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Hijikata Toshizou loved to read.
There were pragmatic reasons for it, of course. Hijikata had always found it advantageous to remain abreast of current events, and in this modern world, news was so plentiful and traveled so fast that he would be a fool not to take full advantage of it. Some three-line mention in the day’s paper could yield an important lead on the location of one of his fellow convicts, or the movements of troops, or a certain traveling Ainu child.
Take today’s edition, for example. The cover story concerning the recent bloodshed in Barato might capture most readers’ attention, but Hijikata found himself most interested in a quarter-page insert much farther in, calling upon ‘hardy trappers and hunters of all varieties’ to deal with an American entrepreneur’s bear problem. It might be nothing, of course. Or it might point to something more interesting, if only one were able to connect the dots.
Voracious readers often developed a certain reverence for the written word, even for newsprint ephemera. On quiet afternoons, holed up in their temporary headquarters as his party sought their next lead, Hijikata would often spread his papers out on the tatami and read them from cover to cover. When he finished, he would neatly fold the newspaper along its original creases, maintaining his reading materials in small orderly stacks near his recliner or alongside his modest belongings. Even if necessity required that he leave most of them behind when his party went on the move, it was a pleasure to indulge himself like this, during these quiet interstitial moments.
Not all of his companions, however, shared his appreciation. Especially lately, as his little traveling party had begun to take on its share of unexpected strays.
Hijikata’s ears twinged to the sound of crinkling newsprint. Behind the day’s paper, he pressed his mouth into a disapproving line. His articles had been meticulously arranged over the floor in such a way that no one else in the group need step over them to cross the common area. And yet the step had been deliberate, weight evenly distributed over the ball of the foot, accompanied by another, then a third. A waft of wood smoke, gun oil, and lingering wet earth reached his nose, as the individual folded themself into a seated position at the side of Hijikata’s recliner.
So the tom’s come back in, Hijikata thought to himself. A soft, perhaps amused sound found itself in his throat.
Without looking up from his paper, Hijikata allowed a hand to settle on the top of Superior Private Ogata’s hair, slender fingers stroking idly through the long strands.
The soldier made a small rumble of approval and tipped his head back further into the touch. Hijikata indulged this obvious bid for attention with a little extra pressure from his nails, scratching at the crown of Ogata’s scalp in slow lazy circles.
If the soldier could purr, Hijikata had no doubt he would have. It should irritate him, the self-possessed swagger of this feral creature which had sauntered its way into his camp, and yet there was something about Ogata Hyakunosuke -- his manner, shrewd yet impetuous; charming yet callous -- that entertained the old swordsman greatly. He would like to have this willful tom all to himself, if the circumstances but allowed.
“In another era,” Hijikata said after a long moment spent in companionable silence, “a child of such manners would be whipped and turned out from his master’s house in the bat of an eye.”
“In another era, I would have one of those ridiculous topknots,” Ogata countered, without a trace of defensiveness. As though he were choosing not to even register himself as the target of Hijikata’s remark. He craned his neck and regarded him through the fringe of one dark-lashed eye. “At my age, you were leading men through the streets of Kyoto, cutting off Loyalists’ heads.”
“Hmm. I see that you’re older than you appear.”
Still a boy, however. Another unmoored child brought into the world amidst the traumatic afterbirth of the Restoration. Military service had apparently done little to curb the marksman’s recalcitrance, much less soften that mouth of his. For a moment, Hijikata entertained the idea of trailing his fingertips down the side of Ogata’s face, over the still-healing suture scars along his jaw, and running a thumb over his bottom lip. It was a nice thought.
“In those days, you could indeed have made a name for yourself as a corpsman,” Hijikata continued, choosing for the moment to keep his hand where it was. He threaded his fingers up to the third knuckles through the private’s hair. It was soft and fine, pleasant to the touch; recently washed and lacking the pomade Ogata sometimes used to keep it in place. “We had a constant need for young men of exceptional skill, back then.”
“Sorry, but I’m not very good with a sword.” Shifting his weight, Ogata allowed his back to come to rest against the side of Hijikata’s recliner. He stretched out his legs, heel of one foot rumpling a heretofore immaculate cover story describing the recent fire that had claimed Ienaga’s hotel. Just in case there was any remaining doubt that he was doing this intentionally. “Or staking my life on lost causes.”
Hijikata tightened his fingers into a half-fist, and watched in quiet appreciation as Ogata obligingly tipped his head back with a soft halting sound in his throat, eyes falling nearly shut.
“You seem to have an appreciation for history,” the old swordsman said. He allowed the day’s paper to settle onto his lap, half-finished column folding from view as he accepted that was all the reading he was going to manage today. “Very well. What would you like to hear about? Hamaguri Gate? Sakamoto?”
“Hmm…” Ogata drew out his mock indecisiveness, tilting his head to the side as Hijikata’s nails found a particularly pleasant spot on his scalp. “Okita.”
“Ah. The golden child.” A bit of a conventional choice, Hijikata thought, with passing disappointment. Well, no matter. If Ogata wanted to hear a story, he could oblige. “In terms of skill, Okita Souji was second only to Nagakura, despite being five years his junior. We -- Kondo and I, his elders at the Shieikan -- found ourselves surpassed in mere months. The townspeople found him charming: his noble bearing and youth, princely. Of course, they didn’t have the dubious honor of studying under him.”
“Really? The ‘Demon Vice-Commander’ found someone else’s instruction unbearable?”
“No, I merely watched him with the younger students. Okita wasn’t like his seniors. He was born into the samurai class, afforded opportunities from an early age that men like Kondo and I could scarce imagine. Isn’t it curious how these ‘child prodigies’ always seem to come from families of means?”
“What then,” Ogata interrupted, the sound of a cadet who had invited his drill sergeant’s cane more than once. “You’re going to say Okita was better than you because he was rich?”
Even knowing that Ogata was being glib for the express purpose of getting a rise out of him, Hijikata couldn’t resist a small flare of irritation. It wasn’t simply Ogata’s ordinary brattiness; it was the exact kind of brattiness that had once dripped from Okita Souji’s lips, pushed to the floor of the training hall with his long, as yet unshorn hair loose around his shoulders.
(‘Do you think this makes your point for you, farm boy?’
‘I’m your elder. At least refer to me as such.’
‘You want deference? You’ll have to drag it from my throat yourself.’)
It is said that cats are not domesticated, certainly not in the sense that dogs and livestock are. As a child, Hijikata once chased a farm cat into the horse stables with a desire to teach it to ‘shake,’ just as he’d successfully taught his shiba pup the week before. He had come away only with a deep set of cuts over his forearm for his trouble.
Cats, explained the stable hand who tended him afterward, do not labor for humans. They merely lower themselves to assist humans, who must in turn be mindful of their temperament. Everything must be on the cat’s terms or not at all. Enter into a cat’s good graces and you can violate every seemingly immutable law about their nature -- rub their stomachs, grab their tails, pet their fur against the grain -- but one thing you will never accomplish is turning one into a pet.
The corner of Hijikata’s mouth twitched with amusement. He dragged his fingers over Ogata’s scalp, from the crown of his head to his hairline. Sprays of fine black hair bunched between his knuckles, the neat backswept strands mussed and tangled as he played with it between his fingers. He felt the shudder of tension along Ogata’s neck, the forceful relaxing of his shoulders as Hijikata finger-combed his hair forward until it hung in front of his face.
He could hear the soldier’s grin. “You fucked him, huh.”
Hijikata tsked. “Is that what they teach children in schools now? How small-minded.”
“That’s not a denial.”
Indeed it wasn’t. But it wouldn’t do to descend to the marksman’s level of vulgarity just for the sake of this little game of theirs. He was many years gone from those days when he would allow a younger man to fluster him.
More importantly, however, Ogata had just shown his cards. Cats, for all their capriciousness, were usually quite transparent when they sought something. Hijikata should have seen it the moment he invoked Okita: the talented upstart, haughty and untamed, all but demanding someone come and put him in his place.
How fortunate that he had found the right old man to indulge him. Or rather, to force his hand.
Hijikata gathered Ogata’s hair together and swept it back again, smoothing it against his head as he had worn it before. Not as neatly, of course.
“It grows late,” he said. Perhaps a slight overstatement; the last ruddy bars of sunlight still filtered through the western windows, enough to read by for a quarter hour yet. But he was interested in seeing just how far he was able to push things now. “You’ll help an old man lay out his bedding for the night, won’t you?”
Others might’ve responded immediately, but Ogata demurred, hesitant. Their flirtation up till now had been relatively free of consequence, but his next words would have considerable weight, and it seemed he hadn’t prepared for things to arrive at this point so quickly. A charmingly youthful blunder. Hijikata could just picture the unguarded expression that must have flickered across the young man’s face for a moment, as the bluntness of the proposition caught up to him. What a delight it would be to elicit that expression when Hijikata was able to watch it.
But cats are prideful creatures as well. Abruptly, Ogata tucked his head against his chest, freeing himself from Hijikata’s touch. He folded up his legs and stood, the wood smoke scent hanging off his clothes reaching the swordsman’s nose again as he half-turned and bore him a withering smirk.
“Nah,” Ogata said, something flashing in his full, dark eyes. A thick lock of hair still hung in front of his face, softly curling against his cheek. “I’m sure you can manage fine on your own.”
Hijikata felt his lip curling into the same thin smile. Wicked and rebellious and many decades younger than the man who wore it.
Ogata took his leave then, his feet finding the same faint depressions in Hijikata’s carefully-laid papers where he had stepped before. Hijikata waited until he heard the click of the sliding door against the frame and rose from his recliner, intent to pick up the day’s reading materials so that he might begin laying out the futon himself.
Right answer.
He had no need for a pet. He hadn’t picked the man up in Barato because he expected loyalty or slavish devotion -- he had followers who filled those roles already, and performed them quite well. No, it had been abundantly clear from the start that Ogata and Hijikata’s alliance would last only as long as their goals aligned. Cats did not answer to humans. They came and went as they pleased, their caprice an acquired taste you either adapted to or didn’t. And Hijikata had long since grown to adore the little beasts.
It would not surprise him if Ogata returned later that evening, after the work was done and a warm bed awaited him. And if he did, it would not surprise Hijikata if Ogata then slid between the sheets beside him, belly exposed, willing to let the older man pet him in whichever way he pleased. He may actually purr after all… or his claws might come out. Either outcome would be entertaining.
Reading was a pleasure, but it wasn’t the only one Hijikata Toshizou was known to indulge.
END