The One Who Stayed in the Dream

1

It started with the dream.

Every night, I saw him. It was always the same. A boy with dark hair and calm eyes, sitting across from me at a café that doesn’t exist. The walls were pale yellow, the windows fogged from the rain outside, and there was always jazz playing softly in the background.

We’d talk for hours about everything and nothing. Books, the moon, why people fall out of love. His name was Evan. I never told him mine. He just seemed to know.

When I woke up, I’d feel the ghost of laughter in my throat, the warmth of his hand still lingering against my skin. It was disorienting falling in love with someone who didn’t exist.

But he felt real. Too real.

After a week, I started looking forward to sleeping. Reality began to blur around the edges classes, friends, the noise of Boston streets, they all felt a little muted compared to him.

In the dream, he’d always ask questions that made me pause.

“Do you ever feel like this isn’t your first life?”

I’d laugh it off. “If this is a dream, why do you keep showing up?”

He’d smile softly. “Maybe I’m the one who’s dreaming of you.”

One night, the dream shifted. The café was closed, the windows boarded up, the rain heavier. He was sitting outside this time, soaked through, staring at me like he already knew what I was going to say.

“I think you’re fading,” I whispered. “You weren’t here last night.”

He nodded. “You’re waking up.”

I frowned. “That’s good, right?”

He looked down. “Not for me.”

Something in his voice cracked like glass splitting from pressure.

When I woke up that morning, my pillow was damp. I didn’t know if it was rain from the dream or my own tears.

2

Days passed. I couldn’t sleep properly anymore. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of him. His voice echoing through static: Don’t forget me.

I started googling his name Evan. I found a face that looked too similar to be a coincidence. A Harvard grad student, studying something called lucid neural patterning. There was a short bio on the website: “Exploring the boundaries of dream architecture.”

My hands went cold.

Was he real? Or was I someone else’s experiment?

I tried to visit the lab listed on the site, but it had been shut down. When I asked around, someone said one of the lead researchers had “vanished” after a test run last year.

That night, when I finally fell asleep, the café was gone completely. Just fog and the faint hum of rain.

Then I heard his voice.

“You weren’t supposed to find me.”

I turned, and there he was, but different. Flickering, like a bad reception.

“Are you alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I stayed.”

He told me the experiment was meant to let people share consciousness in dreams. But something went wrong. His mind never came back.

“I waited for months,” he said softly. “Everyone else woke up. You didn’t.”

My throat tightened. “Because I didn’t want to.”

He smiled sadly. “Then we both chose wrong.”

The fog grew thicker around us. The jazz music returned faintly, like a memory underwater. I could feel the pull of waking the bright, cruel light at the edge of the dream.

He reached out his hand. “You can still leave.”

“And you?” I asked.

He hesitated. “Someone has to stay to keep the door open.”

3

I woke up in my dorm. The lamp on, the world dull and sharp all at once. My phone buzzed. A calendar reminder I don’t remember setting: Harvard: Dream Archive Exhibit, Opening Tonight.

I went.

There, among the installations, was a screen looping snippets of dream footage. In one clip, I saw myself sitting in that café, laughing. Across from me was Evan. The caption below read:

“Subject E. Neural Link Experiment, 2083.”

People around me murmured about “breakthroughs” and “memory architecture.” I just stood there, frozen, watching myself love a ghost.

I stayed until the room emptied.

The screen kept looping. Different angles now. Evan leaning back in his chair, tapping his fingers against the table. Me, another version of me, tucking my hair behind my ear, smiling like nothing had ever hurt me before. Time stamps flickered in the corner of the footage, dates that meant nothing to anyone else. Years ago. Futures ago.

A museum guide eventually approached me.

“Beautiful piece, isn’t it?” she said. “One of our most popular installations.”

I swallowed. “Is he… aware?”

She tilted her head. “Aware?”

“The subject,” I said, gesturing toward Evan. “Does he know people are watching?”

She smiled politely, the way people do when they think you’re confused. “Neural impressions don’t experience awareness in the way we do. They’re preserved states. Echoes.”

Echoes.

I left before she could say anything else.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, afraid that if I closed my eyes, I’d feel the pull again. Afraid that I wouldn’t resist it. My phone buzzed sometime past 3 a.m.

Unknown Reminder: DREAM MAINTENANCE WINDOW 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM

I deleted it. Then, almost immediately, it reappeared.

4

I started dreaming again.

The fog parted slowly, like breath on glass. The café was back, but wrong. The walls were unfinished now, wires exposed, the jazz looping unevenly as if stuck on a scratch. Evan sat where he always did, but he didn’t look up when I approached.

“They’re watching you,” I said.

“I know,” he replied.

There was no surprise in his voice. Only exhaustion.

“I saw the footage,” I said. “They turned us into an exhibit.”

He nodded. “They call it preservation.”

“What do you call it?”

He finally met my eyes. “A cage with good lighting.”

The café flickered. For a moment, the walls disappeared entirely, replaced by darkness threaded with code.

“They’re stabilizing the archive,” he said. “That’s why you can still find me. Once it’s complete, I won’t be able to reach you anymore.”

My chest tightened. “Then come with me.”

He laughed softly. “You still don’t understand.”

“I do,” I said. “I didn’t wake up because I didn’t want to. I stayed because this” I gestured between us “felt real.”

“It was real,” he said gently. “That’s the problem.”

The rain grew louder. The dream began to thin at the edges.

“If you stay again,” he said, “you won’t wake up at all. Not this time.”

I reached for his hand. He didn’t pull away.

“Then let me be the one who stays,” I said. “Let me keep the door open.”

His expression broke. “I already made that choice so you wouldn’t have to.”

5

I woke up screaming.

My dorm room was flooded with morning light. My phone buzzed again.

Harvard: Dream Archive Exhibit Extended Indefinitely

I didn’t go to class. Instead, I went back to the museum.

This time, I watched carefully.

The footage had changed.

In the café scene, Evan was still there, but the seat across from him was empty. He looked older somehow, less solid. His eyes kept drifting toward the space where I should have been.

A new caption scrolled beneath the screen:

Subject E: Neural Anchor Active

Secondary Subject: Disconnected

My knees gave out. I sat on the floor as people stepped around me, murmuring about “narrative loss” and “emergent absence.”

That night, for the first time since the dreams began, I slept without falling through.

I started coming to the museum every week. Sometimes every day. The footage never changed again. Evan stayed in the café, waiting. And I stayed awake, carrying the weight of a love that only existed because I chose not to return it.

Somewhere between sleeping and waking, a door remains open.

But I am no longer the one inside.