I Hope You Burn

When the Earth slipped into a relentless, record-breaking heat, I exhausted everything I had to develop a constant-temperature shelter. Yet, my fiancée, Janine O’Connor, insisted on wearing a bikini and going out to sunbathe with her personal secretary.

In my previous life, I stopped her. I warned her that an apocalyptic heatwave was coming, and that countless people would be burned to death simply by being exposed to the heat. However, her personal secretary looked as though he had suffered a great injustice.

“I’m sorry, Will,” he said. “But I can’t bear to see Miss Janine stuck in a shelter for the rest of her life. I’ve done my research. This is a period of natural selection for the Earth. Only by adapting quickly to the environment can people truly survive.”

Even so, I threatened my own life and forcibly brought Janine back into the shelter.

Relying on the shelter I built, Janine survived the apocalypse and rapidly built a survivor base. However, on the second day after she became the base’s leader, she had me hanged outside the shelter and burned alive.

“If you hadn’t forced me to come back, Mark wouldn’t have been devastated and killed himself in the heat! He was about to develop a new type of shelter, yet you stole all the credit! I’ll make you pay with your life!”

Even after my death, her hatred didn’t fade. She ordered someone to skin me and turn my hide into a rug, stepping on it every day.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day I tried to stop her from sunbathing with Mark Davis.

Smack!

“Apologize to Mark. Don’t make me say it again!”

I opened my eyes. My swollen face burned with pain, but it also made one thing painfully clear: I had been reborn and sent back in time.

The moment I looked up, I met Janine O’Connor’s cold, vicious gaze. It was exactly the same look she had in my previous life when she ordered my skin peeled off. A chill ran through me. Cold sweat broke out as my fingernails dug deeply into my palm, yet memories surfaced uncontrollably.

After my death, my soul had drifted free. I had watched with my own eyes as she and the dead Mark Davis held a wedding, crediting all of my research and survival achievements to him. She even erected a monument in his name, and beneath that monument, she placed my skin as a mat, letting everyone who knelt to worship him grind me into filth beneath their feet.

When I didn’t respond, Janine frowned, her expression turning even sharper.

“Know your place. You’re nothing more than a freeloader to the O’Connor family. You don’t have the right to yell at my personal secretary. Mark letting me sunbathe is for my own good. Don’t twist it into something disgusting!”

Mark shot me a provocative look before he turned to Janine immediately, his eyes red.

“Miss Janine, please don’t fight with Will because of me. As long as you’re well, I can take a little injustice. I just can’t bear to see you locked inside a shelter by him. How is that any different from imprisonment?”

Janine threw herself into his arms and glared at me fiercely.

“Don’t be afraid. Today, no one is stopping me from going out to sunbathe with you! It’s just a lousy shelter anyway. Everyone in the O’Connor family knows he extorted the engagement and demanded hundreds of millions in construction fees! Your survival-of-the-fittest theory has saved the family so much money. Everyone will surely support you. When the time comes, I’ll have Grandpa kick him out of the family!”

I watched her turn to leave, only to find that the shelter door wouldn’t open. Instead, the alarm system was triggered.

“Warning! The outdoor temperature has reached fifty degrees Celsius! Temperature warning! Temperature warning…”

The piercing alarm blared as the main door automatically locked shut.

Mark pointed at the temperature display in shock. “How could it be fifty degrees outside? I don’t find it hot at all. Will, is there something wrong with your shelter?”

Janine’s expression turned cold, as if everything had been confirmed. She looked back at me with icy eyes.

“I knew you wouldn’t let me out so easily. Even if it really is fifty degrees, that just proves Mark’s survival plan works! After days of sun exposure, my body has adapted to the environment! If it weren’t for Mark, I’d still be kept in the dark by you, locked up here so you could use me to control the family!”

Hearing that, I closed my eyes and laughed bitterly at myself.