"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 of his bed.
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 a jarring familiarity. Not the sterile, shadowed contours of my present-day bedroom, but the worn, comforting imperfections of my 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—it all coalesced into a scene pulled directly from a memory I hadn't consciously visited in years.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. Disbelief warred with a dizzying sense of déjà vu.
Had the fall been a dream? Or was this… this vibrant, breathing reality somehow another layer of it all?
The boy beside me, his youthful face creased with a blend of excitement and impatience, was a phantom from a life I thought I had left behind.
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 pains of my adulthood a ghost of a memory.
A cold splash of water, meant to be a brisk wakeup call, hit my face in the shower, and I stared at the person staring back at me.
A boy. An impossible, youthful face with eyes full of a naive hope that had been lost to me for years.
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 trying to reconcile the life I remembered with the reality I was now forced to inhabit.
The boy, oblivious to the tempest raging within me, pulled me towards the door, into a corridor teeming with a vibrant chaos of youth.
The aroma of scrambled eggs and warm milk wafted down the hallway, pulling me towards 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 a single, undeniable truth: I was back.
The dining hall was a vast, open space, defined by its massive, squarely placed pillars that seemed to hold up the very sky.
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 a single anchor in this storm of youth, a familiar face that might ground me.
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, the world stopped.
It wasn't a slow halt, but an abrupt, total silence that cut through the noise of the room, total stillness that seemed to suck the sound from the air.
My breath caught in my throat.
Across the open space, near one of the far corner pillars, she was there.
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, crystalline reality of her.
She was here.