When I Disappeared, He Regretted

The day Jack Prescott's family went "bankrupt," he dumped me on the spot. "My mom's house is getting auctioned. I don't want you dragged into this." I actually bought it. Went against my family and stuck by him, slinging street food just to scrape by. "Don't stress. I'll help you buy it back." Three years of nonstop work—burn scars up and down my arms—and I finally scraped together a small fortune. The day we were supposed to sign the papers, I caught him on the phone. "Jack, you coming back?" some guy asked. Jack flicked his cigarette, all smug. "What's the rush? I'm still milking this sad little simp. She's totally whipped. It just keeps getting funnier." All that time, all that love? Just a joke to him.

Clara Sterling, the richest woman in the city, successfully got a divorce and the custody over her daughter. I married her right away. Five years into our marriage, I've already quit my job and focused on becoming a great father and husband at home. Everything changes when Clara's ex-husband, William Sawyer, returns to the country abruptly. That night, my stepdaughter, Sarah Sterling, moves my things from Clara's room to a guest room. "You're my stepdad, so you can't sleep with my mommy. I can't make Daddy sad. You should leave our home!" The maids make fun of me. Meanwhile, Clara raises an eyebrow at me. "It's completely normal for Sarah to take her biological father's side. Don't take her words to heart. You're my husband now, anyway." I just hum in response as I pack up my luggage silently. Clara tries to climb into my bed late at night, only for me to turn her away. "Our marriage contract will come to an end in two days. Once the time comes, let's get a divorce."

I was the top engineer at the National Deep-Sea Research Center, and the only person in the world with experience in deep-sea rescue. When my sister’s submarine malfunctioned and was stranded ten thousand meters below the surface, I hung up on her distress call. Then I calmly walked into a police station and turned myself in for leaking classified research. A few minutes later, my father called. His voice was frantic and furious. “Your sister is missing. Where the hell are you? I’m ordering you to get to the site immediately and save her, or you won’t see a cent of the family inheritance!” I calmly pulled the blanket over my head and said into the phone, “I don’t have time, and you’re interrupting my sleep.”

On my way to the interview, my best friend—who had always warned me not to meddle in other people’s business—suddenly rushed toward the crashed luxury car without hesitation. That was when I knew she had been reborn too. In our previous life, she and I were known as the two top aces of the Finance Department. After graduation, we both made it to the final interview at one of the world’s top five hundred companies. On the day of that interview, we encountered a terrible car accident. The company’s president was inside the wreck. I gave up the interview to save him, while my friend ran straight to the interview without looking back. In the end, she got the offer, and I lost my chance at the prestigious firm. Everyone pitied me. However, the president held a grand wedding to repay me. I became the wife of my friend’s boss. I was admired and envied by all. She, on the other hand, struggled under endless performance targets. She got buried by work. At the company’s annual gala, I stood beside the president, dazzling under the lights, while she faded into the crowd—exhausted and invisible. Jealousy drove her mad. She grabbed a knife and stabbed me right there at the gala. When I opened my eyes again, she and I had both returned to the day of the president’s car accident.

My mother said I was a born beauty and was able to charm any man. She told me not to touch a man before my twentieth birthday. In the previous timeline, I listened to her, so when a wealthy heir was dosed with an aphrodisiac, I pushed him away when he tried to take me into his embrace. But the effects of the skincare routine I did transferred to my mother after my twentieth birthday. I used face masks, but my face became wrinkled and spotted. Meanwhile, my mother glowed with smooth and youthful skin. I danced, but I only became fatter while my mother became slim. Seeing how I looked like a fifty-year-old woman, my father called me a useless piece of trash and wanted to marry me off to a bald man as his second wife. I cried and begged my mother for help. But she said this was for my own good, her twenty-something face a mask of hypocrisy. I was forced to run away from home, but doing so only sped up my aging. Three days later, I died on the streets right by a trash heap. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back in time to the night I met that rich heir. This time, I did not push him away but straddled him in bed.

On the day of our wedding, Liam Hopkins’ childhood sweetheart stood by the bridge, threatening to take her own life. The moment he hung up the phone, he was ready to leave. Desperately, I clung to his sleeve. “Liam, if you walk out that door, it’s over between us!” “Diana! This is a matter of life and death. I’ll marry you, but don’t make a scene!” With those words, he turned and rushed away, leaving me standing alone. Determined, I spun around and completed the wedding vows with another man. But later, he dared to ask why I didn’t wait for him. I laughed coldly. “Belated love? It’s cheaper than dirt.”

My husband had a bizarre obsession with role-playing. In every scenario he invented, I was always the devoted wife he eventually cast aside. One day, he became the ruthless CEO who fell for the nanny; the next, he turned into a respected professor who could not resist his students. Each time he handed me a divorce agreement, watched me sign it through tears, and then tore the papers to shreds the following morning with a satisfied grin. "It's just a game, babe." That changed when my mom was in a catastrophic car accident and needed 200,000 dollars for emergency surgery. Deep in character as a penniless failure, he said, "I'm flat broke. Where am I supposed to get that kind of money for your mom?" I watched my mother take her last breath because we couldn't pay the bill. On the day of her funeral, he arrived with a pretty college student on his arm. "I've fallen in love with one of my students. It's time we get divorced." He pulled a folder from his briefcase and handed me the agreement. This time, I didn't wait for him to rip it up.

When the news of my death on the battlefield, pinned to the pack's watchtower by silver arrows, reached my pack, my Alpha mate, Killian, simply laughed. He thought I was just jealous he was going to claim the Rogue, that I was faking my own death just to get his attention. "I was just trying to bring Valerie into the pack, and this is how she threatens me? With her own death?" "I left her with my most elite warriors. How could she possibly be dead!" "Tell her to get back here. I will claim Valerie, but after that, the title of Luna is still hers." Seven days later, he appeared before my family's home, carrying the ceremonial Luna circlet. He saw me in my white ceremonial dress, resting quietly beneath the white birch tree in the garden, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "I knew it. You were just giving me the silent treatment again." But in the next second, a pack elder's voice thundered: "Prepare the funeral pyre. Let us pay our final respects to our fallen warrior, Sloane!"

On my son Theo’s birthday, my husband Dashiell brought home his first love, Sabrina. My son was forgotten, I was ignored, and my mother-in-law treated me like a servant. Dashiell, instead of comforting me, declared that because Sabrina was dying of cancer, he would fake a divorce and marry her to fulfill her dying wish. I could no longer endure it—I decided to turn the “fake divorce” into a real one. Dashiell thought he had everything under control, but he underestimated me…

In his bid for perpetual life, the first Don of the Bryant family annihilates the witch clan and violently takes possession of their most sacred relic. In the moments before her death, the head of the witch clan places a curse on every descendant of the Bryant family. Every descendant will suffer a sudden mutation at the age of 23, where their bodies would be covered in thick, black hair, and fangs would sprout from their mouths, turning them into monsters. They can only lift the curse if they marry a descendant of the witches. Ella Crawford—my sister—and I are the last remaining descendants of the witch clan in the human realm. In my past life, Oliver's lottery selection fell on the attractive Ella. I was aware that Ella lacked the power to lift the curse, so I secretly swapped the lots, and Oliver ended up married to me. In the end, during our wedding night, Ella set herself alight, proclaiming that she had lost her eternal love and didn't want to face life without him. As a result, Mom and Dad drove me out. Oliver, however, took me in and showered me with affection. It wasn't long before I conceived his child, and he successfully survived his 23rd birthday. Yet, barely a day later, Oliver pushed me into the fire pit. I pleaded with tears streaming down my face, "I freed you from the curse and am currently carrying your baby, Oliver, so please don't treat me like this!" Oliver merely responded with a malicious grin as he tossed the torch aside. "If it weren't for your interference, Ella would have lifted the curse for me! I would have been able to spend the rest of my life with her, Cynthia!" In the end, I was completely consumed by the flames. I suddenly open my eyes and find myself returning to the day Oliver chooses his bride by lot. I immediately snap the tampered lot, as I'm eager to find out how Ella will save Oliver without any witch powers in this life.