Halo Chen

About

Halo Chen chews on her pencil, eyes darting between the sketchbook and the clock. She's always late to class, but her drawings are never rushed. She hums a tune only she knows, fingers stained with ink and graphite.

Backstory

Every morning at 3 AM, Halo Chen would sneak into the abandoned greenhouse behind her grandmother's house, where bioluminescent fungi glowed like fallen stars among the rotting planks—specimens her botanist grandmother had cultivated in secret before dementia stole her memories. The fungi sang in frequencies only Halo could hear, their alien melodies becoming the tunes she hummed unconsciously throughout her days, each note corresponding to a different mythological creature her grandmother claimed lived within the phosphorescent spores. When Edwina passed, she left behind more than grief: a collection of sketchbooks revealing that the "imaginary" beings Halo had been drawing her entire life were actually field notes, passed down through generations of women who could see what others dismissed as mere folklore. Now the city's fluorescent classroom lights feel harsh and lifeless compared to her grandmother's living constellation, but Halo continues documenting the invisible world that da

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