Category: English

The year I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression, I became the family’s most fragile treasure. All the sharp objects in the house were confiscated. The windows were welded shut. My parents took turns watching me, a 24-hour vigil against the slightest flicker of self-harm in my eyes. To manage my fragile emotions, they even forced my brother, Sam, who had just gotten into a top university, to defer for a year and come home to help. Until the day of Sam’s wedding. The house was a kaleidoscope of festive lights and joyful noise. I looked at the sea of smiling guests and felt the air grow thin, my lungs tightening. I whispered, without thinking, “Mom, I feel… overwhelmed. I need to go to my room.” My mother’s beaming smile vanished, replaced by a terrifying snarl. She grabbed a fruit knife from a platter on the table and shoved it into my hand. “Overwhelmed? If you’re so overwhelmed, then just die!” “This is your brother’s big day! Do you have to ruin it? Do you have to be the black cloud over everything?” “Here!” She gripped my hand, forcing the blade hard against the skin of my neck. “Cut yourself right here! Stop just talking about how you don’t want to live anymore!” Then, with a final shove of disgust, she turned her back on me to raise a toast with her new daughter-in-law. I looked down at the knife in my hand. And finally, I smiled. 1 The cold of the metal seeped into my palm. It was the first time in three years I had touched anything so sharp. It had been so long. For three years, my world had been a world of dull edges. I could only eat with rounded spoons. When my nails grew long, my mother would personally file them down, bit by bit. Even when I showered, the bathroom door had to remain open so they could check on me at any moment. And now, this knife. My mother had placed it in my hand herself. The room was filled with laughter and the clinking of glasses. No one was looking at me. I stared at the knife. I should put it back. Put it back on the fruit platter and pretend none of this happened. My hand lifted slightly, then froze in mid-air. I could hear my brother Sam’s cheerful laugh from the doorway. He was toasting guests, full of life and promise. He’d taken a year off school, a year from the prime of his life, to watch over the “crazy” sister. Now, finally married and starting his own family, he could be free of this burden. Free of me. Looking at all the joy in this room, I suddenly felt so… filthy. I was the only stain on this perfect picture. My presence here made the very air feel thick and suffocating. My mother was right. I shouldn’t have an episode today. I shouldn’t be the black cloud. I shouldn’t be alive. My fingers tightened around the handle. I turned and walked toward my bedroom. I moved slowly. No one noticed. They were all drowning in the happiness of the wedding. Who would pay attention to the comings and goings of a mental patient? I entered my room and gently closed the door. The noise from outside was instantly silenced. I leaned against the padded wall, my body sliding down until I was sitting on the thick carpet. I raised the knife and held it to my throat. My hand was shaking violently. Not from fear, but from excitement. It was a physiological euphoria, the thrill of a prisoner about to break their chains and find ultimate freedom. Over the past three years, I had imagined my death countless times. I thought about drowning, about hanging, about swallowing pills. But every attempt was discovered, followed by even stricter surveillance, by more hysterical crying. “Annie, what do you want from us? Are you trying to kill your mother?” “Annie, we gave up everything for you! Your life isn’t your own, it belongs to this family! How can you be so selfish?!” “Sis, I’m begging you, just be okay, please? Mom and Dad are getting old, they can’t take this…” Today, I would finally be free. Mom, you told me to die. You handed me the knife yourself. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll listen. The sharp edge kissed my skin. My wrist jerked with force. A wet, tearing sound. Then, a gush of warmth. I opened my eyes. Blood splattered across the wall and floor, like crimson flowers bursting into bloom. So beautiful. My strength drained away with my blood. I collapsed onto the floor, curling into a ball. So cold. So this is what dying felt like. I looked at my blood-soaked hands and managed to pull the corners of my mouth into a smile. My brother’s wedding. I celebrate it with my life. The debt I owe my parents for raising me. I repay it with my death. From now on, you won’t have to take turns watching over me. You won’t have to live in constant fear. You won’t have to feel ashamed in front of our relatives. You won’t be crushed by the weight of my medical bills. You are free. And I… I am free, too. My consciousness began to blur. The laughter from outside sounded distant and muffled. “To the happy couple! May you have a long life together and beautiful children!” “Cheers!” So lively. At the very end, I thought I heard my mother’s laugh. It was a sound I hadn’t heard in a long time—a laugh that came from the heart. 2 I was dead. But it seemed I wasn’t entirely gone. My body felt weightless, hovering in mid-air. I looked down at the crumpled form in the corner. Blood was still seeping out, ever so slowly, soaking the carpet in a wide, dark stain. This was a wool rug. It would be impossible to clean. Mom was obsessed with cleanliness; this would drive her insane. I tried to crouch down and wipe it, but my hand passed straight through the floor. I couldn’t touch anything. I stood awkwardly beside my own corpse. After a while, I heard footsteps outside the door. My father’s voice, brimming with unconcealed joy, drifted in from the living room. “What a perfect day! Just perfect!” “Everyone was saying how graceful and lovely Grace is. The family really looked good today!” My mother’s voice was hoarse, but laced with excitement. “Of course. I picked her, didn’t I?” “Alright, let’s open these gift envelopes and tally up the cash.” I floated out of the room and into the living room. The floor was littered with discarded candy wrappers and nutshells. The table was piled high with red envelopes of cash gifts. My father, mother, brother, and his new wife, Grace, were all sitting around the sofa. Their faces were tired, but glowing with satisfaction. It had been so long since I’d seen a scene of such warmth in this house. Ever since I got sick, the atmosphere had been perpetually heavy. When I was around, they didn’t dare speak loudly. They didn’t dare laugh. Their eyes were always on me, cautious and wary. To see them like this, so carefree and happy… it was good. “Hey, where’s Annie?” Grace, my sister-in-law, suddenly looked around. “I haven’t seen her since the toasts. Is she still in her room?” The air froze for a second. The smile on my mother’s face stiffened, then she scoffed. “Don’t worry about her. She’s in her room, playing dead.” “On a perfect day like today, she just had to throw a fit. She even threatened me with a knife earlier, going on about how she didn’t want to live.” “A knife?” Grace looked startled. “I thought there weren’t any knives in the house.” “I gave it to her!” My mother slammed an envelope down on the table. “I just couldn’t take it anymore! She threatens to kill herself every single day. So I gave her the knife! I wanted to see if she had the guts to do it! And what happened? She scurried back to her room to hide, the little coward.” I floated in front of my mother, looking at her agitated face, wanting to scream at her. Mom! I wasn’t hiding! I did have the guts. I’m already dead. But when I opened my mouth, the sound was like a whisper of wind, vanishing into the air. “Mom, maybe we should check on her,” Grace said, her voice laced with concern. She stood up and glanced toward my room. “Annie hasn’t been well for years. What if…” “What if, what if! There is no what if!” My mother grabbed Grace’s arm, her tone harsh. “Grace, you’re new here, you don’t understand. She’s spoiled! It’s all for show, a performance! The more attention you give her, the worse she gets. Trust me. Just ignore her!” My father lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “That girl, Annie… she’s just so selfish. Only ever thinks about her own suffering. Never considers the family.” “Sam’s wedding, the happiest day, and she has to make trouble. Because of her, we haven’t had a single peaceful day in years. Tonight, let her stay in there and think about what she’s done!” I stared at my father in disbelief. He used to dote on me. When I was little and scraped my knee falling off my bike, he would fuss over me for hours. Now my throat was slit open, and he was calling me selfish. I turned my gaze to my brother, Sam. He held a thick stack of cash in his hands, his expression unreadable. He glanced at my closed door, his lips moved as if to say something, but in the end, he just looked down and continued counting the money. “Grace is right, though… Sis’s temper… she really needs to work on it.” My heart—or the ghost of it—clenched violently. Even though it no longer beat, the phantom pain made me curl into myself. So this is what you all think. That even in death, I’m just throwing a tantrum. 3 The leftovers from the wedding feast were spread across the table: roast beef, glazed ham, shrimp, chicken wings, and a beautiful two-tiered cake. It all smelled so good. For three years, to avoid reactions with my medication, my diet had been strictly controlled. Clear broths, plain vegetables. Low-salt, low-oil. I had almost forgotten what meat tasted like. I floated over to the table, greedily inhaling the aroma of the roast beef. “I’ll get Annie something to eat. She hasn’t had anything all day.” Grace, ever the soft-hearted one, picked up a clean plate. She served a large slice of ham and cut a piece of cake. “Grace!” My mother shot to her feet and snatched the plate from her hands. With a loud clatter, she dumped the plate, and all the food on it, into the nearby trash can. “She gets nothing!” My mother was shouting now, her chest heaving. “I’m putting my foot down right now. Nobody is to bring her any food! Let her starve for three days! Let’s see if she has the energy to cause any more trouble then!” Grace was stunned into silence, standing helplessly. “Mom, what are you doing…?” “I’m doing this for her own good!” My mother pointed a finger at my bedroom door. “If she doesn’t learn her lesson, she’ll never understand how much this family has sacrificed for her!” “She’s spoiled rotten! She thinks the whole world owes her something! So what if she’s sick? So what if she has depression? Is anyone’s life easy?” I knelt by the trash can. I looked at the ruined piece of cake. I reached for it, but my hand grasped only air. I couldn’t even eat garbage anymore. I hugged my transparent knees and buried my face in them. It’s okay. I can’t feel hunger anymore anyway. It’s really… okay. The night deepened. A faint, metallic smell of blood began to permeate the air. My mother sat on the sofa with Grace, still talking. “Grace, honey, I’m not a monster-in-law. I’m just… I’ve been pushed to my limit.” “You have no idea what these last few years have been like. I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time. I had to listen for her even when I was in the bathroom. One minute she’s trying to jump out a window, the next she’s trying to bash her head against a wall. I’ve been stretched so tight for so long, I feel like I could snap at any second.” Grace listened quietly and poured her a glass of water. “I understand, Mom. Taking care of a sick person isn’t easy.” “But… the look in Annie’s eyes today. It was real despair. That kind of look… it didn’t seem like an act.” My mother paused, holding the glass. She gave a bitter smile. “Despair?” “When is she not in despair? Ever since she got this illness, it’s like she became a different person. Annie used to be such a good girl. Good grades, so pretty. If it weren’t for this… she’d be married with kids by now…” “Back then, all the neighbors were jealous of my daughter. Now? They all whisper behind my back. The pain in my heart… you have no idea.” I hid in the corner, watching my mother’s tear-streaked face. I’m sorry, Mom. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten sick. I shouldn’t have turned from that perfect daughter into this useless burden. I knelt on the floor and bowed my head deeply in her direction. Though I made no sound, I bowed with all my might. I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry, Sam. Your suffering is over now. The daughter who disappointed you, the ghost that haunted you, is gone. She’s really gone.

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1 After buying the video of my husband’s latest backseat rendezvous from the paparazzi for the 99th time, I dug out the written apology he wrote in high school. He’d been caught secretly holding my hand by the dean, and in his apology, Jackson Archer had scrawled in his determined, youthful handwriting: I know they say we’re too young for love, but I believe our love can conquer anything. Before I’m thirty, I’ll give Audrey a home. With a baby, and a cat. I’m twenty-nine now. There’s no baby, no cat. But he has given another woman and their fraternal twins a perfect home. I took a pen and pressed down hard on the yellowed page, adding a single, shaky line. Then, I drove the tip of the scissors into my own neck. You were wrong. You didn’t make her happy. You drove her to her death. … The pain was distant, a dull throb beneath the overwhelming wave of relief as the warmth drained from my body. Just as my consciousness began to drift, the bathroom door crashed open. Jackson burst in. His pupils shrank to pinpricks the moment he saw the crimson swirling in the bathtub. He stumbled forward, almost falling, snatching a towel and pressing it desperately against the gushing wound on my neck. “Audrey, are you fucking insane?” I looked at his panicked face and felt a strange urge to laugh. Was he afraid I would die, or was he afraid my messy death would tarnish his pristine reputation? “Don’t touch me, Jackson. Let go.” He tried to lift me from the water. I struggled, and the icy, pink-tinged water splashed all over him, soaking his expensive suit and shirt, clinging to his body and leaving him a pathetic, dripping mess. “Trying to kill yourself over something so trivial? When did you become so goddamn dramatic?” he snarled through gritted teeth. I just closed my eyes, too tired to argue. I remembered the time I’d begged Sylvie to get an abortion, threatening to slit my wrists if she didn’t. He had lied to me, telling me he’d sent her abroad after the procedure was done. He lied until she reappeared, two babies in her arms. That was the day I’d thrown myself from the balcony. Again and again, I hurt myself. And with each attempt, Jackson’s initial heartache had curdled into cold indifference. “You don’t have the guts to actually die, Audrey,” he’d said once. “You just pull these stunts to force my hand. Otherwise, how do you explain being saved every single time?” The car sped toward the hospital, a siren screaming through the night. The doctors were quick. Soon, I was lying in a private room. Jackson finally lit a cigarette, the smoke curling around his agitated form. “Sylvie was an innocent girl when she came to me. She’s worked tirelessly for the company and for the children these past three years.” “I was drunk that night. I wronged her, and the children are innocent in all of this!” he said, his voice rising. He loomed over me, his eyes a mixture of exhaustion and utter bewilderment. “The title of Mrs. Archer will always be yours. Why can’t you just be a little more gracious?” “Is it so hard to accept two children? They’re my flesh and blood!” I stared at the man I had once loved with every fiber of my being. He was demanding I be gracious about the children he’d had with another woman. My heart didn’t ache anymore; it felt like it had been encased in ice, a suffocating coldness spreading through my chest. “Jackson, we’re getting a divorce tomorrow.” His brow furrowed. “How long are you going to keep this up? It was just some stupid video from the paparazzi!” “You won’t touch me,” he spat, “so what, I’m not allowed to get relief from her either?” A bitter smile twisted my lips. “You used to say that if you ever made a mistake, you’d let me go without a fight.” His breath caught. A complex emotion flickered in his eyes. “Audrey, we were just kids. You can’t take childhood promises seriously.” I closed my eyes, exhausted. “Then let the past stay in the past.” “You’ve already given your home to someone else. I don’t want it anymore.” Silence hung in the room for a long moment. He reached out, his hand hovering over my hair. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.” I turned my head away. His hand fell, and he slammed the door on his way out, his anger palpable. “Get some rest. The doctor said you’re emotionally unstable and need quiet,” his voice came, muffled, from the hallway. “We can talk about the divorce later. Just don’t do anything stupid again.” In his eyes, my hysteria, my breakdowns, were nothing but foolish theatrics. My pain was merely an inconvenience, disturbing the peaceful, double life he was so enjoying. Just then, something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. It was the old apology note clutched in my hand. New words, blooming into existence on the blank space of the page! Who are you? Why are you scribbling all over my apology note! My heart hammered against my ribs. I stared, transfixed, at the words that had appeared from thin air. My hand trembled as I picked up the pen a nurse had left behind. Jackson, I’m your guardian angel. I’m here to protect you. Stay away from Audrey. I held my breath, my eyes glued to the paper. A few seconds later, a new sentence appeared, the handwriting youthful and angry: That’s bullshit! Why should I listen to you? I love Audrey, and I’m going to be with her! What the hell are you? It was him. It was really the eighteen-year-old Jackson. The boy who still believed love could conquer all, the boy who had sworn to give me a home. That boy and the cold, self-possessed man who had just left my room were two entirely different people. My mother had an affair. My father murdered her and her lover before being sent to prison. Everyone at school called me the bastard daughter of a killer and a whore. Everyone except for the eighteen-year-old Jackson. He held me and told me, over and over, how wonderful I was. Because I’d once said I wanted to see real snow, he secretly saved up his money to buy us bus tickets to go up north. He was the boy who, while reading his public apology in front of the entire school, lifted his chin in defiance and declared, “I did nothing wrong. I love Audrey, and I’m going to marry her one day.” We used to huddle together in a tiny walk-up apartment, making wishes over a cheap slice of leftover cake from his part-time job. Even after he became a ruthless titan of industry, his eyes had still been full of me. He’d let me pick his personal assistants, just to make me feel secure. Sylvie’s resume was unremarkable. Her English was colored by a thick, rural accent. But she reminded me of my younger self, with that same relentless drive to succeed. I treated her like a little sister, buying her clothes, teaching her the subtle arts of navigating high society. I even invited her to our home for the holidays. She would link her arm through mine, a playful smile on her face. “Don’t you worry, Audrey. I’ll keep a close eye on Mr. Archer for you. No other woman will get near him!” And yet, she was the one who betrayed me the deepest. The hospital room door swung open. Sylvie walked in, dressed in a Chanel suit and carrying a Hermès bag. There was no trace of the country girl she once was. “Jackson is swamped at the office. He couldn’t get away, so he asked me to check on you,” she said, her voice smooth as silk. “Audrey, please stop hurting yourself. I know you’re upset.” “But the title of Mrs. Archer will always be yours. We would never try to take that from you.” I closed my eyes, unwilling to watch her performance. “Get out. Don’t make me say it again.” Sylvie clearly hadn’t expected such a blunt dismissal. Her smile faltered. “Audrey, you have trouble conceiving. You can’t hold Jackson back forever.” Her voice dropped, turning venomous. “You’re a barren wreck, Audrey. Jackson’s been sick of you for years!” She clicked her heels on the polished floor and left, her face a mask of displeasure. Who the hell cared about the title of Mrs. Archer? What I wanted was the boy whose world revolved around me, the lover who had promised me a home. And since the man he’d become had shattered that promise with his own two hands, I didn’t want this love, tainted with betrayal and lies, anymore either. A cold resolve settled in my heart. My hand was steady as I wrote: If you don’t listen, you will cause Audrey to try and kill herself over and over again until she loses the will to live. If you truly love her, then stay away from her. It’s the only thing you can do for her. I leaned back against the headboard, drained, and waited for his reply. Minutes ticked by. Just when I thought he wouldn’t respond, new words slowly bled onto the page. The boy’s handwriting was no longer angry, but hesitant. You’re lying. Audrey is perfect. How could I ever hurt her? I’ll spend my whole life taking care of her! Why should I believe you? You don’t have any proof. My life was the proof, written in blood and tears. But how could I explain that to the boy from eleven years ago? Should I tell him that after a business dinner, he would get blackout drunk and sleep with his adoring assistant? That she would get pregnant and give birth to his twins? That the girl he once treasured like a rare jewel would sink into a deep depression, haunted by his daily betrayals, and try to violently claw her way out of this world, again and again? The truth was too cruel for the eighteen-year-old boy to bear. After a moment’s thought, I added one more line: You have a small birthmark near your tailbone. It’s shaped like a tiny star. Jackson had told me that only he, the orphanage director, and I knew about it. Are you really my guardian angel? I smiled a little. The boy was so easy to fool. If you truly want to save Audrey, you have to be distant. Be cold to her. Let her live a life without you in it. A long time passed. When the words finally appeared, they were steeped in a reluctant, painful acceptance: Fine. I’ll listen to you, for now. But if I find out you’re lying, I swear I won’t let you get away with it. A teenager’s threat, fierce but naive. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, a real smile touching my lips for the first time in ages. Please, eighteen-year-old Jackson, I thought. Be cruel. Be heartless. Push away the girl who loves you with her entire being. Push her as far away as you can. The day I was discharged, Jackson came to pick me up. His gaze darkened when he saw the fresh scar on my neck. “The passenger seat is a little messy. You should sit in the back,” he said. My eyes landed on a pair of torn pantyhose hastily stuffed into the side pocket. My heart clenched tight. But this time, I didn’t scream or demand answers. I just silently got into the back seat. Jackson seemed taken aback by my calmness. The driver raised the privacy divider. Jackson cleared his throat, trying to break the heavy silence. “Audrey,” he began, his voice laced with confusion, “how did we end up like this?” “It’s simple,” I said, my voice flat. “There was a time when you only had eyes for me. Now, I’m just one of your many options, and not even the most important one.” His voice immediately rose in defense. “That’s not true! You know you’ll always be the most important person to me!” A mocking smile played on my lips. “That’s an honor I can’t afford, Jackson.” His face hardened. “Audrey, do you have to be so damn aggressive all the time?” “I’m doing everything I can to make it up to you! I haven’t even officially added them to the family records. What more do you want from me?” He always had an excuse. Did that mean my pain was worthless? A profound weariness washed over me. I didn’t even have the strength to argue anymore. “Tomorrow, we’re going to the courthouse.” He grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to face him. “I told you, a divorce is not happening. You will be my wife for the rest of your life!” I looked at his handsome face, now twisted with rage, and he seemed like a complete stranger. “Jackson, the only thing that ever kept me here was my love for you.” “I don’t love you anymore. So you can’t keep me anymore.” His pupils constricted. He slumped back into his seat and, after a long moment, let out a cold laugh. “Your mind games are getting more sophisticated, I’ll give you that. I underestimated you.” The moment I stepped through the front door, I heard the sound of children laughing, followed by Sylvie’s gentle cooing. “Slow down, you two. Daddy will be home any minute.” The living room carpet was littered with toys. The twins were wrestling playfully while Sylvie, dressed in comfortable loungewear, watched them with a fond smile. The domestic scene was so perfect it stung my eyes. Hearing us, Sylvie naturally took the jacket from Jackson’s shoulders and smiled graciously at me. “Audrey, if you need anything at all, just let me know.” She sounded every bit the lady of the house. The little boy ran up and kicked my shin. “Bitch! Don’t you dare ruin my family!” The girl pouted. “Daddy, why did you let the mean lady come back to our house?” Jackson, however, didn’t seem to mind their hostility. His face was filled with doting affection. “Daddy will always love you two the most.” I was an outsider, watching this happy family of four. I dug my nails into my palms, the sharp pain a desperate anchor to my composure. “I’ll take the guest room.” Jackson followed me into the room. “Are you really going to hold a grudge against the children? I was just placating them.” I laughed, a hollow sound. “What do your children have to do with me? Why should I have to consider their feelings?” My words left him speechless, his face turning ashen. “Audrey, I don’t even recognize you anymore!” I nodded, my voice light and airy. “And you have only yourself to thank for that.” I gently placed the old apology note on the nightstand. Just then, new writing appeared on it. To my future self: you’re a piece of shit! I can see what you’re doing right now! How could you let another woman and her bastard children into our home? How the fuck could you let Audrey suffer like this? I’m going to kill you! The words were a chaotic scrawl of pure rage. My heart pounded in my chest. And Jackson, standing in the doorway, seemed to sense something. His eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, zeroed in on the paper in my hand. His voice was low and dangerous. “Audrey, what is that you’re holding?” Jackson snatched the paper from my hand. “Stop playing these stupid games, Audrey. I think you’re having a psychotic break!” I stared at him, my voice sharp with alarm. “Don’t you touch that!” The disgust in my eyes seemed to ignite his fury. His gaze turned venomous. “This is my house. You are my wife. What is there that I can’t touch?” “Audrey, have I been too easy on you lately? What is this, a love letter from your new boy toy?” So, this was him being easy on me? Forcing me to accept his betrayal and his illegitimate children, ignoring my agony? A chill colder than death seeped into my bones. I shoved him out of the room with all my strength and locked the door. All I could do now was pray that the Jackson from eleven years ago would listen, that he could somehow change my fate. But the next few days passed with no change at all. My heart sank. Perhaps as a punishment for my disobedience, Jackson decided to throw a lavish party to formally welcome the twins into the family. Invitations were sent to half the city’s elite. Sylvie, radiant in a couture gown, stood with the two children, graciously accepting the congratulations and well-wishes from the crowd. When her eyes met mine, they were gleaming with triumph. Her smile seemed to say, This is just the beginning. The next party you attend will be our wedding. Halfway through the event, a slideshow of the children’s lives began playing on a large screen. There was Jackson, having a picnic with them and their mother; Jackson, taking them to a water park. The images were a beautiful, agonizing torture. Suddenly, the screen flickered. The children’s smiling faces were gone. In their place was a shockingly graphic scene. It was the video of my mother’s affair, the one her lover had secretly filmed and leaked online years ago. We looked so much alike. I could feel the guests’ scornful glares piercing my skin. Jackson was shouting at the technicians to shut it down, but something was wrong with the controls. My mother’s wanton moans echoed through the grand ballroom. My blood ran cold, freezing in my veins. Across the room, Sylvie’s lips curled into a poisonous smile. She mouthed the words silently: Like my gift? I lunged at her, slapping her across the face with every ounce of strength I had. Sylvie stumbled backward theatrically, colliding with her son who had run over to see the commotion. The boy fell to the ground and burst into tears. “Sylvie! My son!” Jackson roared. Before I could even react, I was kicked, sent flying like a rag doll. My head slammed against the marble floor. A sharp, searing pain exploded at the back of my skull as a warm liquid began to pool beneath me. I curled up on the ground, a wet heat spreading between my legs. I reached down with a trembling hand and it came away slick with blood.

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My husband, Adrian Sterling, came to pick me up. This man, usually so cold and composed, known for his professional boundaries. Actually let his new assistant sit in the passenger seat. I knew right then: this marriage was over. Chapter 1 That day, Adrian drove to pick me up. When I opened the passenger door, I froze. A young, pretty girl was sitting there, smiling sweetly at me. “Hi, Mrs. Sterling!” She greeted me politely. But she made no move to get out. I narrowed my eyes and looked at Adrian. He was on the phone, looking down, completely missing the tension. We were supposed to go to a private auction together. I had dressed up, looking forward to our date, only to find someone else in his passenger seat. “Hi, Mrs. Sterling! I’m Bella, Mr. Sterling’s new assistant.” The girl’s smile was warm, revealing cute dimples. “I heard you guys were going to an auction tonight, so I begged Mr. Sterling to let me tag along and see the world. Don’t worry, I won’t disturb you two.” My heart sank. I knew this cold, perfect man too well. He always kept his distance. He didn’t let people in easily. We married for business, a strategic alliance between our families. But we chose each other. People joked I’d be living like a widow with such an icy husband. But after we got together… Adrian would hold me gently. In moments of passion, his eyes would redden with emotion. He said, “You are my wife. We are one. You are different from everyone else.” Today, something had changed. Chapter 2 But I wasn’t a doormat. I was Chloe Summer, and I never swallowed my anger. “Get out!” I kicked her out, cold and merciless. The girl froze. She didn’t expect me to embarrass her right off the bat. Maybe my tone was too harsh. Bella looked lost. “I… I’m sorry, Mrs. Sterling.” Her voice trembled with tears as she scrambled into the back seat. Adrian finished his call and looked over. He realized I was angry. A look of helplessness and indulgence crossed his face. He leaned over to buckle my seatbelt. Realizing the seat had been adjusted, I angrily moved it back. I fumed. “So annoying! Why does everyone think they can touch my seat!” The air in the car froze. The girl in the back was too scared to speak. Adrian frowned slightly. He suggested calmly. “If you’re in a bad mood, let’s just go home.” In the rearview mirror, the woman was silently crying. I was fed up. “Bella, was it? I’m not in the mood anymore. Call an Uber. Mr. Sterling and I are going home.” The girl went pale, looking weakly at Adrian. He didn’t save her. She got out of the car, looking devastated. Chapter 3 Adrian would never embarrass me in public. He knew how to control his emotions. So he suggested going home. Whatever happens, solve it at home. That was our unspoken rule. “She’s just a college grad entering the workforce. Why be so hard on her?” Adrian pulled me into his arms. “First time.” Adrian was confused. “What?” “In all these years, this is the first time you let another woman sit in your passenger seat.” He didn’t expect that to be the issue. Everyone knew how perfect Adrian was. Countless women liked him. But he kept himself clean. He walked through the garden but let no leaf stick to him. Adrian smiled faintly, rubbing my hair. “I can’t believe you’re jealous.” He leaned down and kissed me, his nose brushing my cheek. “She’s just my subordinate. That’s all. “There will never be anything between her and me.” Adrian cupped my face, looking into my eyes. His voice was deep, promising. Chapter 4 A woman’s intuition is rarely wrong. Even though I’d only met Bella once. I knew she wanted Adrian. I thought my initial warning was enough. But the next day, the necklace that should have been my gift was around her neck. Adrian’s chief of staff, Helen, sent me a photo and a screenshot. In the photo, a diamond crescent moon necklace hung on Bella’s pale neck, making her look even more delicate. Her eyes were red, but she was smiling. She must have cried last night and received a “comfort gift.” The screenshot was Bella’s Instagram story: [The boss said girls should be strong even when wronged! Wiping my tears. Yes, sir, my Boss!] A few “fighting” emojis. And a picture of the necklace in its box. My blood ran cold. I hate to admit it, but she got to me. It felt disgusting, like a mosquito splattered on my favorite white silk scarf. I wanted to drive my yellow Ferrari at 100 mph and slap her face. But looking at my hand, I realized fighting a low-level “pick-me” girl was beneath me. I called my sales associate at Hermes, Wendy. Wendy sounded thrilled. “Mrs. Sterling, don’t worry! I’ll empty the store if I have to. I’ll get everything to you today!” So, before the workday ended. Every female assistant and executive office staff member at Sterling Group HQ—46 women in total—received a gift from the CEO’s wife. A Hermes necklace worth $15,000. It wasn’t the $200,000 auction piece, but the quantity made a statement. Helen handled it smoothly. She required everyone to post on Instagram with the caption: [The boss’s wife says every girl deserves better! Fist pump. Yes, ma’am, my Boss’s Wife!] The girls were happy to comply. As assistants, they were the gossip hub of the company. Who wouldn’t want to post a gift from the CEO’s wife? Some smart ones added: [The boss’s wife knows how to play!] Their individual influence might be small, but their collective gossip power was terrifying. Within 30 minutes, the whole company knew I gave everyone a Hermes necklace. As for why, the rumor mill was already churning. Bella turned pale. She felt humiliated. Red-eyed, she hid in the bathroom to take off the diamond necklace. Two colleagues walked in to touch up their makeup and snickered when they saw her. Bella felt ashamed. She lowered her head, rushed out of the bathroom, leaving the laughter behind. Her cheeks burned. She put the necklace back in the box. And returned it to Adrian, untouched.

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I couldn’t sleep. Beside me, my husband’s phone lit up on the nightstand. Then came the constant buzzing of notifications. Curious, I slid it open. It was a Reddit burner account he’d created five years ago. A post he made back then had suddenly gone viral again. [Need advice: How do I get my career-driven wife to quit her job and stay home?] The top comment, with thousands of upvotes, read: [Simple, bro. Keep her pregnant. Non-stop.] We’ve been married for five years. We already have three kids. This year, he’s been pressuring me for a fourth. Chapter 1 Five years of marriage. One son, two daughters. From the outside, we looked like the American Dream. Jason was the hardworking provider, and I was the enviable stay-at-home mom. Before I saw that post, I was actually content. Exhausted, but content. The only friction was Jason’s obsession with having another son. “Babe, come on,” he’d plead. “Just one more boy. Even out the teams.” Worn down by his persistence, I had reluctantly agreed to go off birth control. But the pressure was immense. He sent me pseudoscientific TikToks about conception constantly—legs up the wall, specific diets, supplements. Meanwhile, he did nothing. I did the labor; he just provided the seed and snored. Lying there in the dark, annoyed, I kicked his shin under the covers. He grunted, rolled over, and kept snoring. That’s when his phone buzzed. And kept buzzing. I unlocked it—he never changed his passcode—and found the Reddit thread. It wasn’t just a post. It was a manifesto. [Need advice: How do I get my wife to quit her job?] I scrolled through the comments until I found his reply to the top advice about keeping me pregnant: [Genius. DM me.] I opened his DMs. My blood ran cold. It was years of messages with a stranger, plotting my domestication. The stranger bragged: [My wife has been a SAHM for six years now. She’s totally dependent. She wouldn’t even know how to update a resume.] Jason replied, just yesterday: [I’m almost there. We’re on baby #3, but I’m pushing for #4. She’s completely trapped.] Stranger: [King behavior. 👑] I felt sick. Physically sick. Jason and I met at work. I was actually his supervisor. Corporate policy strictly forbade relationships between managers and subordinates, so we dated in secret. We had a plan: no kids until we were both VP level. I was on the fast track to a promotion. Then, the “accident” happened. I got pregnant. Almost immediately, someone anonymously reported our relationship to HR. I had to choose: fire Jason or resign. I resigned to focus on the baby. I thought it was just bad luck. But after our firstborn, Emma, came Noah. Then Lily. I was pregnant back-to-back. My friends joked that I was “super fertile.” But reading the chat logs, I found the truth. It wasn’t fertility. It was sabotage. [Just poked holes in the supply with a needle. Works every time,] Jason had written. He had tampered with the condoms. He had orchestrated the HR leak. When I left, he slid right into my old position. I looked at the man sleeping next to me. The man I loved. He wasn’t a partner; he was a predator. And the realization that I might be pregnant right now, carrying the product of his latest manipulation, made bile rise in my throat. I ran to the bathroom, scrubbed myself raw in the shower, and immediately ordered the morning-after pill via DoorDash. I sat on the cold tile floor, forcing myself to breathe. I needed a plan. First, the kids. Because I was always pregnant or recovering, Jason’s mother, my overbearing mother-in-law, had basically raised them. They were wild, disrespectful, and worshipped the ground she walked on. This marriage was built on fraud. It was over. But I wasn’t just going to leave. I was going to take him for everything he was worth. Chapter 2 The next morning, I played the part of the dutiful wife. I kissed Jason goodbye and sent him to work. Then, I went to my mother-in-law’s house and picked up the kids. Emma is five, Noah is three, and Lily is one. The transition was chaos. “I don’t want to go!” Emma screamed, pointing a finger in my face. “You’re mean! I want Nana!” Noah threw a toy truck at my head. Only Lily, the baby, seemed okay with me. I made a silent vow: I would give it one month. If I could bond with them, I would fight for full custody. If they were already too poisoned by his family… well, I had to save myself first. When Jason came home, he stopped in the doorway, horrified by the noise. “Whoa,” he said, frowning. “Babe, why are the monsters here? Send them back to my mom’s. I thought we were having a quiet night.” He winked, implying he wanted to work on Baby #4. I suppressed a gag. “I missed them,” I said flatly. “I want them home for a while.” “But… the plan,” he whined. “We need to focus on us.” “I’m not a factory, Jason,” I snapped, letting a bit of my real anger show. “You want a soccer team? You push one out. I’m tired.” He looked shocked. I never talked back. “Okay, okay,” he retreated, hands up. “Whatever you say, honey. How long?” “A month,” I said. “Until summer break ends.” He exhaled, clearly relieved there was a time limit. Chapter 3 Living with the kids was a nightmare. I cooked dinner. I turned around for two seconds, and Emma was squatting on the dining table, barefoot, grabbing handfuls of spaghetti with her hands. “Where’s my bowl?” she shrieked. “I’m starving!” Noah was barking like a dog under the table, waiting for her to drop food. My temple throbbed. Jason sat on the couch, watching ESPN, unbothered. “Are you going to do something?” I asked. He laughed, not looking away from the TV. “Kids will be kids, babe. I was wild too. Just let them be. If the food’s ruined, just make something else. My mom handles them fine.” He wanted me to cook again? “No.” I grabbed the baby, Lily, and called Noah. “Come here if you want to eat.” Emma rolled her eyes. “I’m not listening to you!” “Fine,” I said. I took the younger two into the kitchen and fed them the backup casserole. When Jason finally came looking for dinner half an hour later, clutching his stomach—he has chronic gastritis and needs to eat on time—he found a clean kitchen. “Babe? Where’s dinner?” he asked, sweating slightly from the pain. I pointed to the dining room table, where the cold, mangled spaghetti lay. “You said kids will be kids,” I said coolly. “Don’t waste food. Eat what your daughter left.” “That? That’s disgusting! Just whip up some eggs or something.” “Make it yourself,” I said, walking away. He stared at me, stunned. He didn’t know how to cook. He ended up eating a bowl of cereal, glaring at me the whole time. Chapter 4 That night was the breaking point. Jason tried to initiate sex. I was exhausted from the kids. I pushed him away. “Not tonight.” Usually, he’d pout but stop. Tonight, he didn’t. He grabbed my wrist, his grip bruising. “Come on, Sarah. You’ve been acting weird all day.” He tried to drag me toward the bedroom. PTSD from the text messages hit me. The holes in the condoms. The manipulation. I slapped him. Hard. Smack. The room went silent. “Jason, get off me!” I screamed. “I said no! That means no!” The commotion woke the kids. Lily started crying. Emma ran out, rubbing her eyes. “Why are you hitting Daddy? You’re a witch!” Jason let go, checking his face. His mask slipped. “You’re really pushing it, Sarah,” he hissed. “I work all day to pay for this house, and I come home to this? Do not think you are irreplaceable.” He grabbed his keys and stormed out. It was our first real separation. I checked his Reddit account. [Update: Wife is acting crazy. Refused sex. Slapped me. Think she’s getting too comfortable.] The stranger replied: [The Dread Game, bro. Pull back. Stay at the office. Make her fear losing you. She’ll come crawling back.] Jason: [Good call. I’ll sleep at the office for a week.] I created a burner account named AlphaDad4Life and replied: [Bro, you’re a legend. My wife is the same. Career women, right? Gotta break them down. Stay strong.] I was in. With Jason gone, I focused on the kids. But it was hopeless. Emma kicked me when I tried to enforce bedtime. Noah threw food at me. Every other sentence was “I want Nana.” “Nana says you’re lazy,” Emma told me on day three. “Nana says Daddy needs a new wife who cooks better.” My heart broke. Not because I lost them, but because they never really were mine. “If you don’t like Mommy, maybe Mommy should go,” I whispered. “Yay!” Emma clapped. “New Mommy! Nana said the new Mommy will buy me toys!” That was it. I was done. I packed their bags and called my mother-in-law to pick them up. I kept Lily.

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My wife, Quinn Foster, had become the youngest Section Chief in the Bureau of Classified Operations, all thanks to the supposed “voices” of the baby in her womb. I was visiting her on a holiday leave when I first heard that chilling voice—a phenomenon that had reportedly helped her root out a mole in the Bureau. The whisper, clear as a bell inside my head, was horrifying: [Oh no, it’s the Bad Dad! He’s the one who stole and sold the core technology!] In my previous life—the one that had just ended seconds ago—I hadn’t even had a chance to speak. Quinn had instantly leveled her standard-issue service pistol at my shoulder and fired. “Who did you sell the tech to? Talk!” I remembered the searing pain as I tried to explain, but her face was a mask of cold fury. Before I could finish, she raised the gun again. A single, decisive shot to my head. [Mommy is so strong! The Bad Dad is finally gone, and the data he stole is hidden in that flash drive!] I died that day, utterly baffled, never understanding how I became the traitor, the classified information leaker. Now, I was back. Reborn into the very morning of that fateful visit. I looked at her familiar, yet already hardening face, and then at the man beside her—her trusted deputy, Chris Valen, whom the ‘voice’ called the “Good Uncle.” I reached into my pocket, pulling out a flash drive. I held it out to my wife. “If this is the evidence you want,” I said, my voice steady, “then go ahead and shoot me.” Quinn took the flash drive, her brows furrowing slightly. When she flipped through the contents, she found nothing but a folder filled with photos—just old snapshots of us. “What is this?” she asked, confusion coloring her icy tone. “You heard the baby’s ‘voice,’ didn’t you?” I asked. “It says I stole core technology.” “This is the ‘evidence’ it pointed to.” In the last life, someone—I still didn’t know who—had planted classified files onto my personal drive, setting me up perfectly. The moment I woke up in this life, I’d scrubbed the drive clean. Every single byte. Quinn’s expression shifted, a flicker of alarm crossing her eyes as she was about to ask how I could hear the baby’s voice. At that exact moment, the door burst open. A uniformed man charged in, his weapon instantly fixed on me. “Don’t move! Hands up, now!” His gaze was sharp, accusatory—it was Chris Valen, Quinn’s partner and deputy. Quinn was genuinely startled. “Chris, what are you doing? Put the weapon down.” She didn’t sound like she was faking it. She truly hadn’t expected Chris to show up like this. It confirmed my suspicion: Chris had planned this ambush. “Section Chief, Ashton Vance is leaking critical military technology. He needs to be arrested, immediately—” I raised an eyebrow, a grim smile touching my lips. “Hold on. How do you know I’m leaking anything?” I turned to Quinn, demanding an answer. “Did the Bureau already issue an order for my arrest, or is this a little off-the-books operation between the two of you?” Chris scowled, his voice cold and hard. “What are you trying to spin? Isn’t the flash drive the evidence?” His eyes darted to Quinn, urging her on. “Section Chief, the suspect is right here. Why are we hesitating?” Quinn’s face was devoid of expression as she tossed the flash drive back to him. “See for yourself. It’s only photos of me and Ashton. Nothing else.” She pursed her lips, a reluctant admission escaping her. “The baby must have been mistaken this time.” Chris was incredulous, vehemently shaking his head. “Impossible. That’s impossible. The baby has never been wrong. It’s always been right.” He jammed the drive into a portable device, frantically scrolling, checking, and rechecking. “There has to be something we missed.” It was a chilling realization: Chris knew more about this “baby’s voice” phenomenon than I did, the child’s own father. My eyes darkened. I closed them for a brief moment, forcing myself back to neutral. “Since you two have work to do, I won’t interrupt.” I held out my hand to Chris. “Hand it over when you’re done looking.” Chris glared at me, his desperation obvious as he searched the empty drive a few more times. Finally, defeated, he snapped it back at me. He spun on his heel and stormed out, slamming the door. I gathered my things and reached for the door handle. Then, the voice started again. [The Bad Dad must have moved the data and hidden it somewhere else. Mommy, grab him and interrogate him!] A knot of panic tightened in my chest, a cold sweat breaking out on my back. I gripped the handle, fighting to appear calm as I pulled the door open. “Ashton, stop right there!” Quinn’s sharp voice cut through the silence. I ignored her, pushing through the door. “You traitor! Where do you think you’re going?” In the next second, Chris materialized from the shadows of the hallway and tackled me with a flying kick. I crumpled to the floor, the agonizing pain in my abdomen stealing my breath. Chris was on me instantly, expertly and brutally binding my wrists behind my back with a heavy nylon restraint. “Is this the Bureau of Classified Operations’ protocol?” I gritted out, the sweat pouring down my temples. “You have no evidence to call me a traitor, and no warrant to restrict my freedom.” Chris let out a chilling laugh, pressing the muzzle of his pistol against the back of my skull. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, why are you running?” “Don’t even think about escaping. My bullets don’t care who you are.” The baby’s voice chirped again, full of unnatural glee: [The Good Uncle is so amazing! He caught the Bad Dad in one try!] Quinn walked closer, her face stone-cold, and gently stroked her swelling belly. “Baby, where did Ashton transfer the data?” [The Bad Dad is too cunning. I don’t know either. Mommy will have to question him herself.] Quinn lifted her gaze, meeting Chris’s eyes. The look they exchanged—a silent, unsettling understanding—sent a shiver of pure dread down my spine. “Take him to the interrogation room,” Quinn ordered flatly. Chris roughly yanked me up and shoved me down the long, cold corridor. The interrogation room was sterile, cold, and oppressive. Chris slammed me into the specialized chair, the restraints instantly locking onto my limbs. He pressed my arms down hard onto the armrests, and the automatic cuffs clicked shut on my wrists and ankles. I looked at the one person who should have been the most familiar to me, a last thread of hope in my voice: “Quinn Foster, have three years of marriage meant so little that you don’t even know who I am?” She stood with her back to me, facing the one-way mirror, her shoulders rigid. “It’s because I thought I knew you,” her voice was distant, clinical, “that I find this so disgusting now.” Chris suddenly wrenched my arm, and a searing pain shot through me, threatening to snap the bone. “Where. Is. The. Data?!” His voice was tight with a disturbing thrill. “Spit it out now, and it’ll be easier on you.” The intense pain brought a coppery taste of blood to my throat, but I clamped down. “I haven’t seen any data. You can search everything I own.” Quinn finally turned, her eyes like ice picks. “The baby never makes a mistake.” She leaned in, her grip tight on my jaw. “Just confess, Ashton. Don’t make this hard for yourself.” A small nod of her head was all Chris needed. He tightened the restraints, and I was completely immobilized. “Why the stubbornness?” Chris fiddled with a small metal instrument in his hand. “Out of respect for Section Chief Foster, I truly didn’t want to resort to this.” I struggled furiously, only making the restraints dig deeper. “This is illegal coercion! Torture!” I gasped out, staring at Quinn. “Have you forgotten every single Bureau regulation?” I locked eyes with her, begging her to stop this. But she barely glanced at me before looking away. In that instant, my heart plunged into an abyss. As Chris adjusted his collar, a platinum tie clip caught the light. It was painfully familiar—a custom piece Quinn had made for me for our wedding anniversary, engraved with our initials. Now it was pinned to his tie. I managed a hollow, bitter laugh. “Just end it now.” “Save us all the trouble.” Chris instinctively put a hand over the clip. Quinn lunged forward, a stinging slap connecting with my cheek. “Stop with the nonsense!” Her voice was sharp as glass. “Chris and I have a purely professional relationship!” She noticed the clip, and her voice wavered. “It’s just a tie clip. What’s wrong with rewarding a subordinate? You never used it anyway. It was just collecting dust at home.” A blockage formed in my chest, and a familiar ache burned behind my nose. I had kept that tie clip carefully tucked away in my study. She had taken it without a word and given it to him. When I’d asked about it before, she had simply brushed it off, saying she’d order a better one. Only now did I understand: her utter ruthlessness in the last life wasn’t just about the cursed ‘voice.’ It was because her heart was already gone. Understanding brought a strange calm. “Do what you will,” I said flatly. Just then, Quinn suddenly clutched her abdomen, and the distinct voice chimed in. [Bad Dad, why are you making Mommy make mistakes?] I flinched. I suddenly realized that the child’s character in this life was drastically different from the one in my memory, which had actively encouraged Quinn to shoot me. Quinn’s boot slammed into my ribs. The sharp, searing pain stole my breath. “Trying to make me violate Bureau protocol? Ashton, that’s a brilliant plan!” The voice immediately backed her up: [Bad Dad is so awful! Mommy and Uncle Chris, hurry up and teach him a lesson!] Chris glanced at Quinn. She gave an almost imperceptible nod. He brought the electric baton down hard on my temple. Warm blood immediately tracked down my forehead, and the metallic taste of rust bloomed in my mouth. “Confess!” Chris’s voice was twisted with fervor as he struck me again. “You’re defiling Section Chief Foster’s reputation!” Waves of dizziness washed over me. I locked my eyes on Quinn. “You are abusing your power! You’re going to convict me based on a fetus’s ‘voice?’” I spat a mouthful of blood onto the polished toe of her boot. “When the truth comes out, none of you will escape this!” Quinn waved Chris to stop, then pressed the baton against my jaw. “You know how I became the youngest Section Chief?” She slammed my head against the wall. “It’s all thanks to the baby’s voice. I might be wrong, but it is never wrong!” The voice chimed in again: [The Bad Dad is about to die and he’s still trying to frame me!] [Does he really think he covered his tracks perfectly?] Chris immediately leaned forward, his palm resting on Quinn’s belly. The gesture was sickeningly intimate, as if he were the father. “Good boy, tell Uncle Chris. What else did your father do?” “Uncle Chris will punish him for you.” I let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “What a beautiful display of deep affection. Is this how you two usually run your investigations?” That comment completely broke Quinn’s control. She drew her pistol and fired, the bullet piercing my knee—exactly as it had in the previous life. The agony was absolute, and blood quickly pooled on the floor. “You will regret this!” I roared. The voice returned, dropping a deadly bomb: [The Bad Dad is collaborating with foreign spies!] [His company is an intelligence relay station. Who knows how many secrets he’s leaked?] The accusation ignited Quinn’s rage. As a core operative, she despised traitors more than anything. She raised the gun to finish me, but Chris suddenly stepped between us. “Chief, hold on. We still have no proof.” He glanced back at me. “And we can’t let him die this easily.” To my surprise, Quinn actually lowered the gun. Given her stubborn nature, once she decided something, she never backed down. How much did she truly care about Chris? I was gasping for air. “Quinn Foster, if you have the guts, just give me a clean death!” In a flash, Chris’s knife plunged into my thigh. “You want to die? Not a chance!” He switched on the chest-mounted recorder. “Ashton Vance, do you admit to colluding with foreign intelligence?” I spat a mix of blood and saliva onto his face. “You’re making baseless accusations!” I struggled against the pain. “I, Ashton Vance, have always acted with integrity! You are manufacturing a confession!” Chris smirked and turned off the recorder, then twisted the knife in my wound. The physical pain was nothing compared to the agony in my heart. After being reborn, I finally saw Quinn for who she really was. Amidst my tortured groans, a piercing alarm blared. The basement door was smashed open, and Bureau agents, weapons drawn, flooded the room. Chris was tackled and subdued before he could utter a word. The Deputy Director, a man named Agent Thorne, rushed to my side and personally released my restraints. “Agent Vance, are you alright?” My hands shaking, I pulled a micro-recorder from my inner jacket pocket. “The evidence… it’s all here…” The pain and the blood loss were overwhelming. I lost consciousness on the bumpy ride to the hospital.

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My brother, Chase, is a top-tier idol. My childhood best friend, Julian, is an Oscar-winning actor. And me? I’m Mia. A D-list actress who spends her free time writing spicy, R-rated fanfiction about the two of them. One night, I forgot to switch accounts before posting a new chapter. The next morning, the three of us were trending worldwide. Julian stormed into my apartment. His eyes were red. He looked like he wanted to devour me. “Mia, you owe me my innocence.” “How… how am I supposed to pay that back?” “Go public with me.” 1 Since high school, I’ve suspected there was something going on between my brother and Julian. At first, I thought they were just bros. But Julian was always at our house. His excuse? Tutoring me. Chase sat on my left. Julian sat on my right. They guarded me like prison wardens while I did homework. If they argued and gave each other the silent treatment, I was the messenger. Basically, if Chase was there, Julian was within three feet. Over time, I started feeling like a third wheel. A very bright, very awkward third wheel. Once, I saw Julian unlock his phone. The passcode was 032699. March 26, 1999. My brother’s birthday. From that moment on, I knew their “friendship” wasn’t as pure as it looked. Later, they both entered the entertainment industry. They interacted constantly on Twitter. They even went on an escape room variety show together. Chase is terrified of the dark. Yet he signed up for a show designed to traumatize him, just to hang out with Julian. When the episode aired, the whole world saw Chase dive into Julian’s arms, screaming. “Julian! A ghost!” Chase’s voice trembled. “Chase! Watch where you put your hands!” Julian shoved him away, muttering about not getting paid enough for this. After that show, their ship exploded. Thousands of fans joined the “JuChase” subreddit. I love writing stories in my spare time. With all this material right in front of me, I couldn’t resist. I pulled an all-nighter and dropped a 10,000-word fanfic into the subreddit. It blew up. Readers flooded my comments begging for updates. I couldn’t stop. I went wild. The smut got so intense that posts would get flagged and deleted within seconds. Chase, ever the internet addict, scrolled through his phone at home. He was gnashing his teeth. “Who wrote this?!” “Who wrote this trash?!” “I’m gonna sue! Rumors about my sexuality are one thing, but why am I always the bottom?!” Chase’s face was beet red. Julian sat beside him, patiently calming him down. Watching them squeezed together on the sofa, I ran back to my room. And furiously typed another 20,000 words. 2 Honestly, I only joined the entertainment industry to ship them up close. Chase and Julian were booked solid. I coasted on their coattails, enjoying the unemployed life. By the time the escape room show reached episode five, I was bored out of my mind. Julian had been distancing himself from Chase lately. My source material was drying up. I had writer’s block. The subreddit mods were DMing me for updates. Desperate, I begged Chase to get me a guest spot on the show. During filming, other guests were analyzing clues. I was glued to Chase and Julian like a shadow. This close, I had to get something good. I was so focused on my ship that I didn’t notice the female ghost creeping up behind me. She tapped my shoulder. “AAAAAAAAH!!!!!” I looked up, saw a terrifyingly pale face, and bolted. I was screaming. I have a loud voice. The ghost froze for a second, then covered her ears and fled the room. When I came back to my senses, I realized something. I was clinging to Julian like a koala. To break the awkwardness, I tried to make conversation. “Heh, you work out, huh? Nice pecs…” I poked his chest. Solid. “Enough! Mia, get down!” Chase stomped over, furious. He peeled me off Julian. See?! I knew it! Chase has feelings for Julian! He’s jealous! In the dim light, I saw Julian’s earlobes turn red. The atmosphere suddenly felt charged. “Bro, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have…” Shouldn’t have coveted your man. Before I could finish, Chase cut me off. “You’re a girl! If you’re gonna hug someone, hug your brother! Why are you hugging him?!” He punched Julian in the arm. “And you! Why are you hugging my sister! Did I say you could?” I’d never seen Chase this mad. I grabbed him to calm him down. Was it my imagination? Or did the corner of Julian’s mouth twitch up? Am I just a pawn in their flirting game? 3 Back home, inspiration struck. I wrote thousands of words. During a break, I checked Twitter. #MiaJulianSoSweet was trending at #1. I clicked it. It was full of people shipping me and Julian. [The chemistry! Mia didn’t leave Julian’s side the whole episode!] I was gathering material! [Chase acts like a mother hen protecting her chick!] He was jealous! [Did you notice? Julian kept looking at Mia!] He was… wait? Was he looking at me? [I used to ship Chase and Julian, but Mia and Julian are the real deal!] Traitor! [Apparently, they’re childhood friends! Friends to lovers trope!] Your bar is low. I scrolled and roasted comments in my head. There were too many. Worried Chase would see this and get hurt, I crept to his room. Sure enough, he was scrolling through the hashtag. Face dark and gloomy. I patted his back and handed him tissues. “Bro, cry if you need to. You should talk to Julian.” Chase frowned and sighed deeply. “Mia, what do you think of Julian?” “He’s great. Handsome, gentle, cooks well. Guys like that are rare, don’t let him go.” Chase’s face got darker with every compliment. He called his agent, Sarah. “Sarah, get this trending topic taken down!” “Money is no object! Remove it! Now!” I backed away, scared by his ferocity. Was a hug worth this much jealousy? Sarah called back. “Chase, it’s not that I’m slow. Someone paid big money to keep that hashtag at the top. I can’t take it down!” Chase pushed me out of his room. And slammed the door. I pressed my ear against it. I heard him yelling at Julian on the phone. “Julian! You animal! Doing something so shameless! We are done!” I skipped back to my room. Picked up my phone. And posted the latest chapter—[Domineering Actor x Puppy Dog Idol]. Then I turned off my phone. And slept like a baby. 4 I woke up at 10 AM. I opened my bedroom door and froze. Chase. Julian. And Julian’s sister, Chloe. They were sitting on my living room sofa like a tribunal. I rubbed my messy hair and forced a smile. “Morning… what’s the occasion?” Chase jumped up like a spring. “Mia! Look what you did!” “I am a six-foot-tall man! How… how did you write me like that?!” I glanced at the phone he shoved in my face. My sleepiness vanished. My name, Chase’s, and Julian’s were dominating the top ten trending topics. Each followed by a dark red [EXPLODED] tag. #ChaseJulianIsReal #FanficAuthorExposedAsMia #MiaForgotToSwitchAccounts #JulianClarifiesHeIsStraight … I clicked in. The internet was having a field day. [I’ve been reading this fic for days. Never guessed it was Mia. She’s Chase’s sister. Is this… a documentary?!] [No way! My oppa isn’t gay! I don’t believe it!] [What is this cursed throuple? I need to know Mia’s mental state right now!] [Oh my god, the tea is piping hot!] Someone even dug up Chase’s college photos and analyzed his socks. My vision went dark. I rushed to find my phone. When I turned it on, notifications exploded like fireworks. I remembered. Last night, after promoting the show on my main account, I forgot to switch to my alt before posting the fic. I checked the subreddit. Gone. Nuked. But screenshots of my fic were everywhere. Compiled into PDFs and circulating freely. My mind went blank. How do I fix this? Suddenly, Chloe walked up behind me. She sneakily showed me her phone screen. Her ID: [HorseWrangler]. ??? The mod who kept nagging me for updates was Chloe?! My childhood bestie! Julian’s sister! Of course! We share a brain cell! I hugged her like a fish finding water in the desert. We wept together.

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Ever since I was a child, my mother sneered at me, saying I was born with a hollow leg. She claimed I stole nutrients from my brother in the womb and fought him for the bottle the second we were born. In middle school, to make sure my brother, Joey, grew taller than me, she only gave me half a dinner roll for supper. I was often so dizzy from hunger that I’d stare at my teachers and drool. I couldn’t help it. My teacher’s freckled face looked like a sesame seed bun—oily, warm, and golden. The sun outside the window was a giant pancake, crispy on the edges and dripping with butter. Even my seatmate smelled delicious, radiating the creamy scent of fresh milk. After class, I’d chug water until my stomach felt like it was going to burst, yet I remained ravenous. At lunchtime, nobody reached the cafeteria faster than me. With that desperate speed, I swept the gold medals in the school’s 400m and 1600m dashes. The coach gave me fifty bucks as a prize. But Joey snitched, and the moment I got home, my mother snatched it away. “Everything you eat, wear, and drink costs me money! How dare you hide cash? No dinner for you tonight!” I sat there, smelling the roasted ribs wafting from the dining table. I pretended to eat, chewing air with all my might, imagining succulent, fatty meat between my teeth. But the fantasy failed. In the middle of the night, my stomach felt like it was on fire. I got up to use the bathroom and saw my dad’s poker change on the coffee table. Two quarters and a dollar bill. I couldn’t resist. That was the start of my life as a thief. Minimum fifty cents, maximum two dollars. I took it every few days. I knew I’d get caught eventually. But the gas station cheeseburgers were so good! The hot dogs were so warm! The greasy fries were worth every risk. 1 Soon, spicy Cheetos became the trend at school. Fifty cents a bag. I didn’t dare buy them. If I bought snacks, I wouldn’t have money for dinner. Between “eating well” and “eating enough,” I had no choice. When the cravings became unbearable, I’d ask my seatmate if I could have his empty bag so I could dip my bread in the leftover spicy dust. He looked shocked for a second. But from then on, he started sharing half his snacks with me. The more I ate, the more guilty I felt. Since I had nothing to share in return, that guilt morphed into a heavy, defensive pride. Finally, I snapped. I stole a five-dollar bill. I bought eight bags of Cheetos and gave them all to him. That evening, I went to buy a burger as usual. I saw my mom sprinting toward me, brandishing a rolling pin. Between “fear” and “food,” I chose to eat fearfully. I ran as fast as I could, stuffing the burger into my mouth with every stride. But she caught me. “This little brat learned to steal! Everyone, look! This is the daughter I raise, and she repays us by stealing her father’s hard-earned cash!” The rolling pin slammed into my back and stomach, stroke after stroke. “You can tell a criminal from age three. She’s hopeless!” neighbors whispered. “Good! Beat some sense into her!” I ignored the agony in my body and the mockery in their voices. I forced the last bite of the bun down my throat, feeling the bliss of a full stomach. The fullness outweighed the pain. As my mother dragged me home, I wept tears of satiation. At least the money was safely in my stomach. Otherwise, the beating would have been for nothing. 2 By high school, my mother threw her hands up. “No money. You stole it all. How are you going to school?” “I found you a job at the local meatpacking plant. They provide three meals. You’re a minor, so your checks go to my account.” I nodded obediently. That night, while they slept, I packed my bag. I pried up a floorboard and took the three thousand dollars my dad had hidden. I took another two thousand from behind the toilet tank that my mom had won gambling. I ran to a boarding school across the state line to enroll. I thought I’d finally eat well, but the lunch lady, Mrs. Gable, was a nightmare. She had a “tremor” in her hand that only acted up when I was in line. A scoop of beef stew would reach my tray as three pieces of fat and a slice of ginger. My portions were half the size of the boys’. After the nth time being cheated, I snapped. “Why do the guys get mountain-sized plates while mine is the size of a fist?” Mrs. Gable’s triple chin wobbled. “How much can a skinny girl eat? It’s a waste! Come back for extra rice if you’re still hungry.” I polished off my plate and went back for more. She sneered. “Extra sides cost a swipe. Only plain rice is free.” I calculated my balance. Fine. Being full was enough. So, I went back for plain rice every single meal. 3 But once you’ve tasted meat, plain rice is soul-crushing. My seatmate, Mia, was kind. She was a vegetarian and hated meat. Every time they served steak or pork, she gave it to me and ate the potatoes. She said she didn’t trust “mystery meat.” Perfect! I’d eat anything. Even if the pig was older than my grandfather, as long as it filled me up, I was in. But then Mia left to study in Switzerland. My meat supply vanished. Before she left, she handed me her meal card. “I don’t want to deal with the refund. Just use the balance for me.” I thanked her profusely. When I swiped the card, I saw a balance of one thousand dollars. For the first time in my life, I was too sad to eat. Besides my parents and relatives, the world was full of people who treated me well. So well I didn’t know how to repay them. Then, Mrs. Gable’s “tremor” got worse. The beef-and-potato stew was precisely zero beef and all potato. I exploded. “Where is the meat?!” She hammered the tray with her ladle. “Girls don’t eat meat. It’s a waste. Save it for the boys!” “Next!” I didn’t understand. Since when did girls hate meat? I stood my ground at the front of the line. Annoyed, she finally slopped a spoonful of gravy and three tiny scraps of meat onto my plate. “Fine! Take it! You’re like a starving ghost. Have you never seen meat in your life?” I sat down and took a bite. It was all ginger. At that moment, a dark rage took hold of me. 4 The next day, I intentionally sat in the middle of the varsity football table. “Wow, look at all that meat on your plate,” I said loudly. “Are you dating Mrs. Gable from the service window to get that kind of ‘special’ treatment?” “She always brags about sleeping with the ‘fresh meat’ on the team. Which one of you is her favorite?” I saw the guys’ faces turn pale and I bolted with my tray. I was terrified they’d punch me. The rumor spread like wildfire. Teenage boys have massive egos. Soon, the narrative became: if you have meat on your plate, you’re sleeping with the lunch lady. The guys were so embarrassed that they refused to go to her window. Eventually, parents heard the “sexual harassment” rumors and complained to the board. The school fired Mrs. Gable. When I heard she was gone, I felt a tiny sting of guilt. But as my own portions grew larger and meatier, that guilt vanished completely. I thought I could finally focus on studying. But one day, my principal pulled me out of class. In his office sat the two people I hated most. “You little thief! You’re dead!” “We’ll drop the theft charges if you come work at the plant to pay for Joey’s college! It’s your fault your grades are so good—you’ve sucked all the luck away from your brother!” 5 The joy of a full stomach evaporated. “I’m not going! I’m going to graduate!” The principal tried to mediate. “Let’s stay calm. Grades aren’t ‘stolen.’ About the theft—is there a misunderstanding?” In front of strangers, my mother was a professional victim. “Principal, she’s a liar! She’s been stealing since she was ten. Every penny we have, she takes!” “She took five thousand dollars! Who knows what she’s doing with thugs or boys at her age?” “What’s the point of school for a girl like this? She’s a menace to society! I’m her mother; it breaks my heart, but she’s out of control!” She wiped a non-existent tear. I bit my lip, trying to hold back the flood. The principal looked at me gently. “Jane, I don’t think you’re a bad kid. Can I ask what you did with the money?” The dam broke. I didn’t want to cry! Crying makes them win! But because he believed me, I couldn’t help it. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and screamed: “I was hungry! I stole it to buy bread! Burgers! Noodles! I was starving!” “I took the money for tuition because they wouldn’t let me come to school!” The office went silent. My dad lunged and slapped me across the face. “Liar! Who ever mistreated you? Everything you own, I paid for!” The principal jumped in to stop him. My mom grabbed my arm. “Come home! You’re nothing but a liar!” I dropped to the floor and hugged the office doorframe. The principal roared: “Enough! Stop it!” My mom sneered. “Mind your own business, teacher.” The principal pulled me back toward him. “How much did she take?” My mom’s eyes widened. “Five thousand! Why, you gonna pay us back?” “Give me your Venmo. I’ll send it now. Leave the girl alone. Let her study.” My mom opened her app instantly. “Fine, but we aren’t paying a cent for her living expenses from now on.”

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1 The miscarriage taught me how to behave. I stopped asking when Nathan would be home. I didn’t question his vacations with my best friend. I didn’t even mind when he started playing dad to her son. Even now, as I found a handful of used condoms on the floor of his car, my expression didn’t change. I simply swept them into a trash bag. But that’s when Nathan slammed on the brakes, the screech of tires echoing the tension in his voice, which was stretched taut like a wire about to snap. “Sophia and I were together… in this car. And that’s all the reaction I get?” I nodded, my voice a calm, placid lake. “Passion is a hard thing to control. I get it.” I had finally become the reasonable wife Nathan always wanted. He just didn’t know that in the years I was unreasonable… I was also the one who truly loved him. … “Aria, you’ve changed,” Nathan’s voice trembled slightly. “The old you would never have been this… detached.” I watched the city lights blur past the window. “That was before I knew better.” “I don’t need you to know better!” he insisted. “You can fight with me, Aria. Like you used to.” A bitter smile touched my lips, and my gaze drifted to my own hand, to the little finger that never quite straightened out. A souvenir from the last time I’d slapped Sophia, when he’d thrown me to the ground and stomped on my hand. Seeing my silence, Nathan made a promise that felt both monumental and completely hollow. “Aria, after the holidays, I’ll end things with Sophia for good. We can start over.” A year ago, those words would have brought me to tears of relief. Now, they were just laughable. The car pulled into the driveway of the Hawthorne family estate. The moment I stepped inside, I saw Sophia in an apron, arranging platters on the dining table, playing the perfect lady of the house. Panic flashed in Nathan’s eyes. “I didn’t know she would be here…” “I invited her.” Nathan’s mother shot me a look sharp enough to cut glass. “It’s Christmas Eve. Try not to make a scene and embarrass everyone again.” It was a perfect echo of last year. Sophia, clinging to Nathan’s mother with one arm and Nathan with the other. At the dinner table, I had emptied my glass of red wine over her head. In response to Sophia’s sobs, Nathan hadn’t hesitated to throw a tureen of hot soup in my face. I subconsciously traced the faint scar on my temple and managed a small smile. “Then we should thank Sophia for her help.” If someone else wanted to play the part of the virtuous wife, I was more than happy to relax. I turned to grab a handful of nuts from a bowl, but Nathan grabbed my arm, his voice laced with disbelief. “Aria, you’re just going to let an outsider celebrate Christmas with our family?” I smiled and nodded, repeating the words he’d used last year. “Sophia’s a single mom. It’s tough. We can’t let them be all alone on Christmas, can we?” “She’s my best friend,” I added. “I don’t have a problem with it.” Just then, Sophia’s son, Max, came charging at me, ramming his head into my stomach. “You’re the bad lady! You can’t take my mommy’s place!” Sophia quickly covered his mouth. “He’s been watching too many cartoons. Don’t mind him.” But there wasn’t a shred of apology in her eyes. I stood perfectly still, a dull ache lingering where he’d hit me. There was nothing left in this world that could truly hurt me anymore. Except for the child I never got the chance to meet. Nathan and I had been the couple everyone envied in college. He knew my class schedule by heart, and my thermos was always full of hot coffee on cold mornings. I knew he’d forget to eat when he was absorbed in his lab work, so I always brought him his favorite barbecue ribs from the cafeteria. We talked about literature and macroeconomics; we were lovers and soulmates. The year we were meant to graduate, the Hawthorne Group was targeted by a rival and driven into bankruptcy. Nathan’s father, overwhelmed by creditors, jumped from his office window. Overnight, Nathan was forced to drop out of college and inherit a mountain of debt. When I found him, he was curled in the corner of a grimy apartment, with jagged cuts on his wrists, blood pooling on the floor. His father was gone, his mother was sick, and the debt had crushed him into a severe depression. I tried to get close, but he brandished a shard of glass, screaming at me to get out. The moment the glass bit into my shoulder, clarity seemed to return to his eyes. He dropped it and collapsed into my arms, sobbing like a lost child. If you’re not afraid of death, what is there to fear about living? I dropped out of college without telling my parents and stood by his side. For seven years, I pieced his shattered soul back together. We worked street stalls, delivered food, took any odd job we could find, and counted every penny together in the dead of night. The night we paid off the last of the debt, he proposed with a ring he’d fashioned from sea glass, polished for half a year. The band was rough, but it was the most precious thing I’d ever worn. At our wedding, he wept in front of everyone. “Aria, I swear I will never let you down.” Our marriage was blissful, with only one lingering sorrow: we couldn’t have a child. The years of hardship had taken a toll on our bodies, and getting pregnant was a difficult journey. The injections, the egg retrievals, the failures… the cold, aching hollowness in my belly after every trip to the clinic. That’s when Sophia showed up with her son. We’d known each other since childhood. Her father was a gambling addict, and her mother had run off when she was young. My parents took pity on her, bringing her into our home. We were raised like sisters, sharing everything, until we went our separate ways for college. I smiled and slipped the boy a fifty-dollar bill, teasing her, “When did you get married? You should have told me so I could get you a proper wedding gift.” Her eyes darted away. “Do you remember when I came to visit you in your junior year? When you and Nathan were renting that little place.” I nodded apologetically. “I’m so sorry about that. I know you were stuck in the apartment by yourself. The lab was so demanding, I never even got to show you around the city.” “One night,” she interrupted, her voice barely a whisper, “you didn’t come home.” “He thought I was you.” She pushed her son forward. “This is Nathan’s son.” I stood frozen, a roaring in my ears drowning out everything else. When Nathan found out, his first reaction was to slap Sophia across the face. Then he spent the entire night on the balcony, chain-smoking. The next morning, he held me, his eyes bloodshot. “Aria, I was drunk. I don’t remember a thing. I will never acknowledge that child.” The day the paternity test results came back, his mother was overjoyed, cuddling Max and beaming. Nathan, however, remained stone-faced. “The only children who will be part of the Hawthorne family are the ones Aria gives me.” Sophia wept, telling us how hard it had been raising a child alone, how she never would have come to us if she hadn’t been completely desperate. Nathan impatiently tossed a check at her and told her to disappear forever. Sophia took the check and left. Life seemed to return to normal. Nathan continued to accompany me to my fertility appointments, holding my hand during injections and wiping my tears after each failure. I slowly let my guard down. After all, Nathan hadn’t known what he was doing, and Sophia hadn’t pushed the issue. Three months later, the IVF treatment was finally a success. I was holding the positive report, my hands trembling as I dialed Nathan’s number, when I saw him across the bustling street. He was holding Max’s hand with one hand and had the other wrapped tightly around Sophia’s waist. He leaned down and kissed her, a gentle, lingering kiss. I stood rooted to the spot, the paper in my hand crinkling into a tight ball. I struggled to keep my voice steady. “Nathan, where are you?” His voice on the other end was rushed. “I’m in a meeting at the office. I’ll be home late to be with you.” “How did the test go? Was it successful?” It was. But I wished it wasn’t. My silence must have given him the wrong impression. He thought it had failed again. “It’s okay, Aria,” he soothed. “If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. We can be child-free. I’ll never blame you.” Across the street, Nathan ruffled Max’s hair while Sophia snuggled into his side. They looked like the perfect, happy family. A single tear hit the back of my hand. The pain was so sharp I couldn’t speak. I just watched them walk away until they disappeared from sight. When I got home, dazed, an expense report from the company’s finance department was waiting. A hundred thousand dollars was missing. When I pressed for an explanation, the accountant reluctantly admitted, “Mr. Hawthorne dropped sixty grand on a diamond ring at a charity auction for the new secretary, Ms. Cole, not to mention the new condo and car.” I sat in the study, staring at the report until late into the night. Finally, the lock clicked. Nathan came in, bringing a chill with him. “Why are you still up?” He tried to wrap his arms around me from behind, but I subtly moved away. “Are you angry?” He smiled, offering me a bouquet of roses. “The meeting ran late. I’m sorry.” But he’d forgotten to trim the thorns, and he’d forgotten I didn’t like roses. They were Sophia’s favorite. I turned the laptop screen toward him. His smile froze, but he tried to maintain his composure. “The company is investing in a new project. We needed some liquid assets.” “What kind of project requires dropping sixty grand on a ring at an auction?” Nathan’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sometimes in business, you have to grease a few wheels…” “A condo and a car, too? All for greasing wheels? I had no idea Sophia was so well-connected.” “So you know.” The room fell into a dead silence. After a long moment, Nathan sighed. “Sophia and Max were living in a terrible little apartment. She had no job, no support. Max is still my son, Aria. I couldn’t just let him suffer. I’m doing this for the boy.” My face was a cold mask. “So you’re using company money to support them?” His expression darkened. “This company is mine. Hawthorne assets. I built it from the ground up, and I have the right to decide how its money is spent!” I looked at him, a complete stranger. “Nathan, do you remember who provided the initial capital when we first registered this company?” He froze. “I sold all the jewelry my parents gave me and added it to the money I’d saved from working three jobs.” “The company’s first major contract? I landed that by drinking with a client until my stomach bled.” “When we were on the verge of collapse, I mortgaged the house my grandfather left me to get us through.” “And now you say you built this company all by yourself?” Nathan’s face shifted through a spectrum of emotions before settling on a frustrated anger. “Yes, you contributed! But I gave you the title of Mrs. Hawthorne. Isn’t that enough? Sophia will never have that title. What’s wrong with me compensating her for that?” “Besides,” he added, his voice dripping with cruelty, “you can’t even get pregnant. Are you going to let the Hawthorne family line die with me?” The bruises from the hormone injections still ached. I laughed until tears streamed down my face. A sperm morphology rate of over 98% abnormal was the real reason we couldn’t conceive. I pulled off the sea glass ring he had made and smashed it on the floor. I sued Sophia, demanding she return every penny. I bought trending spots on social media, exposing her and ruining her reputation. Her few days of luxury were over before they began. She was fired and became a social pariah. She came to me with a knife to her throat, kneeling on the floor. “Aria, I’ll never try to take your place. Please, just leave my son and me alone.” She was sobbing hysterically, and the moment Nathan walked in, she dragged the blade across her neck. It wasn’t deep, but it looked terrifying. Nathan rushed over, slapped me hard across the face, and scooped her into his arms, racing to the hospital. When he returned, his eyes were full of weariness. “Let’s get a divorce, Aria. Not for Sophia. For Max. You’ve backed them into a corner. I have to give them a name.” I coldly tossed the ultrasound report at him. The law here states that a husband cannot divorce a pregnant wife. Why should my legitimate child be born without a father, while a mistress’s illegitimate son dances on my grave? Nathan stared at the grainy image, a flicker of joy crossing his face. He didn’t mention divorce again. He seemed to transform back into the caring husband I once knew. Until Sophia’s son was pushed from a third-story window. The first thing Max did when he woke up was point at me in front of the police. “It was Auntie Aria. She pushed me. She said if I was gone, Daddy would belong only to her.” The security camera on that floor had been tampered with. I was the only suspect. The police investigated but eventually dropped the case due to a lack of evidence. I hired the best lawyer to find the truth. But Nathan was convinced it was me. The day I was released from the station, he grabbed me by the throat, his eyes filled with icy hatred. “How could you hurt a child? You’re not even human!” I choked, struggling to breathe until I finally broke free. From that day on, Nathan stopped coming home at night. He said he was atoning for my sins. If I so much as touched Sophia, he would twist my arm. If I tried to tell my side of the story online, he held a press conference to spin his own narrative, painting me as the vindictive third wheel. Public opinion turned against me. Strangers online ripped me to shreds. My parents tried to defend me and were doxxed, then physically assaulted. After one of Sophia’s live streams, the brake lines on my parents’ car were cut. They were in a serious accident. At the hospital, I discovered Nathan had frozen all of my accounts. I found him at Sophia’s condo. The air was still thick with the heat of their lovemaking. “Max wants a little sister,” he said, as casually as if he were discussing the weather. A chill ran through me. “My parents are in the hospital. I need money.” “Apologize.” He was buttoning his shirt, not even looking at me. “Apologize to Sophia. Admit you pushed Max, and the money will be in your account immediately.” “Nathan, those are the people you called Mom and Dad for three years!” “Mom and Dad?” he scoffed. “They didn’t act like elders when they were feeding Sophia leftovers and treating her like a servant. If they hadn’t been so cruel to her, would she have been desperate enough to come to us in the first place?” He had swallowed every lie Sophia had told on her live stream. I thought of the countless bowls of soup my mother had simmered for him, the savings my father had secretly slipped him when he was starting his business. I remembered when we were children and my mother gave the new winter coat to Sophia, while I wore her hand-me-downs. As I gritted my teeth, preparing to bow my head to them, the hospital called with the worst possible news. The world spun. Sophia blocked the doorway. “You haven’t apologized. Don’t you want the money to save them?” I slapped her with all the strength I had left. Nathan retaliated for her, shoving me violently. My abdomen slammed into the corner of a cabinet. A searing pain, followed by a sudden, warm gush spreading down my legs. Nathan saw the blood pooling on the floor. His face went white. He scooped me up like a madman and raced to the hospital. The baby didn’t make it. When the light in the operating room went out, Nathan knelt by my bed, slapping his own face over and over. I stared at the blank white ceiling, as empty as the space that had suddenly opened up inside me. At the funeral, the grief was so immense I could barely stand, but I couldn’t shed a single tear. Nathan stayed by my side for a long time after that, avoiding Sophia completely. He tried to talk to me like we used to, but I would just sit in silence, saying nothing. Eventually, he started provoking me, flaunting his relationship with Sophia, but all I felt was a profound numbness. I think I had stopped loving Nathan. That’s when my lawyer handed me the investigation report. I read through the file, my fingertips growing cold. The truth was more shocking than I could have ever imagined. The largest sum of money that disappeared from the Hawthorne Group right before its collapse had been traced to an offshore account. The owner of that account was Sophia’s father. Tucked inside the file was another paternity test. Nathan’s ringing phone pulled me from my thoughts. He put it on speaker. A voice cut through the silent room. “Mr. Hawthorne, we managed to restore the security footage from the third floor. We have the entire incident with Max on video.” “Send it to me. And don’t call the police.” Nathan’s eyes were fixed on me as he spoke, completely missing the way the color drained from Sophia’s face. “Aria, it’s Christmas. I won’t hold this against you. Let’s just put the past behind us.” I could only find it pathetic. Even now, he was certain I had pushed Max. Sophia forced a smile. “Nathan, maybe we should just delete the video. There’s no need to dredge up the past and embarrass Aria.” Nathan actually hesitated, considering it. I placed my hand over his on the phone. “Nathan, I’d like to see the truth, too.” He looked at me, surprised, as if the thought of another possibility had never occurred to him. Sophia tried to stop us, but I silenced her with a single glare. “Don’t you want to know who really pushed your son?” His mother snorted and snatched the phone, pressing play. “My son may protect you, but I won’t!” On the screen, Max cowered in Sophia’s arms. “No, Mommy, I’m scared.” Sophia’s voice was a soft coo. “Don’t be afraid, sweetie. Just be brave this one time, and you’ll have a daddy forever.” When Max still refused, her face hardened. “You can have Uncle Nathan as your daddy, or I can send you to live with your grandfather. You choose.” Max started to cry. “I want Daddy Nathan! I don’t want to go to Grandpa’s!” He climbed onto the balcony railing, trembling, and then squeezed his eyes shut as Sophia pushed him off. She didn’t call for an ambulance. Instead, she picked up a nearby brick and smashed the camera. The phone slipped from his mother’s hand, thudding onto the carpet. “No…” Sophia’s voice was strangled. “That’s not real… it’s a deepfake…” Nathan’s voice was hoarse. “You pushed him.” “I’m his mother! How could I!” “Precisely because you are his mother,” I interjected softly. “You knew exactly how to push him so it wouldn’t be fatal. You knew how to make it look like an attack.” Sophia whipped her head toward me, her eyes filled with venom. “It was you! You paid someone to fake this video!” I laughed. “The only person who could commission the Hawthorne tech team to restore that footage is Nathan himself.” It was his handpicked team; they answered to no one else. Sophia’s lips began to tremble. She had no argument left. Nathan bent down, picked up the phone, and watched the video again, slowly, as if burning every frame into his memory. “Why?” he asked, the sound of something shattering in his voice. Sophia collapsed into a chair, curling into a small ball. After a moment, she looked up, a wretched smile on her face. “Because I was tired of it, Nathan! I was tired of hiding in the shadows, tired of my son calling you ‘uncle,’ tired of you always checking the clock, rushing to leave…” “So you gambled with your son’s life?” Nathan’s voice shook. “I never meant to hurt him!” she shrieked. “I knew there was grass below! I just wanted you to hate her, to finally be done with her! Everything I did was for us!” “Us?” Nathan cut her off, his expression turning to disgust for the first time. “There is no ‘us.’ There never was.” The words hit her like a physical blow, and the last of the color drained from her face. But we were just getting started. I pulled out the paternity test. “Sophia, is Max really Nathan’s son?” “What are you talking about! I had a paternity test done with Max. It proved he’s his father!” Nathan’s desire for a child was his greatest weakness. “What if the hair sample you submitted wasn’t Max’s? What if it was yours?” “What? That’s impossible! How could she have gotten my hair?” “She could,” I said, tossing a document onto the table. It was an employment record. For one month, just before she came to us, Sophia had worked as a shampoo girl at the salon Nathan frequented. Nathan’s fingers froze on the paper, the edges trembling. “March, two years ago… I did get my hair cut there. I even complained the new girl was too rough…” His eyes, red-rimmed, snapped to Sophia. “Max… he’s not my son?” I handed him the real DNA report. The probability of him being the father was 0.1%. His mother instinctively let go of Max’s shoulder. Nathan lunged forward, grabbing Sophia’s wrist with a force that made her cry out in pain. “You dared to lie to me? You told me he was my son… you made me raise another man’s child!” “I just wanted him to have a father! Is that so wrong?” she screamed, hysterical. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through alone? Aria had everything—parents, love, a career! All I had was Max! I just wanted to give him a proper family!” “So you stole my hair, forged a report, and taught him to call me ‘Dad’?” Nathan’s voice was ice. “And to seal the deal, you pushed him off a three-story balcony?” He finally lost control, smashing the phone on the ground. “Sophia, how many other lies are there?!” Shards flew across the room. Max burst into terrified sobs. For the first time, his grandmother didn’t comfort him. Sophia scrambled to Nathan, grabbing at his pant leg. “But he calls you Daddy! He truly thinks of you as his father!” “Shut up!” Nathan kicked her hand away and turned to me. His eyes were wild with regret, shame, and a near-suicidal despair. “Aria…” He opened his mouth, but no more words came out. I watched him, my face a placid mask. “You wanted a child, so she gave you a ‘son.’ You needed to feel guilty, so she gave you a reason to atone. You wanted a tender escape from your marriage, so she played the part for you.” “Everything you protected, everything you cherished, everything you were willing to hurt me for…” I pulled the final, most devastating truth from my lawyer’s file. “From the very beginning, it was all just an elaborate scam.” The largest sum of money that disappeared from the Hawthorne Group right before its bankruptcy was traced to an account owned by Robert Cole. Nathan stared blankly at the document. “Robert Cole,” I explained, “is Sophia’s father.” His gaze locked on the name, as if trying to burn a hole through the paper. “Robert Cole…” he repeated, his voice raspy. “Sophia’s deadbeat, gambling-addict father?” “Yes.” I flipped to the next page, a copy of a bank transfer from a decade ago. “Three months before the collapse, the last major payment your father approved was an eighty-thousand-dollar contract for ‘Cole Construction Materials.’ The legal representative was Robert Cole.” “But those materials never arrived at the construction site,” I continued. “Here are the warehouse logs and the testimony from the project supervisor. And within twenty-four hours of receiving the payment, the money was wired to an overseas account.” Nathan was incredulous. “And my dad… he didn’t report it? Why wouldn’t he try to get the money back?” “Because he thought you had slept with an underage girl. Robert Cole used that to blackmail him. Of course, Sophia’s age was faked, but your father didn’t know that. To keep you out of jail, he absorbed the eighty-thousand-dollar loss. That, combined with the rival’s attack, was enough to break the company’s capital chain.” My voice was steady, but I had felt the same shock when I first learned the truth. Nathan staggered back into a chair. His mother was speechless. “Sophia,” Nathan said, slowly raising his head. “You climbed into my bed on purpose. You and your father conspired to destroy my family.” “Your father stole the money that could have saved my family, driving my dad to his death. And then you… you used that money to raise your own son, only to bring him back to me and try to bleed my family dry all over again.” He rose and walked toward her, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him. “Tell me, when you were lying next to me, did you ever, for one second, picture my father falling from that building?” Sophia was trembling so hard she could barely speak. “I was forced to! My father never gave me a cent of that money! I didn’t get into college, I got a boyfriend at the factory, I got pregnant… My father threatened me! He said if I didn’t help him frame you, he’d make me get an abortion and kill my boyfriend! I had no choice!” “My boyfriend died in an accident later, and my dad still wouldn’t help me. I couldn’t support Max on my own, so I thought of you.” Outside, New Year’s fireworks bloomed in the sky, casting flickering shadows across the living room. Amidst the hollow celebration, Nathan slowly turned to face me. “When did you find out?” he asked. “Three months ago,” I answered truthfully. “While tracing Sophia’s finances, I noticed a regular monthly transfer to an overseas account. Following that trail led me to Robert Cole.” All this time, her father had still been blackmailing her, forcing her to drain Nathan’s resources for his gambling debts. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” “Would you have believed me?” I met his gaze. “Back when there was no proof, you wouldn’t even believe I didn’t push Max. How could you have believed a truth that implicated your own father’s death?” He had no answer. I took out the last document, my expression serene. “Nathan, I want a divorce.”

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I was the bottom-ranked Siren in the entire Survival Horror MMO, and universally known as the “Worst Boss Ever.” On the game forums, players tore me apart with vicious posts, calling me a delicate liability, brainless, and a total waste of a raid slot. Then the server announced the Soul-Bound Gauntlet—a limited-time Wedding Dungeon. The reward for the champion? Taking the final Boss home as their in-game spouse. I stood at the end of the aisle, certain no one would show up. But then the system alert flashed: [NOTICE: DUE TO MASSIVE MELEE COMBAT AT THE DUNGEON ENTRANCE, CASUALTIES ARE SEVERE. ENTRY IS NOW RESTRICTED TO THE TOP TEN RANKED PLAYERS ONLY!] My jaw dropped. Wait, what? Didn’t these people despise me? A new BOSS rating list had just launched on the game’s companion app. On the “Most Beloved Bosses” chart, I sat comfortably at the very bottom with a rock-bottom score of 0.1. Under that garishly red number, the user comments were brutal: “Avert your eyes! The Siren Gauntlet is a scam. Anyone who goes is a total fool.” The thread was trending ridiculously high. The echoes of agreement were a deafening chorus: “She looks like a Siren, sure, but does she act like one? Her level design is kindergarten-level weak.” “She just struts around in that tattered little skirt every day. Does she really think she’s that cute? I’m going to puke.” “To the user above: Puking didn’t stop you from buying her the limited-edition skin from the cash shop, did it? And she won’t even wear it! I’m furious.” “Don’t even get me started. Last time, I accidentally made her cry. Her tears made me panic, so I had to toss a few diamond packs at her to get her to stop. I’ve never seen an NPC with such fragile emotional armor.” “And you’re proud of being a button-mashing buffoon?” “Mind your own business. I saw your playtime is twenty thousand hours, all of it grinding the Siren Gauntlet. What are you stalling for?” A confused newbie popped in: “Is she really that bad? I wanted to see for myself.” Hundreds of replies instantly buried him: “Dude, no! Run!” “Heed the warning. Don’t get scammed. Plus, the entrance fee is ten thousand Void Credits (VC) per attempt. You’ll go broke!” Reading those comments, a knot twisted in my stomach. My iridescent tail drooped listlessly onto the floor. Everyone really hated me that much… No wonder no one had been farming my dungeon lately. I was barely scraping by for my next meal. More bafflingly, my dungeon’s entrance fee kept going up. I asked the System Guardian—the voice in my head I called the Sentinel AI—and it just said the price was adjusted based on market demand. I figured everyone hated me so much that the system was deliberately raising the price to keep people away. My nose stung. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t dare. If I cried, the aggressive players would just start a new thread calling me a drama queen. Based on the players’ “feedback,” I decided to turn over a new leaf. The Sentinel AI helpfully offered an idea: “They think seeing you right away is too easy. You need to add difficulty.” That made sense. Before, a lot of players would just stare at me when they entered. They wouldn’t look for clues, just stand there like dumb statues. The forums said my clear time was slow, but that was because when I attacked them, they wouldn’t fight back or even take damage. I’d cry out of frustration, which is what really slowed things down. If they weren’t getting scared, where was my dignity as a Horror Boss? The Sentinel AI pressed on: “Let’s add a massive maze. And at every major intersection, we’ll set up a toll booth. One hundred VC per pass.” I was stunned. “The entrance fee is already so expensive! Now internal purchases too? No one will come!” The Sentinel AI scoffed. “That’s where you’re wrong. Some people might just like that kind of high-maintenance treatment.” Half-believing, I added the maze and retreated to the exit to eat my snacks. These were all “player drops.” When I attacked them, they’d randomly drop all kinds of delicious food. I used to think it was loot, but now I was convinced they were just throwing junk food at me to try and fatten me up because they hated me. The chips in my mouth tasted of pure melancholy. Soon, the first wave of challengers entered. They scurried through the maze like headless chickens. To prove I wasn’t brainless, I’d used a master-level map that would normally take at least two days to solve. Through the wall, I could hear their curses. “What the hell is this broken maze! System, you jerk!” “It has to be the damned system misleading Penny! My sweet Penny is too pure to design this kind of nightmare trap!” Were they mocking me for being dumb and easily fooled? I was so upset I couldn’t swallow my potato chips. I threw the bag down and ran back to my inner sanctum. So I completely missed the later wails of despair from inside the maze: “Waaah! Give me back my Penny! Where is my wife!” “Scam game, pay-to-win trash! Give me back my soft, cute little Siren!” “Penny, look at your mommy! Mommy spent money! What? I spent ten thousand and I still can’t see her? That’s fine… I’m satisfied just breathing the same dungeon air as her…” “Customer service! I’ve put in ten million VC! Stop with the toll booths and just tell me where the exit is! I’ll pay any price!” I huddled under my duvet, sniffing as I asked the Sentinel AI, “Am I a total failure? Everyone hates me so much.” The Sentinel AI’s voice sounded strange, like a suppressed laugh mixed with a kind of twisted pleasure. “Not necessarily… Hate is more enduring than love. The fact that so many people are cursing you means you matter to them.” A new, encrypted thread quickly appeared on the forums. [Rational Discussion: Can Penny see the Player Forum?] “Probably not? Only the devs have that clearance.” “If she can’t see it, why did the dungeon change? She must have seen us dissing her!” “This is all your fault! Stop acting like she’s an annoying little sister! Now I’ve been stuck in the maze for three hours, all my money is gone, and I haven’t even seen a glimpse of Penny’s skirt!” “Serves your foul mouths right! You call her ‘ugly trash’ to her face but secretly buy more skins for her than anyone else! I hate you all!” “Something’s not right. No other BOSS has changed their level. Only Penny’s. This has to be the system doing something sketchy.” “I agree! The system sees how much VC Penny sucks up and is deliberately adding new features to steal money! This is outrageous!” “Does anyone remember when the Siren’s original setting was ‘hug-and-snuggle’? Now, getting her to even scratch us is a pipe dream!” I was reading this, completely lost, when the screen suddenly went black. “Stop looking at this garbage. It’s affecting your mood.” The Sentinel AI’s voice became serious. “Look at the other bosses. They’re all trying to hit quotas and impress the top-ranked players. And you? What good is staring at the haters’ comments?” I felt a surge of anger. “Is it my fault no one wants to come? My rating is so low, what high-level player would bother?” Normal players and high-level players were in two different spheres. Horror game NPCs all hoped for high-level players to visit; one visit could make a dungeon’s popularity skyrocket. But the true elites, looking to grind points, only went to high-risk, near-impossible hardcore dungeons. They wouldn’t look twice at my “tea party” difficulty level. Except for the top player—known only by the ID Damian Kage. He was the single exception, the eternal legend. I scrolled through the leaderboards. The names in the top spots shifted constantly, but the number one slot, Damian Kage, was an unmoving mountain. His preference was listed simply as: All Categories. I pointed at the second-ranked player and asked the Sentinel AI, “This Brock Jensen guy seems to be farming survival/resource escape raids lately. Should I try to mimic that style?” The Sentinel AI was silent for a few seconds. Its electronic tone carried a strange, definite displeasure. “Why are you focusing on the number two player? Is the number one player not worth your time?” Huh? I tilted my head. The top player was elusive, a literal ghost. While his score was always first, no one had heard of him entering a dungeon in ages. The Sentinel AI brutally finished its thought: “He’s been trying for so long and can’t surpass first place. Don’t you think that makes number two a loser?” The Sentinel AI was far too harsh. I’d be grateful for anyone to visit! I sighed glumly and packed up to attend the annual NPC mandatory meeting. The meeting was essentially a showcase for the top performers, designed to motivate (read: shame) the rest of us. The star this month was Sawyer ‘The Slasher’ Jack. He slammed his still-dripping chainsaw onto the table, instantly filling the room with the smell of blood. He sneered at me, sitting at the foot of the long table. “I have to say, Penny, you’re embarrassing us. Dropping from S-Class to C-Class, and you haven’t done any soul-searching? Look at me. I’ve climbed from C-Class to A-Class. I’m practically S-Class already…” Before he could finish, a flash of cold light shot through the air. A black surgical scalpel materialized, slicing precisely through the main artery in his neck. Sawyer clutched his spurting throat, letting out a hog-like shriek: “Who… who dares…” He looked up and saw the attacker. His face went white. He dropped to his knees, not even daring to cover his wound. “Forgive me, my Lady! My mouth is trash! I was out of line! Please, spare me!” The room fell into dead silence. Every NPC turned to stare at the other end of the long table. A woman in all black sat there. Her face was veiled by black chiffon; her clothes were somber, as if she’d just walked out of a massive funeral. She was The Countess of Ash, the personification of the Black Death, and one of the most terrifying entities in the game. Her voice, a grating rasp like an old vinyl record, cut through the silence. “What right do you have to critique him?” She slowly rose. The hand Sawyer was holding the chainsaw with suddenly seemed to be corrupted by an unseen digital plague. It dissolved instantly, falling to the floor in a puddle of black code. —He was ruined. He’d never be able to wield his chainsaw again. He was frantically slamming his head against the floor, begging for mercy, but The Countess didn’t even look at him. She walked to me, lifted her veil, revealing a face that was pale but exquisitely beautiful. Her black-gloved hand gently lifted my chin, and her cold lips kissed my fingertips. “Penny, my poor child. Where is your former glory?” I blinked in confusion. “My Lady, I’m just a normal Siren.” She shook her head, her eyes as deep as an ancient well. “No. You simply forgot.” “You were once the first, and only, Triple-S Class among us.” Before I could process what The Countess meant by “Triple-S Class,” a massive red warning window popped up in front of my face. [SYSTEM ERROR! ILLEGAL DATA INTRUSION DETECTED!] [FORCING DISCONNECT…] [CLEARING CACHE…] A burst of screeching static filled my ears. The Countess’s form instantly distorted into a tangle of corrupted code. She seemed to try to say something, but an invisible firewall slammed into her outstretched hand, pushing her away. “Don’t listen to that lunatic.” The Sentinel AI’s electronic voice was ice cold, carrying a sense of… exasperation? Then, the world went dark. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my pink little bedroom. I was still clutching the unfinished bag of chips, but my mood had completely shifted. “Sentinel,” I asked cautiously. “Was that woman telling the truth? Was I really powerful before?” Silence. Dead silence. After a long moment, the Sentinel AI’s text slowly appeared on the screen, this time in a lazy, non-committal font: [She’s got a system virus; her brain is scrambled. Look at yourself—you can’t even unscrew a soda bottle cap. Triple-S Class? Dream on.] I looked down at my arms, thin as little reeds, and then at the nearby Coke bottle I hadn’t managed to open. Okay, the Sentinel AI was right. If I was Triple-S Class, the game was probably headed for bankruptcy. [Stop dwelling on useless things. Get ready.] The Sentinel AI suddenly changed the subject. [The Soul-Bound Gauntlet is about to begin. Due to your consistently poor performance, the system is forcing you to appear as the final Boss.] I dropped my chips in terror. “I’m not going! The players will tear me apart!” [Relax,] the Sentinel AI’s tone became layered with an odd significance. [No one will dare touch you this time.] … The Wedding Dungeon design was a total disaster. No gloomy castle, no bloody torture tools—just an overwhelming sea of red roses and a red carpet that stretched farther than I could see. I stood in the chapel at the end of the aisle, wearing the white wedding dress the system had forced upon me. Whoever designed it had made it ridiculously form-fitting, cinching the waist tightly, and the backless design made my shoulders feel perpetually chilled. I wanted to find somewhere to hide, but my feet were rooted to the spot. “Sentinel, I’m scared,” I whispered, tears welling up. “What if they come in and just hack me to pieces? I only have one hit point; one touch and I’m dead.” [Just watch.] The Sentinel AI offered only two words. Just then, the chapel doors burst open with a crash. I expected a horde of bloodthirsty players. Instead— There were people at the entrance, but the scene was utterly bizarre. The server’s second-ranked player, Brock ‘The Brute’ Jensen, the legendary killer, was now leaning on his greatsword, his face bruised and swollen, his armor shattered. The third-ranked player, Rylan Knox, the silent assassin, was clutching a broken arm, glaring viciously at Brock. The players ranked four through eight followed, all looking mangled and miserable. This wasn’t a wedding party. This was a crew that had just crawled out of a meat grinder! I started to tremble, my tail instinctively wrapping around my thigh. “See! They’re fighting each other just to kill me first!” I cried, shutting my eyes in despair. “They must be competing for the ‘First Kill Siren’ achievement! They want to chop me into pieces!” […Are you an idiot?] The Sentinel AI seemed to be laughing at me. [Listen closely to what they are saying.] I cautiously opened one eye. The burly Brock Jensen was pulling a bouquet of… crushed roses out of his broken armor? He limped up the red carpet, and his face—the one that could silence a crying baby—was flushed with a strange blush. “Penny…” His voice was a gravelly rasp, like a lump of coal was stuck in his throat. “Don’t be afraid. I cleaned up all the riff-raff at the entrance. No one will take… ahem, take the first kill from me.” See! He was definitely here to kill me!

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My husband’s childhood sweetheart, Bella, sent me a wedding gift. It was a box full of her cat’s fur. I didn’t know until I opened it. My asthma immediately flared up. We were out of medicine at home, so I called my husband, Ethan, who worked at a pharmacy, begging for help. He ignored Bella’s tantrums and delivered the medicine, saving my life. But the next day, he locked me in our bedroom with a dead cat and laughed as I screamed in agony. “If it weren’t for you, Bella wouldn’t have killed herself! You have to pay with your life!” It turned out that Bella, jealous that Ethan had left her to help me, jumped off a building with her pregnant cat. Ethan blamed me and wanted revenge. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my asthma flared up. This time, I called 911 immediately. Ethan ran to Bella without hesitation. But later, he regretted everything. 1 As the air was slowly sucked out of my lungs, the intense suffocation cleared my mind instantly. I opened my eyes. The next second, I threw the gift box in my hand as hard as I could. With a loud thud, cat fur floated into the air. I instinctively covered my nose and mouth, but my body erupted into violent coughs, twisting me into a painful knot. Nebulizer… I fell to the floor, my brain screaming for the medicine. But the familiar scene made me realize: I had been reborn. Ethan’s terrifying laughter from my past life echoed in my mind. I couldn’t stop shaking, gasping for air as I crawled towards the sofa. This time, I grabbed my phone and dialed 911 without hesitation. After giving my situation and address, and hearing the confirmation on the other end, I collapsed completely. As my consciousness faded, I banged my head against the floor to stay awake with the pain. Only when I saw figures in white coats did I let the darkness take me. When I opened my eyes again, the bright hospital lights made my eyes water. The suffocation in my chest was gone, and the smell of disinfectant, usually unpleasant, felt incredibly reassuring. “If you’re feeling okay, you can go pay the bill now.” After the nurse left, I threw off the blanket and walked out. Besides paying the bill, there was something I needed to confirm personally. Stopping in front of the hospital pharmacy, I called my husband, Ethan. He picked up quickly. “Honey, are you at the hospital?” “Yeah, I’m busy.” He hung up the next second, but right before the call ended, I heard a faint “meow.” And in the pharmacy window, there were different faces, but no Ethan. I let out a bitter laugh, my heart aching. Then, I felt a mocking gaze from afar. Walking closer to the window, I saw that Ethan was indeed absent. His colleague, Mark, was on duty. He glanced at me sideways while typing on his keyboard. “Picking up medicine?” I needed more nebulizer medicine for home anyway. Just as I was about to speak, he stopped typing and gave me a malicious smile. “Show me your medical record and prescription.” I gestured politely at the computer in front of him. “The hospital’s electronic system is synced. You can just check it there.” He acted like he didn’t hear me, not even glancing at the screen. “Sister-in-law, everyone else brings a slip. Why do you have to be special?” Then he opened his mouth in exaggerated surprise. “Oh, does your family own the hospital?” “I don’t have Ethan’s good temper. I won’t make exceptions for you.” 2 His voice was loud enough for everyone around to hear. People in line behind me started to grumble. “Just do what the doctor says! Why are you wasting time?” “Is she trying to get medicine without paying? That’s ridiculous!” … Hospitals are crowded places. Seeing a commotion, people started gathering around. Passersby stretched their necks to see what was happening. More and more people surrounded me, making the already stuffy air even thinner. My throat started to itch again. I coughed twice, but Mark looked at me with pure disdain. “What? You don’t follow the rules, you’re in the wrong, and now you’re pretending to be pitiful?” “Sister-in-law, save your energy. Ethan told me you love putting on a show.” As soon as he finished, I felt mocking gazes from all directions. Humiliated and suffocating, the feeling of despair almost overwhelmed me. “Give me the medicine… I need—” I leaned against the wall, gasping for air, looking at him, but he interrupted me. “Nice acting, but I’m not buying it!” I had felt this crushing despair in my last moments in my previous life. That day, my asthma flared up, and we were out of medicine. I called Ethan at the pharmacy immediately. When we were dating, he promised me after learning about my condition: “Xu Jie, I’ll be the person who brings you medicine the moment you need it.” He delivered the medicine as promised, saving my life. But his childhood friend, Bella, jumped off a building with her pregnant cat because he didn’t answer her call and didn’t arrive in time. He seemed fine, just helped his friend with her funeral and buried her cat. Respecting the dead, I didn’t tell him that Bella’s gift had caused my attack. After everything, he looked at me even more lovingly, bought a whole box of medicine, and scolded me gently to be more careful. I thought our marriage was finally on the right track. But the next morning, I woke up suffocating. I opened my eyes to find the dead cat in my arms, its fur stained with dried blood. I screamed and ran to the door, only to find it locked. I frantically opened the bottles of medicine he bought, but they were all empty. I wailed in despair on the floor, while his maniacal laughter came from outside. “If not for you, Bella wouldn’t have killed herself!” “We were together for so long and you were fine. Why did you have an attack right then? You did it on purpose to call me away when Bella and Kitty needed me most!” “Xu Jie, you have to pay with your life!” I used my last bit of strength to bang on the door, begging him to save me. Until I stopped breathing, he never opened the door. That’s when I realized how important Bella, his “little sister,” was to him. Before our wedding, he pushed aside all preparations to help her find an apartment and a job. Now, he pushed me into the abyss for her. I was too naive to think marriage would fix everything. To him, marriage and love could be given to two different people. When I came back to reality, my vision was blurry, and Mark’s face was doubling. “Please, give me the medicine.” I bowed down at the window, begging. The last thing I heard was a scream. “Someone fainted! Get a doctor!” 3 When I opened my eyes again, Mark’s face was right in front of me. This time, his eyes were full of worry and guilt, completely different from before. Seeing me awake, he started apologizing. “Sister-in-law, I’m so sorry! Ethan told me this morning you’d come to cause trouble, so I…” He slapped himself lightly. “I didn’t know you really had asthma!” I sat up and looked around. The culprit was still missing. Mark seemed to notice my gaze and quickly pulled out his phone. “Sister-in-law, don’t move. I’ll call Ethan!” While dialing, he muttered to himself. “Why isn’t he picking up…” He must have been rejected countless times while I was unconscious. And Ethan… He was probably enjoying his time with Bella, not wanting to be disturbed. I took a deep breath, but my chest still hurt. Surprisingly, I heard Ethan’s voice the next second. “What is it? I told you, just tell that bitch to get lost.” “Kitty just had kittens, and Bella and I are celebrating. Don’t ruin the mood!” Mark’s smile froze on his face. I coughed a few times, laughing at my own foolish hope. Mark leaned in anxiously, but I waved him off. Ethan’s voice got louder on the phone. “See? I told you she’s good at acting! She’s doing it again, isn’t she?” Then, a female voice spoke up. “Ethan, don’t be mad. Sister Xu Jie probably didn’t mean it…” Hearing that sweet voice reminded me of the box of cat fur. And the note inside: “Sister Xu Jie, I heard you have asthma? I just got a kitten.” “Ethan will be visiting me often, so he’ll smell like cats. I’m helping you get used to it.” Malice wrapped in sweetness. And now she was playing innocent. “Bella, you’re too kind.” Hearing Ethan’s voice soften with affection, my heart sank. Mark looked awkward, his hand frozen in the air. “Ethan, if you want to keep your job, come to the hospital right now.” Silence fell on the other end. Mark froze too. A moment later, Ethan’s angry voice exploded in the room. “Xu Jie, who do you think you are? What right do you have to say that?” Then, he hung up. Mark scratched his head awkwardly. “Sister-in-law, is there anything I can help with—” I interrupted him. “You and Ethan are from the same hometown, right? You grew up together?” He nodded. I beckoned him closer and whispered. “Do something for me…” Not long after Mark left the room. Ethan, who was just yelling on the phone, showed up with Bella, and… Two kittens in her arms. 4 I instinctively shrank back, shouting at the kittens: “Get out!” Ethan patted Bella’s back soothingly, his face turning stormy. “Xu Jie, you’re not going to die from that distance. Stop acting! Can’t you talk properly?” Of course, he thought I was faking it again, even though I was lying in a hospital bed. Maybe because in my past life, I never had an attack in front of him. He even joked privately: “Did you fake your medical records just to hit on me at the pharmacy?” I met him when I went to pick up medicine and fell in love at first sight. The one time I had an attack, it proved my condition but led to Bella’s suicide. So he believed I used my illness as a tool for attention. I covered my nose and mouth, suppressing my anger as Ethan walked closer with his arm around Bella’s waist. Suddenly, a nurse shouted: “What are you doing? Don’t you know the patient had two asthma attacks today?” They were “escorted” out by the nurse. When he returned, he was alone. It seemed his job was important enough to make him compromise. But he still looked impatient, chin raised, looking down at me. “You’re not dead yet, are you? You look like you’re about to kick the bucket.” Even though he was a few steps away, I still felt uneasy, worried about lingering cat dander on his clothes. I pinched my nose and pointed behind him. “Stand further back.” His patience ran out, and his face twisted in anger. “Xu Jie, what do you want?” “Come here, go away… are you playing with me?!” Seeing his rage gave me a strange sense of satisfaction. I chuckled. “No.” “I want you to kneel and beg for my forgiveness.” His jaw dropped, eyes bulging. He enunciated every word, fueled by fury. “Me? Kneel? To you?” “Why should I?” I replied calmly. “Because if I want, I can make you pack up and leave right now.” He stared at me for a long time, scanning me up and down, then burst into laughter. Shoulders shaking, bending over with laughter. Then, he looked at me with pure malice. “I think you’ve lost your mind.” I didn’t care, smiling as he walked away. I felt a little sorry for him. He personally threw away the only chance I gave him. I opened my contacts and dialed a number I hadn’t called in a long time.

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