Emotional Stories

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 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, 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."

I brought home eighty dollars’ worth of durian. When my sister-in-law, Lily Ward, saw me, she clutched her stomach and screamed from the couch. “Ugh, my stomach! Summer, you know I can’t stand that smell. Are you trying to suffocate my baby?” Before I could even steady myself, my mother, Rosemary Ward, slapped me across the face. It made me see how much my mother favored my younger brother, Jasper Ward. When we were children, she always reminded me that he was younger and told me to give him a pass. I thought things might change after he grew up and got married. Instead, her favoritism only got worse. “Summer, you jinx! Hurry up and sign over your apartment to Jas to make up for this!” Watching Jasper pull out a property transfer agreement, I covered my swollen cheek and smiled. So, this whole act was just to get the apartment I had bought. “Sure.” They were delighted to see me agree readily. However, they failed to consider one thing. I might have willingly given it away, but I wondered if any of them had the nerve to take it.

When I was in the early stages of brain cancer, my parents begged me to give my sister one of my kidneys. They also told me to give them the money I had saved for my treatment. When my sister left the hospital, it was her birthday. My parents threw her a party while I lay in a hospital bed trying to get better. Later, when my mom found out I had late-stage brain cancer, she begged my sister to give me a kidney. My sister said no. So, on the day of my funeral, my mom buried both of her kidneys with me.

Samson Carroll's father, who is the CEO of Carroll Group, is hospitalized, and my sister decides to return to the hospital to work as a nurse. She throws herself into the role—donating blood, helping with emergencies, and keeping watch at his bedside around the clock. Soon, everyone's calling her a hero in scrubs. One night, she blocks the hospital room's security camera. She plans to kill the patient and forge a will so that Samson will marry her. I tell her it's too dangerous. The Carrolls are an influential family with deep pockets and powerful connections, after all. A few kind words and a forged will aren't enough to sway them. But she lashes out at me, calling me an idiot. She says that everyone in Jansbury knows Samson does whatever his father tells him to do. I drag her home, still trying to talk sense into her. "The Carroll family has ties to both the authorities and the underworld. They're untouchable," I explain. "If Samson finds out you lied to him, the consequences are unimaginable." Halfway home, she grows increasingly agitated. "Tonight was my only chance, and you ruined it! You're just jealous I'm about to become a rich man's wife! Go to hell!" Then, in a fit of rage, she shoves me into an open manhole by the side of the road. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the night I brought her dinner at the hospital.

My wife made me get a vasectomy. Not once, but ninety-nine times. Right before the hundredth operation, the doctor looked at me with pity in his eyes as the anesthesia failed to fully kick in. "Ms. Gibson really knows how to destroy a man," he murmured. "She's put him through ninety-nine vasectomies, then had them reversed—again and again. However, his body's long since broken. There's no chance of children now." "It's probably for her ex. Word is, it's his own brother. The scandals in these wealthy families—unbelievable." Because of a hospital mix-up at birth, my and Jeff Cunningham's fates were exchanged. He grew up with the Cunningham family, while I lived a poor life. Years later, my parents found the truth, taking me in and sending Jeff away. To make things worse, I became Wynnie Gibson's new fiancé. I once asked her, barely able to speak through the pain, why she would marry someone she did not love. She looked at me calmly. "To get revenge," she said. "You came home and stole Jeff's place. He was the one I love. He drank himself to death after you returned." Even my biological parents knew she was poisoning me. However, they turned a blind eye. They did nothing to stop her. They knew Wynnie had got pregnant with Jeff's child through IVF—planning to raise the child and let him inherit the family fortune. I coughed up blood and threw myself into the sea. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I was first reunited with them. This time, when I saw the sorrow in their eyes—sorrow not for me, but for the son they lost— I chose to let them go.

When I was six, I spilled hot water, slipped, and burned my face. My face was ruined. My parents learned their lesson and never let my younger sister do housework. To everyone they met, they praised her beauty, her charm. They turned to me with nothing but disdain. When I was ten, I had a high fever. They didn't think much of it and let it drag on until my brain was damaged, leaving me slow and dull. They learned their lesson again. From then on, if my sister so much as coughed, they would rush her to the hospital in the dead of night, showering her with care. I was like a failed experiment. Every mistake they made with me, they corrected for her. I was ugly, silent, dim-witted, unwanted. She was beautiful, sweet-talking, clever, adored by all. When I was diagnosed with depression, I gathered what little courage I had and told them. Mom lashed out, called me sick in the head, and accused me of being petty. If I was so capable, she said, I might as well die. It wasn't until my sister pushed me off a high-rise that they found out, by sheer accident, that she wasn't their child at all. I was their one and only biological child.

On my very first day at work, I received an unexpected "Carpool Request": "I am currently 3 weeks pregnant. Since I don't know how to drive and for the safety of my baby, I require my colleagues to take turns picking me up and dropping me off." "After some research, I found that your car is worth a lot of money, and it’s less than a year old, meeting my standards for a suitable ride. You will be responsible for driving me home today after work." "I don’t work overtime, so please pack up your things before clock-out time and leave the office on schedule." I frowned and immediately replied: "If you have no shame, I’m happy to donate it to someone who truly needs it!"