Renaissance Male

Late one night after getting off work, I was scrolling through my company group chat when a colleague shared a piece of news. The headline was horrifying. "Night-Shift Courier Murdered During Delivery, Police Suspect Robbery." I zoomed in on the crime scene photo that had been partially pixelated, and a chill ran straight down my spine. Lying in a pool of blood, the courier who had been hacked to death was unmistakably me. I had scrolled into news of my own death. Almost at the same time, my delivery app began vibrating violently. "Urgent pickup! Destination: Unit 704 Hawthorne Ridge Apartments, Building 7. Time limit: 15 minutes. Penalty for timeout: Death." As I stared at the notification that read "Pickup failed three times", the searing pain of my brutal death surged through my body. So that was it. I had already died three times. When I forced open the half-closed security door of 704 for the fourth time, a thin delivery envelope lay quietly inside. I tore it open. A photograph slipped out. It was a picture of my dismembered body. The timestamp showed tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. On the back was a single line written in fresh blood: "Next time, remember to pick it up on time." At that moment, the red indicator light on the hallway surveillance camera suddenly went dark. I looked up. From the ventilation opening in the exact same spot, a single eye was staring straight at me. The mole at the corner of that eye was identical to mine.

When the Earth slipped into a relentless, record-breaking heat, I exhausted everything I had to develop a constant-temperature shelter. Yet, my fiancée, Janine O’Connor, insisted on wearing a bikini and going out to sunbathe with her personal secretary. In my previous life, I stopped her. I warned her that an apocalyptic heatwave was coming, and that countless people would be burned to death simply by being exposed to the heat. However, her personal secretary looked as though he had suffered a great injustice. “I’m sorry, Will,” he said. “But I can’t bear to see Miss Janine stuck in a shelter for the rest of her life. I’ve done my research. This is a period of natural selection for the Earth. Only by adapting quickly to the environment can people truly survive.” Even so, I threatened my own life and forcibly brought Janine back into the shelter. Relying on the shelter I built, Janine survived the apocalypse and rapidly built a survivor base. However, on the second day after she became the base’s leader, she had me hanged outside the shelter and burned alive. “If you hadn’t forced me to come back, Mark wouldn’t have been devastated and killed himself in the heat! He was about to develop a new type of shelter, yet you stole all the credit! I’ll make you pay with your life!” Even after my death, her hatred didn’t fade. She ordered someone to skin me and turn my hide into a rug, stepping on it every day. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day I tried to stop her from sunbathing with Mark Davis.

"This feels… incredible… you really know how to handle women…" I'm a figure photographer. Through my lens, I had handled countless women in their most seductive and lascivious moments. The women in my lens, no matter who they were before, always became top-tier models, because I trained each and every one of them. In a dimly lit room, a woman knelt on the bed, completely exposed. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, her cheeks flushed and her eyes hazy. The only thing still held high was the curve of her hips, lifted firmly in my grasp…

A while ago, my sister-in-law, Annie Larsson, who is in her senior year of high school, came over to stay with us during her summer break. The well-developed young woman's daily outfit consists of a camisole and tiny shorts. She doesn't even wear a bra. When she walks or sits, her bust always looks perky. She has a slim, curvy waist, and her butt is always arched alluringly. Any man would have dirty thoughts about her, especially me, her lecherous brother-in-law who dares to act on his lewd impulses. The term "sister-in-law" is simply too tempting to me.

On the day I won the national esports championship, my girlfriend of eight years told me she wanted to go on stage and personally present me with flowers. Standing on the podium, my heart was racing. I reached into my pocket to pull out the ring I'd hidden there, ready to propose to her in front of the entire nation. But what happened next shocked me. She giggled and, instead of handing me the bouquet, she gave it to her male best friend. Under the bright lights, they became the center of attention. The crowd cheered, and their congratulatory messages flooded the trending topics. Even his fans tagged me in posts, mocking, [I told you not to get in the way of our couple, now look at you.] I simply posted on Twitter, [Respect and blessings. Please be locked together forever.]

The night I confessed my love to my girlfriend, she wept so hard she could barely breathe. She said she had seen the future, and she wanted to make a promise with me. I asked her why. She only shook her head and said, "I don't remember… all I know is that in the future I regret something terribly. Frank, no matter what happens, you must give me three chances. Will you?" I was deeply in love with Agnes Grey, so I agreed without hesitation. But later, it was as if she had forgotten all about that night—forgotten it when she clung so intimately to her male assistant. Only then did I understand why she'd made me promise that all those years ago. Because the moment I signed my name on the divorce papers, I heard a familiar voice. It was Agnes at nineteen. Through her sobs, she pleaded, "Frank… you promised me, didn't you? You said you'd give me three chances."

My wife, Alisha West, has always been obsessively frugal. After marrying her, my single guilty pleasure became blowing money on luxury watches—almost like revenge for how absurdly tightfisted she was. By the time our daughter, Elyse Day, turned 7, she had inherited every bit of her mother’s penny-pinching nature. The two of them looked completely out of place in our sprawling mansion. And I loved it. I’d slip into my latest custom-tailored suits and watch them wince at my credit card statements, their expressions twisted in quiet pain. Until one day, lines of floating text suddenly appeared before my eyes. [This spendthrift idiot is still shopping? Doesn’t he know his wife’s company is about to go bankrupt?] [She’s been drained dry supporting this parasite. Her T-shirt collar is practically worn out from washing. Good thing the financially savvy male lead is about to show up and save her.] [Can’t wait for Alisha to file for divorce and kick this useless freeloader out. Let’s see how he survives fighting stray dogs for scraps under a bridge.] I slammed the limited-edition Richard Mille watch onto the table. Alisha, who was crouched on the floor breaking down delivery boxes for recycling, and Elyse, who was helping stomp them flat, both jumped in shock. A chill ran through me. I lunged forward, snatched the battered cardboard box from Elyse’s hands, and held it tightly against my chest. "No… no more buying. I’m returning this watch. "And these boxes… don’t sell them. I think we might need them someday… to lay out under a bridge when we’re sleeping outside…"

It was the climactic moment of my game, but the enemy's flash bang blinded me. After I reopened my eyes, I found myself in the world of the post-apocalyptic underdog comeback story I'd ranted about to my friend the day before. No, I wasn't the protagonist with a cheat for a system. Instead, I was the cannon fodder who suffered the worst fate. He also had my name. I found myself locked outside the armored vehicle while a swarm of high-level zombies had surrounded me. 'Blast,' I thought. 'All this just because I flamed them? And I just made a pentakill after my 8-win streak!' I told myself to calm down and let my mind do its work, but then the laughter of this body's wife echoed from the walkie-talkie. "Stop covering for him, gunners! We're livestreaming to the whole camp. My husband's going to rip these Tier Six zombies to shreds!" Then, the woman's useless male best friend buzzed with excitement. "I'll have a permanent spot in the inner city if he distracts the horde and they rip him apart in the process, babe!" If this went the way of the original story, I'd beg for help only to get no answer and be ripped apart by the zombies. Fortunately, I wasn't the same coward this guy used to be. The woman kept egging me on. I sneered. I didn't spend years playing competitive games for nothing. And so, I grabbed a high-frequency concussion grenade that could get the attention of every single zombie in a 3-mile radius, smashed the ventilation valve of the armored vehicle, and hurled the grenade inside.

My daughter’s kindergarten held a family event, and I rushed there, only to see her holding hands with my wife’s male secretary. “Daddy,” she said, “I wish our family could stay like this forever.” I watched as the three of them hugged, radiant with happiness. Suddenly, exhaustion washed over me. Later, I filed for divorce. Then I left to teach in rural villages for thirty years. If I couldn’t light the lamp in my own home, I’d at least illuminate the path for others.

I cooked up a storm for our seventh wedding anniversary. However, my CEO wife took a couple of bites before leaving in haste for some work emergency. I trailed behind her, only to find her entering an upscale event space where she held a sip-and-see event for the twins she had through surrogacy. Pulling out a centurion card, she handed it to her male secretary and uttered solemnly, “You’ve done well, Dale. Everything I own will go to the children.” Dale, his eyes sparkling, pressed his lips against hers. “Ms. Markham, it’s my honor to have children with you.” With a scoff, I pushed open the door to the hall. I’d like to see how the guy managed to have children with a woman who was born with underdeveloped ovarian follicles.