"I'll take responsibility for this. I'll file the marriage application tomorrow."

Joshua’s voice was cold, final. He buttoned his white shirt—still damp, clinging to his frame, outlining the defined muscles of his abdomen.

He was the best-looking man on this remote fishing island, and the only college graduate among them.

Just ten minutes earlier, he’d pulled Ellie from the river in a panic. Soaked and shivering, they had clung to each other, walking past the villagers’ stares without a shred of shame.

Ellie still wore his white shirt over her own clothes.

In 1980, if Joshua didn’t marry her, Ellie was ruined. In their tight-knit island community, a scandal like this meant she’d be branded a loose woman—shunned by everyone, with no prospects for marriage or respectability. In her past life, she’d accepted with joy, only to be broken, piece by piece, until she took her own life.

But fate had granted her mercy. She’d been reborn, returned to her eighteen-year-old self, to the very day before she’d agreed to marry Joshua.

Joshua was her brother-in-law—or would have been, if her sister hadn’t died on their wedding day. To keep a promise to Savannah, he’d given up a brilliant future and returned to this backwater to care for the sister she’d left behind: an orphan their parents had thrown away, passed from household to household for her meals.

The first time they met, Ellie had been fighting a neighbor’s dog over a bone. Joshua had appeared in her life like a miracle, handing her a roll, offering her a home.

From that moment, he’d taken root in her heart.

Now, in a daze, Ellie stared at this younger Joshua, his hair still thick and black, so different from the man she’d known. The words slipped out before she could stop them.

"What about Diane?"

Diane was Joshua’s sweetheart. His ideal, his perfect first love.

Joshua paused at the door, hand on the knob. After a moment’s silence, he turned back. "I’ll end things with her. I’ll be a proper husband to you."

The door clicked shut. Ellie collapsed onto the bed, weeping with violent, body-wracking sobs.

In her past life, Diane had overheard those very words when she came to plead with Joshua to return to the city. A furious argument, a stormy departure—Diane had gone back and married someone else just to prove a point.

And Ellie had gotten her wish. She’d married her brother-in-law, Joshua.

For a time, she was happy. Joshua indulged her in everything, cared for her with meticulous attention, until Ellie almost let herself believe he’d fallen in love with her.

Then, the following year, Diane returned to the island by boat. She was pregnant with her second child, come to persuade Joshua one last time. The island was hit by a devastating tsunami. Diane was lost at sea.

When the news reached Joshua, his hair turned white overnight.

Ellie, blissfully unaware in her own first pregnancy, missed the change in him entirely. She was too wrapped up in the joy of their coming child.

The baby was born. She nursed him, watched him take his first steps. Then Joshua, against her desperate pleas, took the boy out on the boat.

Their first child died in a storm surge.

The second got tangled in a net and was dragged under.

The third was swimming when a storm rolled in, struck by lightning.

The fourth…

The fifth…

…

Until the tenth was fished from the sea, a small, cold form. By then, after twenty years of burying her children, Ellie had gone completely mad.

She sat on the ground, cradling her youngest son’s lifeless body, a wordless, broken hum escaping her lips. Just yesterday, he’d been so full of life, calling for his mama, begging for candy. Now he lay still and cold in her arms.

Her eyes were vacant, her song a broken whisper. When Joshua came to take the child’s body, she launched herself at him, a wild thing all claws and screams.

"Why?" she wept, tearing at his clothes. "Why do this to me? To our children? Why couldn’t you keep them safe?"

Exhausted, Joshua pried the small body from her arms. He walked to the door, step by step, then turned back—exactly as he had years before when he promised to end things with Diane.

His voice was flat and final. "We owed Diane a life. Our children have settled that debt."

He took the boy away. He never told her where he was buried. From that day, Ellie’s mind shattered completely.

She’d see a child and scream at them to stay away from Joshua, or he’d take them to the sea to drown.

Joshua never cast out his mad wife. He cared for her for the rest of her life. Every time she lost herself to the madness, he’d slice into his arm, not stopping until he saw white bone gleaming through the blood.

When Joshua was forty, a young woman who bore a striking resemblance to Diane came to visit. She fell for him instantly, confessed her feelings. As a token, she gave him a set of sheer lace lingerie.

Joshua flew into a rage, shouting the girl out of the house.

Ellie just giggled nearby, rocking a pillow in her arms as if it were a baby, humming that same broken lullaby.

It was in the dead of night that Ellie woke. She shuffled past the study, her nightgown damp with urine.

There, she saw him. Her husband, the upright man she’d known for a lifetime. He held the girl’s underwear, his body moving in a rhythm of desperate, shameful need.

A groan escaped his lips, fervent and longing. "Diane… your daughter… she’s so beautiful, just like you. I miss you."

Those words were a curse, breaking a thirty-year fog.

Everything rushed back. He’d married her, and Diane had died. So he hated her. To make her suffer, he had killed their ten children.

That very night, Ellie dressed herself in the clothes of her girlhood, before any marriage, and walked into the hungry sea.

She hadn’t expected a second chance. But fate had granted it. This time, she would not marry Joshua.

Ellie wiped her tears away, one by one. She dressed properly, then pushed open the door to the room next door.

"Don’t pretend with me. I know how you feel. Get me away from here. Get me off this damned island. I won’t marry Joshua. I’ll die before I marry him!"

Joshua’s friend John spotted Ellie and tried to act casual, though his ears flushed crimson. “You’re… sure about this? I’m heading south. Coming back won’t be easy. Are you really all right with leaving Joshua?”

Ellie gave a firm nod.

“All right. I’ll get the train tickets and come for you.”

For a moment, Ellie said nothing. Her eyes filled; all she could muster was a choked “Mhm.”

It was past midnight, the world outside pitch black, when Joshua finally returned.

He yanked the light cord with a sharp *click*. In the sudden glare, he found Ellie sitting in the room and startled. “Why are you sitting here in the dark? Have you eaten?”

Blinking sore eyes, her voice came out hoarse—answering a question he hadn’t asked. “I’m not going to marry you. You don’t owe me anything. Just go back to the city.”

Joshua glanced up, dismissing it as nonsense. He didn’t take it seriously.

“I’ve already broken it off with Diane… completely. So stop this foolishness. I’ve spoken to your father. We’ll be married within the week. The marriage application—”

Before he could finish, Ellie lunged at him, her voice tearing into a scream. “You’re always like this! You never listen! I said I won’t marry you, and I won’t!”

“Childish tantrums.”

Watching her run off, Joshua remained detached, still convinced she was just acting out. He went ahead with the wedding preparations.

That night, their rooms were close—so close Ellie could hear everything from next door. Joshua’s frantic, desperate self-pleasuring. All night long, he kept calling out.

“Diane… I love you…”

Twelve hours into the night. Three words—*I love you*. Joshua said them one thousand, one hundred, and fourteen times. Each one a knife, twisting deeper.

Suddenly, the memory surfaced—that deranged moment in her past life when she’d stumbled upon the humiliating scene. Joshua, clutching Diane’s daughter’s underwear, restraining himself, finding release alone.

In the dark study, moonlight fell across him from the window.

Every time passion took him, he cried out Diane’s name. Only back then, her daughter’s name was tangled up in it too.

The two names twisted together on his lips—until she pushed the door open.

All his movements froze. He hadn’t finished. He just looked quietly at the madwoman Ellie had become.

A minute later, he started again. Only this time, he carefully placed the little girl’s lacy underwear into the breast pocket over his heart.

Then, through gritted teeth, he called out, “Ellie, did you have an accident again? Hold on. I’ll take care of it.”

Joshua stood up, ignoring his own obvious arousal, and walked step by step toward her.

He looked the same, just more refined, more scholarly than in his youth.

His very calmness made her madness seem all the more grotesque.

She shoved away the Joshua coming to change her diaper and stumbled, step by crazed step, toward the deep sea…

Ellie jolted awake, realizing she’d dreamed of her past life again. The dream was over, but her pillow was damp.

She rose silently, wiped her tears, and moved through her morning routine with numb, mechanical detachment.

Just then, Joshua emerged from the washroom, his hair damp.

Seeing Ellie, he instinctively shifted the hamper of dirty clothes behind his back.

“Ellie, you’re up so early. Are you feeling unwell?”

He reached out habitually to feel her forehead, just as he had when she was sick as a child.

This time, Ellie turned her head away, avoiding his touch.

Joshua frowned. “What’s the matter with you now?”

In that moment, Ellie desperately wanted to tell him. She was going to marry someone else soon. She was going south. She was never coming back.

He… wouldn’t have to break it off with Diane out of some misplaced sense of responsibility.

“Joshua, I—”

But the words died in her throat as someone came sprinting up, gasping for air.

“Joshua! It’s bad news! Diane’s boat leaving the island—it had an accident! She fell into the sea! Go, quick, you have to save her!”

Ellie reached the water’s edge first.

The news about Diane had left her more frantic than Joshua. She was terrified of reliving the tragedy of her past life—terrified that because of Diane, she might lose ten more children and descend into a lifetime of madness and despair. So when she learned Diane had fallen into the sea, she plunged into the churning waves without a second thought.

She was done owing Diane anything.

Ellie swam hard toward her, but when Diane saw who was coming, she flailed wildly, pushing her away. Her eyes stayed fixed on Joshua, waiting anxiously in the boat.

Diane knew how to swim, of course. Today’s “accident” was deliberate.

She refused to believe Joshua could still coldly reject her—could still marry some backwater nobody—if she were in danger. She was so much better than Ellie. If not for that one moment of hesitation, letting Joshua rescue Ellie from the river all those years ago, *she* would be the one by his side.

Diane hated Ellie. Hated her for stealing Joshua. Wished she were dead.

So when Ellie reached her for the fourth time, trying to pull her to safety, Diane wrapped her arms tightly around her and dragged her down. Held her under.

Every time Ellie struggled toward the surface, Diane yanked her back, even forcing her head beneath the water.

Ellie wasn’t a strong swimmer. Under Diane’s relentless pull, she kept sinking.

“Joshua, help me! I’m scared!”

Joshua could wait no longer. He dove into the sea and swam furiously toward the two women. Pulling them apart, he immediately gathered the sobbing, trembling Diane into his arms.

He paid no mind to Ellie, exhausted from the rescue attempt.

As she sank, Ellie instinctively reached a hand toward him. “Joshua… save me…”

But before she could finish, he was already swimming away, frantic. Because his beloved Diane had scraped a finger, he’d lost all reason.

Watching the two figures recede into the distance, Ellie closed her eyes in defeat.

Maybe this was for the best. The life she owed Diane… she’d finally repaid it.

A crowd had gathered on the shore. Only after seeing Joshua carry Diane onto the boat did they start asking questions.

“Where’s Ellie?”

“Joshua, where’s Ellie? Why isn’t she back?”

It was then Joshua remembered. His face went pale. He turned to dive back in.

“Joshua…”

Diane stirred awake, her eyes red-rimmed. She clutched his hand, her voice fragile and trembling. “Don’t go. I’m scared.”

Afraid he’d rescue Ellie, she clung to him, burying her face in his chest. “I saw several people jump in after her just now. She’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

Joshua, who had always trusted Diane implicitly, only learned the truth when Ellie’s father, Carl, arrived with the police and took her away.

Ellie had nearly drowned. No one had gone back for her.

Diane gripped his hand desperately. “Joshua, it’s not like that! I can’t swim, I never meant to hurt her! I was just so scared, I held on. My vision was blurry—I didn’t see that no one went to save her!”

Joshua paused. This time, he didn’t defend her. He let them take her away.

In silence, he went to Ellie’s room. Taking a towel, he began gently wiping her feverish skin.

A fever racked Ellie’s body through the night. When she finally opened her eyes at dawn, Joshua was there—he’d watched over her until morning. His first words were, “Diane… your father got the law involved, and they came to take her away yesterday. Tell them you forgive her and to drop the charges. Then tell him your accident was your own fault, and had nothing to do with her.”