Personality

Hotaru is quiet and soft spoken (when he speaks at all). He suffers from depression, due to abuse received from his parents, and tends to be withdrawn. He is a gentle and kind person, despite everything he has gone through.

Description

Short, at 5'4". He has a slender build, with a fair complexion, and long black hair that ends at the top of his rear (he typically keeps it up in different styles, though there is always some loose in his face so he has something to hide behind). He has heterochromia, his right eye is a pale grey and his left is dark brown. His face is feminine and, due to his size, he is often mistaken for a woman. He has scars on his body, mostly chest, back, and pelvic area/thighs.

He typically wears furisode and susohiki/hikizuri style kimono, though he will wear yukata in the summer or when he is alone. On his feet, he wears geta or zori with either tabi socks or nothing, sometimes he goes around barefoot.

Background

Hotaru is from Katsurou, which is north east of the Adalsteinn Mountains, situated on the Akane Sea. There is a village on the coast with a large fortress in the water that can only be accessed by ship. The people of Katsurou worship the sea god, Zethar.

Hotaru is actually a prince, though he is not treated as such. He is the second born and was supposed to have been female, as is tradition. The first born son becomes the heir and the daughter is married off to a wealthy family. Since this was not the case, his parents loathe him, he was worth nothing to them (his feminine looks were an extra slap in the face and his eyes are also a reason for their hate). Due to how feminine he is, they force him to pretend to be female, dressing him in women's clothes and presenting him as female to visiting dignitaries. His parents would beat him whenever they had the whim, and have even gone as far as having a surgeon come to "make" him a woman. He struggled during the ordeal and received various scars on his thighs and pelvic area, though his brother, Hayate, and one of their highest ranking soldiers rescued him. After the rescue, Hayate assigned that soldier, Drayce, as his bodyguard and the beatings lessened to be almost non-existent (his parents fear the man). Before Drayce became his body guard, Hotaru's parents would use him to seal business deals. If there was something they wanted, he would be forced to use his body to help pay for it, his parents telling him that that was the only thing their "daughter" was good for. Homosexuality is extremely taboo in Katsurou, so some men would prefer to have him for one night than receive money, just so they could have the excitement of doing something that was seen as "forbidden".

Drayce was the only other person who was kind to him and they became good friends. Though, Hotaru wondered if it was just out of a sense of duty. When Drayce and his brother left on a mission to retrieve the treasure from the god of destruction's temple in the Eshe Desert (on order of the emperor), the beatings began again and were even more severe as retaliation for his insolence. He no longer had anyone to protect him. Fearing for his life, Hotaru ran away before the others returned, though he did not know where to go as he had never been outside of the castle walls.