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"i was so worried! never do that again!"
the sweet smell of the night air and the sounds of birdsong awakened hotaru from a long and peaceful slumber.
when she blinked her tiredness out of her eyes and looked around, she realized that she was in the dream world enmu had made for her, and that she was alone.
hotaru got back up on her feet and put her hands to her throat, expecting to feel pain there from where the young man had choked her, but there was none.
what sort of magical healing techniques do demons have, to remove all the pain from an injury and heal the injury itself? she marveled.
yet again, she was surprised by the power demons had. if demon slayers had the same healing power as demons, they could heal battle wounds much faster and much more effectively, reducing the amount of recovery time it took before a slayer could return to the battlefield.
hotaru, you need to stop praising demons, she chided herself.
hotaru looked into the knothole in the tree that held the portal back to her room, and saw a figure pacing inside it. after looking closely, she realized that it was enmu, and he seemed distraught.
immediately, she touched the portal to return back to her room so that she could console him, not wanting him to suffer a moment longer.
"hotaru!" he cried out, throwing his arms around her and capturing her in a tight embrace. "my little firefly, my beautiful dreamer..."
"what is it?" hotaru asked, concerned. she'd never seen enmu this way; something had to be seriously wrong!
"thank goodness you're alive! i was so worried! never do that again!" he said huffily, letting go of her and crossing his arms with a pout.
hotaru laughed at how childish enmu was being and how cute he looked doing it, and that only made him pout more.
suddenly, an image of muichiro flashed into her mind, and her laugh abruptly ended and was replaced with a frown.
how could she be such a terrible girlfriend? he was most likely risking his life to look for her and suffering because he was apart from her, and here she was falling for the first kind man she met! how disgraceful of her! muichiro didn't deserve a girlfriend as terrible as her.
when enmu saw hotaru looking sad, he instantly stopped playing around and looked at her with concern in his big blue eyes.
"what's wrong, hotaru?" he asked.
"it's nothing," hotaru lied, not wanting enmu to know that she was thinking of a man other than him. she didn't know how he'd react, and she didn't want to upset a powerful demon like him.
