October 17, 2025

We were lining up for a Genshin Impact “pre-roll” event in one of the classrooms on campus. However the event wasn’t about getting early access to upcoming content; we were here to collectively dream about the new banner (literally). It was this latter aspect that interested me most, I didn’t even play the game nor have it installed. I thought to myself that if I wasn’t into what was going on I could just voluntarily wake up.

The person who was originally in charge of leading the event was sick so we had a substitute chaperoning us today. We were led into the room and people immediately started breaking up into pods. Did the dream already start? I was unsure. What disappointed me was that it seemed people quickly settled into going about as if it were any normal day inside of the dream.

I was inadvertently reminded of a group project that was due in two weeks while looking around the tables. The assignment was to submit a proposal for redeveloping an area of the city. One of the screens I passed by had a concept design and mockup for a new playground. I hadn’t even found any group members yet.