This story was submitted on September 26th 2026 by Cicada33, author of The road to freedom. If you have a story to submit it’s right here !
This story is a series divided into 15 parts:
- Side effects of obedience (part 2)
- Side effects of obedience (part 3)
- Side effects of obedience (part 4)
- Side effects of obedience (part 5)
- Side effects of obedience (part 6)
- Side effects of obedience (part 7)
- Side effects of obedience (part 8)
- Side effects of obedience (part 9)
- Side effects of obedience (part 10)
- Side effects of obedience (part 11)
- Side effects of obedience (part 12)
- Side effects of obedience (part 13)
- Side effects of obedience (part 14)
- Side effects of obedience (part 15)
Twenty-two-year-old Ena sat in her half-dark room, weeping on the edge of her bed, utterly broken by pain and exhaustion. Just a month ago, her world had begun to crumble when she broke up with her first boyfriend, the only guy she had ever been with. She had caught him kissing another girl in the park. Instead of apologizing, he turned on her, hurling insults and calling her an ugly, boring nerd. Then, a week ago, she failed the one exam on which everything depended, officially failing her academic year. And just under an hour ago, she had to deliver the devastating news over the phone to her parents.
Her parents were both highly respected doctors. Ena was their only child, the sole focus of their lives, and they had invested everything into ensuring she would follow in their footsteps. From the moment she was born, they had been grooming her to become a great physician. Private primary and secondary schools, student of the generation, language academies, state and European competitions, she had spent her entire life buried in books. She was the obedient, perfect daughter who served as a shining example to everyone, the reason her parents could look down on “failed” families from their aristocratic height. And now, everything had fallen apart.
Over the phone, they told her she was a disappointment. They accused her of embarrassing them, reminding her of all the privileges they had provided, only for her to “throw it back in their faces.” Her father’s voice had been cold as he threatened to cut off her tuition and apartment rent, telling her that if she still planned on studying, she would have to find a job and support herself. She had been sobbing the entire time, but they didn’t care. A suffocating feeling of absolute loneliness washed over her. No one in this world understood her. She had spent her life being the good, obedient girl. She had enrolled in a grueling medical faculty she didn’t even like, just to please them. She had entered her first relationship with a fellow student, someone she thought was her best friend, someone she believed actually understood her, only to be discarded and humiliated.
She sat there in the dim light, her long brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, her glasses fogged and blurred by the tears pouring down her face. She was gasping for air between heavy, ragged sobs. She was done. She was so incredibly tired of being the good, obedient girl who wasn’t allowed to make a single mistake, the girl everyone threw away the moment she was no longer useful.
And then, through the open window of her room, she felt the smell of smoke wafting in.
I came to the big city from a small town. I had a perfect GPA and qualified for a free spot in the student dorms, but my parents insisted on renting a private apartment. They wanted me to have “my peace,” which was actually just a euphemism for keeping me under a glass bell, far away from “bad company.” For a roommate, they chose Katarina, the daughter of their colleagues from the hospital. She was hardworking, smart, and enrolled in the same university. Our parents saw it as the perfect arrangement, Katarina would be my companion and my study partner. For the first two years, it actually worked. I didn’t even like medicine, but I was terrified of disappointing my parents. Katarina helped me through the difficult lessons, explained everything that was confusing, and was my only friend in this massive city. With her help i finished my first two years with straight A’s. And then the third year came, and everything changed.
During the summer, Katarina got into a relationship. Transformed from a shy girl who spent her days buried in books, she suddenly became someone who was constantly going out to parties and concerts. First, she started drinking coffee, which I somehow accepted, but when she go home drunk one Saturday, I was shocked. “Katarina, how can you be so irresponsible? You know how bad alcohol is to your body!” I lectured her, but she just ignored me. We drifted apart. Katarina studied less and lived more. Yet, she somehow managed to maintain good grades, while I left entirely without her help, began to drown under the weight of the material. It all culminated one night at three in the morning when Katarina burst into the apartment, stumbling and making a noise. “Drunk again?” I confronted her furiously in the hallway, but as she stepped closer, a sharp, acrid odor washed over me. “Wait… you smell like tobacco. Did you smoke?” “I was at a club, Ena. Of course I smoked,” she snapped back cheekily. “Look at yourself! You’re drinking, smoking, and hanging out with strange people. That guy has completely ruined you!” Katarina couldn’t take my preaching anymore. For the first time since I knew her, she screamed at me: “What do you even know about boys, you nerd?! You’ve never had one, and you never will if you don’t get out of this cave! Life isn’t just about books, Ena! I’ve had enough of your nagging. I tried to help you, but you’re a hopeless case. I’m moving in with my boyfriend tomorrow, and you can wither away here alone with your books!” She slammed her bedroom door, leaving me in total silence. I spent the following days in tears. I had just lost my only friend, left completely alone in the apartment.
My only comfort was my boyfriend, Ethan. We had known each other for a long time, he was a nerd like me and I knew he liked me. I had never had a boyfriend before, but Katarina’s words seemed to make me angry and I wanted to prove her wrong. One day I asked Ethan if he liked me, he say “yes”, and kiss me, my first kiss, my first boyfriend. We would walk in the park, hold hands, and kiss. He was so good to me, and I felt truly happy. Until one day. A two month after Katarina left, feeling suffocated inside the apartment, I decided to study at a near park. I took my anatomy textbooks and headed out. Just a few minutes after sitting down and opening my books, I looked across the park and saw Ethan. My boyfriend. He was kissing another girl and grabbing her ass. I furiously rushed toward them, clutching my textbooks in my hands, but when I confronted them, he turned on me. He attacked me, shoved me away, while the girl just laughed in my face. I was shattered. I went back to the apartment and didn’t leave for a week. I skipped university, didn’t study, and just cried under the covers, binge-watching series to numb my mind.
And then she arrived. Marta, a new girl, moved into the free room. She was the exact opposite of everything I had ever known. A year older, she was a red-haired art academy student, slightly shorter than me, with curves that filled out her clothes incredibly well, a nose piercing, and several small tattoos dotting her skin. With her came a whole new set of problems. From day one, Marta acted like the apartment was hers. She kept a giant easel, brushes, and half-finished canvases right in the living room, smoked inside without asking, and suddenly our fridge was stocked with beer cans. She even tried to get close to me, making jokes, asking my opinion on her sketches, but I coldly ignored her. I wanted zero contact. But I couldn’t move out because my parents had paid the rent four months in advance, and the stress of hunting for a new place would have broken me. So, I decided to set strict boundaries. I laid down the house rules, no smoking inside, only on the terrace, her friends could visit, but quietly painting was restricted to her room, and our communication would be strictly limited to bills and apartment matters. We were not friends, just roommates. To my absolute surprise, Marta accepted it all without a single word of protest or insult. She just shrugged and said, “Okay.” I got my peace. We lived like two strangers under the same roof, and silence took over the apartment.
Her lifestyle clashed with everything I believed in. She had terrible habits. During those first few days before I enforced the rules, she had smoked inside so much that the acrid scent had permanently seeped into the walls and furniture. Even after she stopped, I could still feel it in the air. Her body looked incredibly healthy and vibrant, even though she was systematically destroying it with alcohol, cigarettes, junk food, and tattoo ink. For me, a girl raised in a sterile medical household where health and success were measured with a ruler, it was completely unacceptable. I despised people like that and considered them irresponsible fools. In my family, the only smoker was my Aunt Lisa, my mother’s sister. My mother openly looked down on her, always saying Lisa lived a ruined life, she had no degree, worked as a hairdresser, dressed provocatively, smoked, drank, swears and was unmarried. I hated her. I hated Marta just as much, especially since she had sex with a different partner almost every third night. It was another one of her awful habits, which wouldn’t have bothered me if our bedrooms weren’t separated by a single, thin wall. Too many nights were spent burying my face in a pillow, trying to block out the muffled sighs, laughter, and heavy groans coming from her bed. She disgusted me. I hated her as a person and couldn’t wait for summer to arrive so I could finally move out.
But Marta wasn’t childishly insolent like Katarina; she possessed a strange, phlegmatic calmness that threw me off balance. Nothing could disturb her peace. She walked through the apartment with total poise, as if the outside world couldn’t touch her at all, completely uncaring of what anyone thought of her choices. She swore in everyday conversation so naturally, without a shred of shame. She was entirely independent, earning her own living through photography and painting. Deep down in my soul, I hated myself because I subconsciously envied her freedom.
Until tonight.
Tonight, I lay completely broken beneath the ruins of my own life. I had just called my parents to tell them that their perfect daughter had failed the year. They told me how disappointed they were, how ashamed they felt, and that moving forward, I would have to find a job to pay for my own tuition and rent. Choking on my sobs, I felt a wild, desperate need for air. Anything to make me feel less damn alone and miserable in this darkness. A thin, bluish wisp of smoke slowly drifting through the open window was a clear sign, Marta was out on the terrace.
Crying and shaking, I got up from the bed, barely conscious of what I was doing. I ran out of the room and practically burst through the balcony door. Desperate for air and an escape, I collided right into Marta’s smoke and her suprised look.
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