

Right before my wedding, my fiancé, Benjamin Gray, holds another wedding at an old settlement with his true love, who has lung cancer. He holds Jennifer Robinson close and smiles tenderly at her underneath the starry sky. "According to the local customs here, the woman whose wedding is held first is considered a man's actual wife. I might have already registered my marriage with Samantha, but she's more like my mistress." Everyone cheers and blesses them as they toast each other and enter their room for the night. I witness all of this, but I don't cry or kick up a fuss. Instead, I make an appointment for an abortion. I've loved Benjamin for 15 years, but I still can't compare to Jennifer, who is my stepsister. If that's the case, I'll let him go. Later, I join a geological exploration and research team in the South Isles and am cut off from the world. All I leave behind is a divorce agreement and a divorce gift. Benjamin has never cared for me, so it's odd that he loses his mind overnight after my departure.

I am diagnosed with severe systemic lupus erythematosus, and I only have three days left to live. When my husband rejects my 188th plea for help, I take my test results and enter the hospice care center. "Hello, I'd like to schedule my own cremation process and apply for government aid." Ten minutes later, they arrive. Before I can speak, my lawyer husband, Jasper Horton, coldly slaps me across the face. "You're faking a terminal illness just to steal attention from Janice?" My doctor brother, Casey Carter, snatches the medical report from my hand and scoffs at it. "Lupus? If you're going to fake being sick, at least make it believable. Only one in a million people gets this." I endure the pain in my body, return to the counter, and hand in the application form and my medical records once more. The staff member sees the butterfly-shaped rash on my wrist and sympathizes with me. "I have no family left," I say. "I'm requesting cremation in three days, location doesn't matter. I just don't want my death to burden anyone."

Elite lawyer Kylin Taylor walks into a cafe and finds her fiance Zane Walker attending tenderly to his mistress. She doesn't make a scene. That night, she slides a condom into a legal contract and hands it to Zane's closest friend, David Evans, Eryland's most talked-about playboy. "Hotel tonight? It's on me." What begins as cold, surgical revenge becomes something stranger: she uses David to deliver Zane a humiliation; David plays along with every sign of enjoying himself.But as the game deepens, he drops the act entirely and and starts betting everything he has on her instead of the thrill. Kylin realizes, with a jolt, that she never had control of this board to begin with. Someone laid these pieces into position ten years ago, and it wasn't her.

In 1976, nine-time world chess champion Mac Sullivan goes to the countryside with his wife and daughter. While foraging for wild vegetables, he stumbles upon two mysterious sages playing an otherworldly game of chess.Mesmerized by their match, Mac steps in to play a few moves, completely losing track of time. When the game finally ends, he discovers that 49 years have passed in the mortal world. To compensate for the lost time, one of the sages gifts him a mystical peach of immortality, but its supernatural power is too strong, and Mac is rejuvenated into a ten-year-old child, now possessing decades of chess mastery in a young boy’s body.