Keywords: Once Upon A Forever, Prologue, Free Web Novel, Nigerian Story, Reincarnation, Doomed Love, Fated Love, Queen, Slice of Life.
Lara
Lara slipped off her shoes by the door as she entered Kira’s home. It was empty and safe. Her place was cramped, but it had warmth. It had bright throw pillows, a calendar from three years ago, and a dull cactus by her window, Kira’s idea of a low-cost air freshener.
She let her bag fall onto the couch, its weight hitting the cushions with a dull thud, letting dust rise from the threads. She inhaled; the dust seemed to calm her nerves, unlike the leather ones at Chief Badmus’s place, which she was used to pretending were comfortable.
Her eyes drifted toward the small kitchen. She walked in and flipped the light switch. It blinked three times before staying on. She moved toward the cabinet, tracing her fingers over the wooden edges.
There it was. Tenjaku. The label was peeling, and the bottle was full, but she could see that Kira had taken a sip from it. Behind it were several empty alcohol bottles, all big brands. She smiled at how Kira treasured her drinks. And yet, she was willing to let her drink it.
Lara reached for it.
She stared at her reflection in the glass, her face framed by exhaustion, her eyes heavy with questions she didn’t dare voice.
“Oh well, it’s either you or cyanide,” she muttered under her breath, twisting the cap open. The scent hit her—smoky, sweet, like an escape.
She grabbed a mug from Kira’s tired plate rack, poured a little in it, and took a sip. It didn’t burn like most whisky; it went down smoothly, almost like whisky-flavored water.
“Wow, smooth.” She poured more into the mug and chugged.
Then she walked into the living room with the bottle and mug.
“Is this really alcoholic?” she asked, as she began scanning the textured label. “40%?”
She sat on the couch next to her bag and picked up the album on the wooden center table. She felt the first wave from her last chug.
“Can I really not escape this life?” Lara asked her bottle.
She noticed how the kitchen lights hit the bottle and the drink glowed. She opened the album; it was filled with pictures of her and Kira, from Kira showing up to support her fights at the rings, to nights in the club, then on a beach, and something hit her.
“I’ve never smiled.”
She opened the bottle, poured more into the mug, and chugged.
Her fingers flipped through more pages in the album, and she finally settled on one page. It was of Chief Badmus holding up her hand in the ring, looking proud, but she looked more fearful than happy, yet the man who had raised her was smiling from ear to ear.
“At least he made living in debt seem like home.” She poured more drinks. “You said I was precious to you! Why did you die?”
She poured herself more drinks as her tears began to flow. Since Chief Badmus died, this was her first chance to mourn him; up until now, all she had felt was numbness at the news of his passing.
She chugged.
“Do you know, while you were admitted in the ICU, he locked me up in a basement? He flogged me, he starved me, he called me a useless gutter rat, a fetish for a disgusting old man who was grooming me. He said once you died, he’ll destroy me and give me to his men. He only let me out because the lawyer refused to read your will if I was not present and unarmed.”
She tipped the bottle to pour in the mug, but changed her mind and chugged.
“I’ve never had anything, but you gave me things. You even acted like a father should; you never scolded me for failing in school, you created a fighting division for me since I said I couldn’t handle school and was always getting in fights. I know you also wanted to make sure that I was strong and could protect myself. But what if the enemy is stronger than me?”
Her hands could no longer hold up the weight of the drink and slowly fell to her side.
“If you were going to die, you should have given me a clean way out, first.”
She lifted the bottle to her lips again and chugged until the last drop emptied into her mouth. She looked at the empty bottle and laughed bitterly.
“Kira will be mad that I finished you.”
She shrugged and dropped the bottle, and leaned back. The room began to spin. She closed her eyes, thinking sleep would come next.
A minute later, she slipped to the floor, eyes open, but gone.
“I should kill him! Then I’ll kill myself!”
She rummaged through her bag for the cyanide.
“I’ll sneak back in, pour this in his morning coffee!” She lifted up the cyanide and hurried for the door but tripped over her bag, hit her head on the table. The glass bottle fell to the ground and broke, and so did Lara’s great escape plan.
Like falling down a rabbit hole, she slipped through herself—time splintering into colors and faces she half-recognized. A rush of incense, the sharp smell of rain-soaked wood, the whisper of silk brushing tatami mats.
She was barefoot, standing in a long line of trembling girls in pale robes. The matron paced before them, her geta clacking like small thunder. “Smile, lower,” the woman hissed, gripping Lara’s chin hard enough to bruise. “You’re not a bride, you’re slaves. You breathe when spoken to.”
Lara—no, the maid—bowed too quickly. The matron smacked the back of her head. Laughter rippled through the line. She bit her tongue, tasting iron. Obedience was survival. She knew that. Still, her hands trembled behind her back, folded too neatly to be real calm.
“Clumsy thing,” someone sneered from behind her. The shogun’s wife’s maid, lips painted like blood. She reached out, shoved Lara’s shoulder just as the matron turned away.
The world tilted. Her sandals caught the edge of the stairs. For a breathless second, she was weightless. Then—hands. Firm, warm, catching her by the waist.
The boy who caught her wasn’t a boy. He was dressed like a prince from the poems—dark layered silk, a crest shining faintly at his chest. His eyes met hers, steady and startled all at once. Neither moved.
“Are you hurt?” he asked softly.
She tried to kneel, but he didn’t let go. “No, my lord.” Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to.
Something flickered in his gaze—something forbidden. He reached into his sleeve, pulled out a small dagger, and threw it at the Queen’s maid. She fell instantly.
The other maids panicked, but no one dared to come close.
The shock of the scene sent her to the next.
She was cornered on the Young Prince’s bed, afraid, unsure, yet captivated.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
He was on his knees. He moved closer; something about seeing him like that for her made her feel stronger, but she knew her slave fate was strong.
She hesitated. “My lord—”
“Please.”
Her pulse stuttered. She raised her hand. His touch was cool.
He lifted up her palm and kissed it. Then, fast, before she could form any objection, he took out a dagger and slashed her palm. She screamed, but he immediately muffled it with a kiss.
She tried to pull back her hand, but he held on until she stopped struggling. Then quickly, he slashed his palm without flinching and pressed it on hers.
Their blood mixed; his felt hotter than hers. His voice was low, urgent. “No matter the lifetime, Haruka, I will always only ever belong to you, and only ever love you. If my love ever causes you pain, may I suffer that pain a thousand times over.”
Something inside her cracked open. It wasn’t joy; it was closer to terror, and it was power. She felt the pain from the cut fade as she cupped the prince’s face with her bloodied palm.
“Why me?” she asked.
“Why is not important.” The prince leaned into her palm, letting her blood smear his face. “I love you, and will only ever love you. We don’t need to understand why.”
And then—light. Screams. The smell of smoke. She was down another rabbit hole.
The maid, still a teenager, but a few years had passed from the blood pact, was kneeling before the shogun’s wife. Her hair had been torn loose; her white robes were stained dark. The queen’s voice was calm, distant, like someone reciting scripture. “End it. Let her ghost learn silence.”
Two soldiers stepped forward. The sword glinted. Haruka tried to breathe, but the air refused her.
When the blade fell, she didn’t feel pain. Only falling again; through time, through herself, through centuries.
Rain, rot, and prayers that never reached heaven—London stank of them all. In the alley behind St. Dunstan’s chapel, smoke curled from a dying candle someone had left by a broken door. The girl—Lara again, though now Cecily—was small, no more than 13, bones sharp under rags, her fingers blackened from digging through waste for scraps of bread.
The church bell tolled the hour. Each chime echoed like a warning. She flinched, clutching a half-rotten apple to her chest as if it were gold.
“Oi, wait!” a man shouted somewhere behind her.
Her breath hitched. She ran. Bare feet slapped against wet stone, splashing through puddles thick with soot. Her lungs burned. She didn’t look back; she never did. Survival was always forward.
Then the rumble came. Wheels on cobblestone, horses neighing, the whip crack of reins. She turned too late.
The cart struck her.
The world folded in on itself. Light bent and dissolved.
When it returned, she was somewhere hotter. The sky itself looked bruised. Seville. Lara, now Clarencia, was tied up and burning.
A crowd pressed in around her; she couldn’t make out the faces beyond the thick smoke that engulfed her.
She had refused to cry, to grace their Christian righteousness with her weeping.
“Burn the Witch!” She recognized the woman’s voice. “That witch bewitched my son! Burn her!”
She closed her eyes in surrender.
Then arms wrapped around her.
It was him. He would burn with her.
She fell again.
The world dimmed, curling inward like smoke.
Then heat. Salt. Drums.
Elmina.
The air reeked of sweat and blood, thick enough to taste. Lara, as Adwoa, eighteen, skin a careful blend of a master’s and her mother’s, knelt on the packed dirt of the fortress yard. Her wrists were bound. Her hair matted. She trembled, but not from fear anymore.
“Look,” a voice ordered in Portuguese.
A rough hand seized her chin, forced her gaze upward. A Ghanaian man was tied to a post before her, his back torn open, raw beneath the sun. The whip rose and fell, each crack splitting the air like thunder. He did not scream. His defiance was heavier than sound.
She held her breath, refused to cry.
She failed when his body went limp.
The man holding her sneered. He was young, handsome, almost pretty. His eyes were pale, emptied by years of hate.
“You see?” he said in broken Twi. “This is what happens when you let others touch what’s mine.”
What’s his? The words twisted in her gut.
He shoved her forward; she stumbled, her cheek scraping the dirt, and the world slid into later.
Night fell.
The young Portuguese man forced his way into her room, into her body, into the certainty of ownership. He made sure she understood who she belonged to.
After, he slept beside her, heavy and unafraid, his arm locked around her as if she were incapable of harm.
She eased herself free.
The room was quiet. She reached for a knife from the cutlery stack, its weight steady in her hand. She looked at him and imagined the blade sinking in. But she knew the ending. If he lived, her suffering would deepen. If he died, she would run—and to where? She would live a life worse than a female dog in heat, or be fed alive to the fishes.
He would find another girl to own.
But losing her would hurt him.
It would tell him one thing.
Her life was hers.
“Bastard,” she said.
He startled awake, then noticed the knife. He relaxed, propping his head on his hand, a lazy smirk pulling at his mouth.
“What?” he said. “Thinking of killing me?”
She lifted the blade, pointed it at him.
He laughed softly. “Stop being cute. Drop the knife.”
Her resolve crystallized. In one fluid motion, she turned the blade inward and drew it cleanly across her own throat.
His smile vanished.
She smiled, catching the perfect terror in his eyes as he scrambled forward, hands clutching desperately at her neck, trying to stanch the life he could never own.
Then the floor seemed to give way as she felt herself slip into another dream.
Lara’s, now Mary’s, mind twisted through centuries like smoke caught in a draft. The summer air in Richmond pressed warm against her skin, but it carried the iron tang of cannon smoke, even if the war had been technically over for a year. She was eighteen, caught in the swirl of a ballroom, the skirts of her dress brushing polished wood floors.
He spun her, laughed low and husky, eyes glittering with a fascination that made her chest tighten. She could smell the faint scent of his cologne, tobacco and something sweeter, the sort of intoxicating combination that made her heart hammer against her ribs.
“You’re impossible,” he murmured.
“I’m… careful,” she said, voice catching. Her words sounded like a lie even as she spoke them.
His hands were warm, steady on her waist, and for a single, dazzling moment, she let herself forget the world outside; the war, the blackened streets, the cries from Richmond’s hospitals. She let herself be spun, dipped, held.
But the dream shifted. Now she stood over him, white and ghostly in the flickering lamplight. His chest rose and fell unevenly, his breaths shallow. His eyes held hers, the astonishment and grief mingling into a heavy cocktail.
“Don’t take it personally,” she whispered, voice tight, clawing at herself for any flicker of defiance. “I love my country, my freedom… more than I can love any man.”
Tears ran down his face, unbidden, and she pressed a finger to his lips.
And then the world turned again.
Tokyo, 1987. Neon lights, billboards screaming in kanji, the first notes of idol pop echoing from a nearby record store. She was Sakura, seventeen, and vibrant.
A boy, tall and electrifying in his appearance and intensity, trapped her against the wall, pressing his chest to hers. His hands were firm, protective, possessive, yet gentle in that strange, terrifying way.
“You have to wait for me,” he said between breaths, his voice trembling but defiant, eyes wide and bright.
He smiled, that reckless, dangerous smile that made her pulse race, and pressed a fleeting kiss to her lips. The rain began to fall, fat drops soaking through her hair, her clothes clinging to her like a second skin. She kissed him back, eyes closed, and for a heartbeat she believed in forever.
He held his jacket over his head and ran back into the stadium.
She watched him go, smiling.
Then the scream—the tire’s roar, metal crunching against flesh. She opened her eyes just in time to see the truck hit her.
She fell again, but this time, she was back in Kira’s sitting room, blacked out from excessive alcohol consumption and a concussion, her face in a pool of her own vomit, next to the broken bottle of cyanide.