Novel & Cerita So Perfect Standing There

The New Year's Day had barely started when my usually unromantic husband, Everett Grant, surprised me by booking a tour for me. The moment I settled into the bus, however, a line of text suddenly drifted across my vision. [Poor Tina! Her jerk husband booked a one-dollar tour for her, and then turns around and drops ten grand taking his mistress overseas.] I froze, convinced my eyes were playing tricks on me, and kept chatting with the woman beside me as if nothing had happened. Then the messages showed up again. [Seriously? Tina's still smiling like an idiot. She has no idea this tour is really a trafficking ring. Once they get her to the island, she's done for!] [Oh, no! The bus leaves in three minutes. Is Tina actually gonna die like this? That's such a miserable way to go!] The bus had been quiet until the tour guide suddenly spoke up. "We'll be departing shortly. It's about an hour's ride. After that, we'll transfer to a boat to reach the island."

When my best friend, Tricia Tate, finds out I have secretly switched my husband's used rubber with her father-in-law's, she has a full-on meltdown right then and there. In my last life. Tricia had been abused by her husband and asked to stay at my place for a while. I felt sorry for her and agreed to let her stay temporarily. But just two weeks later, she unexpectedly found out she was pregnant. I was about to ask her what had happened when her husband suddenly showed up and broke my husband's leg before dragging my whole family into court. In court, Tricia sobbed uncontrollably, accusing my husband, Jayden Lowe, of being a predator and claiming he had assaulted her while she was living with us. She said I didn't just ignore it but helped him carry it out. Jayden and I denied everything in court, but she pulled out an amniocentesis report, proving that the baby was indeed Jayden's. The internet exploded with hate against us, and the court sentenced both of us to prison, ordering us to pay her ten million in emotional damages. In the end, Jayden and I went to jail, while Tricia took that ten million, aborted the baby, and lived happily ever after with her husband. When I open my eyes again, I am back to the very day Tricia came to stay at my house.

After I resign from my job as a forensic pathologist and return to my rural hometown to enjoy a laidback, leisurely life, I feel totally at peace. In contrast, my boyfriend's childhood sweetheart, Jessica Lester, starts panicking for real. She keeps begging me to stay. "Dr. Gardner, even though you're not that talented, I still hope you can stand beside me and speak up for those who have died unjustly!" I roll my eyes coolly and leave without looking back. In my previous life, Jessica is an intern put under my care. But every time we conduct an autopsy, she watches from the side but somehow manages to describe the victim's experiences before death ahead of me. She even uses wording that is identical to what I am thinking. I cannot make sense of it. In later autopsies, I give everything and go all out to prove myself, but even when she is not present, she can still iterate my findings at length. From then on, everyone idolizes her. Meanwhile, I become a laughingstock even if I am the most authoritative forensic expert in the state. Later on, the enraged family members of victims come to my doorstep every day. They lambast me and say that I am unworthy of being a forensic pathologist. They eventually set my house on fire, and I die miserably in the flames. When I open my eyes again, I return to the day I take Jessica to her first autopsy.

My roommate, Quinn York, is a nice person who knows how to pay one's act of benevolence back. At the orientation party, a classmate gives Quinn a cheap lipstick. She insists on repaying that classmate by giving her my expensive custom-ordered dress. When the supervisor of the girls' dorm gives Quinn a bottle of water, Quinn tells me to treat the entire class to a meal at a five-star hotel. When the campus bully, Kendrick Olsen, helps Quinn out of a sticky situation, she has the audacity to deliver me to his bed just to thank him. Because of that, I'm infected with STDs. That's when Quinn posts the report on the Internet purposefully. Since then, everyone views me as a loose woman who has zero love for herself. Not wanting to suffer from such humiliation, I decide to take my own life by jumping off a building. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the orientation party. Since Quinn likes repaying others that much, she should be the one doing the actual repaying!

On the third day after my death, my body was sent to the police station in different packages. Jonathan Walsh, my husband, and Frank Stone, my junior at work, saw my corpse and frowned. “If only Elena were here, she would have been able to find some clues.” Frank sighed as he stared at my horribly mangled remains. “Don’t mention her. She’s not even worthy of being a forensic scientist!” I stared at my husband with a conflicted look. He analyzed each part of my body and deduced the manner of my death with familiar ease. “The murderer is a monster…” Frank’s face turned pale, and he sighed again. Jonathan calmly used all that I had taught him and perfectly pieced out the entire process of my death based on the clues from my dismembered body. I could not help but feel proud. Unfortunately, he was still a little off the mark. He did not manage to figure out that this body belonged to me, his wife.

After I get pregnant with my second child, all the pets in my household start viewing me as their biggest enemy. The tabby cat who once loved clinging to me now poops in my nutritious meals every day. The parrot who only knows how to repeat "hello" begins cursing at me to suffer from a miscarriage. "Die, Leanne Foster!" When I feed the goldfish, they protest against my efforts by quitting food entirely. The next day, they are all dead. Even the terrier I've kept with me for ten years lunges at me like a mad bitch the moment she sees the baby clothes in my hands. After I almost suffer from a miscarriage, I plan on giving the pets away. But my daughter, Harper Steele, hugs the terrier and the cat as she pleads to me sadly, "Mommy, please don't give them away!" My husband, Adam Steele, is worried about my unborn baby, but he also doesn't want to hurt Harper's feelings. In the end, he comes up with a compromising solution. "Honey, there's still one month left till your due date. Just endure the pets for a month, okay? I'll lock them up in their crates and make sure that you're safe." Eventually, I agree to that solution after giving it some thought. But unexpectedly, on the day my water breaks, as soon as I dial Adam's number, the pets rush out of their crates simultaneously and begin tearing at my stomach with their claws and fangs. In the end, I close my eyes weakly from the sheer pain. I can never understand why my pets hate the unborn baby in my womb that much. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day I find out I'm pregnant with my second child.

I spent three hundred dollars on a brand-new phone for my mother, only for her to start saying that the smartphone was stealing her money and that I had personally siphoned off her bank balance. I could never win the argument. So I offered to just reimburse whatever “loss” she imagined. She got even more unhappy. She slapped a stack of receipts on the table and demanded I pay up. “Where did you buy this piece of junk? It’s a ticking time bomb. Give me my money back!” Most of the receipts were for men’s sneakers and athletic wear; the rest were household basics like brooms and hangers. I felt a wave of suffocating frustration. Since when was shopping free? Why was I expected to pay for her? I bought her a new phone, and I just became the ATM? “Fine. If you hate it that much, I’m taking it back to the store.” But she would not let go.

The moment my best friend, Patrick York, rushed ahead of me into the convenience store and asked for a lottery ticket with that specific string of numbers, I knew he was in the same boat as me. We were reborn. In the past life, Patrick and I were shortlisted for an interview at a Fortune 500 company, but there was only one opening. The day before the interview, I had a sudden urge to buy a lottery ticket. However, because of that, I missed the interview and Patrick got hired. Surprisingly, I got the winning ticket and won 50 million dollars. After my graduation, I enjoyed an easy life by living off interest from the bank. Meanwhile, despite getting hired, Patrick was paid a low wage and suffered daily abuse from his colleagues. In the end, he took out his frustrations on me by pushing me off the rooftop, killing me on the spot. After my death, my girlfriend, Emily Hayward, committed perjury for his sake. She claimed that after a prolonged period of staying home with nothing to do, I was in a bad mental state and leaped off on my own. The two of them profited off my death and became trending influencers, making it big. When I opened my eyes once more, I realized I was back to the day I purchased the lottery ticket.

My daughter, Vivian Montiago, is born with a heart condition. To protect her, I decide to spend 200 million dollars on building a prestigious preschool for her in the company's park. I don't want her to be lonely, so I also decide to allow the other employees' children to attend the preschool for free to keep Vivian company. However, on the first day of preschool, Vivian's smartwatch alert keeps going off. When I rush over to the preschool, I find out that Vivian is all tied up and left to die under the hot afternoon sun. Her skin is red and blistering, and her lips are purple as she teeters on the edge of death. "Are you all blind? Call the ambulance!" I yell in anger, grabbing Vivian and rushing out of the place. However, Hailey Lester, my husband's secretary, gets in my way. "You seduced my husband and birthed an illegitimate child. How dare you try to get away without being punished?" she screams, slapping me hard in the face. "I'm telling you that this preschool is a gift to me and my son from Rhett! And you're not allowed to step out of this place without my explicit permission!" "Her life is in danger! We'll talk about that later!" I exclaim, not wanting to argue with her. However, she kicks me to the ground and says, "So what if his bastard daughter dies? He can have a daughter with me if he really wants one!" The company employees don't seem to care about Vivian's health condition at all. They point at me and say, "Ms. Lester is Mr. Montiago's beloved wife, and she also owns this place! You're nothing but a homewrecker trying to take advantage of the free preschool program. Get down and apologize at once!" Fine. Since everyone is as blind as my husband, Rhett Montiago, in realizing who the real deal is, I decide that I am not sparing a single one of them.

After being reborn, the first thing I did was forge a medical report diagnosing chronic kidney disease. In my previous life, my nephew had been diagnosed with kidney failure, and he needed a transplant to survive. I rushed to get a matching test and donated one of my kidneys to him. But over time, my health deteriorated. At twenty, my body felt like it belonged to someone eighty. Even simple chores like sweeping the floor left me exhausted. I couldn't go out to work or earn a living, yet my brother and sister-in-law scolded me for "pretending to be sick." "It's just a kidney." my sister-in-law snapped. "Do you expect to leech off our family forever?" She even went so far as to buy a pair of fresh pig kidneys and smash them in my face. "Since we took one of yours, here's a new pair. Happy now?" Because I had lost a kidney, I died before the age of thirty, alone in a rented apartment. The next time I opened my eyes, I was back—before my nephew's diagnosis even came in.