❛ Dango ❜ | Haganezuka Hotaru x Reader

【贰】

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Haganezuka Hotaru was born into a long line of swordsmiths from the Haganezuka clan. He got his first name from the village chief after the latter took him under his care. However, he did not like it and often complained that it sounded too cute and dainty for his taste. It was told that Hotaru has always had a temper ever since he was a child, and that he would often throw tantrums which were so intense that it left the adults helpless and unable to calm him down, no matter how hard they tried to.

Just like the rest of the inhabitants of the swordsmith village, he wore a mask which completely covered his face as well as a headscarf around his head whenever he was in public. When he was younger, the village chief would often take Hotaru with him whenever he had to travel outside of the village. The rude and impudent people that they came across would often comment on his strange looks and scoffed at him for wearing a mask. Once while they were out in the city, he was unfortunately caught by a group of mischievous children who forcibly took his mask off, uncovering his face which they then proceeded to make fun of. That left a huge impact onto him as a child, and to this day still he is extremely self-conscious about his appearance.

More than just a rule that the villagers had to follow, he thought of the hyottoko mask as a camouflage that protected him from the other people. The very first person that he had met who didn't seem to be weirded out by his image was you, back when you were both still children. And, unlike the rest of them, you greeted him with a smile and did not make any comment on the way he looked.

He built his workshop in a remote location on the outer skirts of the village, a simple wooden cabin just like many others you'd see around the area. Nothing much, but it had everything that one would need to live in.

Up until this day, he had never succeeded to muster the courage to speak to you. Not that he didn't have much to say, but rather that he did not know how to properly put it into words. So he wrote you poems. Anonymously, that is, for that he somehow thought of himself as undeserving of someone like you and didn't want you to find out about who he was.

In spite of that, something snapped inside of him when you said that you were going to step back into the forest. A while ago, a small group of swordsmiths were reported missing and, as people began searching for them in the forest, they came across the remnants of their lifeless bodies hanging on the branches of a tree, their flesh and bones torn apart and shredded in inhumane ways. It was believed that a demon was at the cause of this. Ever since then, venturing into the woods at night became strictly prohibited. He was too scared to lose you and his body reacted on its own before he could even realize.

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He plunged his body into the water as he tried to calm himself down, his head submerged under the surface.

"What the fuck am I doing..." he thought to himself as he looked back on all the things that have just happened.

The way that he acted in front of you embarrassed him and he felt extremely frustrated by it. He was angry at himself for not being able to look at you in the eyes and hold a proper conversation without feeling like he was going to break down the next second. He hated the fact that you had to see him in such a state, but he couldn't help it no matter how hard he tried.

Many times he had imagined himself walking up to you and return the smile that you had offered him, or even simply exchanging a few words while you chatted with him about how your day was. He wanted to ask you out and hold your hand, just like those couples walking around in the city's streets... and yet all he could do was hide behind that stupid mask like a damned coward.