfortunately for her, I'd been reborn. I slapped Aspen Miller and retorted, "What right do you have to speak to me? Who do you think you are, having a wedding photoshoot with Adrian? Are you worthy of being associated with Ford Group?"

As I'm unable to get a ticket for my return trip after the Thanksgiving holiday, I specifically booked a first-class seat home. Just as I find my seat, I see an unruly child jumping around on it. I patiently smile and say, "Kid, this is my seat. Where is your seat?" He makes a face at me. "It's mine now, old hag!" I grab him by the collar of his shirt, wanting to lift him out of the seat. At that moment, a woman's piercing voice sounds behind me. "What are you doing? Let go of my son!" I release my grip and say as gently as possible, "Please control your child. This is my seat." Suddenly, she raises her voice. "He's just a child! Can't you, as an adult, give way to him? You're young and dressed decently. How can you have no compassion at all?" I'm so angered by this distorted reasoning that I laugh. "If you're so compassionate, why didn't you spend the money to buy your child a first-class seat?"

On the day of my birthday, my cousin, who does ballet, falls and injures her leg. My father smacks my leg with a club in a fit of rage. I cry out in pain, but he doesn't care. He sneers and says, "Now, you know how it feels! Why didn't you stop to think how much pain your cousin would be in when you pushed her and made her fall down the stairs?" He hits me with all his might until I can't make any more sounds. To drive the lesson home, he shoves me into the basement, uncaring that I'm on the brink of death. "I'll let you out of there once you stop thinking these dirty thoughts, Yvonne!" But when he opens the door to the basement once more, all he sees is my decomposing corpse.

After the school cafeteria for elementary school kids shut down, I decided to offer meals for all the kids in our building at my home. At the end of the month, when it came time to settle the bill, one of the neighbors wasn’t happy. “The new caterer downstairs only charges $2.50 per meal, but you’re charging us $5! That’s an extra $75 per kid per month. Do you have no shame?” she accused me. I calmly explained that I only used free-range meat and organic vegetables in my meals. But no matter how patiently I tried to reason with them, the parents insisted I refund the difference and demanded I charge no more than $2.50 per meal moving forward. When I lowered my costs to meet their demands, they started accusing me of mistreating their children. They went online to expose me and even reported me to the authorities. The online attacks were relentless. I was fined, and my husband lost his job because of the controversy surrounding me. The stress pushed me into depression, and in the end, I jumped off a building to end it all. When I opened my eyes again, I saw those same parents being swayed by others in the neighborhood to send their kids to the new daycare service that only charged $2.50 a day. What they didn’t know was that the lunch caterer next door did serve meat every day—but it was frozen, diseased pork that had been sitting in storage for two years.