Perfect Pint

After I, Wynn Jaffe, the Chief Forensic Pathologist, submitted my request to transfer into a clerical position, everyone in the department lit up with joy and approved it unanimously. Everyone except my boyfriend’s childhood friend, Yvette Hans, the rookie forensic doctor who called herself the ‘corpse whisperer,’ completely broke down. She burst into my office, grabbed onto my white coat with both hands with reddened eyes. “Senior, your skills may be outdated, but I truly hope you’ll stay and keep speaking up for the victims!” I coldly shrugged off her hand, packed my things, and walked away. In my previous life, she claimed herself as the ‘corpse whisperer,’ someone who could commune with the dead, hear their murmurs, and know what happened to them before they died. I worked tirelessly on every autopsy, dissecting, analyzing, and revising my reports. She only needed a single glance at the body to recite my entire report word-for-word. The victims’ families treated her like a saint, while they sneered at me, accusing me of disrespecting the dead. I could not accept it. I poured everything I had into every examination, but she always beat me to it, revealing the truth before I could. In the end, an extreme group of grieving family members, convinced I desecrated a corpse, kidnapped me, dismembered me, and dumped my remains in the wilderness. When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn back to the very day Yvette first claimed she was a corpse whisperer.

My father hates my mother for ruining his chance with his first love, and his hatred spills onto me, the unwanted child who carries her blood. I'm 18 when I'm kidnapped. The abductor calls Dad, who is a police officer, and threatens him. Dad thinks I staged the whole thing myself and tells the man to slice me apart if he wants to. The abductor tortures me to death. He even cuts my body into pieces and feeds it to the fish. Only then does Dad lose his mind. He tracks down the abductor and hacks him to death.

In my previous life, after my parents divorced, my younger sister Fiona went with my father, Michael, who had a yearly salary of a hundred thousand dollars. Meanwhile, I left with my mother, Jessica, with nothing but the clothes on our backs. However, my father was fired by his company after that. He went bankrupt in an instant and lived in poverty. Meanwhile, my mother started her own business from nothing and ended up being one of the richest in Arman City with a net worth of over a hundred million dollars. Fiona was jealous of me and stabbed me to death the day I was to inherit Jessica's company. When I opened my eyes, I had returned to the day my parents divorced. When I saw Fiona wanting to live with Jessica no matter what, I knew that she had regressed as well. That was fine, though. I never wanted to experience that kind of lowly existence a second time.

I exercised too hard during the day and, by midnight, a sharp pain tore through my stomach. When I checked my pants, there was blood. I called my friend immediately and had him rush me to the hospital. The moment I finished explaining my symptoms, the doctor did not even pause to think before saying, "This is a potential miscarriage. We need to start treatment right away." My eyes went wide. I opened my mouth to protest, but she steamrolled right over me. Her gaze dripped with contempt. "I see dozens of patients every day. I know exactly what you women are like. Probably had abortion after abortion in school with zero self-respect. Now that you're getting older, you want to trap some nice guy into cleaning up your mess." I had never met such an unprofessional doctor in my life. Anger flared in my chest, and I threatened to report her on the spot. She barely blinked. "Touched a nerve, huh? I'm just trying to help you out here. Doctors have it so hard these days. Tell someone the truth and complaints are all you get." The whispers started around me. People staring, judging, pointing. I had truly had enough. Had it occurred to literally anyone that I might just be a guy with long hair?

A gorgeous new lawyer named Charlotte Lowell joins our law firm and claims she has been reborn. One day, a publicly listed company offers us a massive ten-million-dollar case. Charlotte warns our boss, Levi Howard, that the company has major issues. If we accept the case, we'll lose in court and be hit with a huge payout. Levi isn't sure if she's bluffing, but in the end, he listens and passes. The next day, that very company collapses. And the rival firm that took the case is hit with a compensation claim worth tens of millions of dollars. To celebrate dodging the bullet, Levi asks me to book a restaurant. But Charlotte immediately tells him not to go to that restaurant because that place is about to have a gas explosion. Hours later, the restaurant blows up just as she mentioned. News of it hits the trending list. After those two incidents, Levi is all-in on believing Charlotte's claim of having been reborn. In order to keep Charlotte, he gives her the executive position that was initially promised to me. When I hand in my resignation, Charlotte urges Levi to stop me. "If Yelena jumps to another firm, she'll use the resources she gained here to crush us. A year from now, we won't even have a firm left." Upon hearing Charlotte's words, my boyfriend and colleague, Finley Smith, steps forward to back her up. "Charlotte's right. I saw a job offer from Vera Legal in Yelena's email. She's really petty. If she joins Vera Legal, we'll surely face her revenge." Levi believes them and rejects my resignation. I file for labor arbitration, but it's no use. In the end, I'm demoted to a janitor at the firm. Driven by resentment, I fall into depression and end up hanging myself at the entrance of the firm. When I open my eyes again, I've gone back to the day Charlotte claims she has been reborn.

Using an alternative account, I secretly join a cycling group chat that my husband, Liam Johnson, is in. One day, an announcement is made in the group chat. "We'll be organizing a weekend mountain biking activity with an overnight stay, with two people sharing a room. To add some excitement, we'll be drawing lots for room assignments." I can't really understand it. Curious, I ask, "What if a man and a woman end up drawing the same room?"

My roommate is the kind of person who has to get to the bottom of everything and doesn't stop asking questions until she's satisfied. One night, while I'm sound asleep, she suddenly stands by my bed and calls my name, "Melissa, are you asleep?" Having been awakened by her, I shoot her an annoyed glare, but she just says, "See? You weren't really asleep. Otherwise, how could you have answered me?" One day, she decides to skip class. Thinking that I could help by signing her in on my phone, I do just that. However, near the end of the lecture, she suddenly bursts into the room and asks the professor, "I wasn't here today, so why does it show I was marked present? Is the system down?" The professor traces it back to me, fails me on the spot, and makes me retake the class. Later on, I join a speech contest. My roommate stands up in front of everyone and asks why my speech sounded exactly like her ideas. I get disqualified, lose my scholarship, and am labeled a plagiarist. Devastated, I climb onto the rooftop late at night. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the night when my roommate first asked if I was asleep.

When I stand in the sales office and watch my best friend beat me to purchasing the foreclosed property I have my eye on, I finally know for sure that she has been reborn too. In my previous life, both my best friend and I had some savings. She invested all her money in the stock market, while I decided to buy a house to live in. Since I didn't have much savings, I ended up buying a foreclosed property where a murder had taken place. But inside the ceiling cavity, I discovered a safe containing ten million dollars in cash and over a dozen gold bars. Meanwhile, my best friend's money was trapped in the stock market. She lost everything and even ended up in debt. When she watched me move into a villa, drive luxury cars, and spend money extravagantly every day, my best friend flew into a rage. She lured me to a highway where an oncoming freight truck killed me. After my death, my soul floated in the air as I watched her and my boyfriend deceive the police together. They claimed I had been drinking and ignored traffic rules, rushing onto the highway to my own death. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day I'm supposed to buy the foreclosed property.

In my previous life, my parents doted on my frail, sickly younger sister. For her sake, they chose a hawk beastman willing to settle in a human city as her husband. Me? They cast me into the deep sea, marrying me off to a giant shark beastman. When the apocalypse came and torrential rains drowned every human city, my parents and sister were left clinging to a rotting plank, adrift on the endless ocean. I couldn't bear to watch them die. With my giant shark husband, I dragged them down into the deep sea to safety. But resentment festered. Seeing me live comfortably while my shark beastman hunted day after day, my parents grew furious that my sister's life paled in comparison to mine. In their jealousy, they laced the fish we ate with poison and killed me. Now, given another chance at life, they've decided my sister should marry the giant shark beastman instead. My biased parents believe she will finally enjoy the blessings they once denied her. But what they don't know is this: after the cataclysm, fish become scarce. And a giant shark… does not survive on scraps. He needs flesh.

The world was divided into the mortal realm and the divine realm. The Rain Clan belonged to the divine realm. They could hear the prayers from the mortal realm. The Rain Maidens would bring rainfall to the mortal realm through prayers. They could ascend to heavens through cultivation. In the Rain Clan, every rain maiden was born with a dragon who would ascend with her and become her mount. When my sister and I were born, we shared only one spirit beast—a white dragon. The white dragon was the lowest of all dragons, yet I ignored the clan’s objections and insisted on forming a bond with him so that we could ascend. However, on the day I succeeded in calling the rain and married him, he shot an arrow straight through me while I was pregnant and at my weakest from summoning rain. As I lay dying, I saw him rush toward my sister. “Leigh, now I can finally be with you forever.” Only then did I realize the white dragon had chosen me under pretenses to help Leigh ascend. When I opened my eyes again, he and I had both returned to the day of our bond. There, he learned that Leigh was the true heir to the Rain Goddess mantle. He dropped to his knees and loudly confessed that he had always loved Leigh, and that he wished only to be her mount. Everyone knew I had spent half my cultivation to save him when he first hatched. I smiled and pointed at a mottled green snake at the edge of the barrier. The white dragon thought that as long as he bonded with my sister, he would ascend. However, what he never knew was that without me, Leigh could never ascend.