I dreamed a dream 

Written by Nyx

Celia had always believed she would die young. The thought was not dramatic, not shouted into the night, but whispered, rehearsed, folded neatly into her bones. She carried it like a secret curse, a quiet certainty that tomorrow was never hers to claim. 

As a child, Celia never knew how to answer the question, “What would you like to be when you grow up?” She would sit in classrooms where voices rose with certainty—doctor, lawyer, architect, artist—and watch how easily her classmates spoke as if the future were already waiting for them. Their words were bright, their laughter unshaken. Celia tried to match their enthusiasm, tried to smile at the idea of houses they would build together, hospitals they would open, countries they would visit together. She clapped her hands, nodded, even laughed, but her voice always faltered. The joy she echoed was borrowed, hollow, like a song sung in a language she did not understand. 

She learned to live quietly in the shadow of other people’s dreams. She walked through corridors with her head lowered, her steps careful, her laughter thin. She carried herself as if she were temporary, as if she were already fading from the picture. 

There was this one person who always stood next to Celia, A, who dreamed louder than the rest. She spoke of the University of Santo Tomas with a passion that burned through every conversation. She described the Arch of the Centuries as if it were a gate to salvation, the campus as if it were holy

ground. Celia listened, half in awe, half in disbelief, and wondered how someone could want something so fiercely. 

And A did not stop at dreaming. She spent months convincing Celia to go with her, weaving promises and futures out of afternoons. They would spread blankets across Lover’s Lane, sharing cheap snacks and secrets as if the grass itself were consecrated. They would help each other with research papers, their laughter breaking the silence of libraries that felt too heavy to bear alone. They would brave the commute together, shoulders pressed against the exhaustion of crowded trains filled with people who also just wanted to go home, finding solace in the rhythm of shared survival. And when UST became too much—when deadlines cut too deep, when the weight of ambition threatened to crush them—they would be each other’s shoulder, each other’s anchor, each other’s proof that belonging could be carried in the body of a friend. 

Celia wanted to believe in that vision and wanted to believe that if A’s fire was strong enough, maybe she could borrow its warmth. 

Maybe, if she followed, she could learn how to want something too. 

The waiting period stretched like a lifetime. Celia almost forgot about it, burying herself in the rhythm of ordinary days, but A never let her. A spoke of UST constantly, reminding her of deadlines, of entrance exams, of the promise they had made to walk through the Arch together. Those same afternoons became rehearsals of a future they had not yet earned; picnics in Lover’s Lane, whispered plans in crowded jeepneys, laughter spilling across library tables as they helped each other with research. A carried the dream like a lantern, and Celia followed, half‑believing, half‑pretending, but always tethered to its glow. 

When the results were released, Celia opened the website with trembling hands. The word “Congratulations” flashed across her screen. 

A’s did not. 

Celia stared until her vision blurred. The glow of the monitor burned into her eyes, but all she could see was A’s face that shone bright with hope, now dimmed by rejection. The acceptance felt like a crime. She had never wanted UST. She had never wanted this. She had never wanted anything. And yet here she was, standing at the gates of someone else’s dream. 

And A tried, God knows she tried, to be happy for her. She forced a smile that trembled at the edges, spoke words of congratulations that cracked like glass in her throat. She told Celia she deserved it, that she should walk through the Arch proudly, that she should carry the dream as if it were her own. But Celia could see the fracture beneath every syllable, the grief pressed down so hard it left bruises. She knew A too well to be deceived, too intimately to mistake that smile for anything but a damned way of pretending. A’s fire flickered, not extinguished but guttering, trying to light Celia’s path even as it burned her from within. 

Celia carried that smile like a wound. Every step toward UST felt heavier, not because she had earned it, but because A had wanted it enough for both of them.

And fate had chosen wrong. 

The guilt was not gentle. It tore at her like teeth, gnawed at her ribs until she could hardly breathe. She imagined herself as a trespasser, walking halls that did not belong to her, carrying books that should have been in another’s hands, meeting new people that should be hearing another’s voice. Every step across the campus felt stolen. Every lecture was a reminder that she was living in borrowed skin. She thought of A constantly, imagined her footsteps echoing where Celia’s now fell, and the weight of it pressed harder each day. 

But the university had its own way of speaking. The sunlight spilled across the Plaza Mayor in a way that made her pause. The Arch loomed, not as a monument to someone else’s dream, but as a doorway she had walked through herself. The workload pressed against her chest, but it also demanded she rise. The people around her carried ambitions like lanterns, and in their glow, Celia began to see her own shadow stretching forward.