It was a nice and sunny Sunday afternoon when Aiden Conway casually dumps his girlfriend only a few days after they had started dating. But that wouldn't be the first time that he's done something like this. Due to his superficial approach to dating and relationships, treating them as nothing but ways to kill time, people have started calling him the "One Week Boyfriend". (Alright, so far so cliche, but stick with me here because this is where it starts to get juicy)
One day, he suddenly wakes up in a strange white room with a mysterious, disembodied voice talking to him. "I want to play a game..." the entity ominously declares. The rules of the game are simple; Aiden will be given three targets, all three of them are girls whom he's never met before. Now, going for one target at a time, he must get all three girls to kiss him once, and then he wins. "Sounds simple enough," he thinks to himself, but here's the catch; for each target, he's only given one week to complete his task. If he manages to do it by the end of seven days, the timeline will be reset back to the first day of the game where he has to go for the remaining target/s, repeating this process until the game is over. However, if he fails even just once... he will die.
His time starts now.
(Author's Note: Yes, you're suspicions are correct in that this is not based off another book, movie, or tv show, but rather an original story, however it is still focused on the whole "alternate ending" theme. the alternate ending part of the story here is how the timeline resets after each girl and the main character now has to go for another girl, thus altering the series of events and making an alternate "path", if you will, leading up to an alternate ending. I hope I don't get disqualified for not following the exact guidelines T.T Anyways, enjoy!)
Geoff and Naomi are dead, and they're depressed, but when Geoff's cat Bernie dies as well, they embark on a wild journey to find it in the underworld.
*****
When Geoff dies, alongside his girlfriend Naomi, they end up sharing an apartment in the Underworld as skeletons. But after a few years, Geoff starts suffering a mid-death crisis. What's the purpose of going through the motions as a skeleton if you can't really live? Then he gets word that his cat, Bernie, just died and he can collect him and bring him home! Geoff and Naomi hurry to get Bernie only to discover that, due to a clerical error, their cat has been lost. With the hunt for Bernie giving new purpose to Geoff's un-life, he and Naomi begin a quest to get back their cat. Battling skeleton pirates, climbing the sky ladder and facing off against the villain who took Bernie, Geoff is determined to find his purpose - or die a second time trying!
[[2018 Wattys Winner - The Originals]]
[[word count: 30,000-40,000 words]]