Chapter 296: May you outlive your chains. - Reincarnated: Vive La France - NovelsTime

Reincarnated: Vive La France

Chapter 296: May you outlive your chains.

Author: Reincarnated: Vive La France
updatedAt: 2025-08-06

CHAPTER 296: MAY YOU OUTLIVE YOUR CHAINS.

They said the world turned a page at midnight.

But some pages were inked in blood, others in silence.

And many had never been allowed to write their lines at all.

The clock on Place Bellecour struck eleven.

Around it, couples gathered beneath their scarves, clutching wine bottles and each other.

Laughter rang out.

Some danced.

Others smoked and watched the old year die.

An older woman, hunched beneath a wool shawl, muttered, "Let the new year bring us something softer."

A young man behind her laughed. "Softer? You want softer, madame? Then wish for someone who gives hugs, not speeches."

"Better a speech than a rifle."

"Ha! And what if the speech is the rifle?"

No one answered him.

Near the fountains, two girls kissed beneath the lights, whispering wishes in each other’s ears love, freedom, futures untouched by conscription.

But in every corner, whispers danced just behind the celebration.

Estonia.

Austria.

Spain.

"War’s coming," a man said turning his collar up.

"You say that every year."

"And one day I’ll be right."

The night in Shanghai was not quiet.

It was a full of gunfire, the noise of aircraft, and the whimper of wind that knew too many ghosts.

In a shelter near the edge of the city, a boy pressed his sister against his chest as a Japanese patrol passed.

"They won’t find us," he whispered. "They already searched this street."

She said nothing.

Her doll had no head.

Outside, firecrackers popped weakly from wealthier neighborhoods the desperate clinging of New Year’s ritual in a city that had been violated over and over.

A nurse stitched a soldier’s arm under a flickering bulb.

"Do you still believe in years?" the soldier asked, voice cracked and tired.

"I believe in hours," she replied. "Hours where no one bleeds. That’s enough."

In a narrow alley, a mother stared up at a banner celebrating Japanese "reconstruction."

It hung over the ruins of a school.

Her lips twisted, then parted.

"My son was in there."

The soldier on patrol didn’t look at her.

The bell at the colonial administrator’s home in Lagos rang out twelve chimes.

On the balcony, white men raised their glasses and toasted beneath hanging lanterns.

"To empire," one of them said.

"To order," replied another.

Below, in the servants’ quarters, a man named Femi listened to the same bell and whispered to his brother, "What are we celebrating?"

"Survival," his brother said bitterly. "Another year of carrying their trays and building their roads."

"The Queen sends her wishes," a white overseer joked earlier that evening. "God bless the Crown!"

Femi had bowed.

He always bowed.

At the mission church, the priest gave a New Year’s sermon in English and Latin.

The children sat in rows, stiff in borrowed clothes.

"God has placed us each where we belong," he intoned.

A young girl whispered to the one beside her, "Then why does He never look like us?"

Neither of them smiled.

The New Year started i. Berlin with drums and parades.

Uniforms polished, banners lit with torchlight, and the Führer’s voice blaring from every corner loudspeaker.

"Harmony. Purity. Order."

People clapped.

Some cried.

Some merely mouthed the words.

In a cramped apartment, a Jewish violinist tuned his instrument and tried not to hear.

His wife poured soup, thin and quiet.

"They toasted us once," she said. "In ’29, remember? You played at the municipal ball."

He nodded, fingers trembling. "They don’t toast ghosts."

Their daughter clung to her chair. "Are we ghosts?"

"No," the mother said. "We’re shadows. Shadows can move."

Down the street, a boy no older than ten yelled, "Jews don’t belong in the new year!"

His father laughed and ruffled his hair.

"Clever boy."

The violinist’s bow cracked in half that night.

The snow had fallen for days in Warsaw, but tonight the sky was clear.

Fireworks spread over the Vistula.

In a tavern near the market square, songs were sung in Polish, voices hoarse but full.

"We sing to forget," an old man said, swaying beside his beer. "And we drink to remember."

In the alley behind the bar, two students passed a leaflet between them.

"If the Germans come, we strike. If the Soviets come, we speak. If they both come then we scream."

"It’s madness," one said.

"It’s truth," the other replied.

Inside, a man raised his glass.

"To borders that breathe not bleed."

No one cheered.

But all drank.

The pubs in London were filled.

Women danced in pearl gloves, men tipped their fedoras, and jazz spilled from hidden corners of Soho.

Neville Chamberlain dined quietly with guests, content in the confidence of peace. "Europe has always barked," he said. "Rarely does it bite."

A waiter spilled wine.

"Clumsy boy," someone muttered.

In a poorer quarter, a family of six gathered around a single coal fire.

Their father, laid off from the mines, held his daughter close.

"Make a wish," she whispered.

"I wish you never know what hunger tastes like," he murmured.

She kissed his cheek.

The radio crackled. "Reports from Spain remain unstable. France has issued a declaration of peace. All is calm in Estonia..."

The man turned it off.

"Lies don’t warm feet."

The church bells did not ring in Addis Ababa.

The Italians had made sure of that.

On the edge of a burned village, a boy stood in the soot where his school had once been.

A soldier found him there.

"What are you looking for?"

"My name. It was on the wall."

The soldier laughed. "Names are for nations. You have none now."

Farther down, a man whipped two locals dragging supplies.

"Faster, you lazy bastards!"

One stumbled.

Blood on ice.

"No celebrations here," the officer sneered. "Not for you."

In a hut, a mother whispered a blessing over a newborn.

"May you outlive your chains."

Celebration rang out across Tokyo like thunder.

The Emperor’s image was raised in shrines and homes.

The army marched in parades.

Radios declared victory, progress, strength.

In a bar near Shinjuku, young officers toasted loudly.

"To Manchuria!"

"To destiny!"

"To the greatness of Nippon!"

In a cramped apartment, a dissident whispered into his notebook.

"We build empire while our farmers starve. We chant slogans while our sons burn foreign homes. This is not destiny. This is rot."

His wife tore the page.

"If they find it.."

"I know."

In a house near Kyoto, a grandmother braided her granddaughter’s hair and told stories of the old gods.

"But are they still watching?" the girl asked.

The grandmother sighed. "They closed their eyes when we opened ours to conquest."

The café in Algiers was full of music accordion, jazz, clapping.

But the faces at the back were darker, quieter.

The French drank openly.

The Algerians served them.

In the alley, a young man showed another a leaflet under the flicker of a gaslamp.

"Independence is not given. It is taken."

"You’ll be hanged."

"Then I’ll die standing."

In the café, a colonel laughed. "What’s the Arab word for celebration?"

"Permission," a waiter whispered under his breath.

Outside, a child carved the word "freedom" into a wall.

A boot later erased it.

In Bombay, the fireworks were rare mostly seen above the colonial clubs, where British officers drank gin and sang songs about England’s distant hills.

In the chawls below, sweat mixed with incense as families pressed into crowded rooms.

A young girl lit a clay lamp and placed it by the window.

Her grandmother scolded, "This isn’t Diwali."

"It’s still a new year," the girl said softly.

Outside, a constable beat a man for breaking curfew.

"This is British India," he shouted. "You don’t decide when the new year begins."

In a jail cell in Lahore, a freedom fighter leaned against the wall, counting days with chalk marks.

Fifty-seven.

A guard passed by and sneered, "The Empire still stands."

"So does my name," the prisoner replied.

Elsewhere, on a veranda in Delhi, two white men laughed over champagne.

"They’ll never unite," one said. "Too many gods. Too many castes."

In a village nearby, a boy watched his father mend a torn flag the tricolor, not yet flown in freedom.

"Will it fly next year?" he asked.

"If we live," the father answered.

In Times Square, a radio broadcaster shouted into his microphone.

"The world is watching, and we welcome 1938 with hope, with pride, with joy!"

In Harlem, jazz roared.

In Mississippi, a Black man stared out of a shack at the sky.

"Same stars," he muttered, "but a different god, I think."

His son asked, "Is it our new year too?"

"We’ll see," he said, lighting a cigarette.

In a tenement in Brooklyn, a Jewish family raised glasses quietly.

"Next year will be better," the father said.

His wife replied, "That’s what your grandfather said in Kiev. In 1904."

No one argued.

The Kremlin clock rang out across Red Square.

Soldiers cheered.

Vodka flowed.

State newspapers praised industry and silence.

In a basement near Tverskaya, a poet burned his last manuscript.

His wife wept. "You promised you’d stop writing."

"I did."

"Then what is that?"

"Memory," he said. "But now it’s gone."

In a village outside Smolensk, a woman buried a letter in the snow.

It was addressed to a husband lost in the purges.

"I don’t need a reply," she whispered. "Just a place to send love."

A knock on the door startled her.

She did not breathe.

The world turned.

The clocks struck twelve.

Some kissed.

Some cried.

Some bled.

In Paris, fireworks erupted over the Seine.

In Nanking, another body was found in the river.

In Algiers, a boy whispered freedom into the wind.

In Lagos, a girl asked her mother if queens wore chains.

In Warsaw, a man watched his city sleep, wondering how many more winters it had left.

And above them all, the stars remained silent burning, distant, and indifferent.

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