Freedom is a rare find. People strive to find this fleeting state but they are regularly left disappointed and rued, having to return to their own personal caged hell and fantasise of liberty once more. It is often said that death is the only release from life; it is the only way to free oneself from the trials and tribulations one has endured over the years. But what happens when death smiles upon you and grasps your hand ever so gently? Do you feel the sweet feeling of relief? Like a load has been lifted from your overly burdened shoulders?
Or would you feel nothing?
Nothing at all?
Or is it possible to find freedom in the land of the living? To let go of all your inhibitions and live life to the fullest? This was the thing Neji craved; to wake up with the sun upon his skin and not worry what horrors the new day will bring. As a child he would gaze at the birds that would unknowingly tease him outside his window, his prison cell, they spreading their wings with such a grace and finesse before taking to the skies and disappearing from his sight.
How he envied them so.
Did they realise how lucky they were? To come and go as they pleased without the need of consorting a higher power and asking for permission. Neji could feel the breeze twist and turn through his hair as it crept through the narrow opening of the shoji door. Whenever he closed his eyes and permitted his usually focused mind to wander it was as if he too was soaring above the clouds, each individual wisp of vapour gliding over his skin almost as tenderly as the caress of a lover.
Yet those brief feelings of clarity and weightlessness always came to end and continuously tended to send him crashing back to the realm of reality without any remorse. But he had come to learn that what does not kill you, makes you stronger and with each passing day and each fleeting daydream his determination and yearning would grow.
So it was simply a matter of time before he too would join the birds in their unrestricted flights and feel the wind beneath his wings for real. One day soon his gilded cage would open and on that day he would take his first steps of unadulterated freedom.
Then he would be free.