Novel & Cerita Sweethearts Theme

My family has this outdated tradition. On my twenty-second birthday, whoever gets my heirloom bracelet first becomes my wife. For the past eighteen years, my childhood sweetheart, Madison Young, teased that she’d be the one to claim them. However, when I opened the box, the beads snapped and spilled across the floor, right in front of a blind girl passing by, Grace Bellamy. She bent down and picked them up. Madison made a scene, urging me to marry her instead, just to please my father’s illegitimate son, Connor Vaughn. Watching Grace stand there, flustered and surrounded, I stepped forward, shielding her with my body. "Fine," I said. "I’ll marry her."

News of my groom's death arrived, but I shed no tears. Instead, I quickly reclaimed his shares and had his death officially recorded. Why? I was reborn. In my previous life, my family had adopted three boys to accompany me since childhood, all of whom were potential candidates to be my husband. As the heiress of the wealthiest family in the country, my father feared I wouldn't be happy marrying someone else we weren't familiar with. I chose Jayden, the most capable of the three brothers—but just three days after the wedding, he passed away. In my grief, I gave up on remarriage. With Jesse and Joel's persuasion, I lived the rest of my life as a widow. Upon reaching eighty, I went to Massalia, where we once pledged our love. There, I encountered Jayden…who had supposedly died sixty years ago! He was living with my maid, who had gone missing decades ago, surrounded by children and grandchildren, living a happy and contented life. When I realized I had been deceived my whole life, I was so enraged that my vision suddenly darkened. I died of a brain hemorrhage on the spot. When I awoke, I had returned to the day the news of his death had arrived. Let's see how a man who should have died intended to continue living!

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.

I hated my husband most in the moment he died for me, swallowed by the flames. Right before he took his last breath, he tore our marriage certificate in half, his eyes burning red. "If there's another life," he said, "I'd rather we never met." My whole body went rigid. Only then did I understand—he blamed me. Ten years ago, his childhood sweetheart and her family had been exiled. She had begged him for help. But that day, he'd gone with me on a trip and missed the chance to save her. And for ten long years, he held that grudge against me. After my husband's death, the world turned on me. Even my in-laws, who had always cared for me, looked at me with pure disgust. "If not for you, Russ wouldn't be dead. We wish you'd never been born!" I couldn't bear it anymore. I ended my life. I never expected that when I opened my eyes again, I would be back on the day Russ Williams came to propose. This time, I would do exactly as he wished. I would give everyone what they wanted.

When Evelyn Foster brought a man home for the ninety-eighth time, I still thoughtfully placed two cups of tea on the nightstand along with three boxes of condoms in different flavors. Seeing how meek I looked, the man let out a scornful snort. "No wonder women all want to marry men like you. Only men like you can put up with this kind of humiliation." I smiled and said nothing. I lowered my head and looked at the message my foster sister Claire had sent five minutes ago. [The family's financial crisis has been resolved. You don't need to sacrifice yourself anymore. Once you divorce Evelyn, we'll get married.] I replied with a single word. [Alright.] Then I had my lawyer draft a divorce agreement and send it to where Evelyn and I lived. I just forgot to tell my foster sister one thing. I would divorce Evelyn. But I would not marry her, either.

When James Chapman and I first got together, I was a regular student while he was one of the most popular guys in school. Five years down the road, I'm still a regular woman. James' attitude toward me has changed drastically, though. He frequently complains about my appearance. I know it's because his true love is back in the country. He misses our fifth anniversary because of her. His true love makes fun of me for being ugly to his face, so he orders me to get cosmetic surgery at her newly opened clinic. He wants me to use my fanbase to make her business boom. "You're so ugly that you'd be the perfect person to prove Barbara's skills… if she can actually make you look better, that is. We're all friends, aren't we? What's wrong with lending her a hand? Stop being so petty!" Barbara Simpson kills me—I die on the operating table in her inhumane clinic. James thinks I go missing because I'm just throwing a tantrum, but he realizes he's wrong when he finds my mangled body in the basement. The diamond ring he put on my finger is still there, too.

I was the top bounty thief in the organization. The best they had. After turning in my final score, I announced on the spot that I was done for good. Then, I stood in my studio, blending paint. A single photograph was pinned to the wall before me. Black Viper filled the doorway, the light behind him casting his face in shadow. "What's it like," he asked quietly, "pretending to be an artist?" He stepped further inside. "Does paint smell better than blood?" I placed the palette knife down and wiped my hands slowly. "I'm done. I walked away." "Old Fox didn't approve of it." "That's not my concern." Black Viper crossed the room and tapped the old photograph on the wall. "Are you certain?" I did not want to look. I told myself not to. However, my gaze shifted anyway. A young boy stared back from the photo. "The blind kid?" I had spent ten years searching for him. "Where is he?" I moved toward the wall, reaching to rip the picture down. "One last job," Black Viper said, pressing his palm against the photo. My hand stopped in midair. "What's the target?" "The final lot at next month's auction that the Gilbert Group will be holding. "It's called Mermaid's Tear."

Alice Clearwater has died once. When she did, it was on a cot in the Moonshadow pack's infirmary. She remembered hearing her daughter, Aliya Steelclaw, laughing coldly by her ear. That laughter was mixed with Anna Darkfur's string of vile curses as well. Before Alice died, she finally realized that her perfect mate of 50 years, Alexander Steelclaw, never ever loved her.

The campus madonna told my childhood friend that she loved Jackie Chan movies. He tied my arms and legs to four gigantic drones. Monday came by. Right in front of the whole school, the drones hauled me up three hundred feet into the air. The students' laughter was so thunderous, the skies shook. The videos they took went viral. I remained in the air until the drones ran out of battery and flew back down. My childhood friend untied me, grinning like he'd just pulled a harmless prank. "Wendy loves Jackie Chan, so I thought you should give her a little Police Story show. We've been friends our whole lives. You don't mind, do you?" I crumpled to the ground. Wendy Wood was leaning against my childhood friend's chest, and she was laughing so much, tears rolled down her cheeks. "You call that Jackie Chan? She just wet herself!" And she cackled further. I walked off and never came back. That drove my childhood friend mad. "We've been friends forever! You're overreacting!"

After being killed, Janelle Erwin and I open our eyes to see ourselves standing at a wedding venue. This time, Janelle chooses to marry her childhood friend, Lance Huff, who has just returned to the country. She's extraordinarily resentful of me, so she doesn't hesitate to kick me out of her company and let Lance take over my position there. "I will never marry a loser like Wesley! On top of that, he's just a mutt who belongs to the Erwin family!" But right after Lance takes over North Hill Corporation, the company keeps losing bids one after another. At one point, it was even dragged into a murder case. Janelle asks me for help again. But this time, she wants me to become the scapegoat for Lance's crimes. After witnessing my rejection, she starts using the deeds of kindness she's done for me in the past just to emotionally manipulate me. But I just guffaw in Janelle's face as I stare at her. "I've already paid the Erwins back for their benevolence in my past life! Now, you're the ones owing me in this life!"