Nine Perfect Strangers

After transferring into an elite high school, I was bullied. However, it was not my classmates that bullied me; it was every object in the school. The private bathroom in my dorm only ran icy cold water when I showered, forcing me to trek to the public bathhouse in the dead of winter. When I begged the dorm supervisor, Mrs. Linda Mercer, to submit a repair request, she rolled her eyes and said, "The students who lived here last year never had this problem. Why is it suddenly broken when you move in?" My student ID card never worked in the library or the cafeteria. Every single time, it failed to scan, and I had to register manually. The multimedia equipment in the classroom froze whenever I touched it, dragging down the entire class schedule. I went to the teachers for help. They frowned and complained instead. "Everyone else can use it just fine. Why does it only malfunction when you do?" Even my deskmate rolled her eyes and mocked me. "You put on such a show every day. You are the only one who's so special. Are we supposed to stop studying just for you?" One strange incident after another completely isolated me at my new school. I cried and begged my parents to let me transfer again. They said, "The college entrance exam is right around the corner. Stop making trouble. Just endure it, and it will pass." I listened. I decided to grit my teeth and push through. Then, on the day of the college entrance exam, the security gate malfunctioned and started leaking electricity. Everyone else was fine. I was the only one who was electrocuted to death on the spot. Until the moment I died, I could not understand why the entire school seemed to be pushing me out. I was just a newly transferred student who had no grudges with anyone. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I arrived to register at the new school.

From the time I was ten until I turned eighteen, my parents made me write 299 IOUs. Every time I needed money, I had to borrow it and pay it back as an adult. Then I got into a car accident. I needed money for surgery but was still short by 3,000. With no other options, I went to my parents for help. But they just gave me cold smiles. “Clara, you’re eighteen now. We have no obligation to give you money anymore. If you need it, write another IOU.” While holding back tears, I wrote my 300th IOU. After my surgery, I saw my adopted sister’s social media post. In the pictures, she was celebrating her 18th birthday on a cruise. She was the center of attention, like a princess. My parents had given her a luxury apartment in the city and a Maserati as birthday gifts. Even my childhood friend was looking at her with love in his eyes. She said they were the ones she loved and thanked them for giving her the best of everything. I looked down at the crumpled IOU in my hand and suddenly laughed. Once I paid off my debt, I would no longer need such a family.

Our bridal room was set on fire, and my husband, a firefighter, was grievously wounded while trying to save me. I sent him to be saved at the hospital where Winnie Sloan, his childhood friend worked, but the surgery ended up being a failure, and my husband passed away. After the announcement that my husband was deceased, Winnie told me that his dying wish was that he wanted a child. Hearing that, I powered through my grief and used the sperm he had previously frozen to conceive a child through IVF, raising my son to be enrolled in the most prestigious university in the area. On the day of the celebration party, my son kicked me out and invited my husband and Winnie onto the stage as his 'biological parents', and that's when I found out that my husband had faked his death. All those years ago, he and Winnie had swapped out the embryo I'd conceived in secret. The son I had painstakingly given birth to and raised turned out to have no blood relation to me whatsoever. Meanwhile, my husband had been enjoying a luxurious life overseas with Winnie while waiting for a chance to reconnect with his son. In my rage, I confronted them and demanded an explanation, but ended up dying because they pushed me down the stairs. When I came to, I was back to the day of the fire.

I found out my husband, Logan Atkinson, had quietly added his secretary's number to our family plan. [Dear customer, the number ending in 8848 has been successfully added to your family plan. Effective immediately, all calls between plan members are free.] I held up my phone and looked straight at Logan. "You're treating her like family. What does that make me?" He sounded annoyed. "Regina said staying on the phone with me every night was getting expensive. If she's on the family plan, it doesn't cost anything. She's just used to saving money. Don't read into it." Regina said she had severe depression and couldn't fall asleep, so Logan stayed on the phone with her every night for at least seven hours. I stared at the call logs in the family plan. Even on our wedding anniversary, when I closed my eyes, wishing we would make it through another ten years and grow old side by side… He was still on the phone with Regina Dittman, coaxing her to sleep. When I didn't say anything, Logan looked a little surprised. "Wow. Quiet today? Finally learned how to be the bigger person?" I just didn't feel like arguing with them anymore. All those fights before had only proven one thing: he always chose Regina. After ten years in a broken marriage, it was time to set things straight.

While cleaning Desmond Maynard's house, I accidentally knocked over his mother's keepsake. He once told me it was his most precious possession. But when I picked it up, hundreds of love letters spilled out. There were beautiful poems, passionate lyrics, and heartfelt confessions. He had written one letter a week without stopping. On the back of each one wrote a line: To My Love, Bunny. The nickname rang a bell. It was his junior in college. Things started to make sense. I slaved away for 13 years, running his household and caring for his family, but Desmond never even said he liked me. That was because he already had someone he liked. I sorted the letters by date, put them back, and grabbed my phone to make a call. "Mom, I'm in for the marriage proposal."

My five-year-old daughter loved telling lies. I had taken her out to a simple school supplies run, but she yelled on the street that I was a human trafficker. Consequently, I nearly got arrested and taken to the police station. When we went home, she cried and threw herself in my husband’s arms to complain about me before I could say anything. “Dad, Mom wouldn’t buy me stationeries. She even hit me on the street!” I offered my husband an explanation. He heard me out, but I did not expect him to angrily slap me when I was finished. “Our daughter is only five. She can’t lie. Can’t you just put up with it?!” When I drove my daughter to school, she got down on her knees in front of me while the other parents were around. “Mom, please let me go to school. I don’t want to take naked photos for those guys.” When the teacher checked my phone, it was full of my daughter’s explicit photos. A mob of angry parents pushed me into the traffic, killing me. I could not figure out why my biological daughter would behave that way, even as I lay dying. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day when I was about to buy stationery for my daughter.

My elder sister, the crown princess, died on the road while searching for medicinal herbs to save me. The obsessive merman, cunning fox spirit, and unhinged lion shifter she had entangled herself with all came looking for her. Each one believed he was her true love, and they immediately began fighting among themselves until all three were gravely wounded. When they learned that my sister had died because of me, they turned their fury to me, seeing me as the root of all their suffering. The merman brutally ripped out my spiritual core. "You killed her, so you don't deserve to live either." The fox spirit forced deadly poison down my throat. "Simply dying would be far too merciful for you." The lion shifter imprisoned me and tortured me daily. "That face of yours that looks like hers is the only reason you're still breathing." I carried the guilt of my sister's death, and I suffered in silence to keep my parents safe from their wrath. Three years passed, and I had become nothing more than a broken shell. I fought desperately to escape and return to the royal palace, only to hear familiar laughter echoing from the inner chambers. It was my sister's voice. "Thank heavens you came up with this brilliant plan, Mother. I certainly wasn't about to keep dealing with those disgusting beastmen forever." Rage consumed me. I burst through the doors, determined to kill us both, but her personal guard cut me down with a single strike. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day my sister staged her own death.

I'm reincarnated a week before the college entrance exam. Despite being the soon-to-be top scorer, I stab my eye with a syringe. In my past life, Marianne Quentin, my boyfriend Lance Russell's childhood friend, reported me for cheating off her during the final mock exam. The teacher compared our papers and found that my essay was identical to hers. He harshly criticized me and warned me not to repeat my mistake. However, Marianne reported me for copying her answers again during the math exam. Once again, my answers were found to be identical to hers. The teacher scolded me for being incorrigible and sent me home to reflect on my actions. I couldn't understand what had happened. Clearly, I'd never cheated, but my answers were nearly identical to Marianne's, whether in writing and language or in math. As the SAT exam loomed over me, I could only suppress my doubts as I stepped into the exam hall. I finished the writing paper and thought I was safe. However, Marianne stepped out and accused me of cheating again. I tried to defend myself, yet the answers on my paper were identical to hers. In the end, I was disqualified, kicked out of the exam hall, and banned from taking any exams in the next two years—just because I "cheated". I succumbed to despair and leaped from the rooftop. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to one week before the SAT.

After my hundredth disastrous blind date, my best friend and I made a bold decision: we would have children without husbands. She chose sperm from a brilliant PhD donor. I chose a donor with an eight-nation mixed heritage. Later, the PhD donor from Kingsford University was diagnosed with low sperm motility and decided he wanted to marry my friend, Melissa Shaw. She agreed. Whenever she saw me going to my prenatal checkups alone, Melissa would wrap her arm around her husband and mock me. "You're destined to be alone," she sneered. "You can't even find a man to marry you. My husband just launched a major national research project. His future is limitless." What she did not know was that the father of my child was the Prince of Dubaria. He took me back to his country and made me his princess. The jewels I wore were so heavy they practically weighed me down. However, after she saw the yacht I posted on social media, Melissa suddenly called me in tears. "I don't know what happened," she sobbed. "My husband's project was suddenly suspended. We can barely afford baby formula for our child." She said she wanted to make up and even asked if I would be her child’s godmother. However, the moment I stepped through her door, she raised a chainsaw and hacked me to death. "Why do you get to live a better life than me?" she screamed. "Just because you chose better sperm?!" When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my best friend and I first decided to have children without husbands.

My in-laws were hit by a car crash. I called my husband, begging him to give me some money to pay the hospital bill. He said, "Oh, if you want money, just come out with it. That excuse is terrible!" He hung up on me. Despite how unfair it felt, I had to call him again. This time, a voice I was familiar with hit my ears. A woman's voice. "Chris, I got a bit too much sunscreen on my hand. Can I smear the rest on your abs?" Lovingly, my husband said, "You little troublemaker." His parents died that night. Overseas.