I regarded the braised pork before me. The fat, oily meat was chopped into bulging, steamy slices, splayed delicately across the polished, silver plate with juice permeating the tender pieces and flowing thickly down the shiny outer layer. A sickly, fragrant sweetness tinged the air as my fork lay hovering over it, unmoving.

"What's the matter?" A voice sneered.

I looked up in surprise. A little girl was sitting calmly at the other end of the long, rectangular table, arms crossed and jeering. A singular bowl of rice lay before her, cold and gray. The girl paid no attention to it. The wash of dim light illuminated only her sharpest features at the other end. Her defiant eyes gleamed with amusement as she gazed steadily across at me, her gaze unwavering. I, however, found it difficult to look at her, instead focusing on the tiny bowl of rice in front of her.

"Pitiful, isn't it." She murmured without looking at it. "It's what the rest of us eat." Her eyes left my face and traveled down slowly towards my plate. I saw disgust behind her heavy sneer as she stared at the fat, juicy slices.

I felt cold embarrassment take over me, almost as cold as the lonely dinner if you could even call it that, sitting ten feet away from me. I wanted to offer the girl my food, and I tried to make eye contact with her for a few seconds. It seemed so easy to do so now that she wasn't staring intently at me.

A blurry figure shifted silently beside me, and the air around me grew restless and impatient. I had waited too long. Hurriedly, I stabbed my fork into a slice of meat and brought it up to my mouth, feeling the anger subsiding away as I did so. I felt a sudden swoop of sickness with the bite I had just taken, and I did everything I could to swallow. I have eaten steamed pork every day all of my life. I wiped my mouth with a napkin and looked up. The girl was still sitting calmly from across the long and empty table. Her eyes fixed on my face again, and she had not touched her food. I glanced away and shriveled back into the padded, gold-embroidered armchair, not daring to raise myself as high as her. I slowly set down my napkin, and the girl let out a cruel, tickling laugh.

"Full?" She inquired in a mocking tone. "I don't suppose rich people ever are." 

Despite my lowly demeanor, a flash of annoyance coursed through my body as I forced myself to look at her. "You're not the only one who's unhappy," I said quietly. "I'm forced to eat this every day." As soon as those words left my mouth, I immediately regretted them.

The girl rose from the table so forcefully that it shook violently, and the bowl toppled over and smashed into a hundred pieces on the ground. From it, a hundred grains of rice strewed across the ground.

"Don't you use that tone on me, little girl!" She bellowed, her trembling voice echoing all around the empty room, her chest heaving as her face twisted with rage. 

"Don't you so much as speak when your belly is so full."

The girl leaned in and looked me straight in the eye. "Remember, some people have it worse than you, so don't complain. Don't you dare complain."

She turned around and strode out of the room. I sat motionless, my eyes glazed and horrified. Immediately afterward, a distorted, faceless servant stepped forward with a flourish to clean up the mess of broken china. Another servant took away the platter of unfinished food before me. Refinement and grandeur, order and perfectness. They were the buttresses to my tall and hollow existence.

The girl represented the very contradiction. Ragged and unattended to, but alive with challenge and curiosity, feats in which I knew I was hopeless ever to accomplish. How I longed for the unrefined strength of her character, of her courage to speak, unafraid, for the gleam in her eye, which showed that she was not a stranger failure. There was no gleam in my eye. I had not been given a reason to fail. For the hundredth time, I wondered what it would be like to live in such a world, where nothing was expected, and one could rise or fall without consequence. For the hundredth time, I asked myself, would I prefer that life over the one I had? And for the hundredth time, I reached the bitter conclusion that I would not. There are cowards like me who put their trust in solidity, the promise of continuous comfort, sacrificing joy, curiosity, and courage because of the limited world we knew. And there are others, like that girl, who flourish in spontaneity and find small achievements in the ordinary living of an ordinary life, who believe that mine is the most terrible way to live.

As I lay in my furnished bed that night, lost in thought, I heard the jeering voice of the girl, calling out to me and keeping me awake for long hours. 

"Remember. Some people have it worse than you, so don't complain. Don't you dare complain."

"Don't worry," I said, turning over onto my side, my head resting against a silk cushion, "I don't ever intend to."