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(Original prompt: "magical girl who's half-awake, just for you")
I'm Emi, fifteen years old, and I'm pretty normal. Honest! I like getting ice cream and window-shopping, and I get average but respectable marks in my classes. My mom writes for magazines, and my dad is a cameraman for a big movie studio! They're pretty busy and they take a lot of trips, but I know they love me a lot. And at school—
...well, I don't have a lot of friends, but it's not that weird. Right?
I guess—maybe I haven't been completely honest. That's pretty normal too, right? The thing is, a year ago, I had a really *weird* dream while staying up late where I got a cool dress and fought a monster trying to attack one of the kids who live next door, and it turned out it was actually *real*. So I'm Dream Defender Emi by night.
And okay—I think it's a little cool. It's too bad I can't tell anyone about it, since the magic's a big secret, and also... well, most of my classmates think magical girls are for kids.
It's fine, though! Even though I fall asleep a lot at school, I work really hard to catch up, and I have a lot of friends online who are awake at night, so I talk to them a lot. A lot of times I scroll through the updates while I'm sitting on rooftops trying to keep myself awake so I don't miss anything.
Tonight, though, when I open the app, I frown; one of my friends is, like, *really* going through it. She's been sad a lot, recently—my magic picks up the emotional resonance even at that kind of distance—but tonight it feels like something glassy-sharp between my ribs.
In some ways, I kind of wonder if being the weird girl at school is a kind of protection. I mean—I don't like it when people laugh at me and think I don't notice, and even though I laughed along at the time, it was kind of embarrassing when someone sent me a love letter that didn't turn out to be real from the boy who sits next to me in class.
But there's a part of me that's always somewhere else, I guess you could say—in dreams, where I know I'm powerful and capable and doing something important and good. So in the end, it's easy to just let teasing about my hair or my weight or my acne pass by... like a passing dream that fades with the dawn.
Not everyone has that outlet. Fukuroucho-chan I only know by handle, but I'm pretty sure she's got to be about my age, and she posts a lot about things like how she didn't correct someone about insect facts because it wouldn't be cute of her, or how she stopped wearing her favorite butterfly hairclip because her mother said it looked childish.
She's smart, though! She knows a lot about insects in a way that made me less scared of them, and she's really good at baking, even though she keeps saying she just does it for her friends since she's trying to be good. Like she isn't already! She even said she'd give me some of her baked goods if she knew me in real life.
But it's lonely. I get that. And it's got to be even more lonely to not feel like you can be yourself around only yourself. I concentrate, to see if I can feel something like a coalescing nightmare around her, driving that spike of pain into her—
No. It's just the weight of the world, I guess. And—the feeling is surprisingly close?
I rub my face a little to help wake up, and shuffle down the rooftop to the edge—and jump. Or rather, I *fly*, dreaming myself weightless in the waking world, cape billowing behind me. I'm not really sure what I plan to do, but if she's awake and I'm awake, I can't very well just leave her alone.
I touch down gently on a rooftop once I feel the thread of dream-wool pull taut, and crouch down to take a look. It's quiet here, and dark; the neighborhood's gone to bed.
Mostly.
There's a light on, dimly, in a second-floor window I can see; some soft colorful string lights and a bedside lamp. I can just barely see the silhouette of someone flopped over against the inside window sill, head down into their arms.
No one can know I do this, but like, she's not going to know it's *me*, right? It's fine! So I get up, and hop, step, jump over to land delicately on the windowsill, silver heels clicking lightly. And pulling myself into a sitting position, I reach out and knock on the window.
She looks up, and—
I realize, immediately, that I've made a mistake, because I recognize her.
Yume goes to my school—we're in the same class!—and *everyone* likes her, except, maybe, me. She's definitely been behind some of the pranks on me, and maybe all of them. She definitely *can't* be Fukurouchou-chan, can she?
"Um," I say, looking at her tear-streaked face. She looks at me like she can't believe her eyes, which is maybe reasonable considering we're on the second floor and I'm wearing a poofy white dress, heels, and a matching white beret. "I saw you were sad," I mouth, "so I thought I should say something?"
She rubs her eyes, a little—half like they hurt from crying, half like she's trying to be sure she's not seeing things—and then relaxes, a little. I wonder, sometimes, if when people catch sight of me, if they think they're in a dream and just roll with it.
"Are you a... an angel?" she says, grasping for the word. "I don't really believe in angels..."
I'm always prepared for this. "I'm Dream Defender Emi, the defender of everyone's precious dreams!" I say, giving her a practiced wink. "And I'm worried your dreams are in trouble! It felt like you needed someone."
"Oh," she says, in a slightly dazed way. "Sorry."
"No, no! Don't worry. I mean, this is what I'm here for, and you seemed, like. Really like you were having a hard time." I'm kind of on autopilot; this is a little bit routine for me. Which is good, because I'm still working through it being *Yume*, of all people. Yume, who thinks I'm an embarrassment and a weirdo; Yume, who got everyone to laugh at me talking about magical girl anime; Yume, who pays a weird amount of attention to me now that I think about it.
We both stare at each other. "I guess this is where I ask if you want to, like, talk about it," I say.
Maybe it's just that I'm a relative stranger and someone she doesn't think she's going to see again, or the feeling like it's a dream that propels her along as she talks. She unwinds her long knot of worries—that people will find out about her uncool personality, that she isn't anything special in her friend group, that she doesn't even know what she'd *do* on a date so has been dodging opportunities, that the other girls are talking behind her back.
I wonder if, really, her problem is that she sees too much of me in herself.
"Okay, but like—can I be really honest?" I cut in, gesturing wildly, in a way that's a little impaired-by-lack-of-sleep-looking.
She nods aggressively, her face drier if still red. "Okay. Okay," I say, very seriously. "I'm sorry, but the people you're friends with sound, uh... miserable. Is it really your dream to just have, like... medium people. Mid people? Mediocre people not dislike you?"
"Well—I mean," she says, chewing on her lower lip. "I mean, I wouldn't have friends, otherwise. No one wants to have people think of them as, like, a *weirdo* with no friends."
Ouch. I've started to think I get her, though. "But like—here's the thing. Do the weirdos with no friends seem happier than you?"
She frowns even more deeply. I think I've got her. "Just think about it. But you're not going to be around those people your whole life, right? The only person you spend all of it with is *Y-O-U*! And that's who you should be the *best* friend to. If you're spending all your time crushing all your dreams for other people, you can't... use them as your cocoon to become a cool butterfly! Yeah!"
For a long moment, she stares at me, and then bursts out laughing. "That was a *terrible* metaphor," she says.
I put my hands in the air in mock-surrender. "They're the only ones I've got, and it's the middle of the night and I'm super tired. Anyway, you remind me of a butterfly, I guess, Fururouchou-chan."
A strange look crosses her face, and I realize—she's never mentioned her handle in this conversation. I wobble to my feet, and wave.
"I've got to go! But I'll be around, so like—if I should say hi again, hang something cute on your window, okay?"
"Wait, though—"
Heck. That was really too close, I think, as I spring into the air. Hopefully she'll forget, or chalk it up to it being a dream. It's a little risky, saying I'll come back, but—
Well, I still want to try some of her baking, and hear more bug facts. And...
...maybe she needs another weird girl in her life.