7612 Book(s) Related to that was then

I’m a convenience store owner.

When the acid rain apocalypse hit, it ate through metal, wrecked power, and turned clean food and water into currency.

Last time, I made one mistake: I opened my door to my ex, Claire Voss, and her lover, Derek Hale. They didn’t come for shelter—they came for my stash. The blade in my abdomen taught me what mercy buys in a broken world. I killed them, but as my vision faded, the radio crackled with one final update: the disaster was ending.

Day thirty. I didn’t live to see morning.

Then I woke up—one week before it began.

This time I do only one thing: lock myself in my underground storage room with exactly thirty days of food and water, and wait for the rain to stop.

But Claire is hoarding again, louder than ever—embezzling money, emptying my shelves, trying to starve me in the first week so I’ll crawl back begging.

That’s when it hits me:

She thinks the apocalypse lasts forever.

She has no idea it only lasts thirty days.

In my previous life, my wife was addicted to black market gambling on football, which caused us to lose everything.
To make matters worse, a zombie horde then broke out.
We had no shelter and were quickly torn apart by a horde of frenzied zombies.
After being reborn, she planned to run off with all the money, then dump me and elope with her lover.
What she didn't know was that I had awakened the ability to read minds and knew all her plans.

My boyfriend pulled off a drone-sky proposal that lit up the entire city.
Crowds cheered, “Congratulations to Mr. Gunson and Mrs. Gunson—at last, true lovers become family.”
But the woman curled in his arms was his secretary.
The “me” in their mouths had long since turned to white bones beneath a mound of earth.

On Day 100 of the global heat collapse, surface temperature climbed to a hopeless 70°C.

To keep my girlfriend from being roasted alive, I drove my ice ability past the limit and became her personal human air conditioner.

But when my ability core was on the verge of shattering and I collapsed coughing blood, she stole the last two bottles of water from my pack and climbed into someone else’s temperature-controlled car without looking back.

Before she left, she tossed the life-saving lump of ice I’d condensed with half my life onto the blistering asphalt like garbage.

“Jack, I’m sick of your cooling cutting out any second. I’m not staying here to die with you.”

She didn’t know—

The moment that ice turned into white vapor, the broken ability core in my chest—the one ruined because of her—evolved in the abyss.

I begged my mom for ten dollars, but she smashed my head with a frying pan instead.

The next day, my mother posted on a forum asking:
"Hi everyone. My eldest son lied about the end of the world just to get ten dollars. I want to ask, how can I sell him on the underground black market to pay off his younger brother's $20,000 debt?"

The moment I saw that post, any remaining love I had for them died instantly. I snapped my phone's SIM card in half.

What she didn’t know was that a world-ending acid flood would descend upon New York tomorrow.

I had begged so bitterly for that ten dollars just to trigger the Ten-Million-Fold Return System to build a three-billion-dollar Doomsday Ark.

Since she didn’t want it, I gave the throne of the Ark Queen to the female classmate who casually tossed me some charity.

I took the blame for my wife and went to jail, thinking I was protecting our family.

Five years later, when I was released from prison, my mansion was confiscated, my company fell into the hands of my younger brother, and the woman I loved with all my heart was nestled in my brother's arms, mocking my misfortune.

They had been having an affair for a long time, and even my imprisonment was a conspiracy meticulously planned by this despicable couple! What makes me even more furious is that my precious daughter was abandoned on the street like a stray dog, and subjected to beatings and bullying by their illegitimate son .

They thought that by draining my blood, they could forever condemn me to oblivion.

But they forgot that I was once an unparalleled genius in the business world.

In my past life, I stood on the execution platform, watching the entire city—brainwashed by the Saintess—smile as they willingly degenerated into ghouls.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to exactly one month ago.

I smashed the knight's sword that symbolized my honor. Dragging a high-tier ghoul into my basement, I slashed my left wrist open with a heavy blade.

Stripping away all the Holy Light protecting my body, I brutally shoved my bleeding wrist straight into the ghoul's gaping maw.

My bones let out muffled, explosive cracking sounds as they were eroded by the tyrannical ghoul virus. I crushed the reinforced steel bedframe out of shape with my bare hands.

My wife is the city's renowned "Community Angel." She donates every single cent of her high salary to the poor, all to buy herself a saintly reputation.
Meanwhile, as her husband, I spend my days rolling beneath cars in a factory, covered in grease, juggling four credit cards just to keep our large family afloat.
My parents-in-law survive on the expensive, imported life-saving meds I pay for, yet they constantly mock me for being a powerless nobody;
My own children attend private schools on my dime, only to look at me with disgust and call me an embarrassment;
And my wife? Dressed in her high-end couture, she looks down at me and condescendingly urges, "For the sake of the poor children, why don't you get another part-time job and just endure it a little longer?"
Looking at this den of parasites sucking the life out of me, a sudden, overwhelming wave of disgust washed over me.
I didn't argue. I silently put away my overdue bills, packed my bags, and completely vanished from this twisted household.
Later, at the highly anticipated Annual Charity Gala, in front of the entire city, I presented her with an ultimate "gift"—

"Daddy... so cold... and it hurts..." When my precious daughter Mia whispered these words in her weak voice, my heart felt like it was being torn apart.
The life-saving medicine was just ten meters away, but that damned anti-magic barrier had become an insurmountable chasm between life and death.
What made me even more furious was that the vampire guarding the gate not only extorted my life savings, but also demanded I kneel like a dog and lick his boots before he would open the door.
He didn't know that if the door stayed closed, it wouldn't just be my daughter who died—his son and mother would perish too!

In my last life, a friend I’d trusted for ten years drove a knife into my heart over a single biscuit. When I opened my eyes again, we had both been reborn—right before the extreme freeze arrived.

He was convinced the apocalypse had come. He borrowed from loan sharks, rented a massive warehouse to hoard supplies, and even crowned himself king during the icebound period, killing without mercy.

But he didn’t know the truth:

This disaster would end completely after only thirty days.

While he taunted me like a madman, I didn’t expose him. I calmly requested thirty days of paid leave from my company.

This time, I’ll sit in a warm, climate-controlled room and watch—when the state machine restarts on day thirty—how he drops to his knees and sobs in despair.

The system made me an outcast live-in husband in a werewolf clan for three years. The mission reward: 80 billion dollars. Now there's only half a day left until retirement settlement.

The arrogant pure-blood Alpha wants to force me into a deadly full moon execution array, roaring for me to kneel and die.

I don't even lift an eyelid. Right at quitting time, I directly withdraw my soul, leaving the body to the original owner "Ancestor Wolf Emperor" to handle, while I return to my Manhattan penthouse, sink into the leather sofa, and start a holographic livestream.

"Enjoy your night shift, everyone." I take a light sip of hot coffee, coldly watching the screen as the Wolf Emperor crushes that pure-blood Alpha's spine into mush with one foot, shocking my mission wife and mother-in-law into idiots.

At the Morello family’s Christmas dinner, I stood beside Vincent, waiting for him to announce our engagement.
Instead, in the very next second, he walked in holding a little boy and claimed him as his son.
And the woman he said he was going to marry? Scarlett Morello. The one he had always introduced as his “sister.”
The whole room erupted in applause. I stood there frozen, like a nail hammered into the floor.
Later, in his study, he took my hand and said, “Scarlett is dying. Late-stage breast cancer. She only has six months left. After she’s gone, I’ll marry you.”
But there was no guilt in his eyes. No love, either.
Then he told me to go to his villa that afternoon, to take care of the woman who was supposedly “dying.”
I opened the photo he sent me. Scarlett was lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, an IV in the back of her hand.
A professional tennis player who had been playing in an exhibition match three weeks ago, and who had dropped three grand at Louis Vuitton on Fifth Avenue just five days ago.
But sure. She was “dying.”
At three in the morning, I was curled up by the front door of my apartment, crying so long I lost track of time.
Then my phone lit up. A text from an unknown number:
[Elena, I’m downstairs. When we were kids, you told me that once I controlled the docks on the East Coast, you’d marry me. The docks are mine now. Does that promise still stand?]
I pulled back the curtain and there he was. Ethan Vitale, my first love, leaning against the door of a black Cadillac, lifting a hand in a lazy wave.
Three years ago, when he left New York, he was only a Capo.
Now, he was the Don of the Vitale family.
He didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me to come downstairs.
He came for one reason only, to let me know he was back.
I wiped away my tears and texted back:
[It still stands.]
Because I wanted to see for myself just how long that woman could keep up her act.