Rebirth

My husband had a heart attack on his way to work and died. All I could see was his body when I rushed to the hospital. I was heartbroken and bedridden. When I was about to die, I saw on the news that he won a lottery ticket worth 300 million dollars. My bestie cashed the prize money with him. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day when my husband faked his death. But I wanted to make his death real this time! “Are you from the funeral home? My husband is dead. We need to plan a cremation for him right away!”

My husband's first love ran off to a nightclub. She was drugged and assaulted there, and a year later returned with a child. Without a word, Bryson Tanner dragged me to the courthouse to file for divorce. "In this world, widows and orphans are easy prey. I can't just watch Christina get hurt. I'll acknowledge her child as mine." I held my own child in my arms and calmly filled out the paperwork. Just because I was reborn. In my previous life, I had refused to divorce at all costs. I'd also publicly exposed Christina Floyd's tangled affairs with men. She endured scorn and humiliation, and in a fit of anger, left her son behind to escape… only to die on that train. When Bryson heard of it, he showed no expression. Yet a month later, he watched coldly as I was drugged and assaulted, and accused me of cheating and giving birth to another man's child. It wasn't until my child and I were driven to death that I realized the depth of his hatred. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Bryson asked for a divorce.

In my last life, my sister and I got adopted into two very different worlds. My mom? The "cool" type. Let me perm my hair in elementary school, signed off on a nose job in middle school, and shoved me toward one of Northport's richest heirs right after college. Ella's mom? Hardcore strict. Pulled her out of a fling with some delinquent and married her off to a quiet professor with a just-decent paycheck. Ella hated it. Wanted my life so bad. So when I ended up in the hospital pregnant, she used her shiny doctor title to kill me—and my baby. Then boom—I woke up, and we were back to adoption day. This time, she dove for the mom she thought handed me the dream. What she didn't know? That "cool mom" she worshipped was straight-up a monster.

My wife’s childhood friend, Peter White, needed surgery. He requested that I perform the operation as the lead surgeon. I followed every medical protocol exactly and did my best to save him. However, after being discharged, he accused me of practicing medicine illegally. He claimed I had made him permanently disabled. I asked my wife to back me up. But instead, she said to me, “I told you not to act recklessly, but you wouldn’t listen. Now look at what has happened!” The hospital security footage even showed that I did not follow the standard surgical procedure. I had no way to defend myself. In the end, I was stabbed to death by Peter’s wife, Janet White, who had been financially supporting him. Even during my dying moments, I could not understand why the surveillance showed that I was not following the medical protocol! When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day Peter came in for his initial examination.

After my husband's brother died, he took Miranda, his widowed sister-in-law in. He claimed that he would give me his love—but gave all his money to her. He said that since she had no official status, being with him would make her the subject of gossip, so he took her with him and left me behind in the countryside. Every month, he wrote me three love letters, yet sent all his allowance to her. During the famine, she and her two children sat in a warm little house eating well, while my two children died before I could return from selling my blood. One froze to death, the other starved to death. Later, my husband finally came back, but he didn’t shed a single tear for the children. Instead, he told me he wanted a divorce. "Nathalie, to apply for housing, we need a marriage certificate. It hasn’t been easy for Miranda all these years. I want to give her a home. Don’t worry, even if I marry her, I’ll still divorce her afterward—because you’re the only one I love." In the end, I was devastated and threw myself into the icy river. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my children were about to die. This time, I shook them awake, ready to go reclaim everything that was rightfully mine.

The housekeeper’s daughter, Selena Greene, deliberately chose to get married on the same day, at the same hotel as me. When our cars passed each other on the way to our weddings, she rolled down her window and asked to switch my bridal bouquet with hers. My bouquet, however, wasn’t just any bouquet. It was hand-carved from priceless jadeite by my grandfather himself—a one-of-a-kind heirloom and his blessing for my wedding day. “Trish,” she pleaded softly, “please. I’ve sacrificed so much for this wedding. I just want it to be perfect. I’ll give it back to you as soon as we get out of the cars.” My heart softened. Against my better judgment, I handed her my bouquet and took her cheap, plastic flowers instead. However, when we stepped out of our cars, she refused to return it. Worse still, during her ceremony, she tossed my jade bouquet onto the floor, shattering it into countless pieces. That bouquet had been my grandfather’s way of being present at my wedding. It was all I had left of him. Yet, in front of everyone, Selena put on an innocent act and accused me, “Who takes back a bouquet after a switch? A glass bouquet like this is all over online shopping platforms for ten bucks. I’ll just pay you back. Trish, you’ve made my life hard enough on normal days. Do you have to humiliate me on the most important day of my life, too?” Furious, I confronted her, but she ducked behind my fiancé and my brother, wiping at her eyes like the victim. My fiancé immediately went to comfort her, leaving me standing alone at the ceremony, humiliated and ridiculed by everyone. My brother, too, called me cruel and heartless. He cut me off financially and threw me out of the family home. Selena’s husband, having quickly risen to success with the help of powerful backers, unleashed his relentless revenge on the now penniless and alone me. In the dead of winter, hired thugs found me and brutalized me to death. And Selena? She became their princess, adored by all three of them. I sank into darkness, full of rage and regret. However, when I opened my eyes again, I was transported back to the day of the wedding.

The day before the spacecraft launch, I am anonymously reported for concealing a mental illness and lose my qualification to board. After being confined in a psychiatric hospital for three years, my husband, Simon Bergman, who is now a decorated figure in the aerospace field, personally brings me home. "I had no choice but to send you there. I even applied to be demoted just to bring you back. Let's just live our lives well from now on," Simon says. Burdened by guilt for affecting his career, I spend the rest of my life carefully taking care of him and busying myself in the kitchen as a dutiful wife. But before I die, my daughter finds the letter accusing me of having a mental condition—it is written in my husband's own hand. She also discovers decades of correspondence between him and a deceased war buddy's widow named Charmaine Marlowe. In those letters, he writes that to fulfill his buddy's dying wish to take care of Charmaine, he fabricates a false mental illness record and inserts it into my astronaut application. As a result, I was sent to the psychiatric hospital, and my position was taken by her. The glass shatters, and the sharp fragments pierce me, like they are stabbing into my heart. I was supposed to be the one to go to space. But my husband sacrificed my chance so that another woman could have it! I die in despair. When I open my eyes again, I am back on the day of the astronaut selection for the manned spacecraft launch. This time, when Simon offers to help submit my application, I refuse to let him.

At the factory, my arm is pulled into a machine. After the surgery, the factory supervisor tells me it's my fault. Because of my arm, the machine has to be shut down for repairs, and every day of downtime will cost them millions. "Someone has to take responsibility for this, Zachary," the supervisor tells me. "It wouldn't make sense to demand millions from you, so just compensate us with 300,000—that's all." Under their threats—and my family's desperate begging—I sign the IOU for 300,000. With one arm gone, I can no longer find a job. All I can do is collect trash to repay the debt. While picking up bottles outside a restaurant one day, I hear the factory supervisor laughing and bragging inside. "Actually, that one-armed guy didn't violate any rules. In fact, the HQ gave three million dollars in compensation. My house and car? All bought with that money," he said. "I mean, who'd ever find out? With that debt hanging over him, he's probably already run off somewhere." Shaken by the news, I stagger onto the street. A truck roars out of nowhere, slamming into me and throwing me 16 feet across the road. When I open my eyes again, I had returned to the day I lost my arm.

As soon as I walk out of the college entrance exam venue, the police bring me to an interrogation room for interrogation purposes. There, the officers are able to dig out the tools used for cheating in the exams from my clothes. Then, they arrest an accomplice who has helped out with the cheating process in a nearby hotel. As soon as the accomplice sees me, he claims that I'm the one who has hired his services. After that, he gives a confession on the entire cheating process and how we conducted this transaction. All the evidence is present. Soon, news of me cheating on the college entrance exam is spread throughout the Internet. My parents try to defend my innocence, but they ultimately fail. In the end, they die gruesome deaths at home due to cyberbullying. As for me, I suffer from a cardiac arrest shortly after receiving the bad news of their deaths, and I die soon after. I still fail to understand what has happened, even when I draw my last breath. After all, I've never done anything, but why is it that the evidence all points to me being the cheater? When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day before the college entrance exams are set to begin.

My best friend, Scarlett Throne, is diagnosed with cancer. After running away from home, she takes her own life. She leaves behind only a testament and a pair of eight-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. "You're the only person I can rely on in this world. I'm not asking you to adopt them, but just make sure they have enough to eat." Out of compassion, I take the siblings in. For the next 20 years, my husband and I have been working hard together to raise them, buying them cars and houses. But one day, my adopted daughter reports my husband for being abusive toward her. Even my supposedly dead best friend suddenly appears and testifies against him. I demand to know why she does such a thing. My best friend, filled with righteous indignation, says, "I see you as my best friend! I've never thought you adopted my children just to serve your husband's perversions!" My husband's reputation is ruined, and he's been thrown in jail. I desperately try to prove his innocence, only to be forcibly sent to a mental hospital by my adopted son. There, I wither away and die. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the very day my best friend was diagnosed with cancer.