Sasaki Family & Co.

Name: Haru (春)
Surname: Sasaki (佐々木)
Gender: Male ♂
Birthday: March 22th ♈︎
Height: 178cm
Nationality: Japanese
Race: Human
Occupation: Flower shop clerk (high school) | Waiter/Cook in a small family restaurant (twenties)
Sexuality: Gay
Frequent Nickname: Haru-nii (Hana); Hacchi (Towa, Hayato)

He has dark brown hair, which he has been dyeing red since he entered high school. Used to have rather short hair in middle school, but started growing it out in early high school. He usually wears it shoulder-length.

His ears are pierced, although he wears less piercing and earrings than he used to. As a teenager and young adult, he used to wear face piercings more often, but after starting at the restaurant he started doing so less often.

He’ll favour comfortable clothing over what’s trendy and fashionable. Lots of baggier clothing, keeping them for as long as possible when he especially likes a piece, even if it's nearly falling apart. Most of the more trendy pieces he owns were gifted by his sister or picked by her.

In his teenage years, he broke the dress code more often than not. He could also often be seen covered in bandages, especially after nastier fights.

Often depicted: High school age; early-mid twenties.

He always had, and still has, a rather short fuse. He has struggled with anger issues his whole life. The peak of it was as a teenager, feeling angry at everyone and getting violent with things and people around him easily. However as a young adult, he decided to tone this down and work on bettering this issue.

He also has difficulty with authority figures, which was especially bad when he was in high school. This is something he has worked on as a young adult too, reigning in the urge to argue back and not follow instructions more easily.

Despite how loud he might have seemed as a teenager, causing trouble and searching for it, Haru is actually rather calm and quiet outside of that. He’ll mostly stick to being alone or hanging out with the rare friends he has rather than be in big groups or meeting new people.

While his reputation in high school made it so people either stayed away from him or tried picking fights, he’s easy to talk to. He might not share much about himself and not be as chatty as most, but he’ll still entertain a discussion if he’s in the mood for it.

Haru is also very protective of his sister, teetering on the edge of being too much at times too.

Haru’s parent had him when they were both only 17 years old. Had it been only from his mother’s wishes, he would never have seen the day. But his father insisted that they should keep him, that he would work hard to support their little family and that he was really happy. And to keep his word he started working right out of high school, working to take care of their son and support his wife’s studies.

Has a child, Haru wasn’t very appreciated by people around him due to his anger issues and his violent outbursts. Other children didn’t want to play with him for fear that he would get angry and start acting up. Meanwhile, adults found that he was hard to deal with and felt more exasperated than anything, unsure how to deal with him. Even Haru didn’t like how he reacted, feeling frustrated and confused as to why he would react the way he did.

His temper and anger issues only got better due to all the work his father put into helping him. The man stayed patient, taking the time to work out why he felt the way he did and trying to find other ways to vent all those negative emotions. Haru actually felt proud of all the progress he made in controlling his emotions, made all the much greater with his father’s support.

But all that support sadly went away when his father died in a car accident. This suddenly left him with no support. While some of the adults around him started to think maybe things were getting better, grief triggered back his anger issues. And with fewer and fewer people having the patience to deal with him, the less he found it in him to properly work on it.

He instead found himself getting worse and worse, spurred by people looking down on him and not even giving him a chance to show he could do better. “If they only see angry and violent, I’ll show them angry and violent”.

His bad relationship with his mother, and her family, only made him want to be even more rebellious. From a young age, he knew she didn’t like him and he wanted to bother her as much as possible while seeing her as little as possible too. They all believed he was the reason her life couldn’t be as good as it could have been, why she couldn’t go do even greater studies and why his father couldn’t continue his either.

Their bad relationship and the resentment she had towards him were why as soon as he graduated high school and became an adult she kicked him out of the house. This forced Haru to quickly find somewhere to live, seeing how he had no one to rely on aside from his friend convincing their parents to let him stay a little while.

He found a second job along with the one he used to have in high school at the flower shop. From there he actually focused on bettering himself, quickly understanding that always being so hot-headed wouldn’t do him any good. It was hard at first, but this time he felt like he had more people around him to help out.

Hana Sasaki (younger sister):

When Haru first heard he would have a sister, he felt disappointed and angry, as he would have preferred a brother. Yet the moment he first met her at the hospital, she immediately became precious to him. Despite everything, he has tried being a good older brother for her from the start, taking care of her as much as possible, especially after their father’s passing.

His relationship with her never soured and he made sure that she understood he would always be her for her. Even as he got kicked out, he kept in contact with her. He would be ready to drop about anything to come help her, as far or as late as it can be.

Ayame Shimizu (mother):

Since he was a child he has known and felt it deep in his guts that she disliked him. He gave up trying to get her love early on and instead found himself resenting her more and more as the years went by. She never was here for him unless she absolutely needed to be here. This forced him to learn how to take care of himself rather quickly.

Due to this Haru doesn’t have any relationship with his mother, both are seemingly more than happy to ignore each other’s existence. Since the day she kicked him out of the house, he hasn’t contacted her even once, even deleted any contact information he had on his phone. He feels like he would rather die than have himself or someone else call her for an emergency.

Hayato Seta & Towa Fujii (best friends):

Hayato and Towa first started following Haru around like his shadow, attracted by his reputation and all the fights he’s been in. They started as wannabe lackeys but found themselves slowly getting closer to him and getting to know him better. They found out he was more than just the hot-headed delinquent people said he was.

They both worked hard to have Haru warm up to them and have since become his best friends. They are also pretty much the only proper friends he even has. Haru would do a lot to keep them safe and in return, they would be ready to do anything to keep Haru safe too. They also both learned how to help Haru stay more level-headed when he starts getting angry, helping him stay out of trouble knowing that this is what he wants.

Daichi Yoshinaga (situationship):

Haru used to have a rather rocky relationship with him, seeing how he was a straight-A student, class president and always on his case. It took being forced to work with him on projects over the years that made him learn more about the hidden part of him, making him more livable and tolerable in his eyes.

They leave high school on a rather awkward and slightly colder note, where Daichi absolutely refuses to accept he isn’t as straight as he tells himself to be. Especially when he seems so hell-bent on following what his family wants from him, rather than what he wishes to do.

They meet once again a couple of years into their early twenties by accident. This time they start over on better grounding, having matured a lot on their own. From there they start building a friendship that has some non-patonic edges to it.

Flower shop (high school job):

Haru found (and hid) a small part-time job he found for himself at a flower shop away from their school. He needed money for his expenses and the kind owner decided to give him a chance, despite his look and attitude.

He found himself surprised by how well she treated him, the older woman staying rather patient with him. This made him actually act more politely and nicely at work, trying to keep himself out of trouble so she wouldn’t need to deal with unnecessary problems. He found himself getting surprisingly comfortable around his boss, quite enjoying the ambience of the small flower shop.

He worked there a couple of years past his graduation but found himself forced to quit after starting to focus on his culinary school goal and taking more shifts at the restaurant. Haru wouldn’t admit it aloud to anyone, but he actually felt a little choked up as the kind lady commented fondly on how much he had grown and matured, wishing him all the luck he needed.

Small family restaurant:

Haru started as a waiter in a small family restaurant soon after he found himself a cheap and borderline rundown one-bedroom apartment. It was one of the places that accepted to take him in and he worked hard from the get-go to show the owner he was a hard worker.

He was a little awkward around his colleagues at first, never having really had any before since he either worked alone at the flower shop or was with the owner. But he slowly warmed up to the full-timer, slowly making himself more comfortable despite his daily stress and anxieties.

Although he started as a simple waiter, he slowly started getting interested in what happens in the kitchen, watching the cooks work from the sideline while on breaks. He even finds the courage to ask some of them for tips on bettering his techniques, admitting after a while that he wished to enter culinary school one day.

The owner eventually caught wind of this and decided to see for himself what the young man was worth. He seemed rather satisfied with what Haru could already do and offered to teach him some things when he had the time to do so.

The owner also knows about Haru’s hot temper, but doesn’t seem to mind it much. He can see how hard he works on keeping it at bay when needed and when he hears something happened to him, there’s usually a good reason. While he doesn’t encourage Haru to fight with clients, he does appreciate him taking care of troublesome customers when he’s not here.

-Cooking is one of the rare things Haru actually feels proud about. He has always liked cooking and seeks out getting better and learning new things. He does like trying cuisine from around the world but often goes back to more traditional Japanese recipes.

-Haru still enjoys fighting but has taken to boxing and martial arts instead. It is more structured than street fighting, but he found himself enjoying it quite a lot. Even on bad days when his anger feels too much, good solo training helps him greatly.

-Haru has never dated anyone before. Has a teenager he was either uninterested or questioning himself too much, while as a young adult, he was focused on making a living and getting his shit together. However, this doesn’t imply that he still is a virgin.

-He wishes to enter culinary school one day and works hard to achieve that goal. He feels extremely thankful towards his boss who accepted to teach him before he could apply for culinary school.

-He quite likes cherries, and most things cherry-flavoured. He owns a good handful of things with cherries and cherry patterns on them, mostly gifted to him.

-He had picked up smoking when in early high school, but soon found out it was changing how he would taste things while eating. This made him stop, disliking that change and preferring to keep his taste buds functioning well.

-He actually failed grade 10 and had to retake it due to poor grades and attendance rate.

-He has never been too good with school, partly due to the fact he has difficulty focusing on what’s being said in class. Some assume he might have ADD, but he never got a proper diagnosis for it.

-If I recall properly, some of the inspiration for his personality comes from Rin Okumura (Blue Exorcist) and how he had a violent personality as a child, with a father who worked patiently to help change that.