A/N: Here I am, posting in another tiny fandom. But I watched the movie and ended up working through my feelings by writing this. So. Hope you enjoy! Critique and feedback greatly appreciated.
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The curiosity has always been there, even when he was a child. He'd watch human parents swaddle their babies, twirl their children through the air, and wonder – what does it mean to touch a human? The spirits said it meant death – and so he stayed away. But it does not stop him from imagining human parents who would remove his mask and embrace him.
The spirit's touches are like the brush of leaves, like the fleeting pass of fox fur against an arm. They cherish him and he loves them, has grown up with them, has been swaddled and held and been twirled in the air by them – but sometimes, he wonders. But he does not stray too far. He keeps his mask on.
Every day is similar to the last. As he grows taller, the monotony begins to get to him. The spirits are content with their lot, and go about life how they have done so for the past hundred years. But he drifts. He learns the forest, and the forest learns him. Eventually, it pacifies him, to be so close to the forest and spirits he loves.
And yet, he continues to wander within the forest's borders.
Hotaru brings a new dimension to his life. He begins to look forward to the hot summer season, with its incessant noises and heat. She is small and adorable and he's a little too curious about the human world to want her to go away, at first. But then he gets to know her, and then he doesn't want her to leave for another reason altogether. But its alright. She comes back next year.
What he slowly begins to realize is that Hotaru is changing every year. Her words become more sophisticated, her body grows taller and leaner with every passing summer. Soon, he realizes, she will become an adult. And yet, he has not changed.
He wonders how long this arrangement will last. How long will it be until she outgrows him? He learns from her that he looks to be around sixteen, seventeen. He wants to know: will twenty-year-old humans still visit teenagers who live in forests? How old will she be when she marries and begins a family? He has seen it happen many, many times from the edge of the forest. How many years does he have left with her? He does not ask.
But she still walks up to him in summer dresses and hides behind his leg when a spirit appears.
He still has time; the spirits tell him. There are still, by human standards, many years to go before she would think of leaving. So he lets her go at the end of summer, and resigns himself to wander through the forest again. But he can wait. He can give her his summers, and she can give him hers, and it will be enough.
Every year there is a surprise. This year it is the appearance of a new school uniform – and a new maturity to her face and attitude. With a start, he realizes that she is slowly becoming a woman.
That winter he takes off his mask and tucks his chin into the scarf she had given him, years before – and thinks of what it would be like to embrace her.
The idea grows in his head, so much that by the time he sees her again, his fingers twitch with the urge to run themselves through her hair. But he restrains himself.
She is no longer so young that he needs to guide her with a tree branch between their hands, but for some reason he wishes for that kind of anchorage again.
He does not know when it happened. But suddenly, the summers seem far too short, the winters are far too long, and the transition from spring to summer is sometimes the most frustrating thing in his life.
That summer, her smiles make his heart pump faster. Each one makes him want to reach out and cup her cheek with his hand, makes him want to do something foolish, something crazy. It's new and electrifying, and he can hardly stay still. When she tells him about the pains from the past year, it makes him want to go back to the city with her, in order to protect her – from what, he's not sure. He just wants to be there with her.
Before he knows it, summer is ending. Their parting this year is the most difficult to stomach. He cannot fathom waiting for the turn of seasons to bring her back again.
He asks the spirits why it is different this year. What has changed? For all the attention he has paid toward Hotaru, he cannot seem to see anything particularly different to note in her person that would create such a shift in him – she is taller, yes, but she is taller every year, and her personality has a rounder, fuller, edge, but that is not unexpected, so what –
You love her.
Oh.
You have probably always loved her. You are just beginning to love her another way.
The following year is the longest of them all. In the dark of the winter, he calls to mind the light in her eyes, the curve of her cheek, and desperately hopes that she will not be taller the next time he sees her. Her head reaches his shoulders, now, and he knows it will not be long until he loses her to the flow of time. When the time comes, he knows he will not protest. He'll let her go. More than anything, he wants her to live a happy life. If that life is to be separate from his, well, he has lived long enough anyway.
After all, what would life be without her, now that he has experienced her? For her sake he would let himself fade into the background of the forest, as if she had never met a white-haired boy in the forest of the mountain god. But it would be an empty life.
He wonders what it would be like to have his life end with a touch. If he can be selfish enough to beg that of the girl he loves. He wonders what her hand feels like. If he had the opportunity to feel the warmth of her body, he thinks he would take it. It seems like a fair trade: the rest of his empty life for the chance to hold her.
He feels as if he is in a war against himself. He will not initiate this, but he wishes she would. When she says something about glomping him, of all things, his heart rate spikes and his chest throbs. He almost wishes that she will act as she did years ago when he first met her, when he didn't know what it meant to yearn and pine after something and when she would boldly charge into him, distressed, arms outstretched and primed to embrace him. It would be easy to pretend to trip, to let her fall against him, and then he could squeeze her in his arms for a moment.
It is a dirty trick but sometimes he can't help but fantasize about it when he feels particularly fatalistic. Does he fade quickly or slowly after the first touch? He doesn't know. He hopes it is slow. He hopes the spell will give him time.
But for all his longing, he won't ask it of her.
(He remembers her tears, back in the days where she barely came up to his waist, begging him not to touch her – and this is what keeps him back from taking her hand, making his first and last touch a press of the lips, keeps him from doing what he wants so badly –)
He sighs. He loves her, but this is not just love. She has awakened a fierce longing in him, a curiosity that cannot be satiated. He didn't know what it meant to want something until she came. Every moment with her reminds him of the people he has watched growing up, parents embracing children, children tumbling and rolling over each other like puppies, couples intertwined in a kiss – all of these come back at once and he is grateful for his mask, and how it keeps Hotaru from noticing the way he keeps staring at her hands and arms.
She is wearing her high school uniform again this year. It is almost time to let her go. How many more years can he let this go on for? His heart aches when she tells him of her plans to get a job in the area after she graduates. Love wells up in him and he wants to tell her that he will always be here waiting for her. That he loves her and wants her to stay. But he cannot. He loves her too much to hold her back. She cannot walk with a masked phantom forever.
And so he prepares himself to say goodbye. One last memory, he tells himself. One date. One night to act like they are both normal humans without mismatched timelines, humans that will not expire at a single touch. He will let her know his feelings and then he will let her go.
He wonders why it hurts so much.
The light of the festival glows behind them as they meander out of the crowd. The night is late. He is still wearing his mask. A flimsy, white cloth joins their wrists. It is a paltry substitution for handholding, but she smiles and it is as if someone has placed the stars in her eyes.
She is so vibrant. So beautiful.
His throat closes as he removes his mask a final time, fits it upon the contours of her lovely face. Leans in and places his lips right under the eyehole, onto the cool material of the mask. He imagines the softness of her cheek and the puff of her breath, and nearly sighs. After a moment, he straightens, pulls back his tumbling feelings and walks forward.
She can keep the mask. He no longer has any use for it.
When he grabs the boy's arm, he is surprised to find that it is hot. The shock of it brings him to a stop. And then he sees it: light. His fingers are drifting off in pieces of starlight, and he can't breathe. Hotaru is shouting with tears in her voice.
He is dying, and there is nothing he can do about it. But he no longer cares. He sweeps his arms open:
Come, Hotaru! I can finally touch you now!
She is still for a horrible, endless, moment. And then she is in his arms, weeping, smiling, her breath whispering on his skin, her slim arms clutched around his disintegrating body. She is warm and solid and the words I and love and you escape him joyously without warning. Her choked reply sends a burn up his spine and he tightens his rapidly loosening hold around her body. He's losing sensation in his limbs. Its too soon, his mind screams, but deep down he knows that this is enough. And then his body is collapsing open, his soul blooming up and out in wisps and then there is nothing.
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