I used to think dreams were just subconscious thoughts that occurred in our sleep. Scattered images, strange symbols, things your mind stitched together from the noise of the day. But lately, my dreams have been too vivid, too familiar. They don't feel like illusions.
This started when I saw him in my dreams.
I had a dream. Vivid, strange, too real for comfort. In it, I saw a boy I had never met before. His face was clear, not the usual blur of dream people. His eyes held something quiet, something unreadable. And for a second, it felt like he knew me.
Like I was someone he'd been searching for.
When I woke up, I tried to brush it off. One weird dream. Nothing more.
Until he walked into our classroom the very next day. I thought I was losing my mind.
Same face. Same eyes. Same quiet intensity. And the same letter "A" keychain dangling from his bag, the one I'd seen swinging in that dream, catching the light like a secret trying to be noticed.
I didn't even know his name yet. But I knew it was him.
I tried to brush it off. I thought it was a one-time thing. A bizarre overlap of dream and reality. A glitch in my imagination.
Just a coincidence.
But then I started seeing him again in my dreams.
The boy with quiet eyes and a voice that always sounds like an echo.
Not just fleeting images, him. His voice, the way he looked at me, the way he smiled like he carried both secrets and sorrows.
In my dreams, he was warm, light in a dark tunnel. The version sitting across the classroom? He was cold and distant. Guarded, like he had built walls even the sun couldn't climb over. With unreadable expression that didn't belong to the boy I had seen under stars and oceans of memory.
And I couldn't stop wondering.
Why did both versions feel real… and yet nothing like each other?
Why did I keep dreaming about him? Was there a reason I was dreaming of him?