Suddenly, in a stream of memories emerging all at once, Beth remembered Bianca's words that she wrote on her Magical project. "I was once depressed, then this power came to me. I envisioned myself as my idealized self but unexpectedly became that person".

Her life was not over. However, she didn't feel herself and couldn't distinguish where she was.

Was that what you said, Bianca?

She picked up Bianca's words and reflected upon them, drawing thoughts and emotions that she had buried deep in her heart.

If life had a second chance, what would I want? What would I wish to become a better version of myself?

As Beth asked herself this question, she felt as if she was taken back to the care-free summers that she spent as a young child. The happy and awkward child that always laughed and cried like nobody was watching came back to her again. Always wearing a pair of twin tails, the child chased butterflies and ran barefoot in the meadows with her friends. While her friends complained about how butterflies got away so easily from their grasp, her heart stopped a beat when she caught the exquisite details of the butterfly's paper-like wing as the butterfly temporarily landed on the nearby flower. The butterfly was so fragile and tiny in comparison to her, yet she saw it as her equal.

When I was five, I thought I wanted to be a princess that helps people with her pals, a circus performer who can speak animal languages, or a dancer that builds a home underwater. There were so much beauty and wonder in the world that I wished to explore.

As time went by, the imaginative child found a new love. Whenever she went to the shopping mall, her eyes couldn't stop being fixed on the fancy outfits of the mannequins in each store's windows. Meanwhile, a difficult and lonely road came in front of her. With school and life getting in the way, she watched friends who used to play and dream with her left. She heard people tell her that she doesn't need to be sensitive about friends leaving. Her newfound fashion design dream was also stagnant. Would there be no place for her in the world? Would her life be unfulfilling if she went after a dream that seemed too impractical for others?

Maybe all I wanted now is to become a more capable and creative person who can put all those possibilities into reality like Jules, Simone, and Bianca.

I want to create a way to get out, to have a better future!

As Beth grasped onto her thoughts, she started feeling herself once again. Her smell, her vision, her senses...they have all come back. She thought about her better future. Amid warm, fuzzy lights, she saw images of her vibrant high school life, her excited cries at the graduation ceremony, her future first day at Lisette Arts, and her first independent fashion show after adulthood. The grown-up Beth in front of her had her identical curly blonde hair, but longer. Her bright green eyes peacefully reflected the splendid light sparks like a quiet koi pond. Golden glitters were pouring down her dress like gentle waves. Unlike the occasionally sullen teenage Beth, adult Beth was charming and had a confident smile.

Oh! That person is what I see myself being in the future. Am I looking at my idealized self just like Bianca did?

The lovely young adult walked toward Beth and handed her a bracelet.

"Don't be afraid. You have me here. If you ever need me, just call me with this bracelet. Then, you can use your power."

Beth nodded and took the bracelet with herself. It was golden with diamond decorations and floral pattern engravings.

"Follow me."

A strong beam of white light suddenly illuminated her way out of the colorful space, with the person gradually vanishing in the light. Hearing what the person had said, Beth run towards the light trying to find the person's whereabouts.

But then, just as Beth stepped into the white light, she could no longer see that person.

She opened her eyes and found out that golden rays greeted her. The color blobs have stopped attacking her. The bracelet was hanging just on her wrist. She looked down at herself and found out that she was wearing a beautiful white dress with ribbons, flower decorations, and diamonds. She also had a pair of short boots with golden glitter. A sudden realization came to her when she double-checked the dress. Something about it felt familiar as if it resembles an old design she created in middle school. The ribbons on the dress, the round-shaped flowers...those were elements that she often used as a middle-schooler.

Despite that, she didn't instantly remember where she made her design. She stood up and looked at herself in awe. Then, she touched her dress, and it felt so real.

What is this, what is this? WHAT IS THIS?? Wait...this looks similar to a magical girl drawing I produced years ago.

Does that mean...

"I have become magical as the girl Bianca wrote in her portfolio?!!!!"

Beth felt her heart drop from shivering at her thought. Her hands couldn't help but shake as she stared down at her new boots.

"No, it can't be...that was just in her portfolio, right? Are these transformations and real-life monsters things Bianca ACTUALLY experienced?!"

Just when she doubted herself, a blob of messy shadow approached her and fogged her vision. They were cracking weird noises beside her and trying to suck her hair in their giant mouths. She instinctively knew that they had come to swallow her up again.

NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOO!!

Out of fear, she made the quickest action possible to protect herself--punching her fist towards the "monsters." while imagining a shield. A round shield appeared in her hand out of her expectation. Seeing its appearance, she subconsciously took in her breath and gasped.

"A shield!"

Beth gripped the back of the shield more tightly and pulled it closer to her. It felt firm, yet it was not very heavy. Looking around, Beth saw herself being surrounded by a thin transparent globe as well. It was like a little shelter that kept her safe. As the blobs tried to reach her, they were instantly blocked by the shield and the globe. Beth tilted forward and the shield surprised her again. It suddenly changed into a large pen.

With the large pen in her hand, Beth drew lines and dots in the air. They turned into large chunks of colors and shapes and smashed into the blobs. Some of them started disappearing, and the noises began dying down.

If my lines and dots could turn into shapes, could I draw something that turns into real-life objects?

With this thought in mind, Beth doodled a color spray in the air. The doodle did become a real color spray. She rushed toward, grabbed the color spray, and sprayed them on the messy color blobs, including the distorted "Julianna" and "Simone." A mist of blue, green, red, pink, and yellow danced around her like a levitating thin veil. The color blobs started to fade away and disperse in the air. Finally, she pointed the pen tip to the blobs, and a sharp tip landed on the rest of them. Red and black started exploding from the blobs, then, everything disappeared.

The hallway was empty again.

"Is this a dream?" She felt her dress again. "But what if it was real? What's happening to me?"

Her cellphone chimed again. It was a call from her host parents.

She decided to put her giant pen aside and pick up the phone, anxiously making up a legitimate reason why she had been missing for so long. "I am so sorry that I didn't return your phone calls...I was out with friends tonight, and we were in a movie just now. I will return home soon and make sure that this won't happen again. I promise!" Then she ended the call abruptly since it was more important for her to find an actual way out. That was when she realized again that the building was locked.

However, this time Beth had a plan. She picked up her giant pen to draw a key and inserted it into the keyhole. Three, two, one...she held her breath. In front of her, the door cracked open. Fresh air entered the building through the crack.

As she grabbed her backpack and headed out, her entire outfit and giant pen suddenly disappeared, as if nothing had happened. She stood at the crossroads on the busy Laurel street, looking around streams of passing people, in her normal attire again.

There was one exception — her bracelet didn't disappear, and fit her wrist perfectly.

✨

Back at home, Beth finished homework in a hurry and went to bed a little bit early than usual. All those new monsters took a toll on her spirit. After closing the lights, she stared at the dim ceiling while fiddling with her bracelet.

Why did magic happen to me? Would the monsters come again? It was only before the start of the semester that Owen and Nora told her about those monsters Laurel students experienced. The students who developed magic should be very stressed, according to them. Bianca wrote on her website that her magic came to her when she was at a particularly low point of depression. However, Beth couldn't recall herself feeling especially overwhelmed recently. Surely she struggled to cope with the new workload at Laurel and felt inadequate in comparison to her friends, yet she couldn't pinpoint the exact reason why magic happened to her exactly after she was accidentally locked in school.

Was it because I felt I was a burden to my friends after being left alone in the art room?

Having no current evidence finding out the reason for the magic, Beth drifted to think about her runway project, the cloud dress that couldn't be tailored to her and Julianna's expectations. A sudden idea struck her as imageries of the color blobs flashed again in front of her eyes. All those color blobs had tangible yet flexible organic forms. What if she constructed some forms with silk and decorate them on the dress?

With the new ideas in mind, her thoughts jumped to the costume she wore and the weapon she used. In all those young adult novels and comics that she read before, forms of magic were often related to the magician's personality and desires. Bianca had a long aquamarine dress and sword according to her portfolio. Sword is a symbol of power that connotes protection and justice. Did Bianca use courage to construct a better life? Beth herself had a giant pen that could make different shapes and objects come into reality. Her transformation attire was the white dress with elements she recalled drawing a lot in middle school. She used to doodle a lot of costume designs on pieces of paper, or in her journal. However, since she never organized old drawings much, a lot of them left at home were probably lost, or left in the trash.

I guess mom probably threw a lot of my drawings away. She never understood why they were important to me.

She did tear up my drawing, after all.

✨

The incident happened in her first year of middle school, on the day when Madison received a concerned mail about her school performance. At the time, Beth was at her table, doodling under her textbooks in secret.

"What are you doing here?" Madison couldn't help but kick open the door to Beth's room. "Answer me!"

"I am doing homework!" Beth kicked her chair to the side and stared straight into Madison. "Why are you angry at me all of a sudden? What's happening!"

"You are NOT doing your homework!" Madison walked toward and grabbed Beth by her sweater. "All you do is draw nonsense, you spoiled, selfish brat!"

She slapped the mail on the table. "Take a look at what your teachers think of you. A semester's money was wasted."

Beth walked towards the table and stopped. Her heart was scorching. She couldn't do it.

"Just flip the damn mail!"

She reached out to the mail with her trembling hands. Your schoolwork was below average. We are concerned about your progress in the talented program. As a recommendation, you might be placed in a lower-level class. The mail wrote in bold letters.

"When you were entering middle school, a counselor recommended us to look at a talented program for you. We said that you could just attend a school in town, yet the counselor refused. None of us were familiar with those programs, yet we knew that it could be an entrance to a better life for you. See, this is what you did with this opportunity. Please stop making those pointless drawings again. Focus on the most important thing." Madison went on to open up a drawer, exposing all of the fashion doodles that Beth had made.

"Pointless? You have no right to call them pointless!" Beth tossed all the doodles in front of her on impulse. "You know nothing about me. These are my ideas on fashion that I have been recording. The school structure is too restraining for me. I wanna create miracles with my design someday!"

"Miracles? So laughable. Art for you will never be a viable career option based on our household situation. Studying hard and do something realistic! Don't talk to me about miracles when you couldn't even keep up with school!"

"How did you find my artworks?"

"I found it when I was trying to clean up the mess you made in your room one day! These papers were floating everywhere."

"Why couldn't you just have talked to me about these artworks? You are stepping on my privacy! School's all you ever cared about. You never took the chance to know who I am and what I want. Did you even care to talk to me about my daily life at school, or what I am interested in? You always assumed what I wanted. Why can't you understand that I started becoming interested in fashion because of the magazines my friends showed me? Not all the second-handed clothing that you made for me!"

"Give me your doodles and pencils. I am going to take them away until you realize what you have done wrong."

"No, I won't." Beth leaned backwards toward her desk and spread her arms, trying to protect her artworks. "I never want to become someone just living a boring, predictable life without any goals!"

"Give them to me!!"

"No!"

It started to rain outside.

Madison squeezed Beth to the side heavily and rushed to the table. On the table, there was a new drawing depicting a puffy fantasy dress made of silk, and decorated with ribbons, flowers, and diamonds. On the side, there was a note. Yet Madison was so flamed that she didn't notice the details. She grabbed the drawing and instantly tore it apart into pieces. As soon as Beth realized that she had been pushed aside, everything was too late.

The drawing had already become a lifeless carcass of torn-apart aspiration. Some of the other pieces of drawings just flew away with the wind from the window in the night.

"Clean up the mess before yourself."

"Congrats!! You destroyed my work!" Beth was so frustrated that she punched her hand into the wall. Blood appeared from the cracks of her knuckles, but she couldn't care less. The numbing pain from her hand and the tears from her eyes all mixed together. Through her misty eye, she saw red dripping from her hand to the floor, like raindrops that fall slowly.

Beth pushed Madison out of her way, despite the grip that Madison had on her. Then, she slammed the door as she ran out of the building. The streets were dark and empty with the heavy rain going on, yet she couldn't care less. The clouds above her seemed to press the entire city down. Her clothes were soaked wet; water poured down through her hair, sticking the chunks of hair on her forehead. The heat from her body clashed with the coldness of the rain.

At last, she stopped at a corner at the turning of a road. The rainwater that got into her eyes was so mixed with her tears that she couldn't distinguish between the two anymore.