Every few months or years, I find myself returning to the same place in my dreams. It’s not a specific location in the real world, but more like a strange nexus — a café, a hacker’s den, and an entrance to something much larger all at once.
The place is always at the edge of my city, or at least that’s how it feels — remote, yet oddly familiar. When I step inside, I’m greeted by a dimly lit room with an irregular layout. The air buzzes with an energy that’s hard to describe. A radio in the corner crackles to life, cycling between music and snippets of hacking news. Sometimes, people use it to talk to one another, like an old-school intercom system.
The first time I tuned in without responding, I got «kicked» for eavesdropping, but I explained myself and was allowed back. That moment set the tone — this place operates on its own strange rules.
There are four doors in the room:
The first door is the entrance. It’s how I came in, though I’m not sure if it’s always the same from dream to dream.
The second door leads to a restaurant. This space is brighter, almost ordinary, filled with «normal» people who seem unaware of the room I came from. I chatted with some of them briefly, though what we discussed is blurry now. It felt like stepping into another world entirely — a layer of the dream that wasn’t meant to intersect with the base.
After returning, I met someone from the radio. They were eccentric, bordering on rude, but oddly likable — chaotic in the way that makes you curious about what they’ll do next. They didn’t introduce themselves, but they seemed to be in charge. ██████████████████████████████████.
They led me through the third door, which opened into a short, crumbling hallway. Dust hung in the air, and the walls looked ready to collapse. There was a single locked door at the end. The stranger gestured for me to open it, and somehow, I already had the key.
When I turned the lock and stepped inside, a rush of recognition hit me. This was my room — given to me years ago in another dream. It was small, windowless, and painted a garish yellow that somehow felt comforting. The furniture was sparse — a TV, a few worn pieces I couldn’t fully make out — but it felt like mine.
The stranger told me to settle in and then disappeared.
The fourth door leads to the "exit". But the exit isn’t an escape; it’s a gateway to something vast. Walking through it, I entered a surreal, dreamlike expanse — something like the Nexus from Yume 2kki. The landscape was alive with people and impossible architecture. It felt like a game, though I knew it wasn’t purely fiction. Somehow, this dreamworld was tied to reality, and the stranger who guided me was its admin.
Later, I tried to return to my room, but the hallway had transformed into an open, dizzying expanse of platforms. The pillars holding them up were fragile, crumbling under my feet as I ran. At the far end, I spotted my door, barely holding its place in this impossible void. I ran faster, the platforms breaking apart behind me, and threw myself through the door just before everything collapsed.
Inside, my room was untouched — bright yellow walls and that same sense of worn familiarity. It felt like a haven.
What happened after is harder to recall — fragments of events, conversations, and emotions. I don’t know when I’ll return to this place, but I hope it won’t be long.
Watched Clannad: After Story for the whole day. Literally cried for multiple hours. While this season left much larger emotional impact on me, in the end I think I liked first season more, because this one didn’t have much going on for most of the first half. It was really uncomfortable and a little boring to just see him work. I don’t want to ever work. I hope I will never work and never have to spend most of my life doing something I don’t want to do.
