Dreamed You, Found You

Chapter 8 ## The Color That Shouldn't Be There

Ratna found her at lunch again.

This time, Sari wasn't staring into cold coffee. She was writing in her notebook, hunched over the pages like a student cramming for an exam, her pen moving fast. She didn't look up when Ratna sat down across from her.

"You're doing it again."

Sari's pen stopped. "Doing what?"

"Being weird." Ratna set down her tray—rice, fried chicken, a small bowl of chili sauce—and leaned forward. "What are you writing?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing doesn't take that much concentration."

Sari closed the notebook and tucked it into her bag. "Lesson plans."

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm a fine liar. You're just nosy."

Ratna grinned. She had known Sari since they were children, had watched her go to university in America and come back with an accent that faded after six months and a stack of books about education reform. She knew when Sari was hiding something.

"Fine," Ratna said, tearing a piece of chicken with her fingers. "Don't tell me. But you should eat."

Sari looked down at her own tray. She had taken rice and vegetables, but she hadn't touched either. The food sat there, growing cold, just like the coffee yesterday.

"I've been having dreams," she said.

Ratna chewed. "Everyone has dreams."

"Not like these."

"Bad dreams?"

"No." Sari paused, searching for words. "Not bad. Just... vivid. Real. I wake up and I can remember everything. The temperature. The light. The way the air feels."

Ratna swallowed. "That sounds exhausting."

"It's not exhausting. It's—" Sari stopped herself. She had almost said *wonderful*. She had almost said *the only thing I look forward to*. "It's confusing."

Ratna set down her chicken and wiped her fingers on a napkin. She looked at Sari the way she looked at patients who were describing symptoms that didn't quite add up—curious, concerned, not yet alarmed.

"Tell me about them," Ratna said.

Sari looked down at her cold rice. "There's a city. Grey. Tall buildings. I've never been there, but in the dream, it's familiar. And there's a man."

Ratna's eyebrows rose. "A man?"

"I can't see his face. But he's there. Every night. Just... standing there. Watching."

"And you talk to him?"

"I try. The words don't come out right. Or I can't hear him. It's like there's something between us, something I can't see or touch, but it's there, keeping us apart."

Ratna was quiet for a moment. Then she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.

"You're in love with him," she said.

Sari's face went hot. "I don't even know him."

"You're in love with the idea of him. Same thing."

"It's not the same thing."

"You dream about him every night. You write about him in that notebook. You're not eating, you're not sleeping properly, and you just told me you remember every detail of the dream when you wake up." Ratna ticked off each point on her fingers. "That's not confusion. That's obsession."

Sari wanted to argue. She wanted to say that it wasn't obsession, it was curiosity, it was wonder, it was the feeling of standing at the edge of something vast and unknown and wanting to step forward.

But Ratna wasn't wrong.

Not entirely.

"What if he's real?" Sari asked.

Ratna stared at her. "What?"

"What if he's not just a dream? What if he's a real person, somewhere, dreaming the same dreams?"

"That's not how dreams work."

"How do you know?"

"Because—" Ratna stopped. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Because that's not how anything works. You don't just share dreams with strangers. That's not a thing."

"It could be a thing."

"It's not a thing."

"You don't know that."

Ratna threw up her hands. "Fine. I don't know that. But I know you, and I know you're not sleeping, and I know you're losing weight, and I know you're going to make yourself sick if you keep this up."

Sari picked up her fork and pushed rice around her plate. "I'm fine."

"You said that already."

"Because it's true."

Ratna sighed. She reached across the table and put her hand over Sari's, stilling the fork.

"I'm not trying to be difficult," Ratna said, her voice softer now. "I'm just worried about you. You've been different lately. Distant. Like part of you is somewhere else."

Sari looked at their hands—Ratna's darker, wider, the hands of someone who lifted patients and carried boxes of supplies. She thought about the grey city, about the man with the blue collar, about the way her heart raced when she saw him.

"You're right," Sari said. "Part of me is somewhere else."

Ratna waited.

"But I don't know if that's a bad thing."

Ratna withdrew her hand and picked up her chicken again. "You're impossible."

"I know."

"Eat your rice."

Sari ate her rice.

---

That afternoon, Sari stood at the window of her classroom while the children packed their bags. The sun was low, casting long shadows across the schoolyard. In the distance, a line of palm trees swayed against the orange sky.

She thought about Ratna's words.

*You're in love with the idea of him.*

Maybe that was true. She didn't know him. She didn't know his name, his voice, the shape of his face. She knew nothing about him except that he existed in her dreams and that his presence made her feel less alone.

But that wasn't nothing.

That was everything.

She touched her collar, where his blue had been.

Then she turned back to her students and began passing out homework.