Déjà vu is not the feeling of having already lived something.
That's what people say to simplify it, to make it fit into a short conversation or a psychology book. For me, it's different. It's when the world loses the edge of the present. When the now becomes too thin, like wet paper, and something underneath starts to show through.
It isn't memory. Memory has a face, has context. Déjà vu comes without explanation, like a delayed warning. One second before, everything is normal; in the next, every gesture, every word, every silence carries a strange weight, as if I were repeating something I got wrong the first time.
It's a physical discomfort. A tightening in the stomach, a pressure behind the eyes. Sometimes a light vertigo, as if the ground had shifted a few centimeters without warning. My body reacts before I do. I recognize the moment, but I don't know from where.
The worst part isn't the sensation of repetition. It's the certainty that comes with it: this shouldn't be happening like this. There are no images of the past, only a suffocating intuition that the outcome already exists — and that it isn't good.
When it happens, I stop. Not because I want to, but because something in me demands attention. As if an ancient part, older than any conscious choice, were trying to grab me by the arm and say: look closer. You've been here before.
Sometimes the déjà vu passes quickly. Other times, it drags on, clinging to the most banal details — the distant sound of a train, a laugh out of time, light reflecting on glass. Everything feels rehearsed. Everything feels out of place for being perfectly aligned.
And then it disappears.
The world returns to normal. People keep talking. Time moves on, indifferent. Only I'm left with the residual sensation, like a metallic taste in my mouth, like a scar that hurts without being touched.
What frightens me most isn't feeling like I've lived that moment before.
It's feeling that, the last time, I couldn't stop anything.
That feeling consumes me and imposes itself as something too old to be mine. It brings memories I don't recognize and sensations I should never have known, but that arrive with the familiarity of something repeated to exhaustion. A closed cycle, tiring, suffocating.
I hate it.
I hate it with enough force to wish to experience everything — the worst pain, the happiest days — just to break this repetition. Life is short. I know that. And something in me knows that it doesn't end: it crumbles.
From the very beginning, I knew.
While my "siblings" swam blindly, guided only by impulse, I saw. There was understanding where there shouldn't have been anything. A spark awake in the dark. The womb was not shelter, but ocean: silent, vast. I floated there carrying more than a genetic code. I carried a formless memory.
They would call it madness. Imagination. Biological impossibility.
But the weight of existence was there before the first cellular division. The terror and the ecstasy of already being, before any thought.
I never knew my parents. I only knew they were people involved in international business. At seven years old, they left me in an apartment. Days later, they were declared dead.
Or that's what I chose to accept.
Living in London became automatic. A habit repeated for so long that it lost its origin. Wake up. Walk. Study. Return. Repeat.
I am David Graham. A student at Imperial College London. One of the best universities in the city. Even so, I don't know what I want from the future. That ignorance weighs more than any failure.
London was gray. Not just the sky or the buildings. The air. The days. The thoughts.
I always woke up at 7:13, three minutes after the alarm. The apartment in Kensington smelled of old paint and forgotten furniture. Too big. Too untouched. There were doors I hadn't opened since I was twelve.
"Your parents were important people, David."
The sentence always stopped there.
At Imperial, I was just another face. I studied Mathematics because numbers didn't pretend. They lied with logic.
My classmates had goals. I had silence.
Sometimes I wandered aimlessly through the city. I watched people with simple destinations. Subway. Coffee. Routine.
I merely occupied space.
My parents were dead. Or not. Maybe they had chosen to disappear. Maybe I was a mistake that stayed alive through the universe's oversight.
At night, before sleeping, the question surfaced without emotion:
If I vanish tomorrow, would anyone notice?
Before Imperial, there was Harrow.
An old boarding school, suffocated by tradition. Rich boys pretending courage. I was one of them — without visits, without letters, without holidays. Only bank transfers and a polite notice: "Your case is special."
Some called me Ghost. I heard it. I didn't correct them.
I kept my grades high enough not to cause trouble. Practiced fencing to wear the mask. Avoided bonds.
Charles Winthrop tried to cross that distance once.
Drunk, at my door.
— You're lucky, Graham. No one expects anything from you.
He wouldn't understand that being nothing weighs more than failing.
In my final year, a teacher caught me staring at an old portrait.
— Thinking deeply?
— I was imagining whether he also felt like an impostor.
He laughed. I didn't.
Imperial wasn't a choice. It was an escape.
My dorm room was a gray box overlooking an alley. Perfect.
On the second day, Clyde Atwood entered my life like an impact.
— You know where the chemistry lab is. And you don't look like the type who rats people out.
— Third floor. East wing.
— Then it's settled. We're best friends. — Clyde didn't understand refusals.
He was a walking paradox: physics genius, superstitious, loud, compulsive knitter.
— You're a social black hole — he once said.
— Or maybe I'm just not interesting.
— No. You know things.
He had secrets too. He never asked about mine.
So I managed to wake up.
Sunlight crossed the dorm window when I opened my eyes. The room was intact. Clyde walked in without knocking, as always.
— Well, look at that — he said. — The corpse decided to cooperate with the world today.
I muttered something unintelligible and got up. We washed our faces in silence. Coffee. Always the same.
Clyde watched for a moment, leaning against the sink.
— You make coffee like it's a ritual — he commented. — Same amount, same time. I bet if someone messes with it, you lose it.
— Some things work better when they don't change.
He gave me a sidelong look.
— And why do you hate it so much when something works?
I didn't answer.
We left the dorm shortly after. The sky was low, heavy, promising rain.
The campus was still waking up when Eva came running toward us. Too much energy. Wide smile. A sheet of paper in her hand.
— You're not going to believe this — she said before even stopping. — I got it.
Clyde raised an eyebrow theatrically.
— Got what? Mastered the art of not tripping while running? Because that's already progress.
She rolled her eyes and shoved the paper against his chest.
— I passed. Top grade. Project approved.
Clyde read it quickly, then slowly lifted his head, as if recalculating reality.
— You're kidding.
— I'm not.
He broke into a smile far too wide for the hour.
— I told you. I always told you. The most dangerous mind in this university wasn't mine.
Eva laughed, an easy, contagious laugh. Then she looked at me, expecting something.
I held her gaze for a second longer than necessary.
— Congratulations — I said. — You deserved it.
She seemed to relax at hearing that. As if it were exactly what she needed.
— Thank you — she replied, and then, on impulse, hugged me.
It was quick, but enough to catch me off guard. The smell of cheap soap and coffee.
The real warmth of someone alive. For an instant, the world felt… aligned.
Clyde cleared his throat.
— Okay, enough human contact for today. This is getting weird.
Eva stepped back, laughing.
— You're the one incapable of showing affection without irony.
— I show affection by keeping people alive and away from me — he replied. — It's love in its purest form.
We started walking toward the campus entrance. The ground, still damp from the early-morning rain, reflected the cloudy sky. Gray over gray.
— We should celebrate — Eva said, carefully folding the paper as if it were fragile. — Somewhere decent. Not that horrible snack bar on the corner.
— The place is horrible, but the coffee is honest — Clyde countered.
— No — she insisted. — Something better. Today is important.
I looked at the two of them ahead of me. Clyde gesturing too much, Eva talking with her hands. Something fit there, against all my expectations.
— We can go after classes — I suggested. — A pub, maybe.
Both of them stared at me at the same time.
— Well, look at that — Clyde said, pointing at me. — He made a voluntary social suggestion. Write it down, Eva. It's historic.
— Then it's settled — she concluded, satisfied. — Pub afterward.
We headed toward the station. The wind began to blow colder, lifting the leaves scattered along the sidewalk. The sky darkened little by little, as if preparing for something.
— You're strange today — Eva commented suddenly, slowing her pace to walk beside me.
— Strange how? — I asked.
— Quieter than usual. Which, in your case, is impressive.
I thought about answering. Thought about lying. Thought about saying nothing.
— Just tired — I ended up saying.
She studied me for a moment. Didn't press.
Clyde walked a few steps ahead, his headphones hanging around his neck, tapping his fingers to a rhythm that matched no music at all.
The station rose before us. Stairs going down. Artificial light. The distant sound of trains.
Something inside me contracted.
A sudden chill, with no thermal cause. As if I had forgotten something important — or as if something had just noticed me.
I stopped on the first step.
— Graham? — Eva called, and then I forced a smile.
— Nothing. Let's go.
We went down.
And the world began, slowly, to slip out of place.
The corridors seemed stretched. The station was too clean. Too empty.
The shadows didn't align with the lamps.
I saw the reflection in the dirty glass of a panel: a tall silhouette, long hair, motionless.
I blinked. Nothing.
We entered the carriage, and the train departed.
Then I rested my forehead against the cold window, closed my eyes, and let the motion carry me.
And I fell asleep.