I ran into my Japanese teacher and she asked me how I had been. I struggled to respond as I sought a way to reply to her in Japanese but no words came out of my mouth. We awkwardly switched to Mandarin which neither of us were entirely fluent in instead of English for some reason which did not help the situation. I later told her in English that I was learning Spanish which was why I was getting everything mixed up in my mind.

I was sitting at a table with a group of people engaged in a conversation. When it came my turn to speak, what came out was a question that wasn’t explicitly directed at anyone. “Why do you never make eye-contact?” someone asked. The conversation quickly switched to how everyone else also noticed that I never make eye-contact when talking to them.

I was picking up two large boxes that were on the street. Knowing that these were my birthday presents, I tried to wrap them without looking as to not ruin the surprise later. They were from my mother and aunt. After I had finished sticking on the last strip of packing tape, I asked if I still needed an invitation to my own birthday party and it turned out that I did.

“I think I have found my purpose” the middle-aged man said wearily. A few days ago he tried his hand at the piano in the bar where he usually worked. He wasn’t a performer but seeing his friend in the crowd dance to his music gave him life. He didn’t seem to notice how he fumbled some of the notes and missed some of the beats but it was glaringly noticeable to the owner when he faltered. “And then it was all nothing” he said. He recounted how he walked out, got into his car and drove to an old mansion by the lake. His disappearance was unnoticed for three days until he showed up back at his house and family soaked from head to toe. He spent the next few days trying to convince his boss that he didn’t try to commit suicide that day as he showed him the direct route he drove in his car. It was undeniable however as he had a record of paying a fee that could’ve only meant that he had gone to the mansion days before.

We were walking in a line on the platform above the perimeter of the displayed pieces in a museum. Several of the works were missing as we looked down at the glass cases with unaccompanied labels. Someone asked if we knew who had reported their artwork as missing and I replied that their name started with a “Ts” and their last name with a “V”.

I was late to our room assignment meeting as I entered the house and had to pick from a selection of three potential roommates. On each person’s door was a blue bar which lit up, indicating that they were already taken. I walked into the room at the end of the hall belonging to someone by the name of “Brandon”. There was a large bed in the middle of the room with a row of desk space along the two walls on the side. On the desks there was a total of four desktop computers and I wondered what one person could possibly be doing with so many. Running a server, perhaps? A large window was on the left.

I was being led to the docks to meet numerous relatives of my friend so that they could judge and “approve” of me. I wasn’t sure what was happening in the moment but apparently I was approved and and I sat down. My father messaged to our group chat on LINE to express his dismay that there were now two “xanders” on his contact list.

I was sitting at the dinner table with a theremin and laptop in front of me. People were preparing food in the kitchen while I was playing with the instrument. I was surprised how easy it was to play whatever I wanted as I tried to produce various game OSTs. Someone walked in and asked me what I was doing, took the laptop from me and started writing an e-mail. I couldn’t make anymore sound.

We were sitting in a small chapel and someone at the front was going to present their final performance. “I"m slightly inebriated” they admitted prior to commencing. They started by reading the first line of a poem and handed it to someone in the front row. Without any direction, people started standing and lining up to read one line before passing it on.

We walked into the classroom on the top floor while talking about games from our childhood. There was a storm brewing outside the window. I mentioned how I reminisced the days of custom games in Starcraft and the flexibility of its map editor.