“You want to live here? You want to immigrate to this country?” he said in an amazing tone like he happened to see the sun peeping out from the western horizon, and giggled, then laughed in a happily sad tone.
“I wanted to,” I stressed. “I was born here, but was then forced to leave when I was still a toddler. I have had enough of hypocrisy from the people in the Port. So I thought it would be great to have a chance to come back here, to go to a place, where people still value the importance of maintenance of order instead of fragile freedom that does no good to the society.”
“You hate to be free, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate it. I just don’t think it’s as important as it is said to be. I can live without it.”
“You can live without it? Like how? Like a robot without soul but has a free mind that allows it to want to emigrate?” he repeated my statement in a mocking way. “You’re taking it for granted.”
“Imagine you are in a place of true freedom, where everyone gets to do whatever they wish to, eats whatever they want to, plays whatever stupid games they like. They don’t need to wake up every morning to catch the bus in order to be on time at work and worry about any problems. Imagine you are in a perfect world like that, a literal Shangri-La. Sounds like a dream world, isn’t it?” I gulped down my saliva difficultly. “But when we are in such a flawless world, we are more prone to be attacked by our sloth and our unlimitedly expanding greed or craving, craving for more power, more wealth, both materialistically and mentally, which will make us sinful. Don’t you see? True freedom is just a pipe dream that should never be within our grasp because it will make us more easily corruptible. By sacrificing freedom and keeping orders, which are the only tool that can tackle with our never-ending desire, there is still a chance that we can be less sinful. The more freedom we enjoy, the more sinful we are. We don’t deserve it. So I can surely live without freedom. Plus, I just can’t stand the way how people are abusing their right to freedom to do anything inconsiderate, especially one that would disturb order.”
“Tell me you don’t mean it,” a familiar female voice behind me sobbed weakly and kind of freaked me out.
So I looked over my shoulder at her, saw the same old crying face of the helpful staff, who scowled at me in the airport, and was then dazed by an aghast feeling suggesting that she had followed me all the way from the airport to here and had never stopped crying. And I could only stare at her. Of course, by now, I know that she had done a lot of things, like informing Ciara about my arrival and aiding to set fire to the hotel, before regrouping with Kaylen at the foyer, and I have already gotten used to her fickle mood. Yes, she is still as capricious as she has always been even she is now living in the house with me. So I guess she was born that way. But luckily, yesterday, when she and I were sitting on our bed reading, I happened to find a way to help her gain better control of her emotions. And that’s simply done by letting her listen closely to her own watch, which was her Gift, ticking, and she surmised that it was because of the special ticking sound, which was like ‘te-teeing’, it had.
But back then, it wasn’t a real option, so I could only let her mutter on.
“Tell me you don’t mean it,” she repeated twice, with her head down, wiping tears in her eyes away.
“Don’t cry, my girl, don’t cry,” Jack, walking alongside her, said, patting her gently like he was her father. “You can’t blame him.”
“Sloth, greed, and any of that will never give up on making us sinful, no matter how much freedom we have,” Kaylen quipped. “These are only excuses. What’s the real reason behind it?”
So I turned my head back and looked at him when a holy shaft of sunlight from the end of the alley dazzled me like it was the end of a time travel.
Shaking my head with eyes shut, “Anyway, what should I do now? Is the border closed yet? I don’t want to stay in this country any more,” I said.
“Sadly it’s closed,” Kaylen said. “But don’t worry. As I have told you, we can get you out of here safely.”
I felt relieved.
After what I’d been through, that was the only thing I’d love to hear, “Thank you. What’s the plan?” I asked, as we were about to walk into the boulevard that ran over the sweeping meanders.
Kaylen stopped at the edge of the alley, craned his head out to look left, then right, and then commanded, “Kriss will tell you about the tunnel later. For now, we have to split up into two groups. It would be too suspicious for such a large group of people to stay together. Jack, pick five of them. You guys will come with me. Kriss, can I count on you to bring the rest of them to House Heaven?”
The telecoms staff smiled and replied, her smile after tears looked like a rainbow after drizzle, and it did hold my eyes steady for a moment. “You can count on me.”
“I will meet you at nine o’clock in the park in our usual spot. Be careful. Try not to get caught,” Kaylen said.
He sounded like they were spies dispatched to infiltrate this country rather than just ordinary brainless freedom-pursuers to me. I wondered maybe it was the reason why the government yearned to eradicate them since, according to what Kriss had told me, it banned everything that would potentially disseminate confidential information of the country.
So, “Who are you guys, really?” I asked Kaylen.
He cast me a nonchalant glance, with his side profile and his pair of glinting dark black eyes, and strode away with Jack and his men without saying a word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Plodding along the boulevard, from time to time, I would look back at the entrance of the Golden Hotel, which was still surrounded by a huge crowd of agitated people expressing hatred with unclassifiable violent acts. The itchy sound of cutting through steel only fizzled out when the sparks were no longer visible to me, yet, from my last glance, it seemed the steel gate was rigid enough to hinder them from swarming in even they were using a chainsaw.
“Who are you guys, really?” I asked Kriss, choked and searched my pockets for my mask but couldn’t find it anywhere.
There were in total six of us moving as a group, and I decided to walk alongside Kriss, who was leading the way, though I soon realized that she didn’t want me to fall into step with her; every time I caught up with her pace, she would change it abruptly so that I could only trail behind her and could only talk to her from behind.
“You already know that,” she answered with a coarse tone, picking up speed as if she was afraid I would try to fall into step with her again.
The street, where many lethargic-looking local pedestrians were smoking, wandering around, or crouching in the middle of the street, was seemingly densely packed, but the main reason why it seemed packed was because the street was becoming narrower and narrower as we proceeded.
“I thought you are a staff working for a telecoms company.”
“I am.”
“But how did you –” I paused when we walked past a local, and I receded to a dawdle, then resumed when I was sure he was out of earshot. “But how did you know they were going to attack this hotel?”
“There are many of us,” she said tersely.
I waited for her to go on speaking, but nothing led away from her statement.
“In the Port, the freedom-pursers are only capable of doing stupid things like dancing in the middle of the road, singing the national anthem during rush hour or playing deafening music along the road with loudspeakers in their cars. They never do anything constructive or lovable. But you guys are different. You guys are really in pursuit of freedom. I can feel it.”
“Are they not?”
“Are they not what? In pursuit of freedom?”