"Mom!" Lucy shouted as she entered her apartment, "Mom, are you here!?" but there was no response. She pulled out her phone but no notification was present. Running to her mother's room, she was only greeted by the mess and emptiness that is ever-present.

She ran to all the windows to ensure they were locked and shut their blinds. After making sure the front door was also locked, she ran to her room. locked its door and closed its curtain. These actions did little to help calm her nerves but it was all she could do as confusion, fear, and anxiety were within her. The only option left was to crawl in between the sheets of her bed.

"I may never leave this house ever again," she said to herself as horrific thoughts of what could have happened swam in her head. "How could I be so stupid? How could I not know that it was a stranger?" She covered her face with both her hands as the tears seeped between her fingers.

The jingle from her phone gave her a spook but she immediately uncovered herself and reached for her bag. Her anxiety had made way for anger as she saw Jenny's name with the preview message 'How'd it go?'

She flung the phone onto the carpet below, stomped it a few times, and kicked it toward the wall. Her breath was heavy, sweat was now accompanying her tears, and her hands were tight fists.

"This is all your fault, Jenny! You and your stupid ideas! You could've gotten me killed!" She wiped her eyes before returning to the safety of her bed. "I should have never talked to him. I should have never done this. He took advantage of me. I don't know how he found out about me but I should've known better. How? How did he find out about my dreams? I never told anyone. Nobody knows about it. How did he find out?"

Soon, her fixation was on figuring out how a stranger knew about her dreams, how he could have discovered the mysterious man within them, figured out that she played the role of a young girl in love with that man, and all the details of the events that transpired in her mind to perfection.

Rationality had calmed her down and she sat straight up. "No, it's impossible. Not even my parents know. My former friends don't know. Nobody knows. Only he knew."

Far from comfort, this revelation only made her even more unsure and amplified the terror she was going through. "What is going on? Am I going insane?" She got off her bed and took back her phone, now with newly added scratches and a noticeable crack on the screen. With much hesitation, she unlocked the phone and opened the chat. The happy memories of her nights indulging in conversation about the mysterious world they lived in during their slumber rushed toward her. She recalled the smiles she had whenever she chatted with him and the warm feeling that she would receive after they signed off.

The phone slips from her trembling hands. Her eyes refused to close but she forced them in order to step into the darkness. And as before, there he was waiting for her, reaching out his arm, and inviting her.'

Her eyelids open as far as they could and with a great gasp, she falls backward on her bed. "No... NO!"

--

"Sir," said the security guard, which snapped Johan out of his stupor. "You've been sitting here for hours. Do you have any business being in this train station?"

"Oh... no. I'm sorry. I was just... I'll be taking my leave now."

As he headed out of the train platform, his mind was racing with convoluted thoughts. 'This situation can't be real. This has to be some kind of weird illusion. I mean... that must've been someone else. It had to. What are the odds? The same girl as before? Impossible!' As his mind continued to churn all sorts of complex and wild ideas in some faint attempt to rationalize everything he has gone through, one particular thought stood out among the rest. 'Reincarnation? Ridiculous. I was a fool to have that idea affect me. This is all your fault, Edwin. Why did you have to put that idea in my head? It caused me to meet up with a kid!' And once again, the scene of him rescuing that girl who almost fell into the pond on that faithful day, whom he gazed into her eyes, and whose face imprinted itself unto his memories flashed before him. "It's not her!" he shouted, catching the attention of those around him. Feeling embarrassed, he quietly strode over to his car.

Upon closing the door, "This is madness! There has to be a logical explanation for all of this. I mean, I was never meant to see her again. And even if I did, how did we end up chatting?" Another pause as his mind conjured up images of the many nights he would have in front of his phone, laughing at the silly things Lucy had told him, and the relief he felt when the conversations would come to an end. The emotions that ran through him on those nights rekindled, giving him a positive charge that was very uncomfortable for him to bear at the moment.

"What was I thinking? I was a fool. I knew this was a bad idea to fall in love with a stranger. And now... I'm paying the price." He gripped his steering wheel tightly. "I was a fool to fall in love. In fact, I can't fall in love according to everyone. This isn't love, right? This isn't right at all. There's no way."

As he continues to beat himself up, the pleasant scenes of his conversations with Lucy that would go through the night play in his head. "But... she knows about my dreams. I never told anyone before except on that blog. I only posted that one dream but she guessed every other instance correctly. There's no way she could have known about them unless..." He let go of the steering wheel in order to recline his seat. "I don't get it. None of this makes any sense. If we are reincarnated, then why is she so young. I must be a decade older than her. Why such a large gap in our ages? The only possible explanation I can think of is... the man in my dreams. Could it be that... he fell in love with someone so young?"