

As Anne Smith stands in the spotlight receiving her medal, she declares her love—not for her husband, Noah Jones, but for Dr. Mason Quinn. At that moment, Noah lies on his deathbed, crushed by twenty years of silent sacrifice. No gratitude from Anne—only their daughter's cold disdain sealing his heartbreak... But when he opens his eyes again, it's the eve of Anne's departure. This time, Noah chooses to live for himself.

My girlfriend told me she'd been bonded to a System. It let her see a Demand Index for how much everyone around her needed her. At first, her eyes had gone red with tears. "Your number's only thirty. Does that mean you don't love me?" "Not needing you doesn't mean I don't love you," I told her. After that, she started holding an umbrella for her male assistant on rainy days and driving out of her way to take him home. When I asked why, she brushed it off. "Don't overthink it. His number was just high, so I figured he needed the help." Then I came down with a fever and took to my bed, and she chose to go shopping with him instead. "Your number's low, but his side is more urgent. Let me finish helping him first, then I'll come look after you." She shut the door behind her. I closed my eyes for a moment, then picked up my phone. "Mom, I'm coming home alone this New Year."

Skyler Reid spends three years being the kind of husband most people only read about. He cooks, he tends the house, he keeps the light on when his wife Ruby works late, he asks for nothing in return. She is a celebrated lawyer with a demanding career and he builds his entire life around making sure she never has to worry about coming home. It works, until it doesn't. When Ruby's first love Brandon Lowe resurfaces with a divorce case that needs handling,everything shifts. She pours herself into his affairs without question, and when Brandon frames Skyler with a flimsy accusation, she doesn't pause to ask for his side. She just turns on him. Skyler looks at the woman he has quietly loved and served for three years and realizes she has never once looked back at him the same way. He stops fighting for something that was never quite his and lets go. Only then, when the warmth is gone and the light is finally off, does Ruby understand what she had in her hands and chose not to hold.

International detective Kerry Weldon accidentally transmigrates into a workplace Mary Sue novel as cannon fodder. She activates a Cannon Fodder Survival System that requires collecting others' emotions to extend her life.After inadvertently calming the volatile CEO Logan Williams' fury, she's hired as his assistant. Discovering Logan's emotional fluctuations boost her life force most effectively, she deliberately provokes him. Logan suffers from a rare emotional disorder that mysteriously improves around Kerry, and he gradually falls for her. Meanwhile, the original female lead Melanie Norman, jealous of Logan's special treatment toward Kerry, repeatedly targets her as a thorn in her side.