The Search for Freedom

KailaPublished by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

"What am I doing here?" I asked myself.

My world tottered. It seemed like there was an earthquake in the place where I was. though there wasn't even a small plot of land. I seemed to be in a vacuum.

"Hey, Kaila, wake up!" The woman's voice exclaimed.

I sprang out of my bed and realized I had a dream. A dream about the void I saw Amara was sitting on the bed beside me. Now I knew that she was the one who had shook me and had been trying to wake me up. "Good afternoon, Kaila." Amara greeted me and smiled sweetly.

"Afternoon?" I asked in a shocked voice.

"Yeah, it's already afternoon. Try to look outside your window so that you can see that the sun is already at the center of the unblemished sky."

I donned my pink sneakers and went towards the window. I raised the curtains and glimpsed the scene beyond. Amara wasn't joking in her words that it was already afternoon, but she was wrong about saying that the sun was already in the center of the sky. I could only see the gray clouds instead of the afternoon's unblemished blue sky.

"I went here because I'm worried about you. You have been caging yourself here. You did not show your face last night. Is there something wrong?" Amara asked while stepping towards me.

I didn't reply to her question; I just looked outside the window.

"We already prepared your breakfast. Come! Let's go downstairs." She came, opened the door, and got out.

After wondering how long I had been sleeping, I lowered the curtains and followed Amara downstairs when something crossed my mind. The boy, who seemed to be a zombie, whom I didn't mean to kill.

How merciless! I wasn't thinking about what I would do. I was just lucky that the pinkish cloud showed up again, or else I couldn't go back to the mansion, and I might have already been inside the prison or have become a beggar. Bygones were bygones; they wouldn't come back. I should forget those things, because even if I blamed myself all day, I still couldn't bring back the time and the life of that boy.

"Let's get inside the dining room." Amara continued.

I didn't know how to thank Amara for all the goodness she did for me. The reason why I hired her as a butler in the mansion was that I didn't know who to talk with if she wasn't there. But I wasn't treating her as a servant.

Amara opened the door to the dining room. I saw and smelled the aromas of delicious foods served on the long table. I went towards the spot where I was always sitting if I wanted to eat. I sat down on the chair and filled my plate with food. The dining room was so quiet and different from before, for when we were eating, my parents were talking about everything. The servants were just looking at me. I didn't need too much food if I ate alone. Therefore, I invited them to eat with me so that the melancholy inside the dining room wouldn't reign.

I could see the smiles on their faces. It seemed like they didn't have any problems, or at least they weren't thinking about them. I knew that pain couldn't always be seen in tears; sometimes it was present in smiles.

It would be better to smile than to frown and shrug. All our problems were just temporary, and if we could do nothing about them, we should laugh, and they would leave us on their own volition. My parents were always telling me not to waste my time on those things that, whatever I was going to do, would not change anything.

The place in my dream suddenly crossed my mind. I had never been there before. I didn't know what kind of place that was where I could see nothing there but a void.

After I ate my breakfast, I went inside my parents' bedroom. The room was spacious, with a large braided rug on its gold-oak floor. There were many picture frames of my parents hanging on the walls. Many days had elapsed before that day. I often wondered if I could resist looking at their pictures. I knew they were happy wherever they were. Unlike me.

There was only one bed inside. I was already old enough to know what a married couple was doing. I knew that my parents loved each other without doubt. But I was confused as to why they didn't make another baby.

Perhaps I wouldn't have been so sad those days if I had a sister or brother. Maybe my parents were just busy with their work and business, which is why they did not give me a sister or brother. They might have thought that they could not take care of a child because of their busyness.

I sighed. There was also an oversized couch where someone could sleep. Maybe sometimes they use it when they are sulking against each other. Maybe my dad would sleep there while my mom was on the bed, and they would just stare at each other, thinking about their problems, so that they could sleep together in one bed later.

I didn't stay longer in the room because I was allergic to the smell of an old room. I was allergic to everything that seemed old and antiquated and never attracted my attention, especially if it had a dull color. I wasn't interested in antiquated things, even though they were expensive, because I had the capability to smell the memories of the people who used them in the past.

Sitting on the wide balcony and looking at our wide lawn that was covered with thick lying snow, which had never been covered before, My parents always told those servants to remove the snow, for it could pile up until they'd reached the mansion.

They told me that there was a possibility that our mansion would be covered with snow or frozen by the cold ice, which I also wanted to happen when I was young. Perhaps it was cool to live in a mansion made of snow, but tomorrow, if the weather was nice, I'd hire a worker to remove them, because I wasn't that little anymore.

Though it was already midday, the breeze never stopped blowing. I remembered the old woman who gave me the pinkish cloud. There were no days I didn't remember her. I realized that everything that happened many days ago wasn't just a dream. The old woman wasn't just a dream. Maybe she had a connection to why the pinkish cloud brought me to the place where the zombie boy was.