The Perfect Stranger: A Novel Novels & Stories

I had anemia, so getting pregnant was not easy for me. My husband and I tried for ten years, and we finally had a son. When our son turned eight, he got into a car accident. The doctor said that he needed a blood transfusion, but his blood type was A. Both my husband and I were type O. My husband started to suspect that the child was not his and did a paternity test right away. The result showed that the boy really was not his son. I could not believe it and asked for another test, but the result was the same. My mother-in-law accused me of cheating and called me horrible names. My husband asked for a divorce and told me to leave with nothing except my son. We were kicked out of the house and ended up living in a cave in the mountains. A sudden rainstorm caused a landslide, and my son and I were buried alive inside. After I died, my spirit stayed near my husband. I heard him talking on the phone. “Don’t worry. I made her leave with nothing. We’ll get our marriage certificate tomorrow.” It turned out he had been seeing another woman for a while and had planned everything to make me leave with nothing except my son. What I could not figure out was how he managed to fake the paternity test in front of everyone. Luckily, I returned to the past. I woke up on the day of my son’s car accident.

When I turn 18, my family suddenly strikes gold. Dad makes a fortune in business. We move into a huge house with a driver and a housekeeper. My younger brother, Vincent Becker, is sent to study in Basmar. After that, he graduates and marries a rich heiress. Their partnership makes our family's business soar. I'm the only one who misses my college entrance exam because of stomach cramps, and my parents marry me off to a lonely man in some rundown countryside. He locks me in a basement and hurts me every single day. I crawl my way back home, half-alive, but my parents only look at me with disgust. "Useless brat! How did you not die out there?" Vincent says that he'll take me out to clear my head. Instead, he shoves me in front of a truck. I'm rushed to the ICU with nearly every bone in my body broken. Right before I die, he leans down in his designer suit and whispers in my ear. "Let me tell you the truth before you die. Our family didn't get rich from business. We got rich because of the hundred-million-dollar lottery ticket you bought. "We cashed it behind your back and never told you." I die full of resentment, and right after my death, they sell my organs for 120 thousand dollars. I open my eyes, and suddenly I'm there again—to the very day I bought the lottery ticket.

After a fire broke out at the company, I shoved the only rescue rope into the hands of my husband, Peyton Shepherd. However, he yanked the smoke mask off my face and turned to secure it on his secretary, Hannah Russell, instead. Peyton escaped using the rescue rope, and Hannah remained unharmed thanks to the mask. I collapsed from inhaling toxic smoke, and then a falling pillar crashed into my stomach. Blood pooled beneath me. Just as the firefighters lifted me onto a stretcher, Peyton grabbed me and pulled me back down. "Serena, it's just a minor injury. Why are you lying on the stretcher? Let Hannah go to the hospital first. Her condition is serious, and she needs a comprehensive medical exam!" The firefighters and paramedics stared in shock. They looked at my blood-soaked dress, then Hannah crying pitifully over her blistered hand. My colleagues tried to intervene. "But Mr. Shepherd, Serena's injuries are clearly more severe!" Peyton snarled through gritted teeth. "Enough! I'm Serena's husband. Don't you think I know her condition? If Hannah's treatment gets delayed because of this, none of you will escape the consequences!" I pressed my hand against my slightly swollen lower abdomen and nodded, agreeing to let Hannah take the ambulance first. I decided that from this moment forward, neither I nor my unborn child owed Peyton anything.

My wife was a surgeon. She saved plenty of lives in her career. However, the only person she failed to save was me. When I was involved in an accident with her long-time crush, she immediately saved him instead. I had been dead for three months, and that was when she realized the person who had been messaging her during this time was not me and started to panic.

When I came home for break, my mom, Evonne Ziegler, took me to the grocery store to buy ingredients for a big Thanksgiving dinner. As soon as we got there, she asked me what I wanted to eat. I picked up a pack of salmon and dropped it into the cart, but she immediately took it back out. "Salmon has radiation contamination now. You can't eat that." I glanced at the rotisserie chicken instead, but I was still turned down. "Chicken is full of growth hormones. They grow them in a week now. You'll get sick eating that." Apparently, everything was off-limits, so I lost interest and stopped talking. I figured I'd just let her buy whatever she wanted. But that upset her too. "I specifically brought you to the store. If you want something, just say it. Now you're just being silent. How am I supposed to know what you like?" Not wanting to ruin the mood, I casually pointed at some peaches nearby. "I like peaches. Let's get some." "We already have peaches at home. Don't buy any. You won't even eat them." On the drive back, Mom suddenly sighed. "You're so hard to please. We basically came out here for nothing." The moment I heard that, I suddenly thought this whole thing was pointless.

On the day of my birthday, my best friend, Bella Johnson, gifted me a polaroid camera. I took that to the zoo. I took some photos of the animals in the zoo. In my past life, I took the polaroid camera she had gifted me and happily took photos for my whole family. Unexpectedly, after a week, my mother got into a car accident and passed away. My father suffered from a stroke, which left half his body paralyzed even after treatment at the hospital. The company that I was managing ran into problems and almost went bankrupt. In merely a month, my hair had gone gray. There were wrinkles and red marks on my face. I gained a lot of weight due to the stress. My boyfriend felt that I was jinxed. He claimed that it was my bad luck that had caused my family to fall apart. He broke up with me. I was ranting to Bella when I accidentally discovered that she had suddenly become a millionaire. Her parents, who were hospitalized, suddenly became healthy again. It was as if they had not been sick to begin with. I almost lost my mind when I found out about that. On my way to the hospital, I was run over by a car and died. After I died, I found out that everything had happened because of the polaroid camera that Bella had gifted me. She had already been having an affair with my boyfriend for a long time. When I opened my eyes again, I was transported back to the day Bella gifted me the polaroid camera.

After I got a second shot at life, the very first thing I did was enroll in an intensive weight-loss boot camp. In my past life, my boyfriend was always on my case about my weight. He flat-out told me he wouldn't put a ring on it unless I got down to a hundred pounds. I tried every diet and workout plan out there—I pushed myself to the edge—but instead of losing, I packed on even more pounds. Meanwhile, my so-called best friend ate cheeseburgers, fries, and pizza like it was her job and still dropped from 130 pounds to a hundred in less than a month. The second she hit that magic number, my boyfriend's head turned. They started sneaking around behind my back. When I finally confronted them, they shoved me off a rooftop. It wasn't until after I died that I discovered the truth: my "best friend" had linked herself to a weight-transfer system. Every single pound I struggled to lose went straight to her. And every ounce of fat she should have gained? It landed right back on me. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day my boyfriend gave me his hundred-pound ultimatum. With every memory of my past life intact, I couldn't help but smile. My best friend wants to be skinny, does she? Well then, let's see how she likes being nothing but skin and bones. Let's see if forty-five pounds is skinny enough for her.

Before my parents died, they arranged for me to marry Alan Palmer, the powerful but impotent overlord of Northingdale. The day I received the engagement letter, strange floating messages appeared before my eyes. [Don't marry him. He can't have kids, and he's violent!] [If you go through with this, that freak will torture you to death. Run!] [Your childhood sweetheart is your true love. Run away with him!] My childhood sweetheart, Leon Wade, grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes with what seemed like deep affection. "Tiffany, let's run away together. Have your maid take your place and marry Alan. She knows you well. No one will notice." Fooled by the so-called love in his eyes and those floating messages, I chose to go with him in my past life. I could only watch as the maid stole my identity as the heiress of the Glissons, gave Alan a son, and walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in fortune. In the end, Leon held her in his arms. He tied a huge stone to me, kicked me into the ocean, and said smugly, "From now on, she's Tiffany. As for you, rot at the bottom of the sea forever!" I watched as sharks slowly tore into my body, pain ripping through every inch of me, until only my bones sank into the dark water. After being reborn, I finally understood that those floating messages were fake. They were carefully planted traps designed by Leon. Now, facing him and his pleas for me to run away, I let out a cold laugh and ignored the floating messages. "I'm not some helpless maiden. I'm marrying Alan."

During the year-end review, Shirley Johnson, Chris Kennedy’s childhood friend, said she wanted to take over as the project lead so she could get promoted to deputy general manager. For the sake of the company, I turned her down. Shirley, furious, quit on the spot and went to get married. Under my lead, the project brought in billions, and the company went public in one leap. Later, I married Chris. During our honeymoon, I was kidnapped and dragged into an underground compound in Morandia. I was about to call for help when I heard Chris say, "Do whatever you want with this vile woman." I desperately demanded to know why. Chris kicked me in the stomach. "If you hadn’t forced your way into the project lead position back then, Shirley wouldn’t have been pushed into that marriage! She wouldn’t have been abused to death. You owe her." When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day Shirley demanded to be the project lead.

The entire ward could hear the thoughts of the beautiful intern nurse, Sonya Row. When a patient kept vomiting nonstop, and I suggested increasing the pain medication, she stood nearby, sighing. [What should I do? Should I tell the family this painkiller can be addictive and really bad for the body? If they just wait a few more minutes, he'll recover on his own. There's no need to spend money at all.] The room fell silent in an instant. Everyone's gaze shifted toward me, and the family quietly refused my treatment plan. After that, I became the joke of the entire department. Every patient specifically asked not to be assigned to me. Later, while comforting a terminal stomach cancer patient, I followed her family's wishes and lied, saying it was just gastritis. Sonya complained about it in her thoughts. [The patient's practically dying already, but she's still saying she can be cured. It's obviously just to trick this old woman into draining her life savings on treatment.] That night, the old lady jumped off the building so she wouldn't burden her family. Her family thought I had revealed the truth and driven her to her death. They reported me directly to the hospital director, and I was stripped of my position as department head. Then, on a holiday weekend, the hospital admitted a pregnant woman with a suspected amniotic fluid embolism. To save her life, I had no choice but to remove her uterus. At that moment, Sonya's thoughts rang out again. [She doesn't have an amniotic fluid embolism at all. She was on her phone during surgery, which caused this. Now look what happened. This baby's a girl. This family wanted a son, and now they'll never get one.] The family attacked me on the spot, recorded it, and posted the video online to harass me. The desperate husband, obsessed with having a son, stabbed me to death to vent his rage. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Sonya first revealed her thoughts. This time, I could hear her thoughts, too.