Practice Makes Perfect Artinya Novels & Stories

For eighteen years, my wife, Elizabeth Connerty, never once reached out to her first love, Lucas Ryder. She committed herself fully to me and cooked warm meals for me. She attended every parent-teacher conference for our daughter. She carefully planned our family trips year after year. That was how we lived—quietly, steadily, and happily—for eighteen years. But after our daughter celebrated her eighteenth birthday, I turned to Elizabeth and said, "Let's get a divorce." She stood in the doorway of our daughter's bedroom, staring at me in stunned silence. I added calmly, "When our daughter was born, you promised me that once she turned eighteen, we would divorce."

After my sister's appendectomy left her without both kidneys, I took a scalpel and held an entire hospital hostage. I locked twelve doctors and three patients in the morgue, announcing to the world they'd all been infected with HIV. With only three hours until the treatment window closed, the doctors, trembling and begging, swore that they knew nothing. I started a live stream, flashing a blood-stained scalpel. "You have three hours to find my sister's kidneys." I didn't care if they were already inside someone else.

After I get reborn, I've orchestrated every missed moment with my biological parents. When they want to take my adopted sister, Simone Graham, to take a family portrait, I'll take cold showers so that I can catch a fever. When they decide to book a cruise ship overseas in order to celebrate Simone's birthday, I join a classified project, which stops me from leaving the country. When they start a company for Simone, I quickly apply to get dispatched to South City, which is 600 miles away from my hometown. I also make sure to declare that I will never fight with Simone over anything in life. In my previous lifetime, Simone and I had been fighting over our parents' affection for decades. But all I got were comments on how manipulative and cunning I was. Everyone preferred Simone, who was pure and innocent, while showing disdain toward me, who was a woman of little words. Even my own husband and child couldn't understand my pain at all. "We're all family here, aren't we? Can't you just stop your dramatics for a few days? Whenever I come home, you always start a fight and cause unrest among everyone! You really should reflect on your own actions!" Just like that, I died on my sickbed all alone. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day I get accepted back into my family. This time, I'm not going to fight anymore. I'm going to live for myself instead.

On the day I was diagnosed with uremia, my husband asked me to donate a kidney to his one true love. I turned him down, claiming I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t expect him, my own husband, who was a doctor, to drag me to trial. The charge? Ingratitude. If found guilty, I would be executed on the spot, my kidney forcibly harvested, my soul condemned for eternity. But if the charges were dismissed, my husband would face immediate execution. His love would fall into ruin, plagued by illness and poverty. Everyone pressured me to confess. After all, when I nearly died in a car crash years ago, it was her blood transfusion that had pulled me back from the brink of death. But what they didn’t know was… I had been reborn. In my past life, I died never knowing my husband and his lover had orchestrated the car crash that nearly killed me. Now that I had returned, I would tear off their masks and expose their malice for all to see.

I was a streamer famous for doing random, unhinged stuff online. And now the richest woman in Bayford wanted me to seduce her son. "Make my son fall for you. I'll give you ten properties. Houses, apartments, condos." For a second, even I thought, 'Okay, this is insane.' Marianne Jensen looked at me like I was her last hope. "Please. I'm out of options. Ever since he was little, I kept pretty girls around him. When he got older, I introduced him to every type of girl possible. But he's thirty now and has never dated anyone." Then she lowered her voice. "I think something's wrong with him. Like those billionaire guys in drama shorts. Maybe he only likes weird girls from the bad side of town." I just stared at her. Wow. Appreciate that. 'Did I just meet a crazy person?' I was about to say no when she shoved ten property deeds and a photo across the table. "Go seduce my son. If you pull it off, the ten properties are yours." I looked at the deeds, then the photo, and instantly decided to help this desperate but incredible mother. Forget something being wrong with him. Even if he liked men, I'd still make him fall for me. Thanks to Marianne pulling strings behind the scenes, I became the personal assistant to Jace Jensen, Bayford's golden boy. And the first thing he said when he saw me was, "How much did my mom pay you? I'll double it. Now get out." Two months later, the job was over, but Jace stood there with red eyes, crying. "How could you use me and throw me away? I don't care. You're taking responsibility for this."

After eight years together, I took a hit for my surgeon boyfriend. Milton Woodard vowed I could ask for anything. Everyone assumed I'd seize the chance to propose, locking him down for good. Instead, I looked him in the eye and said, "Let's break up." Then I walked away without a backward glance. Milton smirked, betting with his buddies that I'd come crawling back in under three days, calling me a desperate lapdog chasing his attention. He was dead wrong because I'd been reborn. In my last life, I proposed to him and won. Overwhelmed by the news, his first love threw herself off a rooftop and killed herself. Milton unleashed his grief-fueled rage on me. On our wedding night, he slashed my face and locked me in a dank, claustrophobic basement. When I got pregnant, he force-fed me supplements until the baby grew too big for me to deliver. I hemorrhaged, torn apart, and died in agony on the birthing table. Now, reborn on the day I saved his life, I was done playing his fool.

“Who the hell changed the screw tolerance by 0.007 mm?” “I did. Is there a problem?” Kimmy Zabel, our department’s “good-luck charm” and full-time slacktivist, did not even look up from her compact mirror, where she was carefully applying lip gloss. “It just didn’t look right, so I tweaked it. Do you really have to yell at me?” The production line had been running on the wrong spec for twenty-four hours. I hit the emergency stop. Keeping my voice steady took some effort. “These parts no longer meet export standards. If we miss tomorrow’s shipment, even a month of overtime wouldn’t cover the penalties.” “It’s one tiny number. You’re being so dramatic!” Kimmy snapped her makeup case shut. “Anyway, it’s New Year’s Eve. I’ve got a date. I’m not staying here to suffer with you people.” Before she even reached the door, I gestured to the staff to pull the shutters down. “For precision components like these, one number translates into a million-dollar loss. You can take these defective units and explain them to the regulators.”

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 picked up a system with my sister. The system said only one of us could bind to it, and the other could take twenty million dollars. My sister shoved me aside and chose the money. Ten years later, she squandered everything and ended up homeless. Relying on the luck the system gave me, I excelled in my studies, climbed the career ladder, and reached the peak of my life. Driven by jealousy, my sister stabbed me to death at my birthday party. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day we found the system. This time, she said without hesitation, “Luck is too intangible. I’ll take the loss. You can have the fortune.” I knew she had been reborn, too. What she didn’t know was that the luck granted by the system always came at the cost of one’s lifespan.

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.