Hypocrisy

Three days after I died, my fiancé got a call to ID the body. He just scoffed. "She's dead, so what? Call me when she's in the ground." The cops, out of options, hit up my backup contact—my childhood friend. He actually laughed. "She's really gone? Not my problem. Burn her or whatever." Then my body hit the internet— And suddenly, both of them looked like ghosts.

In my previous life, I, Ruth Spencer, fell seriously ill. Because of that, I managed to stop my husband, Zayne Colman, from going on a business trip to the country border. He immediately canceled his flight, pulled me into his arms, and gently comforted me. Over the phone, he gave instructions to my younger sister, Reagan Spencer. "The project comes first. You go in my place." But no one could have known that the so-called business partner was actually a ruthless scam syndicate. Reagan had her organs harvested and was tortured to death. I was devastated. Zayne held my frail body in his arms and hoarsely promised that even though Reagan was gone, he would still love me twice as much. And he kept his promise. For ten years, he never let me suffer at all. In fact, he spoiled me rotten. This went on until the day I gave birth. The pain nearly knocked me unconscious, but Zayne put his hand over the call button to prevent me from summoning help. The words he spoke were laced with malice. "If you hadn't gotten sick at such a convenient time back then, Reagan wouldn't have gone alone! I could have saved her. "It's your fault she's dead! She must feel so lonely down there. You and this bastard child can go keep her company!" That was when I finally realized that our love were nothing but a lie. When I open my eyes again, I am back on the day he is about to leave for that trip to the border. This time, I release them to the path leading to freedom, or, in other words, to hell.

"Sweetie, are you coming? I'll wait for you at our usual spot." Henry Lane is about to go to bed when he receives a voice message. It's spoken in Rushky. He turns his back to me as his face lights up in joy. Then, he answers in Rushky, "Of course. I love you." I'm about to fall asleep, but I jolt when I hear that. The sweet voice on the other end of the line rings out again. "Your wife won't find out about this, will she?" "I'm talking to you to her face now." Henry snorts. "We're speaking in Rushky; she can't understand us." My heart twists painfully. It turns out he's never loved or truly understood me. He thinks I'm just a housewife whose world revolves around him; he has no idea I once studied in Rushnia for two years as an exchange student. I suppress my sorrow and heartbreak as I caress my belly. Then, I make an appointment with a local hospital for an abortion.

Sorevia City, Darmoria One of my wife's so-called friends practically shouted across the table, "So, you got knocked up by your side piece. What's the game plan?" Vanessa Joplin calmly set a plate of steak in front of me. "We always said if one of us cheated, we'd vanish from each other's lives for good," she said, all sugar-sweet. "I'm not letting that happen. So yeah—I've been careful. Once the baby's here, the only dad anyone'll see is Glen." After that, she signed that she'd love me forever—totally missing the red burn around my eyes. She didn't know I'd gotten my hearing back a week ago. Didn't know I already knew about the guy on the side. And she definitely didn't know I'd bought a ticket north. Seven days. Once the paperwork cleared, I'd be gone. No noise. No goodbye. Just erased.

I tried to die a hundred times to make him notice me. For two years, I was Shawn Scott’s wife in name only—an unwanted bride bound by a scandal, left to live in the shadow of another woman. My parents only saw my faults. My husband only saw my mistakes. As for me? I saw no way out. Every time I tried to end it, I’d wake up again, bruised and humiliated. I was greeted not with concern, but accusations such as "Why are you so selfish, Zoe Jennings?" or "Why can’t you be more like your sister Yvonne?" It wasn’t until my hundredth suicide attempt that I finally understood: I was the only one fighting for a love that never existed. So, I stopped. I walked away. I disappeared. I gave them what they wanted—my absence. However, when I left, the man who never looked at me twice started chasing the ghost of the woman he thought he knew. By the time he realized what he truly lost, I was already learning how to live again.

My wife had called me in the middle of the night with a hint of drunkenness in her voice. She admitted to having too much to drink and asked me to come get her. I hurried to the private club she mentioned, only to find myself having to change into a bathrobe as soon as I got there. Surrounded by a group of wealthy women in their fifties, they playfully flirted and teased me relentlessly. Suddenly, a few of them pounced, pushing me to the ground and demanding I crawl like a dog. Despite the humiliation, my main concern was still my wife's wellbeing. Hours passed before she finally showed up, disheveled, supported by her male assistant, looking at me with a cold smirk. It was then that the truth hit me. This whole situation was a scheme she had orchestrated to please him. My anger rising, I called and spoke through gritted teeth, "Three days. I want every single business under the Spencers wiped out."

At the wedding, I immediately recognized that the woman under the veil wasn't Selene, but an impostor. But I still went through with the ceremony as if nothing was wrong. In my previous life, Selene had been forced to return and complete the wedding with me after I exposed the fake bride in front of everyone. That very night, however, her childhood sweetheart was rushed to the ICU with acute alcohol poisoning. When Selene heard the news, she didn't shed a tear. Instead, she cursed him, saying he got what he deserved. … After we married, Selene and I appeared to be a loving couple on the surface. I kept funneling money from my family to save her family business from collapse. But on our first anniversary, my wife—with not even a sliver of warmth in her eyes—tied me to a helicopter with her own hands. "If you hadn't forced me to come back and marry you that day, Chase wouldn't have ended up like that," she snarled. "What right do you have to live so happily? I'll make sure you feel the pain he went through before he died." She threw me from ten thousand yards up, and I hit the ground as nothing more than a broken heap of flesh. So, this time, I pretended to know nothing and went through with the wedding alongside the fake bride. I wanted to see just how Selene would manage to save the crumbling Liraine Co. without the Schreiber family's support.

When Ingrid Stewart, the prettiest woman in the factory, got dragged into an abandoned warehouse by a hooligan named Edmund Holloway, I didn't rush after them with a brick in my hand, unlike my past self in the previous life. Instead, I went to the nearest police station right away. In my previous life, I sustained heavy injuries in order to save Ingrid from Edmund. The Stewarts decided to marry her to me so that they could repay my life debt. After our marriage, I treated Ingrid with utmost sincerity, but all I received in return was her resentment. On the night the rundown apartment we lived in was on fire, I rushed into the inferno to push Ingrid and our son out of danger. In return, a beam crashed down on me. When I raised my head, I saw Ingrid dragging our son toward Edmund. Then, she said to me icily, "This is all your fault, you stupid coward! You're the reason why Edmund and I weren't able to get together for so many years!" Edmund guffawed loudly as well. "Right, I forgot to tell you that your son, whom you've loved for 18 years, is actually my child!" In the end, I kept coughing up blood because I inhaled too much smoke. Just like that, I died a gruesome death in the fire. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Ingrid gets harassed by Edmund. In this life, I choose to grant Ingrid and Edmund's wish of staying together.

Even after more than three years of marriage, Samuel Ferguson still seemed impossible to satisfy. After the third round, he brushed a tear from the corner of Tania Russell's eye, a roguish smile playing at his lips. "Did you cry from the pleasure? Want me to carry you to the shower?" Tania turned her head, avoiding him, her fingers digging into the sheets until her knuckles went white. Steam rolled through the bathroom, wrapping a set of broad shoulders and a narrow waist in a haze of heat — but that heat could not thaw the icy chill in her heart. An hour ago, in the throes of passion, the name "Lulu" had slipped from his lips, and it still lingered in her mind. All those years, he had always called her simply "Tania." After a moment, she wiped her tears, reached for the phone on the bedside table, and stepped out onto the balcony. "Elias, investigate Samuel for me. I think… he's cheating." "A lead?" Elias did not waste time. "He used to call her 'Lulu'".

After I landed a five-million-dollar contract and saved the company from financial collapse, my CEO wife wrapped me in an excited embrace and said she wanted to have a baby with me. She took out her phone and showed me a virtual baby on an app she had just signed up for. "Look, honey," she said. "Isn't it adorable? You can even change how it looks. Do you like it? Once things settle down at the company, we can have a real one." That night, I came across a post by her male secretary on social media. It was a photo of a positive pregnancy test, with my wife's figure visible in the background. I did not comment. I just liked the post. When my wife noticed, she panicked and called me immediately. "Honey, it's not what you think. Please listen to me! I wanted to surprise you. The baby is yours! "Can you clear things up on social media for everyone? I promise I'll give you a child of your own soon." She insisted the baby was mine, yet she seemed to have forgotten that we had not shared a bed in six months. "End the pregnancy," I said. "We're finished."