How To Save The Endangered Empire

Is This What Freedom Is?

The air felt softer, and the atmosphere didn't choke my every breath. My spine did not shiver, nor did I feel a sense of death only a doorstep away. These were the thoughts of a person who'd escaped the life she was forced to live.

Along the smooth dark wood floor of a newly owned apartment, a girl with long brown hair and dark honey-brown eyes dragged her suitcase while the little spools of her hair stuck to her smiling face. The sun's glare shone like a spotlight shining in the open living room area.

Visions of a cozy yet quaint home became the blueprints of what she'd dreamed up for the empty space in the future.

"So this is what it's like to feel at ease in your house. This is...my home." She whimpered with the few tears spilling out from her sun-glazed eyes. Like a puppy running and struggling to survive in the harsh streets, she'd finally found a place of comfort and warmth.

The word "Freedom" only seemed like a dream in the past, but in these four walls, as the beaming rays of heat entered her home, she could feel that what she had once dreamed of could finally be her reality.

The image of change and freedom was enough to make her sensitive heart flare uncontrollably with glee; from this point, she didn't mind that there was a possibility of struggle and hardships awaiting in the future because knowing that she successfully escaped her inevitable death was enough to keep her going.

Vivid blueprints of a cozy home erased the fact that the room was empty and plain. Her little heart pitter-pattered with excitement, knowing that she could make this quaint space her own.

Eager to move into the new life she'd built for herself, her boxes packed with her belongings quickly emptied while the blank, white-painted rooms filled with them. Once she finished unpacking her necessities, she sat on her wooden black dining table with her laptop, scouting for the perfect job to fund her vision of freedom.

"Hmm, where to begin...Well, I have to find a job outside of fast food service. I can't handle something so stressful when I have to study hard to keep my scholarship. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps."

'Beep, Beep,' her microwave sounded, finishing the noodles she'd prepped for dinner.

"Yes, finally! I was starving!"

Extremely hungry, her stomach grumbling like an earthquake, she sprinted to the microwave and ignored how hot the glass bowl had been.

"Weirdly enough, this is the first time my stomach doesn't feel nauseous at the smell or sight of food. I guess it's because no one's breathing down my neck or haunting my space anymore."

Food always smelt like garbage in the past, and her stomach rejected it at the mere sight. Eating felt much more difficult when her abusive family made her feel like a pig who'd eaten everything in sight.

Setting down the bowl on her placemat, she heard her tummy rumble and felt her mouth salivating.

"Mmm! This is so good; I was craving ramen. Huh...?"

The window by her table stood beside her directly and shone through it, the illuminating light of a single star in the dark blue sky. "It looks like a star that would only come once in a lifetime. How lucky am I to be able to see it?"

Instinctively, her eyes shut, and her hands clasped each other while a wish she'd been praying for her whole life came to her empty mind. "Please let me be free; I'll give anything, so please let this freedom last..."

Opening her eyes, she felt her heart darken, her throat tighten, and a soullessness within her. In her heart was the tiniest flicker of hope that came along with her wish. Every hope, however, ended in heartbreak when things only seemed to get more complicated after wishing for anything good, as if the world was reminding you that you're not deserving of such happiness.