Once Upon A [Hidden] Time - [Stolen] Series IV

PROLOGUE

A good book is believed to be like a childhood wound that leaves a more profound mark on its reader. It etches into our minds forever. The words that dance in our heads paint exquisite pictures in our imagination. We build this vivid world around us, deluding that no one can destroy that world. It is ours to live, ours to rule.

The stories we fall in love with, the settings that take us into faraway lands, the people we meet in those fictional worlds—accompany us throughout our lives and forge a castle in our memory which, sooner or later, permanently shape us and remain erected in our hearts like a formidable fortress. We guard these stories as if they are part of our spirits. We lock those people inside our hearts, never wanting them to escape. Our lives are embedded with theirs so deeply that we feel like we live in them, and they live within us. We often find it difficult to dissect facts from fiction. And when we experience heartbreak in those stories, the memory of the person lingers like a ghost, always haunting us.

Until now, I had not understood that this was a story about love and heartbreak, about treachery, deceit and mockery— absence and loss, and how I had taken refuge in it until it became entwined with my own life. As if I had escaped into the pages of a novel and have become a character myself, inhabiting the mind of a stranger, like others, utterly clueless of other's intentions, yet able to think through his mind like a writer who fancies being a god when he sketches characters from his wild imagination.

Until now, I had not known that his story was not just his. It was mine, too, like a fabric with intricate threads interwoven so deeply that it is impossible to part. We have become part of one story that relies heavily on two main characters—him and me. Our story isn't completed without the other.

In the twisted logic of my fictional universe, I have always fancied that his future life was a blank page of a book for me to write. That I could restart his story, invent something out of my fantasy and make his world a better and liveable place. I thought I'd write his emotions, decide his fate, and believe that only I have the power to change his world. That I would pave his path that would lead him straight to me. That I would tether his emotions with mine so I could feel what he feels, see what he sees and love what he loves.

How wrong have I been!

Despite reading his life and knowing how he thinks—his mind has turned aside like a storm that sweeps off everything caught in it, sinking us into the depths of the ocean.

It has broken me.

For me, his book has not only stolen my present but also wrecked my past and smashed my future into smithereens.