Melodramatic

The most popular girl from my high school is getting married. She invites everyone in our class to the wedding. I want to act like I don't see the message, but she deliberately tags me in the group chat. "You kept pretending to be a rich girl like me in high school, but I don't hold it against you. In fact, I'll allow you to attend my wedding tomorrow to see what the rich life is like." The other classmates speak up. "You're so generous, Haley. It's no wonder you can marry someone from the Baumer family. I can't believe you can even forgive someone as materialistic as Emma!" "Does someone like Emma Larkin even deserve to attend Haley's wedding? She's so full of herself." As the insults become worse, Haley Stockwell steps forward to keep the peace. "Come on, let's put this behind us. I'm not bothered by these things since it's been so long. Anyway, let's not bear a grudge against Emma when she's already so poor and ugly." Everyone in the group chat starts singing her praises and calling her kind and innocent. I sneer. Haley is the one who kept pretending to be rich—I'm the true heiress from an affluent family, yet she made me out to be a liar. She turned me into the target of everyone's insults. I check the digital wedding invitation to see that the venue is my villa. The groom looks familiar—isn't he my husband's driver? I smile at the thought of what's going to happen. I reply, "Sure! I have to attend your wedding!"

My husband, Fabian Hunt, is a neurologist. To spend the rest of his life with his colleague, Yelena Walker, he's been working day and night in the lab for the last three months. Finally, he succeeds in developing an experimental drug that can erase memories. I happen to see his tablet one day. He forgets to log out of his account, so I go through his chat history. Yelena: "Fabe, when can we finally be together without hiding?" Fabian: "Darling, just wait a little longer. Once I switch Anya's vitamin pills for the experimental drug, she'll lose her memory. After that, she'll ask for a divorce herself, and I won't have to take any blame." In an instant, I feel a chill run down my spine. So, he's willing to erase my memories of our time together just to get me to leave him. Since that's the case, I'll give the adulterous pair what they want. But when I start to forget one anniversary after another, Fabian asks me in a panic, "Anya, how can you forget everything about me?"

My body matured faster than most girls my age. When I turned 18, my overprotective brother worried I’d be taken advantage of, so he asked his best friend to look after me. But the first time we met, that man's eyes never left my body. After I graduated from college, he kept crossing the line, again and again. By day, he was my boss, and by night, I was his "personal assistant." For four years, we kept our affair a secret. He molded me into exactly what he liked, and the worst part? I let him. One day, his ex-fiancée came back from overseas. He slipped out of my bed in the middle of the night and rushed to the airport to pick her up. Humiliated but unwilling to let go, I followed him there, only to watch him gently stroke another woman’s hair right in front of me. He turned to me and said, "Jennifer Huckabee, four years ago, you were the one who crawled into my bed while I was drunk. The way you're behaving now… it’s really pathetic." The way he looked at her was soft, and the way he mocked me was sharp and deliberate. I suddenly realized he was right. This was meaningless. So I lowered my head, texted my brother to tell him I’d accept the Sinclair family marriage proposal, then looked up at that man and smiled. "Alright then. Goodbye."

I was Randy Johnson's contract wife. For five years, I tried every possible way to make him fall in love with me. But aside from showing me concern in bed, he ignored me the rest of the time. When a piece of equipment at the amusement park fell and struck me, the first thing he did was rush to his beloved first love. She was startled but unscathed. Yet, he rushed her straight to the hospital. When a towering cake display collapsed on me, leaving blood streaming down my arm, he still chose to comfort his first love, who merely had a stomachache. Since he loved her so deeply, there was no reason for me, his contract wife, to stay. So I let him go and freed myself in the process. I chose to study abroad, vowing never to see him again for the rest of my life. I never expected… this time, he would be the one to regret it.

I think Micah Walker is the love of my life. I fight hard within my family to secure a grand wedding with him. My parents plan to launch a multi-million-dollar jewelry line called "True Love" on our wedding day. But seven days before the wedding, Micah tells me he has to marry his first love first to honor her late mother's last wish—then marry me afterward. He says impatiently, "For Ariana's filial duty, everything else can be sacrificed. If you can't let go of that money, then go marry someone else right now!" Turns out, in his world, I and everything I have built were always expendable—just some obstacles standing between him and his precious first love. I turn away and call my brother. "Kyle, keep the wedding as planned. Just find me a new groom."

After my eight-year-old twin sister was kidnapped, my dad became the person who wished for my death more than anyone else in the world. He would always say, "Zachary is an ungrateful brat! A good-for-nothing!" So, when the news of my disappearance reached the school, my dad leads everyone in cheers. He even spreads word of my misdeeds everywhere. "Zachary stole a poor student's tuition fees and even made a false police report accusing the teacher of hitting him!" "That's right! He even helped traffickers kidnap children—his own sister was almost sold by him! I hope he dies soon!" Five years later, my memories are extracted and projected onto a large display screen. And yet my dad, who hates me to the core and wishes for my death, falls to his knees and begs for my forgiveness the moment he learns of my death.

My husband's first love gets engaged. To make her regret it, he abandons me, his newlywed wife, and joins a research project down at the southern tip of the earth. I've made 999 attempts across several years to visit him, with each one ending in failure. After five years, I stopped going. During a lively birthday party, he suddenly shows up. When he sees my slightly bulging belly, he howls in anger. "I spent five years at the research base, and not once did you care about how I was doing! Who's the father of the bastard child you're pregnant with?" "It's none of your business," I calmly reply.

When I was trapped by large columns of fire alongside Reya, my firefighter husband appeared and chose to only rescue her. I got on my knees inside the sea of fire and begged him to save me, too. He jabbed a merciless kick at me. “You are evil through and through, Amaranth. Are you not going to give Reya a chance to live at least? I will never forgive you for starting this fire to kill her!” At this point, his forgiveness no longer mattered. After he rescued his former lover from the scene, I was burned to a crisp alongside the baby inside me.

I find cigarette ashes on the passenger seat of my wife's car. She brushes me off, saying, "My new assistant left it there. He's not the most sensible." When I ask for a divorce, she stares at me in disbelief. "Just because of that?" "Yeah. Just because of that!"

Jenny posted a picture of me and her brother, who had an intellectual disability. The caption? "Finally, a happy ending!" The comments were all the same: "Is this your sister-in-law? She’s gorgeous!" I simply replied with a question mark, but Jenny ignored me and responded to someone else instead. "She's kinda my sister-in-law, yes!" It didn't take long for Steven to call me, his tone full of anger. "It was just a little edit, do you really have to blow things out of proportion?" Half an hour later, Jenny posted another photo of her sitting in Steven's luxury car, and even tagged me in it. "We may not be related by blood, but this big brother of mine has always been my rock!" Steven commented. "I'll always be here." I knew he was trying to get a rise on me on purpose to appease Jenny, but I didn't grace them with a reply this time. All I did was like the post and file for divorce.