"Haruto! Get up or you'll be late!"
The voice pierced through the haze like sunlight through storm clouds, sharp and
suddenly. My eyes flew open. For a moment, I didn't know where I was. The ceiling above me wasn't the school observatory's — no stars, no flickering lights.
It was… my ceiling.
White. Plain. Familiar.
I blinked. My body felt heavy, like it had just returned from somewhere far away. My blanket — warm, lumpy, tucked under my chin — was the same one I'd had since middle school. My room looked untouched. Posters still lined the walls, my alarm
The clock blinked 6:58 AM in red digits, and my desk was stacked with unopened textbooks.
None of this made sense.
My heart raced as I sat up slowly. My fingers instinctively reached for something at my chest — a pendant.
Gone.
I stared at my hand. Empty.
The feather. Yumiko's matching pendant. The one she held the night we kissed under the stars.
It was gone.
The knock on my door came again, gentler this time. "Haruto," my mom's voice called, "come on, breakfast is ready. You don't want to be late for your first day of high school, right?"
First day?
I stood up too fast, stumbling. I rushed to the window, pulling aside the curtain.
Everything looked… normal. Not the world I had just been in. Not the one where I had memories of rooftop benches, school trips, haunted houses, campfires, and gentle rain. The world outside was bright, ordinary — like nothing had ever happened.
My mom's footsteps retreated. I stood there, frozen, still half in a dream I could feel slipping away.
No observatory.
No silver sky.
No Yumiko.
But it felt so real.
The stars, the laughter, her hand in mine. The soft weight of the blanket we shared.
The nervous flutter of her voice when she said she was falling for me.
I clutched my head. It was too much. Too vivid. Too alive to be nothing but a dream.
As I washed up and changed into the stiff, neatly ironed school uniform, I moved like a ghost. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like myself, but wrong — like someone had hit reset on me while I wasn't looking.
I reached again for the pendant. Still nothing.
Downstairs, breakfast was on the table — miso soup, toast, eggs. My dad scrolled through his phone while my mom hummed over the sink.
"Excited for your first day?" she asked,
turning around.
I nodded slowly. "I guess."
They didn't notice the trembling in my fingers. Or the way I kept glancing at the clock like I was late for something more important than school.
The walk to school felt unfamiliar.
Which made no sense — I'd done this route hundreds of times.
But now… every turn felt like I'd already seen it through someone else's eyes. I kept expecting to hear footsteps beside me. A teasing voice. A sudden breeze catching long black hair.
But there was nothing.
Just silence, broken by the occasional chirp of a crow or the low hum of cars in the distance.
I passed a small park. My feet slowed.
In the dream — if that's what it was — wasn't this where Yumiko told me about her old home? Or maybe it was near here that we watched the sunset during the trip.
I shook my head. No. That was a dream.
But the ache in my chest didn't feel imaginary.
At school, I was greeted with the usual noise of new beginnings — lockers slamming, first-year students chattering nervously, teachers barking instructions. My name was called roll. I was directed to my class.
Room 1-B.
A new start.
Or… a restart?
The room looked clean and bright; windows open to the breeze. I took the desk by the window, automatically. It felt right. Like that was always my seat.
I looked to the seat beside me.
Empty.
The teacher walked in, and class began. Names were called. Faces were introduced. And then, about fifteen minutes in, the classroom door slid open.
My heart nearly stopped.
A girl stepped in, bowing quickly. "Sorry I'm late."
She had long black hair.
I held my breath.
But when she looked up… it wasn't her.
Not Yumiko.
I deflated slowly, the anticipation burning into embarrassment. What was I expecting? That a dream girl would walk back into my life just because I wanted her to?
I bit my lip and stared out the window.
Clouds drifted lazily across the blue. The sky felt... empty without stars.
Lunchtime came.
I didn't talk much. I just ate slowly, robotically, while the other students chatted around me.
"Hey," someone asked, "you, okay?"
I nodded. "Just… didn't sleep well."
It wasn't a lie.
Inside, my mind kept looping — all the moments I thought I'd lived. Every tiny
detail, still vivid. The smell of the lake. The sound of her laugh. The feel of her fingers brushing mine.
You don't dream things like that. Not with that much depth. That much feeling.
And yet, here I was.
After school, I wandered.
I didn't want to go home. Not yet.
I passed by the old record store, the one where Yumiko had dragged me in just to look at weird jazz vinyl's. But now, it looked dusty, half-closed. Like it hadn't seen life in months.
I walked to the riverside. The same bench from our rain-soaked walk. But this time, no puddles. No soft confessions. Just the wind and the soft rush of water.
Was I going mad?
Was I mourning someone who never existed?
That night, I stood in my room holding a pen I didn't remember buying. It had feathers printed on it.
Coincidence?
I stared at it for a long time before opening a blank page in my journal.
I wrote her name.
Yumiko.
The ink bled into the paper. My hand trembled.
"Was it all a dream?"
I wrote.
"If it was..., why does it still hurt like this?"
I lay awake for hours.
Wondering.
Wishing.
Waiting.
And as I drifted into sleep, the last thing I thought was this:
Maybe dreams don't vanish.
Maybe they wait — in the quiet spaces between seconds. In the spaces between raindrops. In the light between stars.
Waiting… to become real.