~~ "But wishes are only granted in fairy tales." ~~

 

“ZAEL YOU DUMB GET THE UP!” someone yelled.

I moaned and tried to sit up, only to fall back onto the bed again with a splitting headache. When I slowly sat up again, I opened my eyes and a bright light invaded my pupils. I flinched, but then got a better sense of where I was. I was in a dorm room. A college dorm room. I looked down and saw Anna fuming at me, fully ready for the day in a flowery dress and a gray blazer. Her hair was half-up and she wore mascara and pink lipstick.

“W-W-Where am I?” I asked.

Anna huffed. “In. Our. Dorm. It is the first day of college and you slept for an extra two hours! I went to a morning class and came back to find you still sleeping!!! What were you even dreaming about?!”

It was… a dream?

I tried to think but my mind was clouded from sleep. “Wait… what about…. what about you and Jimin?”

“Jimin? Who the heck is Jimin?” Anna asked.

No.

“Jimin, your boyfriend? And then Jungkook, my boyfriend?” I asked.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

No.

“ And what about Yoongi? And Hoseok? And the coffee shop?!”I almost screamed.

“Zael, you must have had a long, drawn-out dream. It has obviously gotten you pretty shaken up. But listen, we are in the real world. You have to go to class.”

No.

Tears brimmed my eyes and I shook my head in denial. “No. No- this is a dream.”

“No. It’s not.”

I shook my head as tears started streaming down my face. “But it can’t be. It.. It c-can’t be!”

I brought my knees up to my chest and hug my head down low. Anna tried to offer comforting words, but none of them worked. It was all a dream. Everything. My whole trip to South Korea was a dream. I had no boyfriend, Anna had no boyfriend, my dad was actually dead. I couldn’t believe it.

Then the faint laughs that I kept hearing… it was Anna laughing at me sleeping the whole time.

I let out a sob. “It was so real, Anna. It was so real.”

Anna crawled into bed with me and hugged me, rocking me back and forth even though she was smaller than me. I sat crying for another ten minutes, realizing that almost everything that made me happy was gone. Then, as I dried my tears, I realized that not everything was gone. Anna was still there, my mom and stepdad and brother were still there, and my friend Joseph was still there.

It is going to be okay.

With another wipe to my eye, I sniffled and then started getting ready for the day. I felt Anna eyeing me closely, obviously wanting to know what had happened in my dream. I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was too personal. It was too… heartbreaking.

“So, when is our next class?” I called from inside the closet.

“In ten minutes,” Anna sighed.

“What?!”

~~~

I walked out of the social science building, heading for my third class of the day, Biology. I had promised Anna that I would meet her before we went in, so we could have seats next to each other. As I hoisted my backpack up and skipped to the next song on my playlist, I turned a corner on the path and ran into someone going the opposite way.

“Oops, sorry,” I said, half-dazed.

“Fine,” he said, not stopping to turn to look at me.

I got just enough of a glimpse, however, to reason that he looked a lot like… Yoongi. I whipped my head around and saw his reddish-brown hair fade into the distance. Everything about him screamed Yoongi. His face- although I only saw the side of it- his size, his gait…

I shook my head in disbelief. No, Zael. It was all a dream. It was all fake.

I tried to clear my mind and keep on walking. When I saw Anna come into view, I gave her a slight wave as she skipped my way. She met me with a nervous smile which I presumed to mean she thought college was amazing and scary at the same time.

“Ready for Biology?” she asked.

“Hm… I guess,” I replied meekly. I was never a huge fan of Biology, but after core classes were over I knew that I could move onto classes that I personally preferred.

Anna laughed at me and tugged at my arm. We walked into the building and found the room number. As we sat in two seats next to a small window, I began to think back to the dream. I thought about Yoongi and how I had, in a way, betrayed him. I was almost certain the the guy I ran into earlier was him. I wondered why he went to the same college, and if I had ever seen him around before. Then, my mind wandered to Jimin,