Novel & Cerita The Good Shepherd

At the New Year's Eve dinner, my mom suddenly assigns some rules to me and my siblings. She claims that those who don't fit the criteria aren't allowed to eat at the table. Rule number one: One must have spent at least 50% of their time keeping Mom company at home last year. Rule number two: One must have gone shopping with Mom all the time. Rule number three: One must keep giving Mom allowance. But it appears that I, the oldest sibling, am the only one who doesn't meet the requirements. My little sister, Chelsea Cage, begins acting coquettish immediately. "All Cassidy cares about is her business, unlike me, Mom! I care about you!" Meanwhile, my younger brother, Cameron Cage, lectures me with a frown, "What's the point of you being able to earn more money than average people? No matter how good a breadwinner you are, the fact that you don't care about Mom completely nullifies it!" My mom tells my siblings to sit around her happily. Then, she criticizes me in a sarcastic tone. "As parents, when we become old, what we need is our children's company, not cold hard cash." I'm pissed off, to say the least. I'm the breadwinner of this family, and yet these freeloaders get to put on airs in front of me. The reason why I don't go shopping with my mom is that she's never satisfied with whatever gifts I've picked out for her during the times I did go out with her. That's why I gave her money straight away. I didn't give my mom any allowance at all because all the money is regularly deposited into the supplementary card, which she has. Since my long-term efforts are worth nothing compared to my siblings' sweet talk, I suppose I can quit being the ATM of this family.

I was sent back in time to the very day my sister and I had to choose our mafia husbands. This time, though, I discovered I could hear people’s thoughts. In my previous life, my sister married Caspian, a violent brute. She lived every day in fear, trapped in a nightmare she could never escape. I, on the other hand, married Arnold—the gentleman everyone admired, living a life others envied. However, my sister had also been sent back in time, and this time, she made her move first. She chose Arnold, the “perfect husband” she had always coveted. At that moment, her thoughts echoed clearly in my mind. ‘Elysia shall suffer instead. This time, I’ll make sure I choose the good husband first.’ Her malice was unmistakable. My dear sister, did you really think I was happy in my last life? Since you want that life so badly, I’ll hand it to you myself.

On the day of our wedding, Henry Zander, my fiance, gets his legs broken in a car crash in his attempt of playing the knight in shining armor who intends to rescue the damsel in distress. So, I terminate our wedding on the spot. Both families surround me, trying to convince me to prioritize the bigger picture. My future mother-in-law cries her heart out as she takes my hand. "Winona, Henry got crippled because of his acts of heroism! He's the real hero here! If you head over to the hospital and take good care of him from now on, we'll still be a family!" My mom hugs me as well, her voice lowered. "You're still pregnant with the Zanders' heir, Winona. Do you have the heart to deliver your baby to this world without a father in their life? Hurry up and apologize to the Zanders so that this incident can be water under the bridge!" My dad acts more impulsively by slapping me on the spot and calling me an insensitive bastard who humiliates the family. Regardless, I walk over to the emcee calmly and pick up the microphone. "I'll give the 880-thousand-dollar wedding gifts meant for Henry and me to the driver involved in this car accident."

After the company's entire plane crashed and everyone on board died, we all found ourselves transported into a novel, tasked with winning the favor of a queen. The system's icy voice issued its prompt: [The queen's male consort possesses a voice as melodious as a lark's.] Our handsome secretary smiled with quiet confidence. That very day, he stationed himself along the queen's usual route and began to sing a modern pop song. The queen was thoroughly pleased. She summoned him onto her carriage. Our colleagues looked on with unconcealed envy. "Looks like the bonus is his." "How lucky. The queen is wealthy and beautiful. Not only does he get to spend the night with her, he'll make a fortune too." But the next day, we saw the secretary hanging from a tree in the royal garden. His body was completely naked, riddled with arrows, his eyes still wide open in death. The voice he had once cherished was now a vessel crammed with thick, crude bamboo spikes. At the same time, the system's cold notification sounded once more. [All challengers' lives have entered the countdown. Please complete your conquest as soon as possible.]

Our bridal room was set on fire, and my husband, a firefighter, was grievously wounded while trying to save me. I sent him to be saved at the hospital where Winnie Sloan, his childhood friend worked, but the surgery ended up being a failure, and my husband passed away. After the announcement that my husband was deceased, Winnie told me that his dying wish was that he wanted a child. Hearing that, I powered through my grief and used the sperm he had previously frozen to conceive a child through IVF, raising my son to be enrolled in the most prestigious university in the area. On the day of the celebration party, my son kicked me out and invited my husband and Winnie onto the stage as his 'biological parents', and that's when I found out that my husband had faked his death. All those years ago, he and Winnie had swapped out the embryo I'd conceived in secret. The son I had painstakingly given birth to and raised turned out to have no blood relation to me whatsoever. Meanwhile, my husband had been enjoying a luxurious life overseas with Winnie while waiting for a chance to reconnect with his son. In my rage, I confronted them and demanded an explanation, but ended up dying because they pushed me down the stairs. When I came to, I was back to the day of the fire.

Trevor Farren cheated on me—with a hostess, no less. He bought her a villa, handbags, necklaces, and even whisked her away to the Maldives. Everything I had, she had too. In my fury, I resolved to retaliate. I found myself in the smoky halls of a nightclub, learning shameful, provocative moves from the women there. I would seduce him and make him fall for me all over again. I vowed to crush him in the end. I'd ruin him. Strip him of everything he held dear until he tasted the bitterness of despair, the way I had. Standing before the mirror, I traced my curves with a sly smile. "Trevor, do you like what you see?"

My girlfriend called me frantically out of the blue, saying her mother's water had broken. She begged me to take them to the hospital. But I lazily hung up the phone and turned away, buying myself an ice cream bar instead. In my previous life, her mother had also gone into labor late in life. I had risked everything to rush her to the hospital, running twelve red lights, pushing my car to the limit until the fuel gauge nearly burst. Yet, despite all that, her mother had lost the baby. Worse still, she turned around and accused me of killing the baby. My girlfriend had hated me for it, blaming me for her mother's inability to have children again. That very night, she and her shameless relatives took over my family's house, forcing my parents into such anger and despair that they ended up in the hospital. My company went bankrupt, and as if that weren't enough, I was beaten so severely that both my legs were broken. In the end, I fell into a deep depression and took my own life. But when I opened my eyes again, I found myself reborn. This time, I uncovered the secret her mother had been hiding.

My dormmate falls in the dorm and sends the rest of us the hospital bill. She wants us to compensate her. "I only fell because you guys left a puddle of water at the door. It's only right that you compensate me, don't you think? It's not much—you each just have to give me a thousand dollars to cover the checkup, medication, transport, the classes I missed, and the mental distress I suffered." I exchange looks with my two other dormmates. All three of us politely decline. That's when she goes berserk. She screeches threateningly, "Do you know who my father is? I'll make sure you guys can't graduate if you don't compensate me!"

I was the top repair specialist at a luxury goods store. Ninety percent of the shop's revenue came from my work alone. In three years, I turned a run-down little shop on the brink of closing into a nationwide chain. All because I clocked in two minutes late one morning, the newly appointed supervisor, Tom Menzie, locked the front doors and announced he was taking everyone on a company trip. I asked why no one bothered to tell me. Tom sneered, "Well, those who can do more are trusted with more. We're going on vacation. You stay and work overtime. If you can't handle it, then get the hell out!" I was so mad that I laughed. I called the owner directly. "I heard you're firing me."

Right after finishing a meeting, I opened a forum and saw a warning post. The location tag was our company. The title read: “Red flag! What a cheap company. Anyone who joins is a total sucker. They can’t even afford a decent coffee break.” The photo attached showed the expensive coffee and five-star desserts I had just asked my assistant to distribute to everyone. I frowned and tagged the entire group chat, asking if anyone had suggestions about the afternoon tea. A Gen-Z intern who had just joined, Julian Hayes, instantly replied with a voice message: “Boss, no offense, but these assembly-line desserts are full of trans fats. Nobody would eat them.” “A truly humane company hires a Michelin chef to cook and slice everything fresh on site. That’s what real respect for employees looks like.” I laughed in disbelief. Our company’s daily coffee break budget was thirty dollars per person—already considered top-tier in the industry. So I replied, “Since it’s impossible to satisfy everyone’s taste, we’ll cancel afternoon tea from now on and convert the budget into cash for everyone instead.” Less than five minutes later, that post was updated: “Guys, can you believe this? I made a perfectly reasonable suggestion and the lame boss immediately canceled the whole coffee break perk! This is the true face of corporate greed—can’t handle even a little bit of honesty!”