201 The loser (1/2)

Something many people didn't really know about Ellie, she always hated losing.

From the very first day since she entered school she always realized that she wasn't as good as the other kids.

She wasn't the most athletic at gyms class, she wasn't the best artist in drawing class, she was bad with numbers, she had trouble memorizing the names of countries, and she would often make many grammatical mistakes when trying to write.

Most of her family was very supportive and would just comment that she didn't need to worry so much and just keep trying. But the thing is, Ellie always noticed that most of the other kids didn't seem to have as much trouble as her.

They all seemed to have at least one skill that they exceeded in class while Ellie had none. Everyone had at least one good reason to look forward to school, one subject that they had some fun in doing because they could handle it with ease.

But for Ellie, school just sucked. She felt like she wasn't good at anything at all. And the more others succeeded, the more of a failure she felt.

She begged her parents to stop going to school many times, but they all just insisted that she would eventually find that one thing she was good at.

Ellie waited, and waited, and waited, just hoping that one day she would be better at something than the others, but nothing ever happened.

It reached a point where she eventually just gave up and assumed she would never be able to win at anything. Everyone would always be a little bit better than her at anything she tried.

That is until she got a score on one of her assignments that made her feel something she never felt before.

Once, while she was around the age of seven, her teacher handed her the result of a project and spouted words Ellie never imagined she would hear.

”Congrats, Ellie! You had the best score in the class!”

”... ... ... Wait, what!!??” Ellie gasped as she looked at the piece of paper she had just received. It was an assignment to compose a fantasy story for the writing class.

There were comments addressing a few errors in her grammar, but also addressing how the teacher was impressed with her creativity, storytelling structure, and ability to make her characters feel alive.

Ellie touched the paper almost wondering if that was even real. This was the first time she was praised for anything to this extent. She came home that day and wouldn't stop talking about her score to her parents who were clearly very proud of her.

She assumed that writing would, at last, be the course the gave her the motivation to go to school, but once she received her next score, her heart shattered.

”Miss Tulip...? Why did I get such a low score...??” the girl asked while wondering if the entire class was in the same boat as her.

”Oh...” Ellie replied.

This was also a new feeling for her. Not only did she got her first victory, but she also got her victory taken from her.

She assumed she could just do the same thing she was good at over and over and people would just shower her with praise for it. But it turns out, that wasn't the case.

Something snapped inside of Ellie. She lost again, and not just that, she lost at something she knew she was good at, something she knew if she had tried a little harder, she could have succeeded. If only she had paid more attention, paid a little more effort to what she had to do, she could have done a better job.

This was somehow worse than losing for not being good enough. She lost while being good enough, but being too cocky on herself to do it properly.

After that, Ellie decided to try harder, to make sure she never would feel that same anguish again. If she failed, it would not be because she didn't try hard enough.

”Next time... For sure...” she whispered.

The same thing happened again to Ellie years later.

She found out about the actual existence of magic after hanging out so much with her aunt and even realized that she herself could be a mage as well. Not only that, but it also seemed that she was good at it. She had a skill that no other mage had, the ability to copy the skills from others, and use it herself, allowing her to utilize many different powers.

An idea began to blossom on her mind, the idea that she wasn't just good, but in fact, really, really good. Everyone just kept looking so impressed with the things she could do. She even met a talking frog that said she should be able to take on anyone in a fight if she wanted.

And with that concept stuck on her head, she just decided to go after the biggest threat she could find and try to take on her, which soon proved to be a massive mistake as she realized that, while she did have a lot of power, she was incredibly amateurish to the concept of fighting and got demolished in an absolutely one-sided battle.

To make matters worse, her defeat didn't just affect her, it affected pretty much the whole world. Once again she was over her head just because she wanted to feel the taste of victory one more time.

Ellie was demoralized. She started to think that maybe she just wasn't meant to be good at things and maybe should let others who know what they are doing handle it. People that can actually pull it off properly.

But her mindset changed once again after she entered the garden.

The garden was a gigantic place full of dangers that Ellie had entered in order to improve her skills in combat. She decided to enter it mostly as an obligation since she felt she needed to try and clean her own mess.

But a voice inside kept whispering, what if she fails again? What if she makes things even worse? What if she is taking a job that is too big for her to handle? What if she ends up disappointing more people? What if it would be better if she just disappeared so she couldn't mess it up even more?

And then, she saw it. A new form of achievement.