Chapter 5

Chapter five : short quiet life

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In a cold, dull room, there lived a girl alone. She lived in a heavy silence, broken only by the sound of medical monitoring devices. Her world was limited by the walls of her room, cold but not solid enough to protect her from the emotional pain, which was more severe to her than the pain of her suffering body.

 There was no one to hold her hand, or comfort her as the pain ripped through her small body. Her family was not there, no familiar faces to fill her room with warmth, no tender voices to fill her heart with hope. She could feel the world's presence, but it remained distant, foreign.

As a child, she used to hope that one of her family members would visit her, waiting for someone to open the door of the room and enter, waiting eagerly to perhaps see a mother or father or any familiar face. Sometimes she would imagine what they would look like, what they would look like, what they would say, and she would smile with a mixture of dream and fear. As the years passed, hope died in her little heart. Their visits in her dreams became just a wish that carried nothing but vague memories of characters she had never seen before. 

Her family was wealthy, so her body was never short of medicine or food, but her soul was always in short supply. She lived in a first-class hospital room, surrounded by the latest medical equipment. She could order anything she needed, and it always arrived on time, but there was something bigger than just the material things that couldn't be bought—a sense of belonging and love. 

In the absence of any family warmth, her books, her loyal friends, her only companion, the laptop that enabled her to communicate with virtual worlds, where she explored, read and learned what she could not experience in her real life, were all that gave her strength. 

Through books, she crossed the boundaries of time and space; she learned about the stars, the history of nations, the intricacies of science and the delicacy of poetry as she read, searching for something new to fill the void. She would read at night and taste the taste of knowledge, inspired by the genius of writers and thinkers, she thought that if she became genius enough, perhaps she would gain recognition from her parents. But little by little, that childish hope faded, leaving behind a pure desire to acquire knowledge for herself.

Her love of knowledge became a refuge from her loneliness. She was never bored, each book was like a new journey to another world, a world where there were no physical pains and no long waiting times. 

In the long nights, she would learn about herself through books. She would read about literature, history, and science, she loved them, and she would spend long hours researching and thinking, and she would write down her thoughts and record her small joys and bitterness on electronic pages. The computer was her only window to the world, and her means of escaping the constraints of her weak body.

But that didn't stop her from thinking about her sorrows, and she even devoured religious and philosophical books in search of meaning for her short, limited life. Sometimes she would sit for hours looking at the screen in front of her or staring at the ceiling of her room, pondering questions to which she had no answers: Why was she living in isolation, why did no one in her family love her, and what was the value of all this knowledge if she couldn't apply it in the real world?

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When she turned seventeen, her body felt heavier, her breathing slower, as if her entire life had been concentrated in every cell. She knew the end was near, but she was not afraid.

 Instead, she felt a kind of peace, as if she had prepared herself to face this fate.

 She had acquired many skills in all fields. In theory, she knew how to drive a car, solve equations, write a poem or even play chess. But she lacked the opportunity to apply all that she had learned in her narrow world, where the only activity she could do was read. Although she did not live the life she had hoped for, did not run on the grass, did not taste the complete freedom, she found her peace in knowledge.

If she had one regret, it would be her inability to experience her life as she had read about it, to make real friends with whom she could share her dreams and thoughts, to leave an impression on their hearts, to make memories with them.

And in the end, she left this life quietly, as she had lived it. Her death was light, a mixture of resignation and contentment. There was no one to witness that moment, no one to say goodbye or hold her hand. But she left knowing that her short life was not devoid of meaning. 

She was like a candle that lit up for a short moment, but left behind a trace of light that could only be seen in the pages of the books she read and in the thoughts she planted in her little mind.

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