Courtesy of @mikimikimii who loves Hoshi a lot like damn that’s why we based Sayaka on this nerd, but here you go anon~Hoshi is sad for a lot of reasons! They’re not all huge, and it’s not like she’s had someone close to her die or anything, but it’s a combination of a lot of things that just happened to mesh in an awful way.

 Hoshi’s naturally gifted with physical ability and co-ordination, so she’s very very good at pretty much any sport going. When she was younger – elementary school ageish – she was also very tall, which coupled with her innate sporting ability made her pretty much the best at any sport she tried. When you’re young, at least where I live, being good at sports/games is really important to making friends, because nobody’s gonna want to pick you for their team if you can’t catch a ball. Hoshi met her best friend, Hideki Sonoda, at a kindergarten/pre-school/daycare/whatever it’s called, and since then, the only person who’s ever been able to keep up with her has been Hideki. Naturally, they were drawn together, and Hoshi declared Hideki her rival, which was the beginning of their super interesting relationship! For the most part at elementary school, Hoshi was the ‘stronger’ one, as Hideki was rather shy and demure, whereas Hoshi had confidence in spades, so Hoshi got a little used to protecting Hideki. 

However, come middle school, Hideki had a massive growth spurt and Hoshi didn’t. Suddenly Hideki was taller than her, and everyone else was still growing and she wasn’t. Hideki suddenly grew into their size and gained a lot of confidence, whereas Hoshi began to feel a little unsure, a little unsettled for the first time in her life. Now, Hoshi has a pretty big mouth, and kinda likes to talk big. She’s not the type of person to yield, ever, so she gets into a lot of conflict with people. In elementary school, this worked because she was bigger and stronger, but in middle school and high school, she didn’t have the same advantage, so it started to backfire on her, and Hoshi ended up on the receiving end of some pretty nasty bullying. Nobody physically touched her when Hideki was around, because everyone was just a little bit afraid of them, but there was a lot of verbal abuse and social harassment. Deliberate exclusion, messing with her schoolbooks, bitching about her when Hoshi was _right there_ and the like, that sort of thing. Now, important to note is that Hoshi probably wouldn’t have been bullied nearly as much as if she weren’t so upstart and aggressive towards people. It’s also important you understand that I’m not saying Hoshi is at fault for being bullied, because nobody is ever at fault for that sort of thing. I’m merely trying to express that Hoshi definitely didn’t help herself by deliberately starting fights and making enemies. Hoshi is a sweet precious cinnamon roll who doesn’t know how to people. 

This carried over to high school, and it was right before this that Hoshi finally clicked she like-liked Hideki. However, with no signs that Hideki reciprocated, Hoshi didn’t really know what to do, so she just sort of…left it. Hideki didn’t like anyone anyway, so she figured she could just leave it, and they could stay being friends and rivals. Unfortunately for Hoshi, this wasn’t the case. Yuki, Hoshi’s little sister, starting hanging out with the two of them more and more, and over time, it became apparent to Hoshi that Hideki actually liked Yuki. Now, Hoshi and Yuki are very close – Hoshi, not being the greatest at making friends, is very very close to her family, so Eli, Nozomi and Yuki are the most important people in her life – her two mothers, and her baby sister. Hideki sort of fits in there too. However, even though Yuki and Hoshi told each other almost everything, Hoshi didn’t tell Yuki about her crush. When Yuki told Hoshi that she like Hideki, it hurt her a lot, but she tried to smile and be supportive. She’d just cause trouble for them if she let her feelings be known, and she didn’t want to do that to her most precious people in the world. So, well, if that isn’t a knife to the heart, I don’t know what is. Hoshi hadn’t told anyone that she liked Hideki, so she had nobody to turn to, because her two biggest confidantes were the problem. Her mother, Nozomi, probably picked up what was wrong, but Hoshi never talked it out with her – she just soldiered on and pretended like everything was fine. 

All of this kind of snowballed – Hoshi didn’t have the type of body she wanted, she was short and small, not muscular and tall like Hideki, like she wanted to be. She’s not effortlessly social and popular like Taiki, she’s not graceful and elegant and cute like Yuki, and she’s not pretty and alluring like Kusuki. She’s not academically smart, and her amazing physical prowess is offset by her height. She feels like everything she was supposed to be has been ripped away for her – but she probably could have dealt with that, as long as she still had Hideki and Yuki as her bffs. But then Yudeki started dating, and Hoshi was left behind. It’s not like they ignore her – she still hangs out with Hideki a ton, and she still talks with Yuki a lot, but there’s a distance between them that she can’t ignore anymore. It’s really, really hard for her to see the person she’s crushed on for the better part of her entire life holding hands and making out with her sister. It just doesn’t seem fair. 

So, all in all, it’s a combination of being unhappy with how she ended up looking, how tall she ended up being, combined with a shitton of verbal abuse in her middle school and high school years (in high school, some of the bullying turned physical, but Hoshi is probably the one who swung first), which led to her feeling super insecure about a lotta things, and then her best friend and crush starts dating her sister. Life hurts.TL;DR: Hoshi is a precious insecure child who got bullied and can’t open up to people so she bottled up all the horrible feelings she has inside :c