"Wake up…"
The sound was close, urgent, a boyish voice tugging at the edges of a fading dream. It was a far cry from the panicked shout that still echoed faintly within the recesses of my mind.
"Hey, we're gonna be late for our first day," the voice insisted, laced with a hurried enthusiasm as its owner rustled with the impatient energy of youth, already wrestling with the tangled sheets.
It was then, amidst the chaotic symphony of early morning dormitory sounds—the creak of bed frames, hushed whispers, and the distant clatter of something metallic—that the world around me snapped into something that felt unsettlingly familiar.
Not the sterile, shadowed contours of my present-day bedroom, but the worn, comforting imperfections of a high school dormitory room. The chipped paint on the walls, the familiar slant of the sunlight filtering through the slightly dusty windowpanes, the scent of old wood and youthful ambition hanging in the air—each detail tugging at something I hadn't expected to feel again.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a heavy, confused beat. Disbelief warred with a dizzying sense of déjà vu.
Was the fall a dream, or had I never truly woken from it at all?
The boy beside me, his youthful face creased with a blend of excitement and impatience, was someone my eyes recognized before my mind could follow. His eager eyes, the nervous energy that radiated from him as he smoothed down his slightly rumpled uniform—it was all achingly, impossibly real.
A whirlwind of questions clawed at my throat, each one a frantic whisper in the sudden storm within my mind. My body felt younger, lighter—the aches and heaviness I'd come to expect were simply gone.
A cold splash of water, meant to be a brisk wakeup call, hit my face in the shower, and my gaze fell on the person staring back at me, a stranger framed within the glass. A boy. An impossible, youthful face with eyes full of a naive hope I no longer recognized.
My hands, smaller and less calloused, felt like a stranger's. I ran my fingers over a clean-shaven jawline that hadn't seen the drag of a razor in what felt like a lifetime. The sight of my nostalgic high school uniform, crisp and ready, was a new form of torture.
I moved through the motions of getting ready like a puppet on strings, my mind a frantic battlefield as it tried to reconcile the life I remembered with the reality I was now forced to inhabit. By the time I was done, my mind was still warring against itself.
The boy, oblivious to the tempest raging within me, pulled me through the dormitory door and out into a corridor teeming with vibrant chaos of youth. The aroma of scrambled eggs and warm milk drifted through the building, drawing us along with the sounds of cutlery on plates and the low murmur of morning conversations. It was a symphony of simple domesticity from a time long gone, and every note of it whispered the same impossible thought—that I was standing somewhere I had no right to be.
The dining hall was a vast, open space, defined by its massive, squarely placed pillars that seemed to hold up the very sky. I barely registered any of it as a constant flow of students moved between the food stations and the scattered tables, a vibrant hum of youthful energy filling the air.
I clung to my friend, the noise a physical weight pressing in on me. My eyes scanned the hall, searching for something—a familiar face—to hold me in place. But all I saw was a dizzying mosaic of laughter, whispers, and the casual motions of a life I no longer knew how to live.
Then, everything seemed to slow at once. The noise of the room stretched thin. My breath caught in my throat. Across the open space, near one of the far corner pillars, she was there—sitting in the strange, weightless stillness.
Slender and beautiful, her long hair fell over her shoulders like a dark cascade. Her default expression was a quiet, unapproachable air of indifference that kept the bustling world at bay, a look I knew so well it felt like a home I was no longer welcome in.
But I remembered. I remembered the way that stillness could shatter with a single smile, a rare and precious light that made every struggle, every unreciprocated effort, feel like it had all been worth it.
And every subtle gesture—the way she leaned against the pillar, the soft tilt of her head—sent a silent, invisible string across the room, pulling at my very core.
My body screamed to cross the distance, to wrap my arms around her and never let go. My mind, which had been frantically searching for an explanation, went completely blank.
All of the confusion, the fear, and the disbelief melted away, replaced by the single, undeniable reality of her.
She was here.