Rebirth

I saved the current queen with my medical expertise and ability to save patients from the clutches of death itself. To fulfil my long-time wish, the queen intended to order that I was to marry the son of a marquess, Eldwin Gennings. However, I fell on my knees and begged her to let me marry a notoriously useless rich heir instead. The queen was shocked. After all, everyone in the Royal Capital knew that I had been in love with Eldwin since we were young. I had even said several times that I would not marry anyone but him. In my past life, I had indeed married Eldwin, just as I wished, but on the night of our wedding, he left me waiting alone in our bedroom. The next day, he married my half-sister as his second wife. I was bullied and framed by my half-sister. As a result, Eldwin cut my wrist tendons and damaged my arms permanently. In the end, my wounds got infected, and I died. When I opened my eyes again, time had rewound to the day the queen ordered me and Eldwin to be married. This time, when he found out that I wanted to marry someone else, he went mad and begged me to take him in.

After reliving my life for the third time, Soren Vantrell still died at 28. Unwilling to accept it, I started over again, meeting him and falling in love as before, until a sudden turn changed everything. He began claiming his mental state was unstable, using it as an excuse to visit his psychologist, Dr. Nadia Pembroke, again and again. Until one day, I caught them kissing inside her consultation room. With a light, mocking laugh, Soren said, "You might think I’m crazy if I told you this, but I really have died three times. Every single time, I died right next to Sloane Hartwell. "I was originally curious to see how she would try to save me this time. Now that I think about it, she must have been bad luck. Once I stayed far away from her, didn’t I end up living just fine?" I quietly stepped back. In this fourth life, whether he lived or died has nothing to do with me anymore. This time, I was going to live my own life.

My little sister Willa? Always played the noble princess—even during the freaking apocalypse. She was pregnant and still trying to look like some graceful queen. I told her to end it. Safer that way. She slapped me. "Shut up. How can you be so heartless?" Meanwhile, I skipped meals so she and her rescue-pet gang could eat. When I collapsed from hunger, she snorted. "Drama queen. Think of it as a free weight-loss plan." I dragged her to the base, the safe zone, and nearly died doing it. She snatched the last of my rations. "The baby and I are good. Give the rest away." I died from my injuries—frozen, starving, forgotten. Willa? She got crowned a saint. Even landed the baby daddy—the Deputy Governor—and kicked off her perfect little fairytale. Then I woke up. Back to the moment she asked me to swear I'd protect her and the baby. This time, I laughed in her face. "Die for all I care."

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.

A wealthy heiress from Belvoria’s elite circle asked me to be her dead boyfriend’s substitute. My compensation included a 50,000-dollar base salary, plus 8,000 dollars per shared meal and 10,000 dollars per accompanying shopping trip. My hypocritical older sister quickly stopped me from agreeing to this deal. “We come from a respectable family. How can you sell your dignity for such little money?” Yet she later became a rich man's mistress and successfully married into wealth. Meanwhile, I struggled to balance work and studies to pay for my tuition. This hurt my academic performance. After graduation, I could only find a job with a monthly salary of 3,000 dollars. I even developed a tumor from overworking. I eventually died in a cold and impersonal hospital, unable to afford treatment. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the young heiress asked me to be her dead boyfriend’s substitute. This time, I agreed without hesitation. I was determined to take this role.

My sister pushes her daughter at a murderer so she can win the prize in a photography competition. After this, she even uses the incident and my name to extort the victim to pay an astronomical sum as compensation. The victim stabs me to death in a fit of rage. When my son, who is brought up by me, learns the truth, he doesn't seek justice for me. Instead, he scatters my ashes in the sea and says, "My mother told me that I would've been the happiest child in the world if not for you taking the wrong child home back then." When I open my eyes again, I'm taken back to when my daughter was five years old. I have a month until her death. This time, I'm going to protect my child to the best of my abilities. I won't bother about an ingrate anymore.

A week before summer break, my boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart threw a fit, insisting on going to Tanond to watch a strip show. She even convinced our entire class to go with them. I kept warning them that it was not safe, that it could be some kind of new scam, and begged them not to go. When they refused to listen, I secretly reported it to the police. On the day of their departure, the police stopped them right at customs. A few days later, a male stripper suddenly went viral overnight. When she found out about it, she got so furious her eyes turned red. “It’s all Zoey’s fault! If it weren’t for her, we could’ve seen an international superstar's strip show!” On the first day we went back to school, they drugged me and made ten men teach me how to dance. “Didn’t you stop us from watching a strip show? Then you can perform one for us yourself.” The next day, my photos of strip show were all over social media. After that, I jumped off a building out of despair. When I opened my eyes again, it was once again the day his little sweetheart demanded that trip to Tanond.

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.

During my night shift, I refused to help my adopted sister administer fluids to her patient. After the wrong drug is given, I watch a seven-year-old boy die after he suffers an allergic reaction right before my eyes. In my previous life, the boy's family stormed the nurses' station after I'd just finished administering his IV medication. The next thing I knew, I was violently beaten up. "You poisoned my grandchild by giving him the wrong medicine!" But the fluid I introduced into his bloodstream was a simple glucose solution. It couldn't have led to such a disastrous outcome. When I was on the brink of passing out, someone called the police. I thought help had finally arrived, but I was sorely mistaken. The police officer—my brother—pinned me to the ground. "We found your prints on the drug vial. You're a murderer." Then, my childhood friend, a forensic pathologist, held up an autopsy report and accused me of the same crime. "The patient's time of death is around 5:00 am. That's the same time you administered drugs into his system." Unable to prove my innocence, I was ultimately beaten to death by the boy's enraged family members. My brother and my childhood friend had always loved me. Even on the brink of death, I couldn't understand why they would do this to me. Now, I open my eyes and find myself back on the night it all began.

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.