The Queen's Maid

Three

"Anne, wake up. We have to go to Service Office." A hand pats my upper back gently. Sleepiness still has it control over my body, making me feel weak and my eyes still shut close.

But I'm sleepy and feeling lazy for today, mom. I want to go back to sleep and not doing a single thing for today.

"Hmm, five more minute." I keep my eyes close, my arms wrap around my pillow tightly as I snuggle closer into it, sighing quietly.

God, I'm feeling so sleepy.

"Come on, Anne. You have to get ready, we're going to Service Office. You have to submit your information, remember?"

The sunlight comes through the window pane is the first one who greets my eyes as I open them. And when the reality and two words hits me, a pout forms on my face.

The Choosing.

Today is the day. The first big day of the week.

Today until the next six days, person with age between 18 until 26 have to submit their information for The Choosing. And if you're not and get caught, you'll get stripped off of your caste.

The words may sounds cruel. It is cruel. But that's the only way to make us, The Servant, work for our kingdom. Because it's us that has the responsibility to work for other, that is above us in the caste system.

Having a job is better for most of us rather than have ourselves stripped off our own caste to be the lowest of the five caste that exist.

Though our caste only one step above The Lowest, the differences between the two castes are the things that make us a lot more better and fortunate than The Lowest. We can live a lot more better life as The Servant, rather than The Lowest.

If you get stripped off of your caste and be The Lowest, you'll have nothing left to hold on to, although your family would try their best to keep you alive.

The help from your family would be so helpful for you. But that doesn't mean the government would let any of your family, or other people to help you when you're The Lowest, especially because of you break the laws and get yourself stripped off of your caste.

When that happen, you feel like you're a burden and disgrace to your family and you have the feeling to go away from them, from their life.

Being a Lowest means you're homeless, have to fight for food with other starving people. If you don't get any food, you are don't have any other choices but to rob from other people. And you have to do it all over again, to survive from the starving and the harsh world of The Lowest.

"Yes, mom."

"Get ready, I'll wait downstairs."

"Okay."

She flashes me a smile and she spins around and walk out of my room quickly when a thought pops inside my head.

"Wait," She stops outside of my room and turn around again, looking at me, confusion covers her face. "Don't you have to go to work?"

Today is Monday, right?

The confusion replaces by a smile as she stares at me earnestly. My eyebrows raises at the look on her face.

"No, I'm not for today. I have a day off. For you."

A train of people lining up outside the Service Office can be seen from afar as I walk closer to the place. The queue haven't trained too long considering the time that's only 7 in the morning. And besides that, today is the first day of The Choosing registration week which means there's still a long way to go until the last day of choosing.