Placating Gesture

My wife, Violet Miller, was obsessed with cleanliness. Yet I caught her peeling shrimp for a male intern at a dinner party. I demanded a divorce on the spot. Violet stared at me in disbelief. “Daniel is like a younger brother to me. What’s wrong with looking after him? Are you really divorcing me over this?” My heart ached. Maybe... it was time to let go.

In the glittering world of wealth and power, where every smile was calculated and every gesture choreographed, Ann Sinclair is left wondering ‘what had she truly signed up for? Now that she was married to Lucas Montgomery, the internet giant. The game of marriage had begun, and neither of them knew just how dangerous it would become.

The very handsome and smart heir of the billionaire company 'Russell Hotels'- Adrien Russell, was generous enough to save a young and beautiful woman from the goons on a stormy night. But little did they know that his kind gesture would change both their lives... For good? Or for bad? What happens when the turn of events lead to an unwanted marriage between the two? How will they survive?

When His Majesty King Dominic Thornfield was attacked, my husband, Roland Wentworth, Commander of the Royal Guard, was busy placating his first love, Vivian Sinclair, who had stormed off in a fit of anger. I did not light the signal flare in my hand. Instead, I used my heavily pregnant body as a human shield to protect the King and help him escape. In my past life, I had lit that flare. Roland abandoned Vivian to rush back and save the King. He was rewarded for his loyal service by being made a Duke Protector. However, Vivian fell into a trap and died on the spot. On the surface, Roland said nothing. Yet, on the very day I went into labor, he threw me into the Beast Dungeon. My face twisted in agony as I demanded to know why. Roland merely glanced at me coldly and said, "His Majesty had plenty of guards around him, so why did it have to be me who came back? You must have done it on purpose, only caring about power and wealth. If you hadn't lit that flare, Vivian wouldn't have died. Whatever suffering Vivian endured, I'll make you pay it back tenfold!" In the end, I was torn apart and devoured by the beasts. Even the child in my womb was consumed completely. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the King was attacked.

Tunnels deconstructs the individual’s Romantic fascination with ‘love’ or the grammaticality of beauty. Ideally, the ‘tunnels’ in the collection are subterranean love poems from the suburban imaginary. These seemingly syntactic tunnels travel through one’s literary imagination or heterotopic dreamscapes, and while αγάπη (Greek for ‘love’) inspires these rhizomic tunnels to navigate the abysmal ‘meta-spectacle’ of gesture, language or moment of poemness, the mind like the many-colored jeepneys of Manila, where driving past roast goose restaurants in Shek Kip Mei or spotting stilt houses in Kampong Kleang, attempt to explore the transgeneric textualities of the everyday, alongside the unstructurality of time and space, the littoral and the liminal.

Reina Shivani Milendez, a 28-year-old woman, discovers that her long-time boyfriend has been cheating on her. In an attempt to unwind, she visits an exclusive bar, where she is approached by a man named Zachary Aden Contreras, who unexpectedly proposes marriage. Thinking it’s a joke, she declines. However, Zachary is persistent and offers her a deal in exchange for the marriage. Believing that he genuinely wants to help her move on from her ex-boyfriend and helping her to become a successor of Shivani's family business. But what she thought was a sincere gesture of love reveals itself to be part of a larger, deceitful game—one in which her desires are manipulated and consumed by a deceptive arrangement.

Randomly, he would gesture at any girl. Every girl would get ready to come and bow down to him, and do whatever he would demand. He's gorgeous with a supermodel look. There was only one percent hope that his marriage would work. But he booked a separate room on their wedding night. He didn't stop there, he was with another woman. She decided to leave him. But he didn't agree to leave her alone. The more she ignored him, the more he grabbed her attention. She wanted to get away from him before it got too late. He always won, he was a proud heir, arrogant CEO, and he was determined to get what he desired.

A famous actor misplaced his phone and was found by a poor girl, from a trash can. She finds him and returns it in one piece. This honest gesture made him feel indebted to her and he wanted to be her friend. He later fell for her and professed his love, but unfortunately, she thought he was a playboy and turned him down. Wilbur Sanders continued to try to gain her love and just when she accepted him, his ugly past showed up. Will she continue to love him after finding out about what he had done before? Her life is being threatened by his old friends, will she let him go in order to live?

A plane crash had orphaned her... he too, shared the exact same fate. However, his misfortune was all her father’s doing.She was at the young age of eight when he, who was ten years older, brought her to the Tremont Estate. She thought this kind gesture came from the good will of his heart. Little did she know, it was for retribution.For ten years, she had always thought that he hated her. He was gentle and benevolent to the world, but never towards her…He forbade her from calling him ‘brother’. She could only call him by his name - Mark Tremont, Mark Tremont, over and over again till it was ingrained deeply in her head...

“I want a divorce, Elodie, and you have just 30 days to respond to the petition. If not, it will be granted automatically.” His words echoed like it's the easiest thing to say. And just like that, Elodie’s world shatters. Five years later, she rebuilds her life but fate strikes again when her son is nearly killed in a tragic accident by Travis Milton, a billionaire CEO. Haunted by what could’ve been, Travis covers the hospital bills and brings Elodie and her son into his home. What begins as a gesture of responsibility slowly turns into something deeper, and passion ignites. But the walls between them crumble, and long-buried secrets resurface, truths that could ruin everything. Will Elodie risk her heart again for a man she barely knows? Or walk away to protect the only thing that matters…her son?