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Chapter Text

Sometimes Toushirou wondered what the point of surviving a homicidal immortal human-turned-demigod was if he was just going to end up slaughtering every Edo citizen himself out of pure frustration.

“Yes, indeed, very dangerous,” the fire-bird-Amanto in front of him insisted, “please keep a look out, yes?” Toushirou looked down at the report he’d been given. Yamazaki had drawn a crude stick figure, labeled it long black hair, long black coat, big sword???? and written a messy Do your best, Vice-Chief!!!! on the back of a F*milyM*rt receipt before shoving the distressed Amanto towards him and vanishing. Said Amanto was wringing its hands where it stood in front of the police box, small embers bouncing off its fingers.

“Right,” Toushirou said, placing a cigarette between his lips. The firey-winged-Amanto immediately held up a hand and burnt it to ashes before he could reach for his lighter and then looked up at him with an expression reminiscent of a puppy expecting a reward, or maybe Sougo trying to apply for a paid vacation after doing the absolute bare minimum.

Toushirou thought about asking Soyo if she would consider exiling the Shinsengumi again.

He dusted stray ashes off the report and shooed the flaming Amanto away, wondering why he’d ever decided this was a good idea in the first place. There weren’t a lot of major police operations to do when the government was so unstable – instilling police boxes in every major district had been Kondou’s idea, if just to keep the Shinsengumi occupied while they slowly rebuilt. “Besides, we need to connect with the people again, Tosshi,” he’d said, and Toushirou had agreed to it like a fool, and now he was stuck with Sougo and some newbie for eight hours a day, trying to convince disgruntled Edo citizens that no, being a “bitch-ass snitch” is not a crime punishable by arrest and-or subsequent death penalty.

The only reason he hadn’t made a fuss at the time was probably thanks to the months they’d been stuck on an airship – he’d been absolutely stir crazy from repeating the same forty sword drills over again and spending all his spare time figuring out how to trick Sougo into taking a nap in the sun so he’d wake up with tan lines in the shape of his eye mask burned onto his face. It had made him too eager to get back to work.

Your choices, he thought. Think on them. “Hey, scan this into the system for me,” he said, handing the paperwork to one of the new recruits. “Sougo’s asleep, so it’s your job.” He moved onto Yamazaki’s next report.

This one said, Today I found out two very important facts. These will certainly be useful in helping the Prime Minister consolidate power, Vice-Chief. They are as follows:

1. The longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely the cow will stand up; and
2. Once the cows stand up you cannot easily predict how soon the cow will lie down again.

I made these observations following careful examination of the lying habits of 73 cows, totaling over 60,000 lying episodes. Please find attached the relevant log-survivorship plots and frequency distributions of (log-transformed) lying episode leng

Toushirou fed the report to the paper shredder.

There were a lot of petty disputes, nowadays, and there were always groups seeking to take advantage of the instability of Soyo’s early rule. While Nobume kept the personal threats at bay, the Shinsengumi had their hands full scouting new recruits and keeping public order – Toushirou and the rest were instructed to do as much as they could to try to reestablish some sense of authority within Edo society.

He supposed that this probably included breaking up the street brawl currently occurring at the end of the street.

He lit a cigarette – properly, this time – and approached. A man and a woman were tussling on the ground, surrounded by a crowd of spectators that seemed to be alternately cheering them on and filming the whole thing. The man was tugging on the woman’s hair, and the woman was clawing at his throat. Both were cursing unintelligibly at each other. Toushirou made his way through the crowd and kicked one of them in the stomach.

“What – seems to be – the problem, sir,” said the man as the woman tried to scratch his eyes out.

“You tell me,” Toushirou said.

“I’ll tell you,” the woman snarled, “it’s that he left the goddamn light on downstairs again when I always tell him to turn it off if you’re the last one up but he never listens –“

“– you said you were going to go downstairs for water –“

“– like you’d know, you’re never at home –“

“– need to work, to support –“

“– I know what this is about, you want me to get an abortion, don’t you?” The woman launched herself at the man with renewed rage.

Toushirou took a deep breath. “Jesus Christ–“

“Woah, Christian figures?” said Sougo from behind him, “now you’ve really done it –“

“- stop trying to kill each other for a second.” The pair separated under Toushirou’s glare, panting from exertion and casting dirty looks at the other. “Okay,” he continued, trying to salvage anything he remembered from Kondou’s old conflict resolution lectures, “let’s go back to that last part.”

The woman placed a hand gingerly over her stomach and looked away. Around them, the crowd was very loudly pretending to mind their own business. Toushirou was beginning to seriously consider the consequences of being seen committing double homicide in broad daylight with a crowd of witnesses when the man clenched his jaw, and said, “I don’t want an abortion. I just –“

“But you –“

“Hey, can you at least let him finish?”

“You’re right, I forgot about the light, and I just,” tears were welling up in the man’s eyes now. Even Sougo was beginning to look interested. “What if – what if I’m not a good father?”

In an instant the woman burst into tears. “No, dear, you’ll be great, don’t think like that –“

The man was sobbing now. “You were right, really, I’m never around anymore –“

“– I didn’t mean it like that, I know you’re trying your hardest –“

“– just get so worried –“

“Another job well done, Hijikata-san,” Sougo said, looking down at the couple who were now embracing and tearfully confessing their love. “Why don’t I go buy you some k*wpie as a reward?”

Toushirou sighed and felt all his hope escape with it. “Yeah, sure,” he said, and Sougo was off, doubtless to concoct some kind of mayo-covered death trap. If he was lucky, Sougo would pick something non-corrosive today, like a hand grenade, and Toushirou would be able to lick the mayo off it before disposing of it accordingly.

When he returned to the shoddily constructed police box, he realised that the recruit who’d been helping him scan reports all day was now staring intently at him, jaw hanging open. Toushirou narrowed his eyes at her.

“Th – that was really cool,” she said and took a step towards him before tripping and dropping her stack of papers. “Like, I really thought they were gonna – it was like – and you just – and now they’re all fine!“

Toushirou took a breath of smoke. “Pick those up,” he said, gesturing at the scattered reports.

“Yessir,” she said and scooped up the whole mess, dropping it straight into the paper shredder and turning back with a hand stuck out. “By the way, my name is Yomotsu.”

Toushirou watched forlornly as his day’s work was slowly destroyed. “I didn’t need or want to know that.”

“Yes,” said Yomotsu, “but I – I want to be your apprentice, Vice-Chief! Please teach me everything!”

Toushirou stared at her.

“That’s okay too!” she maintained. “I learn best by example – I’ll just watch, I’m a visual learner – you won’t even notice I’m there.”

Sometimes he really preferred the homicidal immortal alien.

*

It was past six when they finally signed out of work, but the sun was still bright and high in the sky. Irritatingly, Sougo hadn’t looked surprised when Toushirou told him and Yomotsu to head back to the Shinsengumi headquarters without him – he’d just given a half-hearted wave and a “say hello to the boss for me,” even though he had no way of knowing exactly where Toushirou was going.

Okay, so he was going to see Gintoki, but that wasn’t really relevant. It was just weird how everyone seemed to know, like some inside joke he wasn’t part of. So what if he’d spent more time in the past month trudging up the stairs of Otose’s shop after work than driving to the Shinsengumi dorms with his coworkers? Gintoki and his two protégés certainly hadn’t complained about his presence any more than they usually did (although it was kind of hard to tell sometimes, because they rarely stopped complaining about anything and everything from this week’s Shonen Jump to the increase in spaceship carbon emission levels).

Otose greeted him as he approached. “The slackers aren’t in right now,” she said between deep drags of smoke. “Job might run ‘til late.”

“I’ll let myself in,” Toushirou said, and the old lady waved him off and returned to her magazine. Sure enough, the room upstairs was empty – even the giant freak dog the Yorozuya owned was absent, though it had left white tufts of fur scattered on the couch. Kagura had dropped a trail of sukonbu wrappers leading from the kitchen to the couch to the doorway, and there were empty bowls and dirty chopsticks stacked precariously in the sink.

Toushirou sighed as he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He switched on the water heater and half-heartedly swept the freak-dog fur off the couch as he waited. Dealing with mundane complaints all day was menial work compared to the fugitive lifestyle they’d been forced into just a short time ago, but it was still tiring in a different way – draining, perhaps, having to mediate domestic disputes and petty arguments for hours.

It all felt a little anti-climactic, like defeating Gintoki’s evil teacher should’ve done more; ushered in an era of instant universal world peace or something. Then it turned out that random muggings and home invasions kept going even after the universe-threatening villains were killed.

Toushirou idly washed the abandoned dishes as he wondered. Him and Gintoki’s – friends? acquaintances? with benefits thing was probably some fucked up coping mechanism they’d picked up along the way. Well, as long as Gintoki stuck around (and sometimes stuck really close, too) he would just take full advantage of the situation and try not to think about it too hard. Nothing involving Yorozuya Gin-chan was good when examined closely. The Shinsengumi dorms had grown cold and unfamiliar in the time they’d been away and Toushirou was exhausted, so he rolled out Gintoki’s unnecessarily large futon and tossed his vest and cravat to the side before collapsing.

In the dorms there was always noise; the creaking of old wood as someone got up to take a piss, or the rustling that signified the night patrols coming and going, or Sougo setting up a particularly explosive wake-up call. Here it was the same – even when the Yorozuya weren’t here there were sounds drifting through the open balcony door: Otose’s two assistants greeting customers, shopkeepers haggling at the market stalls opposite. There were children laughing playfully and running down the street. Toushirou closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and slept.

*

He woke up to a hand in his hair. “At least take a shower,” Gintoki said, looking faintly dismayed. “Now you’re stinking up my blankets with your shitty mayo scent.” His bokuto and yukata were lying to the side already and he was sitting cross-legged next to the futon.

“Sleep outside,” Toushirou said. The shitty alarm clock said it was 9PM, but the sun was still shining directly onto his eyes. He tried burying his face further into the pillow. The repetitive motion of Gintoki’s hand patting his head was quickly sending him back to sleep.

“Oh my, unlawful evictions now? Looks like there’s still one more corrupt official left to clean up.”

“You don’t even pay rent, bastard.” He yawned. “I’d be doing the community a service.”

“And deprive Kabuki-cho of my diligent service? There’d be chaos.”

Toushirou raised his hand and placed it on top of Gintoki’s. He traced his knuckles with his thumb and felt him exhale; then Gintoki brought their conjoined hands into his lap and laced their fingers together quietly.

“We got a bit of a troublesome job,” Gintoki said. “Might not be back here ‘til next week.”

Toushirou rolled onto his back, using his other arm to shield his eyes from the sun. “There’s still people gullible enough to hire you, huh?”

Gintoki laughed quietly and leaned down. “Scared I’ll take your job, tax thief?” he murmured and kissed him.

Gintoki’s kisses always tasted sweet; like artificial strawberry flavoring, almost sickeningly artificial. When they separated Gintoki knocked their foreheads together lightly in a way that Toushirou recognized as a question: he’d realised long ago that Gintoki took being a man of action to the extreme. This was Gintoki hovering between pressing for more or backing away.

While Toushirou would normally have been onboard for more, it really had been a long day, and he felt exhausted down to his bones. He pressed a quick kiss to the corner of Gintoki’s mouth before pitching his voice up into a falsetto and crooning, “Not tonight honey, I have a headache.”

Gintoki laughed. “Ah, are we at the dead bedroom stage already?” Toushirou turned to the side and Gintoki slid under the futon beside him, curling an arm around his waist.

“You were flirting with my sister the other day, weren’t you, you filthy two-timing bastard,” Toushirou continued even as he reached down to entwine their fingers together again. “I won’t forgive you.”

“So it’s a love triangle, then?” He cleared his throat and said, in an over-exaggerated falsetto, “Toushiko-chan, it’s not what you think!”

“It’s over, you cheating scum. Don’t ever show your face to me again.”

“Toushiko-chan, won’t you please list–“

Kagura slammed open the closet door and they both jumped. “Agh, you disgusting pair of old men, shut up and go to sleep, I’m seriously about to throw up here!”

*

The sun was still up at 5AM when Toushirou woke up the next day, high above like it was mid-afternoon as he left a snoring Gintoki a yawning Kagura and made his way back to the Shinsengumi headquarters. By midday, he began to realise there was a problem.

He squinted at the sky. There wasn’t a single cloud floating anywhere in sight. Beside him, Yamazaki said, “So you’ve noticed too, Vice-Chief.”

“Yeah,” Toushirou replied. He drew his katana and pointed it at the nearest bush. “Stop following me, you fucking stalker!”

“My name is Yomotsu!” said the bush, before moving away.

His phone chimed: he opened his email inbox. Hi, Vice-Chief, I hope you don’t mind if I contact you here too! My name is Yomotsu, see you around!

Unsubscribe, Toushirou sent back and crushed his phone. He gritted his teeth. If this was how Shimura Tae felt all the time, he was half considering sending Kondou to the hospital himself out of sympathy.

“Yomotsu! Remember it!” the recruit said from the hallway in the morning the next day when he slid open the screen door.

“Okay,” Toushirou said before closing the door and jumping through the window instead.

It kept up during patrol:

“Can I ask you for some advice, Vice-Captain?”

“No,” Toushirou replied. “Hey, stop jaywalking. Here, sit down and commit seppuku. Actions have consequences.”

“Thanks for hearing me out,” Yomotsu continued. “Well, it’s just that I’m having a little trouble with my mother – she’s married to a scumbag! Like, a really big scumbag. Like someone who would replace all your coke in the fridge with no sugar coke which just doesn’t taste the same even though no one else seems to be able to tell the difference.”

“I know exactly how that feels,” Toushirou lied.

And then:

“So then one day he goes and calls Mother ugly and leaves her! And of course all us kids are mad at him but he seriously runs off to some big city and hides, which he’s kind of good at, and even though he’s a scumbag Mother’s really sad like she’s actually in love or something. Weird, huh?”

“Uh-huh. You there, do you know how fast you were going? This is a shared zone. Commit seppuku and think about your mistakes.”

And on:

“It’s just a bad time for me and my siblings, and I hate the guy, really but he kind of does make her happy. Even though if he calls her ugly one more time then I’ll really –“

“Sure. Hey, red wire or blue wire? Let’s toss a coin for it. Over there, stop screaming –“

And:

“You seem to know this sort of stuff, so I was maybe wondering if you perchance mayhaps –“

“Stop making up words and get to the point.”

“Could help me get them to make up?”

Toushirou sighed. “Look, I don’t know anything about relationships, kid.” He felt a headache coming on, and the week had barely started. Normally a trip to Kabuki-cho might make him feel better, but the Yorozuya had been suspiciously absent since they’d left on their so-called ‘troublesome job’. “Why are you asking me, anyway?”

“It’s just that Captain Okita said that you – wow, that’s a scary expression, Vice Chief.” Yomotsu laughed nervously. “That man looks suspicious! Allow me to dispense justice.”

Confronting Sougo about anything never went well, of course, but even beating dead horses could be fun sometimes depending on the company.

“She seemed really troubled,” Sougo said flippantly while sharpening his katana, “and besides, it seemed like you really enjoyed helping out Tetsu back then, so I figured you’d probably enjoy this too.”

“Hey, why are you sharpening your sword? How is it getting blunt? What are you using it for?!”

“Please don’t ask personal questions, Hijikata-san,” Sougo replied, picking up his katana and examining it closely. “You’ve come at the right time, though,” he said, apparently satisfied.

That right there was Toushirou’s cue to leave.

*

After work he sat down for his regular dinner donburi. Gintoki usually met him there, after he finished doing whatever the hell he decided passed as ‘work’ on a regular day, but his latest request must have really been keeping him busy if he couldn’t even make it for the shop’s Uji Gintoki Special.

The lady behind the counter prepared his Hijikata Special as usual, then squinted out the window and said, “Ah, could I trouble you for the time?”

Toushirou flipped open his phone. “Eight PM.”

“Sunset’s late again, huh?” She turned. “And where is Sakata-san today?”

“On a job,” he said through a mouthful of mayonnaise.

“Oh.” She pursed her lips. “You know, Sakata-san might be difficult sometimes, but if you hang in there, I’m sure he’ll come running back.”

Toushirou grunted.

“What I mean is, he’ll definitely realise how lucky he is already, so just believe in him, Hijikata-san. I’m rooting for you both!”

No, he’s seriously just working. I don’t want to know what you’re assuming, lady.

The thing is, he did know that even before the Shinsengumi’s exile there’d definitely made an odd pair. Gintoki managed to piss him off so damn much at first, and then they kept getting into so much stupid shit together that it was impossible not to start thinking about him all the time. There was no way to pinpoint the exact moment that hate and irritation had turned into respect and then more – if you stay in the one place for too long, you’ll start to grow moss, Gintoki had said once, and it was probably something similar: Toushirou’s feelings for Gintoki had grown so slowly and unassumingly that he hadn’t realised until the moss was covering his whole being.

In the beginning, Toushirou had liked to think that they were rivals or something like that – or equals, at the very least, and he’d been content with at least being a particularly noteworthy piece of moss growing on the man if nothing else. And then the whole long-lost-Joui patriot with the indestructible sensei part came out and he had just felt kind of stupid. Knowing that Gintoki was the shiroyasha put things into perspective, a little – realistically, he probably didn’t even register as a blip on Gintoki’s radar, compared to the surviving Joui patriots and his Kabuki-cho allies and the Yoshiwara leader and, well, everyone that Gintoki had ever met, really.

So all in all Toushirou decided it was pretty realistic to assume that Gintoki had only started their – relationship, ew – to help with some of his post-war trauma or whatever, and that it was most likely temporary before he realised that there were better things out there.  It was understandable: everyone wanted to pretend that nothing had happened at all – that they’d never been threatened by an immortal and unstoppable evil, or forced to leave their homes as criminals, or had their planet’s existence threatened by a psychotic tyrant. After the Edo terminal was destroyed there were cracks left everywhere; buildings and entire streets were shattered and rebuilding, and the Shinsengumi dorms had been halved in size. Kondou and Matsudaira disappeared constantly, trapped in long discussions with Soyo’s advisors, trying to salvage as much order as they could. Sougo would leave for hours with Kagura, returning battered and bloody and exhausted but satisfied, seeking something like comfort in the only other person who understood the language of violence as well as he did.

Gintoki had a torn purple yukata neatly folded in the back of his closet. He never brought it up, and Toushirou never asked.

So when Toushirou had realised that Gintoki was pushing for more than just late night drinking sessions, he hadn’t exactly discouraged him, because he knew Gintoki could definitely handle himself and if not he had Kagura and Shinpachi. And most of all, Toushirou was kind of really fucking tired of being selfless, too, and then Gintoki’s hands slid down to his ass and he had stopped thinking completely pretty soon after that.

The shop owner kept giving him weirdly pitying smiles all through the night which he tried his best to ignore. It was almost like a preview of how things would be like when things went back to normal. A trial run of heartbreak. And now his pathetic self-pitying monologue was starting to piss him off, too.

Outside, the sun was still shining directly overhead – if this went on for any longer, he’d really need to buy some sunscreen. He trudged up the stairs to the Yorozuya office, which was empty, crawled into Gintoki’s unmade futon, and spent the next few hours alone staring up at the ceiling and trying to memorise how warm the blankets felt around him.

*

Willful ignorance was a skill Toushirou had honed to perfection after years of being in close quarters with Sougo and Kondou, and now the Yorozuya trio too. He probably could’ve ignored his newfound stalker forever, and he’d been fully intending on doing so, until –

“Don’t worry, kid. Nothing gets in the way of true love,” said a very drunk Kondou, clapping Yomotsu on the back. “Has she put a restraining order on him yet? No? Then –“

It was the third consecutive day of constant sunlight. Kondou had installed blackout curtains over all the screens in the East Wing and invited everyone to his “party room” via PA announcement to “celebrate the triumphant return of true love”. By this he meant that he was triumphantly returning, alive, from the hospital after Otae-san had severely disapproved of his latest escapades.

“That’s why it’s important that your lover is completely financially dependent on you,” Kondou was saying now. Yomotsu looked worryingly eager next to him. Toushirou put down his sake cup and thought that the least he could do was to prevent Kondou’s skewed ideas of relationships from infecting someone else. He stood up and out of the corner of his eye saw Tetsu pull out his phone with a solemn expression and begin to dial emergency services.

After escorting Kondou rapidly and loudly off the premises, he turned to glare at Yomotsu. “You’re asking Kondou for advice? Do we not have entry exams for the Shinsengumi anymore?”

“I don’t have any other ideas!” she cried. “Mother does nothing but get angry all day and I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been in a relationship before! Please help me, Vice-Captain! I brought you something!” She held out an extra-large limited edition Joui war era K*wpie Mayo. Every bottle came with a random special ’Heroic Joui Rebels!’ figurine that had only been in production for a few years before Sada Sada had arrested everyone involved. He tore open the packet: a tiny, badly painted Gintoki in his shiroyasha outfit stared back up at him.

Toushirou pocketed it and sighed. “Fine. You ask around, and I’ll tell you what’s good advice, and what’s not.” He cleared his throat. “Hey slackers, listen up! Someone here wants to know how you get two people who are in love to make up after an argument.”

The room fell silent, and then all at once people were shouting over each other. “What did the Yorozuya do now, Vice-Chief?” someone said. “Let’s go arrest him!” There was the shiiink of multiple swords being drawn.

“What does that bastard have to do with anything?! Sit back down!” Toushirou gestured to Yomotsu. “It’s for her, not me!”

The room let out a collective sigh. Some began to mutter to each other, looking thoughtful.

“Ah, how about the O.K.I.T.A. system?” Sougo said, raising a hand. ”It’s an acronym, Yomotsu-chan, but these principles are essential for every relationship. Listen closely.”

“O.K.I.T.A. system? Didn’t you just steal that concept from something you saw on TV?” Horrified, Toushirou realised that Yomotsu had pulled out a notebook and was waiting eagerly for Sougo’s explanation to start.

“The first step is to open communications with the target. After observation of the target’s schedule and interests, you need to place yourself unobtrusively into their life. Make your first meeting look like an accident.”

Wait, isn’t this basically describing how to stalk and kill someone?

“Next, you want to kill your opposition. This includes other potential lovers, friends, family, and anything that could operate as a support network for your target. Isolate them from their old world.”

“Uh, this doesn’t exactly sound like a healthy relationship.”

Sougo ignored him. “Then the important step is to instigate conflict. Stage a horrible argument and storm off. Let them be alone for a few days, before you move on to tempt with hope – send an email about how much you’re sorry and how much you miss them.”

“Okay, this is just blatant emotional manipulation. No one who’s not a sociopath would do this.”

“The last step is to abandon entirely, by deleting your email address and making sure you never see them again –“

“How exactly is this going to help them make up?!”

Yomotsu was nodding while writing furiously. “O.K.I.T.A. Open communication, kill opposition, instigate conflict, tempt with hope, abandon entirely. Thank you, Captain Okita!”

“I strongly recommend you throw those notes away right now.”

Kumanaku piped up next. “Ah, if we’re talking about love, I actually have some experience here.”

Sougo turned to his subordinate with an incredulous look.

“No, seriously.” He clasped his hands together with a solemn expression and they all leaned in, tense with anticipation. Kumanaku closed his eyes. “My father came from the West, across the ocean, from the land of the Qing. Here he met my mother and they had *** and did **** ****** then ****** and –“

“Less detail! Less!”

“My mother passed away when I was a child, but my father and I were close, and he raised me into the upstanding man that stands before you today. And although I am fully loyal to my homeland, it still was rare for me to meet another of my background – half-Chinese, half-Japanese, so when I met this girl, I was intrigued. I was cleaning the toilet when I met her –“

“So you were in the female bathroom? Kumanaku, you –“

“– I was reaching for some bleach at the same time she was, and our fingers brushed, just slightly. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. Just as MagiClean toilet cleaner washes away 99.9% of germs and bacteria, so too did love wash away all my rational thoughts, leaving only the sparkling, shiny beginnings of a wonderful relationship.”

“How inspiring, Seizo-san,” Sougo said. “Proving that there really is hope for everyone.” It definitely wasn’t a compliment, but Kumanaku thanked him anyway.

“We began to see each other all the time. We talked for hours. I even shared my home-made cleaning chemical recipes with her. She understood me like no one else – she had also been raised only by the one parent. She took me to meet her mother, once, and everything was squeaky clean. Then one day, she finally decided to open up to me about her dad. She told me about how he left her mother when she was very young, and she showed me his picture. Imagine my surprise when the picture depicted none other than my own father!”

What?

“Of course I explained this to her, and she left very quickly, and I never saw her again. Ah, but the spirit of young love stays with you forever, like a stain on the inside of your toilet bowl.” Kumanaku smiled and laughed. No one joined him.

“Seizo,” someone said quietly. “Did you and her…?”

“Certainly,” Kumanaku replied, closing his eyes and smiling fondly. “Your first time is always the most special, and –“

Sougo got up. Out of the corner of his eye Toushirou saw Tetsu pull out his phone with a solemn expression and dial his most recent contact.

By the time the ambulance had pulled away, conversation had resumed, with everyone stepping up to offer Yomotsu different pieces of absolutely useless advice. Shimaru held up his notebook. Does your mother like flowers? He could bring her a gift to apologise.

Yomotsu fiddled with her braid as she thought. “Flowers? She likes white lilies and white chrysanthemums, I think.”

Shimaru nodded. Then why don’t you tell him to send her a bouquet of those? It’s a way of expressing his lov

Toushirou smacked down Shimaru’s notebook. “I don’t think sending a woman funeral flowers is a good idea in any situation.”

“………is that so……,” Shimaru said.

Next, Tetsu began to cry about how women on dating apps always asked for his height and then never messaged him again.  Kamiyama made a suggestion that sounded suspiciously close to sexual harassment. Harada asked for a pay rise and a promotion but changed his mind very fast when he saw Tetsu reach for his phone a third time.

Hours later it was approaching 3AM, and Toushirou pulled away the blackout curtains, letting sunlight stream into the room again. Toushirou stepped over some troops who had passed out and made his way to Yomotsu, who was studying her notes with intense concentration. “Is there anyone else I should ask?”

“Yes, you haven’t asked me yet! Yamazaki! Remember me?! This is a Shinsengumi scene, how come I didn’t get to say anything?!”

Toushirou paused. He very faintly heard someone talking, but it could have just been the wind. “No, I’m pretty sure we got everyone.”

“Hey, don’t just ignore me! Why’s my text white?! No one's going to see it!”

“Um, Vice-Captain, why’d the paragraphs suddenly get weird like that…? Is there something there in that gap between our dialogue?”

“Because I’m talking!”

“What the hell are you talking about? There’s no one else here. If there was, we’d definitely remember. Let’s go.”

“I’m right here! Listen to me! Hey, don’t end the scene now –“

*

Toushirou had been trying to attach a giant clock on the wall of the police box for the past twenty minutes when he heard a distant explosion. Behind him, his radio crackled.

“- uh, code I-Don't-See-Anything situation in the north,” said his radio. Toushirou sighed: that was the Shinsengumi way of saying that there was Yorozuya activity occurring and it was probably in everyone’s best interest to steer clear. He finally managed to line up the back of the clock with the nail on the wall, hooked them together, and stepped back.

The next explosion knocked it loose again. He picked the clock back up and threw it onto the ground outside, where it shattered into several different pieces.

Sougo dragged his eye mask onto his forehead. “Hijikata-san, I just woke up, what’s the time?”

“Time to get back to work or commit seppuku,” Toushirou snarled.

In the distance there was another explosion, then screams, then the radio crackled back to life and said, “ah, the Yorozuya appear to be fighting some kind of Amanto? It has a human-like body and heaps of silver blades fanning out from its arms. Also, they’ve adopted a kid or something. Wow, the Amanto has a really big katana – oh, it’s so bright, I can’t look directly at it –“

Toushirou turned the radio off and went back to his paperwork. Sometimes it was really impossible to get any peace and quiet around here.

The explosions died down after some time, and as Toushirou began to leave the police box, the sun had finally decided to set. He passed people standing outside their houses and lined up along the riverbanks, watching as streaks of red began to make their way across the sky.

He stopped and joined them for a while: the first stars blinked back into existence as the light began to fade away, and the soft light of the crescent moon blanketed the world in a soft glow. When he turned around, he realised that the streets were alarmingly familiar – he’d subconsciously been making his way towards the Yorozuya office, and now he was in the middle of Kabuki-cho. There was a beggar next to him. “Please, any you can spare,” he was saying, head pressed to the ground in a formal bow. “Please sir, even just a crumb of pussy –“

Toushirou kicked him down the street where he bounced before crashing straight through the window of Oedo Hospital.

He felt a little better now, but still, what the hell? He had his own dorm at the Shinsengumi headquarters, as broken down and unfamiliar as it was now. Seriously, his attachment was probably becoming actually unhealthy or something at this rate.

Some part of him wondered if he deserved to have his heart broken. It was probably karma, for –

Well, anyway. Toushirou realised, after some careful reflection, that he’d been painfully clingy for the past few weeks. Some time apart would probably do them both good. He began to head back to the Shinsengumi headquarters. Anyway, if he didn’t manage to sleep quite as easily without the heat of Gintoki next to him, well, that really wasn’t anyone’s business but his own.

*

Sougo found him sitting on the edge of the engawa outside his room, chain-smoking his way through his second pack of cigarettes. He leaned against a post and said, “The demonic Vice-Chief, acting like a stilted lover. Did boss finally come to his senses and kick you out?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Toushirou grumbled. There were lights on in the surrounding buildings, and the soft chatter of Shinsengumi officers inside the dorms could be heard faintly. He felt Sougo watching him, unusually quiet.

“I thought you had better taste,” he said after a while, tone was as light as always – but Toushirou wouldn’t have survived this long if he’d been that gullible.

“It’s not the same,” he said, because they both knew what he was referring to. “I mean, it’s not like that, for him. So it’s not the same.” He tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. “It’ll probably be over soon, so don’t spend too much effort thinking about it.”

“I guess.” Sougo stared at him, face blank the way he got when he was thinking hard enough about something and had forgotten to pretend he was human. The thing is, it wasn’t like Sougo was devoid of emotion, like some people assumed – he’d definitely loved his sister, and Kondou, and maybe Kagura, now – he was just detached from his feelings in a way that most people couldn’t understand. Long ago, Mitsuba and Kondou had taught him emotions like teaching a child how to recognise colours for the first time: showing him how people acted when they were happy or sad until Sougo was less of an aloof observer to his feelings and could experience them instead (sometimes more enthusiastically than probably healthy re: finding joy in Toushirou’s continued suffering).

Sometimes he’d revert, mostly in battle, and then Yamazaki or Kondou would say something to inevitably break the moment or he’d have a new idea on how to generally decrease the quality of life of everyone around him and he’d remember how to be a person again. It scared the shit out of some of the new Shinsengumi, the ones who hadn’t been around long enough, but Sougo seemed to enjoy being able to feel things, anyway, and he had the Yato girl, who probably understood that better than anyone. He was probably lucky that he’d ended up surrounded by people with such numerous and varied issues that collectively they made Sougo seem almost normal sometimes.

“Well,” Sougo said, “don’t take your heartbreak out on us tomorrow.”

Toushirou scoffed. “Give me some credit, Sougo. If I’m harsh on you, it’s definitely because you deserve it.”

“Ah, so cruel,” he replied and began to leave. “Oh, I brought you something, Hijikata-san.” He tossed a package over his shoulder and walked off. Toushirou whacked it away with his hand and it exploded mid-air, raining small pieces of shrapnel all over the courtyard.

His cigarette had burned down to his fingers. He crushed it into the ashtray and headed back inside.

*

Gintoki was beside him when he woke up.

“Whuh,” said Toushirou, sleepily wondering if he’d subconsciously managed to sleepwalk across half of Edo, but no – he was under the government-issued futon on the Shinsengumi dorm’s shitty lumpy tatami, and Gintoki was still propped up on an elbow and smiling down at him.

“I broke in last night,” Gintoki explained casually.

Toushirou closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“You clearly looked at me right in the eyes. That’s not going to work.”

Maybe if he was a little more convincing?

“Okay, if anyone actually snored like that they should probably be consulting a medical professional.”

“Did they kick you out of the pachinko parlors again?” Toushirou muttered, giving up.

“Why would they? I’m their most loyal customer.”

“A pachinko parlor’s most loyal customer isn’t something anyone wants to be.” He looked over as Gintoki laughed, and caught the edge of a bandage under his yukata sleeve. He frowned. “Are you injured?”

Gintoki pulled his sleeve back down. “It’s all very tragic. I was being a hero, risking my life the common people of Edo, when I was catastrophically injured in the line of duty! C’mon, I deserve a reward, hm?” He closed his eyes and puckered his lips, humming and leaning in.

Toushirou pushed his face to the side. “Looking to get some more catastrophic injuries, huh?” he said, but then leaned in and pressed a kiss to Gintoki’s cheekbone anyway because he was probably a fucking idiot. It was worth it, though: Gintoki looked happy when he turned back, and then Toushirou decided that he was definitely a fucking idiot if he was going to be regularly thinking sappy shit like that.

“I missed you,” Gintoki said quietly and kissed away Toushirou’s reply, moving closer and cupping his face with both hands. There was something – not quite worrying, but something strange about that, and Toushirou thought it was maybe important or something, but it was starting to get hard to think properly when Gintoki was on top of him like this. He was mouthing at his throat, now, and Toushirou sighed and stroked a hand through Gintoki’s hair, letting his thoughts be chased out of his head as hands slipped under his yukata.

It felt a little like giving in.

*

Afterwards, Toushirou elbowed Gintoki off him and looked around for his clothes. “It’s still dark,” Gintoki grumbled. “Let’s go back to sleep.”

Toushirou pointed at the clock on his wall. “It’s 10AM, you lazy bastard.”

Gintoki shot up abruptly and slammed open the door, still naked, and looked up at the night sky. Toushirou spluttered as the cold air hit his bare skin and dragged the blanket up. Outside, some wandering Shinsengumi officers rapidly developed an intense interest in their own shoes. Gintoki was staring up, still, and the stars stared back at him, silent and unmoving. The moon was disproportionately huge: bright and full. Toushirou frowned; hadn’t it been a crescent moon just last night? Or was it still night? But his clock said it was the morning…

Gintoki closed the door and began to dress, frantic and wide awake; Toushirou blinked, shocked by his sudden change of demeanor. “Got another job. I’ll tell you at dinner,” he said, and stopped to press a kiss onto his forehead before he was suddenly gone.

The clock ticked away the minutes as Toushirou sat, frozen. Neither of them were particularly the sentimental type, but Gintoki’s exit was – abrupt, even for him. There was a strange feeling gnawing at him, like his heart was suddenly too heavy and had dropped into his stomach.

He was still sitting there when Sougo shot down the door with his bazooka, Kondou close behind him. The sun didn’t rise for the rest of the day and they carried out their patrols in darkness.

That night, Toushirou sat at the donburi stall for hours, making his way through his rice bowl one grain at a time, and then through his sake one sip at a time. Gintoki never arrived. The hole in his chest felt unbearable.

Just don’t think about it too hard.

Goddamnit.

Chapter Text

Apparently the sun had decided that it had worked overtime for the past few days, and was now stubbornly taking an extended vacation. Toushirou wearily examined the Shinsengumi HQ’s electricity usage over the past week: at this rate they’d probably have to end up holding a bake sale or something to supplement. Or maybe he’d ask China to catfish Matsudaira and drain his savings. He was probably just going to end up spending it at Snack Smile anyway.

He lit a cigarette and flipped through Yamazaki’s latest reports. Today I made a very important investigation. These will certainly be useful in helping the Prime Minister consolidate power, Vice-Chief. My records are as follows:

ABSTRACT: As children, many of us learn to associate the sound of a train rocking along the tracks with the sound effect, ‘chugga chugga chugga chugga’, coupled with the ‘choo choo’ of the train’s horn being sounded. However, as we reach adolescence, the quantity of ‘chuggas’ we say before the ‘choo choo’ tends to differ even between close friends and lovers. Henceforth I ask you: what is the truly appropriate amount of ‘chuggas’ before a ‘choo choo’? In this study we have used stratified random sampling from a variety of demographics in order t

Toushirou slammed his brush onto the table.

The ceiling whimpered. “Ah, you seem to be in a bad mood today, Vice-Chief,” Yomotsu said from the air vents.

“I am not in a bad mood,” Toushirou said. Ridiculous. He calmly ripped Yamazaki’s report into pieces, and laid the torn paper on the floor to shred it a few more times with the tip of his katana just to be sure.

Yomotsu fell to the ground with a crash, and he thought he heard her shoulder dislocate. She yanked it back into place. “Did, ah. Did – maybe, something happen between you and, your, uh.”

Toushirou (very calmly) looked at her. “My what.” Did his katana need to be polished? It had been getting slightly dull lately. He took a closer look.

“W-w-well, it’s just that, a lot of gossip – here, I mean, people gossip – not always about you but sometimes – but it’s not like I was trying to hear it, I really tried not to listen –“

“What are people saying about me, Yomotsu,” Toushirou asked. Very, very calmly.

“They’re s-s-s-s-p-p-pl-please can I lea –“

The door slid open. “Vice Chief, there’s been a situation at the palace!” Yamazaki said, panicked.

The palace? Soyo. Toushirou got up. “Alert Sougo and the First and Second squads. Fill me in on the way. And you –“

Yomotsu froze from where she’d been trying to crawl out the door. “Y-yes…?”

Toushirou felt a truly unpleasant smile grow on his face. “How would you like some valuable field experience?”

*

Sougo was unusually tense and distracted in the car. Of course, any incident in Edo Palace naturally made everyone incredibly edgy – especially now – but for Sougo, it was probably bringing up memories.

Sougo generally treated the world around him with apathy and vague disdain, but sometime in the past year he’d formed an odd group with Soyo, Nobume, and China – though a combination with such a high concentration of sadists wasn’t really something Toushirou wanted to promote (once he’d run into the four of them getting crepes together and giggling on his day off, no doubt planning evil world-dominating schemes). Toushirou rolled down a window and lit a cigarette, staying silent. There was no reassurance he could offer that Sougo would want to hear.

The palace came into view; Soyo was sitting outside, lit up by the car’s headlights, hair and clothes soaked and wrapped in a blanket. Behind her Nobume was in a similar state and Toushirou wondered idly if they’d gotten lucky and someone had just set off the emergency sprinklers or something. The car had barely rolled to a stop before Sougo was off to check on them, and Toushirou spotted Matsudaira talking to a sodden official off to the side. “Pops Matsudaira,” he said as he approached.

“Ah, Toushi,” Matsudaira said, turning. “You’re updated on the situation, I presume?”

“Yeah.” Some Amanto had barged into the palace, beat up some stuffy court officials who probably had it coming anyway, and refused to leave. No casualties, a relatively low number of injured, and the ramped up security in the palace had ensured a quick evacuation. All in all, it definitely wasn’t the worst situation possible.

Matsudaira nodded and gestured at the man he’d been talking to. “Tanaka over here says the Amanto made it rain inside, too.”

Toushirou frowned. It explained Soyo and Nobume’s waterlogged state, but was worrying in a whole new way: the rain would certainly put out his cigarette. These were truly appalling conditions.

Matsudaira’s gaze was hidden behind his sunglasses even at night, but his head moved to the left ever so slightly. “And this is…?”

Toushirou couldn’t see what kind of petrified expression Yomotsu was probably making, but he could hear her sword rattling in her shaking hands. “Some new training methods. Field experience,” he said, eying the palace. The darkness would make stealth easier, but any kind of small group could be easily overwhelmed if they underestimated the opponent.

Matsudaira shrugged. “In any case, we’re trying to keep this incident under wraps. It’ll be bad if the public sees the new government being so intimidated by a single pesky Amanto. Take care of this, Toushi,” he said, a little warningly.

Toushirou lifted a hand. “Don’t stress about it, old man,” he said, turning to make his way towards Soyo where she was seated on the kerb.

“Hijikata-san, good evening, uh, morning,” Soyo greeted, standing. She looked unharmed, if a little shaken, and Nobume paused to nod at him before launching a kick at Sougo’s crotch.

“Prime Minister,” he said, bowing slightly. “We’ll take care of things here. I’ll have Yamazaki escort you back to the Shinsengumi dorms for the day, uh, night.”

“You don’t need to be so formal, please,” she said, smiling up at him.

As Prime Minister, Soyo’s earnest demeanor had won her the support of a lot of Edo’s citizens, as well as a very specific and suspicious demographic of younger unemployed unmarried men. It probably would have been more worrying if Nobume hadn’t so publically and enthusiastically dealt with the first few stalkers who’d dared approach, and Toushirou had even heard that the bodyguard herself had a growing fan club within Yoshiwara’s Hyakka.

He escorted Soyo to Yamazaki, who was wilting under the strength of Nobume’s glare, and turned towards the waiting Shinsengumi officers. Sougo got up, dusting off his jacket, and joined them.

“The Amanto’s holed up in the Honmaru palace,” Toushirou said, raising his voice. “First squad will make their way through the Nijyubashi and Kitahanebashi gates. Second squad will stay in the Kitanomaru ward for backup. This is an undocumented Amanto species – don’t engage unless necessary, and always stay in contact with your other squad members.” 

Sougo saluted lazily before turning to his men.

“Yomotsu, you’re with me,” Toushirou added. She only looked faintly horrified, which was a bit of an improvement.

Half-heartedly he wondered if the Yorozuya was going to get involved. Probably not – Soyo was Kagura’s good friend too, and she would definitely have come running if she knew there’d been an incident at the palace, and where Kagura went…he shook his head. There was no room for distractions.

*

The rain soaked through his cigarette as soon as they entered the inner Honmaru palace and Toushirou dropped it to the ground with a mournful look. It was coming down from the ceiling steadily - his uniform was soaked through in a matter of seconds. He flicked on a torch with one hand (official Shinsengumi torches, waterproof and cheaper in bulk) and held his sword in the other.

“Stop being so goddamn jumpy,” he said the fifth time Yomotsu screamed as he opened a door to reveal absolutely fuck all.

“Wh-wh-why am I here, too?” she cried. “I just wanted to be a paper-pusher, really! I thought the police didn’t actually do anything!”

I’ll just ignore that, for now. “Look, missions like this are routine, Shogun’s old living quarters or no. It’s probably some prank pulled by the attendants, and we’ll check out all the rooms and head ba—“

They both jumped as a deafening crack echoed down the hallway, followed by the ominous creaking of wood. Toushirou held his breath, sword raised, but all he could hear was the rain on the wooden floor. His radio crackled once then fell silent.

“I’ve had enough,” Yomotsu said solemnly and began tying a noose to the ceiling rafters.

Save some rope for me, goddamnit! Wait, no.

“Rule thirty-three: any Shinsengumi member who commits suicide will commit seppuku to atone,” Toushirou growled, cutting down the rope. Yomotsu looked seconds away from bursting into tears.

“Yomotsu,” he said. He opened another door: the light of his torch revealed ero magazines and D*rito wrappers all over the floor. He slid it shut. “The feedback on your swordsmanship is promising,” because sometimes he did like to know exactly who was stalking him.

Some of the fear on Yomotsu’s face was replaced by surprise. “Yes, the – my mother’s, uh, dojo trained me, Vice-Chief.”

Toushirou opened another door (there was a suspicious amount of scrunched up tissues on the ground) and wished he’d convinced Soyo to fund research into waterproof cigarettes. “I didn’t bring you on this mission just to punish you.” Mostly, though. “Kondou-san doesn’t give out praise lightly, you know.” Encouragement, yes, but genuine praise was surprisingly less common than most would expect.

Yomotsu was looking a little thoughtfully at him now. She took a deep breath and drew her sword. “I-I won’t let you down,” she said shakily, and Toushirou gave her a nod before continuing down the hallway.

They made their way past four more rooms, checking each, when wind blew through the corridor suddenly despite the lack of windows. Sharp pinpricks of rain hit his face, and Toushirou shared a look with Yomotsu. Her eyes widened, and with a jolt of alarm Toushirou realised that some of her hair was beginning to rise.

He barely had enough time to yank Yomotsu to the ground before lightning struck. Toushirou flinched at the immense sound, like a crack that tore apart the air itself; the bright shape of the bolt was burned into his eyelids. He gritted his teeth and focused on the cold, cold water lapping at his fingers as he leaned on his sword and tried to regain his bearings. Between the ringing of his ears and the drumming of the rain, there was laughter, faint and mischievous. He opened his eyes.

There were two Amanto flying up and down the corridor, identical except one was white where the other was black, lit up ominously by his dropped flashlight. They were most likely Dakini tribe Amanto – ugly, horned beasts, but shorter than any that Toushirou’d ever seen, and had high-pitched voices, giggling as they performed aerial somersaults.

“Fuujin, Fuujin, look, look,” the white one said. It had two golden barbell-like weapons, one in each hand, and a hoop of flat, round discs floated behind it.

“I see, I see,” the other replied, hands grasping a long, tubular cloth bag around its shoulders. “Visitors, yes!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Toushirou saw Yomotsu stagger to her feet. She was wide-eyed, gaze flicking between the two Dakini, but her grip on her sword was steady and her mouth was set in a determined line.

“Fun time, fun time!” the white one said, and stopped, holding its palms out to its sides.

Toushirou felt the air around them electrify. “Yomotsu,” he warned, but she was already off, down the corridor in two long steps and slashing at the white one’s hand. The Amanto yelped and lurched back, but Toushirou didn’t watch any longer: instead he turned to block as the black one tried to bring its cloth down on his head.

The cloth bag collided against his sword with a loud metallic clang that belied its flimsy appearance – it seemed the Amanto was armed, after all, and Toushirou adjusted his grip on his sword.

Behind him, he heard the sounds of Yomotsu deflecting the other Amanto’s strikes, and the splash of her footsteps in the water. He lunged.

*

Once, Toushirou had overheard some Fourth Squad officers gossiping in the hallway about him after training. “He’s so focused when he’s fighting,” one of them said to the other. “The Demon Vice-Chief…who knows what kind of schemes he’s thinking of?”

“Ugh,” the other had replied, “probably predicting your next sixteen moves or something freaky like that.” They had both agreed, and laughed.

To be honest, it wasn’t true. He wasn't thinking about his opponent’s strategies or strikes or techniques or anything like that when he sparred an opponent.

He wasn't thinking at all.

There was no room in his mind for anything but movement: he dodged a strike to his right, saw an opening, took the opening, was blocked, threw it off, parried, lunged, dodged again. The Amanto kept dancing through the air, twirling out of his reach, and if it seriously kept up the giggling for much longer Toushirou was really going to have to download some mindfulness apps or something on his phone.

On his belt, his radio crackled and Sougo’s garbled voice came through. “Hijikata-san, we’ve located the leader. If you don’t respond in ten seconds, I’ll assume you’re dead.” It barely registered as words in his mind as he cut a gash open in the Amanto’s side, causing it to cry out. The wound tore open like a rupture on a balloon – no blood, he noted distantly – and a cold wind blew into his face.

The Amanto reared back, hands at the end of its cloth-weapon, and brought it down again. He blocked it, gripping the hilt of his sword, but gravity was against him. He planted his feet on the ground even as his arms started to shake with the effort.

He heard Yomotsu yelp from somewhere behind him and her sword came skidding over the water, landing next to him. “Play, play!” The white Amanto was laughing, and its voice had taken on a triumphant tone.

Toushirou grunted and threw off the black Amanto’s attack, forcing the cloth-weapon out of its hands and into the air. He turned. Ahead, Yomotsu had staggered back against the wall, the Amanto bearing down on her.

Behind, something grabbed his jacket. He threw his whole weight forward and heard it tear as the white Amanto lunged.

He plunged his sword into its back, piercing through to the front of its chest.

The tip of his blade buried itself into the wall, inches from Yomotsu’s head.

The Amanto froze in mid-air, arm raised, and twisted its neck all the way around to look at him. “Why, why,” it garbled, and collapsed into a shower of rain.

Toushirou turned around, breath coming out in harsh gasps and chest heaving, bracing himself to face the other one. The black Amanto hovered, staring at them with a blank expression. It twirled in the air, once, then sighed and said, “Over, over,” almost wistfully.

Then it blew away into nothingness, leaving only a faint breeze.

Toushirou warily stepped forward, peeling his jacket off his shoulders and dropping it on the ground. Do Amanto normally disappear when they’re cut down? Whatever. He didn’t really know enough about Amanto or Dakini to dispute it. Yomotsu had picked up her sword again and was curiously prodding at the puddle where the white Amanto had been.

His radio buzzed to life. “Ah, Hijikata-san, your passing is so tragic. It’s a shame you never managed to do anything worth mentioning with your life.”

Toushirou wiped the water out of his eyes. He grabbed his radio and said, “Shut up, Sougo.”

*

Sougo was standing outside the door to the Shogun’s old room, sword drawn and jacket torn. “You’re late, Hijikata-san,” he said. “Did you have trouble with the tiny Amanto? How weak.”

“You have a black eye,” Toushirou pointed out. Sougo pretended not to hear him. He took up position next to him and they nodded at each other, silently. Toushirou kicked down the door.

“Ah, thou hath finally arrived!” boomed the Amanto that was standing in the middle of the room. It was easily double Toushirou’s height, arms crossed over its blue upper body. Its eyes were red, gleaming from under its horned golden mask, and a mane of white – hair? Fur? – floated around its head like a cloud. It had a metal skirt of some kind, and beside it a long, jagged sword was embedded in the ground.

Behind him, Yomotsu whimpered.

“I am thy god of storms, and thou shalt call me Susano’o,” bellowed the Amanto. “I seeketh an opponent. Who shalt duel me in noble singular combateth?”

When he turned around, Sougo had, predictably, disappeared entirely. Okay, time for Plan B.

Yomotsu looked at him with an incredibly pitiful expression.

Okay, time for Plan C.

Toushirou lifted his sword. “I am Hijikata Toushirou, the Demon Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi. Explain yourself.”

“Good to meet you, most honored opponent! As I hath previously explained, I am thy god of storms,” the Amanto roared.

“God?” Toushirou scoffed. “Nice try, Amanto-san. We do have trade agreements with the Dakini tribe, you know, so you can drop the act.”

“Whateth? I am no…actor. I do not know that which thy speaketh of. I am thou god of storms.” It looked a little puzzled.

Toushirou narrowed his eyes. “I’m not falling for that. Gods? Pfft, why don’t you try something more believable, like anachronistic Bakumatsu-era space aliens or something?”

The Amanto was silent for a moment. “Thou art starting to piss me off,” it said finally. “Let us commence our duel promptly.”

“No!”

“No?”

It took a step forward.

“I mean, no more wasting time, god-of-storms-Susano’o-san. I’d be honored to duel you.” The Amanto reached for its sword and Toushirou cleared his throat loudly. “But it’s just,” he let out a heavy sigh and wiped a raindrop from his cheek dramatically. “Could you turn off the rain?”

Susano’o looked baffled.

“It’s just that we humans, ah…” Come on… “We can’t move very fast in water. When water touches us, it slows us down. That's why it took so long for us to get here. So if I were to fight you now, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be very honorable – in fact, it’s almost like you had it rain on purpose so you could have an advantage.”

Susano’o spluttered thunderously. “Y-you’re wrong! Thou art clearly japing, to trick me into some dastardly plot! I shalt not be so easily tricked!”

“I would never lie,” Toushirou lied. “Look into my eyes, Susano’o-dono. The Demon Vice-Commander would never resort to cowardly tricks to beat his opponent.”

Susano’o looked at him, considering. Then it said, very loudly, “Hm, thou eyes looketh indeed those of a man of truth! Very well.”

The rain dried up as quickly and suddenly as it had started. Toushirou pushed his soaked fringe back.

“Okay. We can have that noble duel now,” he said and ducked as a rocket flew over his head and exploded, sending Susano’o back through three walls, falling down the roof, and finally rolling to a stop in front of three very familiar figures.

Turns out the Yorozuya had heard, after all.

Behind him, Sougo lifted his smoking bazooka onto his shoulder. “You were standing too close, Hijikata-san. My hand slipped. Sorry, I missed you.”

“Oi, you apologised for the wrong thing,” Toushirou said and pulled out his radio. “Second squad, move in for the arrest.”

*

“Thou art a liar, and a dishonorable fool!” Susano’o shouted, struggling against the heavy duty duct tape it was wrapped in. “I shalt remember thee, for the rest of thine days, may thou be cursed!”

“Susano’o-dono, I’m very sorry,” Toushirou said with feeling. “My subordinate acted without my permission. Please, feel free to take it out on him. Anytime.”

“Thou expect me to believe that?!”

“I would never lie,” Toushirou lied. “Look into my eyes. The Demon Vice-Commander would never blame another to absolve himself of guilt.”

Susano’o glared at him for a long moment, and then nodded and said, “I see! Thy subordinate is certainly disrespectful. We shall have to postpone our duel until next time, then!”

I hope we never see each other again, Toushirou didn’t say, and made a weak noise of agreement. He stood up, lighting a cigarette (finally! Nicotine!), and came face to face with all three members of the Yorozuya.

“The Prime Minister’s fine,” he said. “She and Nobume are back at headquarters, probably in the middle of flaying Kondou as we speak.”

Kagura nodded. “Thank you, mayo bastard!”

“Don’t call me that! Your gratitude sounds really insincere now, you know!”

Gintoki pointed at Susano’o, who was being dragged away by several officers. “Why are you soaked? And what’s going on here, huh?"

“What? He was causing a public disturbance,” he said. “Some of us have jobs and work, you know. It might be a foreign concept to you.”

“I’m just shocked that you managed to do anything without our help, that’s all! Anyway, what kind of loser’s still working? It’s already night time!”

Toushirou flipped his phone open, which had miraculously survived the waterlogged journey. “It’s 3PM! Stop pretending so you can slack off. I know you have a phone!” Gintoki was acting…suspiciously normal.

Well, if he wasn’t going to bring it up, neither was Toushirou. Just a little more, he thought, and it was too easy to slip back into their routine bickering.

“Shinpachi-kun, is it safe now?” someone interrupted.

“Oh, yes, you can come out now,” Shinpachi said. A kid emerged from the shadows and padded over to join them. He had a long black hair tied in a low ponytail, and his black coat made him seriously undiscernible in the darkness. All-in-all, he looked like a textbook chuunibyou.

Toushirou looked at Gintoki. “Is Gin-chan’s Odd Jobs rebranding to Gin-chan’s Orphanage?”

“Says you! Indoctrinating young impressionable recruits with your police propaganda now, huh?”

“This is our client, Saisho,” Shinpachi explained, cutting off his reply. “We’re kind of his bodyguards, for the week.”

The kid couldn’t have been older than thirteen. “This kid needs bodyguards? What are you protecting him from, his maths homework?”

“What? No, obviously!” Kagura said, wagging a finger at him. “Everyone knows crafts is harder than maths!”

“Crafts? Are you in elementary school?!”

She stopped. “There’s different types of school?”

“Gintoki!”

“What? You try making her do anything that involves getting up before ten, first, and then we’ll have this discussion.”

“Right, whatever,” Toushirou said, blowing smoke into Gintoki’s face. “Go do your job, and try not to cause any major political incidents this time. I have to get back to work.” He was starting to shiver: the cold night air on his still-wet clothes made a pretty bad combination.

Shinpachi waved. “See you later, Hijikata-san.”

“Hopefully not,” he muttered under his breath and turned to rejoin the rest of the Shinsengumi.

Yomotsu was unusually still and quiet, staring at the Yorozuya’s client and squinting weirdly even as Toushirou got into the patrol car and turned the heat all the way up. “He’s, uh, a family friend, I think,” she obviously pulled out of her ass when asked.

He hoped that this didn’t signify some kind of overarching story arc or something.

Surely not. He probably would have realised if that were the case, right?

Right??

*

The first thing he did when he got back to the Shinsengumi HQ was change into his yukata and dump his uniform into Sougo’s laundry basket. Then he headed to Kondou’s office.

Inside, Soyo and Nobume were sitting with Matsudaira in front of the shitty TV, watching reruns of K*men Rider: Power Rangers. “We have to transform, everyone!” said the 144p red ranger. “Red power!”

Kondou was in the corner a fair distance away, looking dejected. He didn’t want to know.

“You should probably call the royal plumbers or something, Pops Matsudaira. Prime Minister,” he greeted with a bow.

“Hijikata-san, please, you don’t need to do that! We’re friends, aren’t we?” Soyo said with a smile. Toushirou really couldn’t figure out why she kept saying that - it was probably a trap of some sort. “Oh, is that your new assistant?” She gestured behind him. Yomotsu was in a dogeza bow on the ground.

Stalker, more like. “Something like that. This is Yomotsu.”

On the TV, the green ranger lined up and swung his arms. “Green power!”

“Yomotsu Shikome, sir!” Yomotsu said, shooting up stiffly and saluting. Her back was incredibly straight. “I’m proud to serve justice!”

Soyo giggled and Toushirou thought he saw actual hearts manifesting in Yomotsu’s eyes.

“Prime Minister, could I, maybe – trouble you with a question, if it’s not too much – if it is that’s fine, let me know,” Yomotsu said, shaking nervously.

Ah, we’re back to this again? And what happened to all her confidence at the palace? Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.

(“Pink power!” shouted the TV in 8kbps 22050 Hz.)

“Soyo is fine. Of course you can.”

“Yes! S-S-S-So-Prime Minister,” she stammered, fiddling with her hands. “Uh, I meant, I know two people who are, that is – I, uh.”

(“Blue power!” The music was starting to pick up now.)

 “Uh, I would like to ask you if I could ask the Vice-Chief to ask you a question!”

On the TV, the white ranger did a complex hand movement, and said, “White po—“

The TV mysteriously broke. Toushirou slid his sword back into its sheath and sighed. “Her mother had a fight with a lover, and she wants to help them make up.”

Soyo paused. “Ah, that sounds…difficult.”

I definitely saw you look at me before you said that. It’s not a metaphor, damnit, she’s really asking about her mother!

“To be honest, I’m not sure…Nobume-san, Matsudaira-san, what do you think?”

Nobume tilted her head. “The way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach,” she said confidently.

“Hey, are you sure asking the reformed child soldier is a good idea? You’re probably the worst out of all of us, you know!”

“Well, my wife and I were arranged, so I’d recommend taking away his freedom of choice entirely; he’ll have no other option than to go back to her,” Matsudaira said thoughtfully. “Actually, why don’t you ask Mayora 13 over there? I’m sure he knows a lot about seducing women.” His gaze was piercing even under the shades.

“Wh – that was a misunderstanding, pops! We went over this already!”

“I haven’t heard it yet, Matsudaira-san,” Soyo said, pleasantly. Both she and Nobume looked unfairly delighted at his spluttering.

Toushirou realised with sudden clarity that god hated him and his life was bullshit so this might as well happen.

The next hour of was definitely some kind of karmic retribution for every remotely illegal thought and action he’d ever attempted for his current and past lives. At some point Kondou joined them, crawling over from the corner, all too eager about the fact that he was finally the perpetrator instead of the target of any group bullying activity.

Shockingly, it was Matsudaira who saved him in the end. “Ah, I gotta take care of things back at the palace, I think. Time for me to beat feet.”

Kondou nodded. “For me, too. Time to beat mea – feet. Beat feet.” He coughed. Nobume’s hand came up to rest on her sword’s hilt. He hurriedly left.

Where are you going, anyway? This is your office, Kondou-san...

Soyo got up. “We won’t keep you from your work any longer,” she said, dusting down her kimono.

She’d grown up, a lot, he realised suddenly – both her and Nobume, actually. Toushirou wasn’t particularly close to either of them – even when they’d sparred with the Mimawarigumi, he’d typically leave Nobume for Sougo to deal with – but even he could see how much more confident they both seemed: walking steadily forward with heads held high.

It was good that they had each other to rely on.

“Soyo-hime, Nobume,” Toushirou called and they both paused to look back at him. “Be careful on the way back.”

Soyo’s face lit up with a smile. “We will, Hijikata-san!”

*

Gintoki ambushed him as soon as he stepped outside the gates.

“Don’t make such a defeated expression at me,” he said cheerfully, starting to walk. “I even came personally to pick you up! What an honor!”

“Loitering is an offence.” Toushirou followed, because it was highly likely that he had sustained a concussion sometime during the day which must have been hindering his decision making process. “Hey, the old lady’s place is the other way, you know. Don’t you have G**gle maps or something?”

“Nope,” Gintoki replied. “And we’re going somewhere different today. It’s a surprise.”

So Toushirou followed him all the way into the subway station and onto the train and up the stairs.

“Akiba?” he said when they emerged from the station, confused. “Is Glasses making you queue overnight for a figurine release again?”

Gintoki scoffed. “Apparently he can’t trust anyone else with his precious Otsuu-san, actually. Try again.” He led him into an arcade, past the (rigged, definitely) claw machines and shooter games, until they were on the fourth floor. Then he finally stopped.

“The other night,” Gintoki said quietly.

“Hm?” Toushirou replied. Ah, so this is why. Still, he hadn’t had to lead him all the way here just to give them some privacy. The Shinsengumi’s Vice-Chief getting dumped in public was a bad look, sure, but he’d handled worse.

It was so very Gintoki: surprisingly thoughtful when it came to the things that counted.

“I…” Gintoki looked a little nervously at him, holding eye contact, and Toushirou couldn’t look away, trying to memorise every detail. The arcade machines around them were flashing, and the music was obnoxiously loud, but he couldn’t focus on anything except the way the lights danced on Gintoki’s face. He took a breath. “That night, I…I mean…I beat the high score in Dancerush Stardom in Sega Building 2.”

I expect nothing, and I’m still let down.

“Really! Look!” Gintoki slammed the NEXT button of the machine next to him. The Top 10 Leaderboard came up. At the top, Gin-chan♡  was in first place with 99,831 points.

There were lots of things Toushirou wanted to say, but when he opened his mouth, what came out was, “Crazy Shuffle? Really? That’s only level 9. And you didn’t even get 100,000 points!”

“It’s okay, I know you’re jealous,” Gintoki replied, infuriatingly casual. “Why else would you be putting down my achievements like this?”

“Who would be jealous of a non-perfect level 9 score on a song even foreigners play?! At the very least, you should be playing kors k’s Butterfly. That’s level 10.”

“Jealousy is a disease, Hijikata-kun. I hope you get well soon.”

I’m sorry, Kondou-san. I’ll turn myself in after I dispose of the body. “Shut up! Watch, I’ll beat your high score in one play, right now,” he said, and brought his fist down on the START button. Something inside the machine cracked.

Three minutes later, Tosshi☆ was at the top of the leaderboard with 99,886 points.

“All that and you didn’t get 100,000 points either!” Gintoki said, pointing at the screen.

“What’s that?” Toushirou replied, catching his breath. “Feeling, ah, insecure about second place? Hah, that’s okay, I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

Gintoki growled and swiped his card again.

*

An hour later the machine in Sega Building 2 was broken and they’d been kicked out. The next few hours were spent moving and getting kicked out of Sega Buildings 1, 3, and 4 as well – by then even all the restaurants were looking awfully reluctant to welcome them in, and they both silently agreed on no maid cafes, so they were walking along the Kanda River, eating konbini onigiri, when Toushirou realised that there had been something very, very wrong about the whole night.

He swallowed down the rest of his mayo-covered onigiri and turned to Gintoki. “You’re under arrest, by the way.”

“What? I thought it was going well!”

Toushirou pressed on. “What was it, permhead? Blackmail? Extortion? Threats? How did you do it, right in front of me, too?!” He took a few steps forward and Gintoki backed up against the railing.

“Huh?! I’m a law-abiding citizen of Edo, you know,” he protested. “Never mind that, what’s with the sudden accusations?! What did I do?!”

Toushirou blinked. “You…paid for everything! With yen!”

“Don’t say it so incredulously! Yorozuya Gin-chan’s been doing very well after the war!” Gintoki propped an elbow on the railing and sighed. “It’s, ah. The other night, I really was busy, and.” His other hand came up to the back of his neck. “Look…ugh, can’t you just leave it?”

A warm feeling bubbled up in Toushirou’s chest; a kind of satisfaction, like he’d just had Kobe wagyu yakiniku and ten-thousand-yen sake instead of expired onigiri and hundred yen vending machine cans. There was no reason for him to feel so energised after playing a couple of shitty arcade games with a man who couldn’t even finish his sentence, but really, when had Toushirou’s life been anything like normal?

He laughed and reached forward to pinch Gintoki’s cheeks. “Wow, so even you have a conscience in there somewhere, huh?”

Gintoki pushed his hands away and brought them down, but he didn’t let go. “What the hell?! I’m a pleasant, selfless man, you know! I couldn’t stop thinking about how pathetic you probably were, I just needed to see you, so I could lift the shadow of guilt from my pure and kind heart!”

It might have been because he was tired or drunk on the atmosphere or a combination of both and everything that was going on lately. “Well, that’s just not true,” he said, smiling softly. “You don’t need me.” Shit, had that come out weird? It definitely had. Well, there was no helping it now.

He leaned back and met Gintoki’s gaze, which had become suddenly sharp and clear. “Neither do you,” he said neutrally.

Toushirou thought of islands and a body slumped against a tree and a feeling of overwhelming despair before someone’s shout had brought him back. He thought of two years spent going from quiet town to tiny village, chasing after a shadow of a demon. “Yeah,” he said, and by the way Gintoki’s brow furrowed, it probably didn’t come out as convincing as he’d wanted.

Shit, he needed a distraction. He rummaged through his yukata for his cigarettes, and when he pulled them out something else fell out of his sleeve, too. Gintoki leaned down to pick it up and squinted at it. Horrified, Toushirou realised it was the limited edition shiroyasha figurine he’d gotten from Yomotsu days ago.

“Oi, oi, what’s this?” Gintoki said lightly as he jumped back to avoid Toushirou’s lunge. “Missing me so much already, Hijikata-kun? Come here, Gin-san will give you the real thing!”

He held his arms out and Toushirou kicked him in the stomach. “You fucking wish, permhead! Sougo must have put it there. It’s probably wired to blow up or something.”

“Oh? He must have tried really hard to get it, then. I heard there’s only five copies of this figurine in circulation, and they’re all highly illegal.” Gintoki’s half-lidded gaze was back, but his eyes were glinting, reflecting the glittering street lights around them.

“For – voodoo,” Toushirou insisted. “It must have been for an ancient voodoo curse. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise.” He shot forward again, bracing his elbows on Gintoki’s shoulders, and jumped with one hand shot out. An arm came around his waist to steady him.

He snatched figurine with a triumphant cry, but the momentum carried them too far forward. Gintoki let out an aborted, “hey, wait –“

- and then they were tipping backwards, over the railing.

Ah, Sougo’s going to have a lot of laundry to do this week, Toushirou thought, right before they both hit the water.

Chapter Text

It was morning – the stars were out, the moon was bright, the birds were heatedly discussing whether or not it was appropriate to chirp or not, and the Yorozuya were fighting another Amanto and had destroyed two-thirds of a street by the time Toushirou passed by with Yomotsu and Sougo.

Basically, it was the start of a typical Tuesday in Edo.

This Amanto was humanoid but impossibly tall: it was wearing a black overcoat, with long strips of cloth over its shoulders like a cape. Its limbs were pitch black and already missing an arm, while the rest of its limbs had thin, white lines running down the lengths. It wore a golden mask on its face, and a crescent-shaped headdress, and Toushirou could see one single glowing red eye through its visor.

It held a katana that dripped with black matter of some kind and was using it to deflect Gintoki’s strikes. Kagura was shooting at it from the rooftops, causing it to occasionally falter. Shinpachi lingered further away, arm out and standing protectively in front of the kid – their client. Toushirou lit a cigarette and got started with crowd control, sending curious citizens somewhere far away with generous application of death threats, and leaned back to watch.

It was always a spectacle when the Yorozuya were involved: Gintoki, when he was serious, knew how to take advantage of every falter in his opponent’s step. He had a uniquely opportunistic fighting style that could only have been learned on the battlefield, where unpredictability and split-second decisions were the difference between life and death. Kondou’s dojo had taught Toushirou and Sougo the fundamentals of combat: techniques that even the most skilled swordsmen fell back on. Gintoki was a different kind of monster entirely. The only thing he relied on was survival: it made him incredibly adaptable and an absolute bitch to fight against.

It was impossible to keep up for too long against that volatile swordplay, and soon enough the Amanto went down. It let out a piercing screech as it fell, striking out – it caught Gintoki’s calf – Toushirou’s heart stopped as he caught sight of blood – before collapsing into a cloud of dust that blew away in the morning breeze.

Gintoki only looked a little mildly irritated as he inspected the gash on his leg, and Toushirou felt himself relax.

Not that he’d been particularly tense, or anything.

In the distance, the sky began to lighten, from navy to mauve to a pale yellow, and sunrays began to peek over the horizon. Kagura threw up a fist in celebration and Shinpachi and the kid gave each other relieved looks. Lingering Kabuki-cho residents were murmuring and pointing upwards.

“An Amanto that causes eternal night,” Toushirou mused. The Yorozuya turned at the sound of his voice, eyes wide. “This is new. We’ll have to make a report to the Amanto Embassy.”

“Nothing to worry about now,” Kagura said, opening her umbrella and twirling it once. “Night-causing Amanto have officially been driven to extinction!”

“That’s not a good thing, you know!”

“What a savage Yato, driving away the native Amanto populations in Edo,” Sougo drawled, yawning. “Invasive species should be put down. Here, I’ll get started.”

“Sadist First Squad captains are about to become extinct, too!” Kagura said cheerfully, cracking her knuckles.

Toushirou stepped out of range. The Yorozuya’s kid client slinked out of whatever hole he’d hidden himself in and crept over to Shinpachi, who was trying to engage a stuttering Yomotsu in conversation. Gintoki limped over, looking around weirdly. “Ah, I think Sougo put needles in my strawberry milk the other day,” he said. “Any reason why that might be?”

“How would I know?” Toushirou replied, raising an eyebrow. “That guy does whatever he wants. Are you sure it wasn’t actually one of your employees trying to collect on your life insurance?”

“No, he definitely just glared at me right now! Look!”

Toushirou looked. Sougo was bickering with Kagura about some mundane topic, like normal. He turned back to Gintoki. “Why don’t you ask China instead? They probably started another stupid challenge or something. You should probably watch out.”

“Maybe,” Gintoki said, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. “Or maybe…hmm.”

Toushirou squinted at him. “Did you hit your head? Why don’t you stop thinking about pointless shit and start thinking about how you’re going to pay for all the property damage you just caused, huh?” He gestured at the rest of the street; rubble was strewn in the middle of the road, and at least four buildings looked pretty unsalvageable.

Gintoki looked him in the eye and said, solemnly, “You’re mistaken. It was already like that when we got here.”

“The hell do you mean?!” Toushirou snapped. “There are about sixty-four witnesses who can attest differently! We’re going to have to find temporary residences and file insurance claims for all these citizens, you know. You’ve added a lot to my workload. You can demonstrate how sorry you are by buying me coffee.”

Next to them, Glasses let out a long-suffering sigh. Yomotsu and the kid were staring with wide eyes. He was probably tearing apart whatever stoic image Yomotsu had of him, but whatever. She could always find someone else to hero-worship.

“Well, I can’t help but think it really says something about the quality of our infrastructure if it’s knocked down so easily like that,” Gintoki said irritably. “It was probably on the verge of collapse anyway. So if you think about it, we’ve actually helped the city by preventing more people from getting injured when it inevitably collapsed in the definite near future. You’re welcome. You can demonstrate how grateful you are by buying me coffee.”

“You haven’t helped anyone! And what were you doing starting fights with Amanto, anyway? You’ve probably set back negotiations by around ten years, fighting in public! In fact, that’s probably worth two coffees, large size.”

Gintoki waved his arms. “It was keeping the sun from rising! I was serving the nation! That’s definitely three coffees, large size, with milk alternatives instead of full cream.”

“If it wants the sun to stop rising, that’s none of our business,” Toushirou said. “You can’t just go around forcing your ideals onto everyone else. For that, come back when you have four coffees, large size, with milk alternatives instead of full cream, double-shot, and with extra hazelnut syrup.”

“Sometimes I wish I were born deaf,” Glasses mused to no one in particular.

*

At some point Shinpachi wrangled them, like a particularly exasperated sheepdog herding a particularly destructive group of sheep, into a nearby T*lly’s if only to remove them from the public eye. And so Toushirou, Sougo, Yomotsu, the Yorozuya, his two employees, and their client ended up squashed into the corner booth of the café, watching in horrified silence as Gintoki took the lid off the sugar jar, poured half of his coffee inside, and began to stir.

“Amazing, boss,” Sougo said. “Your continued survival proves that we live in a truly godless society.”

“You sure have some weird thoughts, huh, Soichiro-kun,” Gintoki said, tearing open two sweetener packets and adding them into his disgusting creation.

“It’s Sougo.”

“No, really, we’re all thinking the same, though,” Toushirou said. “There’s no way that’s even dissolving anymore. It’s fully saturated. There’ll be solid sugar let at the bottom. You’re just drinking sludge at this point.”

“Hijikata-san, you’re covering your coffee with mayonnaise,” Glasses said.

“How is that relevant? Stay on topic.”

The kid – Yorozuya’s client – had been staring down at the menu. He slammed it shut, threw it down, and said, “I don’t want any of this stuff.”

Toushirou watched curiously as Shinpachi winced and pointedly ignored him. It was an unusual gesture from someone who usually took pointed measures to be polite despite the mannerisms of everyone around him.

The kid cleared his throat. “Kagura-chan, get me a C.C. Lemon from F*milyM*rt,” he said, very loudly.

Kagura lifted her head from where she’d been dozing off on the table. “Huh? Don’t wanna.”

“What? You don’t want to? But I’m –“ his eyes flicked over once to where Toushirou sat. Very suspicious. Was it the police thing? “I’m, uh, your client. Here, I’ll even give you the money. You can buy yourself something nice with the change.” He grabbed a few coins, seemingly from nowhere, and tossed them on the table.

Kagura snatched them up and scowled. “This is 300 yen! After your drink I’ll only have 50 yen left, yes? How exactly am I supposed to buy myself something nice? Even temples ask for 100 yen or more these days.”

Then why are you pocketing the money anyway?!

“You’re sitting on the outside, no one else can get past you,” the kid said. “Or I could ask Mr Policeman over here.” His gaze slid over to Toushirou, and Toushirou somehow got the feeling that this twelve-year-old meter-tall kid was trying to stare him down. “Hey, your job is to serve the community, right? Go get me a C.C. Lemon. Here.”

He dropped three hundred-yen coins into Toushirou’s cup. The coins slowly sank into his mayo-infused coffee, disappearing like Jack disappeared into the water at the end of Titanic, and with about the same air of desolate hopelessness, too. The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. There was a very quiet, “oh no,” from Glasses.

“It’s okay, Toushi,” Kagura interrupted, and Toushirou slid his sword back into its sheath. “Calm down. I’ve got it.”

“Thank you, Kagura-chan,” the kid said, and Kagura gave him a sweet innocent smile that usually meant that someone’s life expectancy was about to get drastically shortened. She stood up, leaned past Shinpachi and Gintoki, and grabbed the kid by the collar, yanking him out of his seat and slamming him the ground next to her.

“You are on the outside now, yes?” she said to the crater on the floor, dusting off her hands.

The kid peeled himself off the timber with a whimper and dragged himself out of the café. An employee took pity and opened the door for him.

“I’m really sorry,” Shinpachi said anxiously once he’d disappeared. “It’s just that Saisho-san can be a little bit…”

“He’s a spoiled brat,” Gintoki said, scraping the sugar at the bottom of the tin into his mouth. “But he’s paying damn well.”

“About time you made up your rent, I guess,” said Toushirou, who knew that the financial state of the client had nothing to do with whether Gintoki decided to accept the job or not. He spooned the hundred yen coins out of his cup and onto the table, where they quickly disappeared into Kagura’s pocket. The coffee still looked pretty drinkable. Well, why let good mayonnaise go to waste?

“That last Amanto should’ve been the last of them, so we won’t have to deal with him for much longer, at least,” Shinpachi said. “Still, though, sorry about that, Hijikata-san…”

Toushirou shrugged. It probably ranked among some of the tamer and less-nightmare inducing things that’d happened to him in the Yorozuya’s proximity. Besides, the kid’s attitude was pretty amateur compared to some Bakufu officials he often had to deal with, and at least here he didn’t have to suck up. Yomotsu, who had been staring intently at the kid until now, piped up. “Ah, you guys are the Yorozuya, right?”

“Finally, some respect from the police,” Gintoki said, taking out a pen. “Are you a fan? An autograph, is it? Where should I sign?”

“U-um, no, it’s…I have a small request, of sorts. A question, really.”

Toushirou zoned out as Yomotsu recounted her dilemma again. He’d heard it far too much the past couple of days: whenever he’d so much as exchange a passing greeting with anyone at any given time, she’d appear suddenly, leaping out from the nearest bush or wall, interrupting his day and asking for advice with stuttering speech.

“Oh, I know this one,” said China, hand shooting up. “They should have a really good fight! While shouting out all their issues! They’ll be best friends at the end. It happens all the time in Shonen manga, yes?”

“Do you always think with your fists, you dumb brute?” said Sougo, seemingly nonchalant but obviously itching for a response.

Lucky for him he’d found someone else who was the exact same type of bat-shit crazy. “Yes! Right now, they’re thinking about beating the shit out of you. Oh, now they’re turning thoughts to actions.”

The café’s door jingled: the Yorozuya’s client, back from his konbini trip, triumphantly set a bag of C.C. Lemon on the table and watched as Sougo was launched towards the other side of the café. “Eh, what are we talking about?” he said, elbowing Gintoki aside as he took a seat.

Shinpachi carefully moved his mug away from Kagura’s reach. “Maybe something that shows he’s really dedicated to her. That he’ll support her, through thick and thin. That he’s been there from the very beginning, and that he’ll always retweet her fancams and that –“

“Otsuu-chan hasn’t noticed you yet, so I don’t think that works, actually,” Gintoki interrupted.

Shinpachi’s face went an alarming shade of red. “Well, it’s not like you can think of anything better!” he snapped.

Gintoki’s gaze snapped to Toushirou then back, for some reason. He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well –“

“Oh, Mister Police, you did keep a look out, yes! Thank you very much!” someone interrupted. Everyone turned – even Sougo and Kagura, mid punch – to look at the new arrival.

A vaguely familiar fire-Amanto was standing next to their table, flaming feathery arms on its hips.

“Huh,” Toushirou said.

The fire-bird drew a flaming sword from its wing and pointed it at the Yorozuya’s client. “I found you, father!” it chirped. “Die now!”

“Oh no,” the kid managed just before the Amanto lunged. Gintoki pushed him to the side and dove out of the Amanto’s blazing trail as it drove its sword straight through the glass windows and flew onto the street. In an instant the Yorozuya leapt into action, following the Amanto outside and forming a defensive barrier in front of their client.

Toushirou took a sip of his liquid mayonnaise and accidentally swallowed some stray glass shards. “‘Father’?” Toushirou said. Sougo was standing up, face bruised and hand on his katana’s hilt, while Yomotsu sat uncertainly with a worried expression.

“Oh,” Saisho called from the ground outside, “yes, that’s my son. His name is Kagu-tsuchi. He was quite a difficult child.”

“Man, they sure do start them young these days.” Toushirou lit a cigarette. “Sit down, Sougo. The Yorozuya have this under control,” he said as the Amanto whacked away Kagura’s umbrella and casually swatted Shinpachi down the road. “We wouldn’t want to interfere.”

Saisho screamed as Kagu-tsuchi launched its entire feathery self at him, sword leaving a scorched indent on the dirt. Its next lunge was blocked by Gintoki’s wooden bokuto, which abruptly caught on fire. The bokuto was dropped with a yelp and Gintoki frantically kicked at the dirt in an attempt to smother the flame, before it was tucked away, black scorch marks and all, safely into Gintoki’s obi.

Saisho had fallen over and was scrambling away pathetically as Kagu-tsuchi approached. Kagura shouted something about charcoal chicken as she punched it, and Gintoki picked up some poor shopkeeper’s cantilever umbrella, breaking it in half and brandishing the pole like a sword. The Amanto threw Kagura off and twisted to dodge Gintoki’s lunge, taking a few steps back and readjusting its stance. Gintoki was pausing too, but even as Toushirou watched him he knew that Gintoki’s balance was completely off. There was blood, winding down Gintoki’s leg and dripping on the ground, even though the flaming Amanto hadn’t managed to land a hit so far.

Gintoki’s injury from before, Toushirou realised, and before he knew it, he was out of his seat.

How irritating.

“This is pathetic,” Toushirou said as he blocked Kagu-tsuchi’s sword with his own. His katana was beginning to glow orange where it was pushing against the Amanto’s; Toushirou narrowed his eyes and swung to the side, sending Kagu-tsuchi’s sword arm out to the left. He slashed at the Amanto’s undefended torso and it managed to block but lost balance, falling back. Sougo leapt forward, lightning fast, driving his blade through Kagu-tsuchi’s shoulder and into the pavement below.

“Mister Policeman, what does this mean? You side with criminals?” the Amanto said, spitting embers.

Toushirou pointed his sword at its beak. “If you’ve got a problem with the kid, that’s your own business. But the police here don’t tend to take too kindly to anyone attacking citizens in broad daylight, so why don’t you cool down?”

Kagu-tsuchi let out a roar and lunged: Toushirou moved on reflex, driving his sword into its chest and swinging to the side. The Amanto turned to ashes, drifting onto the dirt, sword doused of flames and falling to the ground with a dull thunk.

Toushirou sheathed his katana and turned to Gintoki. “What’s that stupid look on your face for, perm-head? Get up. You haven’t paid the bill yet.”

*

“One broken window and three broken tables, huh,” Toushirou said to the café owner. “Yeah, why don’t you take it up with Gintoki, over here? You can take him to court over it, actually. Build a lawsuit. What’s your email? I’ll send you the appropriate forms.”

“Good luck trying to prove anything,” Gintoki said. He turned to the kid, who was anxiously looking around. “Hey, you didn’t mention the flaming chicken. That’ll be another fifty-thousand yen on your bill. Well, our job here is done.”

“You didn’t even do anything! I killed it,” Toushirou pointed out. “I should be the one getting the fifty-thousand yen.”

“Okay. If you give me a hundred-thousand yen, I’ll give you fifty-thousand yen so you can feel rewarded.”

“Who would do that?! If you’re going to scam someone, at least put some effort into it!”

“I didn’t really know for sure how many were after me!” The kid cried out, suddenly hysterical. “She might be really mad this time or something. Oh, what am I going to do…” he trailed off, clutching his head.

“Geez, get your goddamn marriage issues under control,” Gintoki sighed.

Marriage issues? Now that sounded familiar. Maybe he could take a look at Yomotsu’s notes or something. Toushirou turned back to the café owner, but she’d disappeared somewhere while he’d been distracted, and there were disgruntled employees sweeping up stray glass shards on the street.

“Well, there was Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, Susano’o, Fuujin, Raijin, and Kagu-tsuchi, so that should be it,” the kid was muttering. “But if she was mad enough that Kagu-tsuchi came out, then she might have sent her other kid too. Ah, what was the name…?”

“Who cares about its name? That’s another fifty-thousand yen, thanks!”

“How do you do it?” Yomotsu said. Her voice was quiet, but surprising, like Toushirou hadn’t heard it in a long time.

“Hmm?” he replied distractedly.

“You two are so different. And you argue all the time. And you’re…you were on opposite sides, before the Amanto invasion, but now…you all seem to know each other so well.” He followed her gaze: she was watching Sougo and Kagura duel it out as Shinpachi tried to calm down an irate Gintoki and their crying client.

Toushirou’s cigarette had been lost during the fight. He pulled out another one. “Shinsengumi, Joui rebel, Amanto, whatever,” he said, flicking on his lighter. “When it comes down to it, well…we all fought for the same thing, against the Tendoushuu, in the end.”

“I thought my mother and that man could never work, at the start, because they were too different,” Yomotsu continued, smiling half-heartedly. “But they fell in love anyway, and they were so nice to each other. They argued, but he always came back, but still, why…” she swung her arms out once, and stopped. “Is it…is it just not enough?”

Toushirou blew out smoke and watched it drift, slowly, fading into the air. Goddamnit. He really wasn’t good at this sort of shit. “Listen, forget about grand gestures and romantic gifts and all that stuff you have written down,” he said. “The truth is, love sucks. When you love someone, you have to let go of the annoying stuff all the time, and you have to do things you don’t like, and you have to give up things you really want if you want it to work, and that sucks. But if you don’t, and if you keep doing whatever you want all the time, without thinking about anyone else, then it sucks more because then it’ll just hurt you, in the end. Really bad. Worse than…than eating a packet of super spicy senbei chips all in one go.”

The last part almost got stuck with the lump in his throat, but he forced it out. Some things didn’t deserve to remain unspoken.

“If you’re lucky, they’ll do the same and give up the stuff they want for you, too, and then all the shitty stuff that happens won’t feel like it’s shitty at all,” he continued. “And then it’s worth it. But if that guy you’re looking for really hurts your mother, and it’s not like that, then you’re right. It’s not enough, and she should give up on him, because love itself will never make it worth it. So she has to let him go.”

Yomotsu was looking at the ground, biting her lip. Her fists were clenched, and Toushirou sighed. “But that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, right? So here’s my real advice: you could just trap the guy in her basement forever or something,” he said, smiling crookedly. “Then he’d definitely never leave.”

Yomotsu let out a soft laugh. “I see,” she said, relaxing slightly. The heavy atmosphere was dissipating a little, at least.

Toushirou took a breath to speak again –

“Oh, I remember now,” the kid said loudly, up ahead. “The name of her last child should be Yomotsu Shikome.”

– and stopped in surprise.

Next to him, Yomotsu drew a knife from her uniform.

Toushirou blinked, and she buried it perfectly into his throat.

“Thank you for your advice, Vice-Chief,” he heard, distantly, faintly, barely, because what the fuck?

Sougo’s katana buried itself into Yomotsu’s shoulder. The momentum tossed her to the side. Toushirou inhaled sharply as the motion made the knife tear sideways.

“What the fuck,” he tried, but when he opened his mouth all he managed was a sickening gurgle. He pressed his hands to the side of his neck as his legs gave way. Someone caught him on the way down, but all he could feel was the blood leaking through his fingers.

“Toushirou,” Gintoki was saying, floating hazily above him. His hands were pressing down on Toushirou’s neck as if he could shove the blood back in.

That’s obviously not going to work, Toushirou thought, gripping the sleeve of Gintoki’s yukata and staining it a deep red. Are you an idiot? Don’t you know first aid?

He tried to say Gintoki but he couldn’t make it past the first syllable without choking on his own blood. It was everywhere: in his throat, on his hands, at the edges of his vision, framing Gintoki’s frantic expression. Gintoki, he thought. Gintoki. He tried to focus on Gintoki’s eyes, but his gaze kept slipping.

Gintoki, I –

*

*

*

Afterwards, Gintoki sat with Toushirou’s body in his lap, frozen and barely blinking. China and Shinpachi were next to him, crying, and the kid was scrambling away, but there was no sound: the world was muted. Sougo was staring at them, wide-eyed, katana tip-down and through Yomotsu’s chest, impaling her to the ground.

Toushirou watched his body with a detached sort of interest.

Yomotsu’s blood was pooling under her, reaching out in finger-like tendrils. It spread further, like it was running away from her body, and Sougo shouted something and Yomotsu replied and collapsed into thousands of spiders, crawling away from under the uniform jacket and shirt.

A stick snapped behind him. Toushirou turned.

Before him stood a rotting corpse clad in a white marriage kimono. She might have been a beautiful woman once, but now half her face had fallen away to reveal bone. Only her right eye remained, framed by squirming maggots that had made a home in her cheek. Scraps of black, matted hair leaked from her headdress, hanging to her waist like vines.

The corpse unhinged her jaw. A centipede crawled its way out and into her empty eye socket.

“Hello,” she said. A death-rattle followed her every word. “I am called Izanami-no-Mikoto.”

*

Izanami led him through streets, down alleyways, and the sun began to set at some point as they were walking but the streetlights stayed dim and eventually Toushirou could barely see where he was stepping. He’d lost track of the turns a while back, anyway; the area they were in now was unfamiliar, and shadows were lining the edges of the roads, but Toushirou resisted the urge to look and kept his gaze focused on where Izanami’s white kimono seemed to almost glow, rippling, ahead.

He followed her through giant, looming tori gates and down some stairs until they approached a temple. The temple was dilapidated: moss was crawling through the cracks of the offering box and the engawa was covered with a thick layer of dust that seemed to heave, like the temple itself was breathing. Izanami delicately lifted her kimono with rotting hands as she walked up the stairs, and when she slid open a screen door Toushirou caught sight of a shadowy figure inside twitch away.

“I’m terribly sorry for the state of this place,” Izanami said, voice low and smooth. “I really wasn’t expecting visitors today. But do make yourself comfortable, dear.” She motioned at a torn couch, modern and Amanto-style, and Toushirou sat stiffly. His limbs felt heavy. Should he talk? What would he even say?

Izanami set down a tea pot and two small cups. “You are my guest,” she said, pouring. “Have some tea, dear, you must be cold.”

Toushirou lifted the cup. It was burning hot against his fingertips, and he realised he was cold – freezing – but he didn’t really mind. The tea smelled bitter, and there was steam wafting up in lazy tendrils.

“Wait,” Izanami said. “Have you heard of the Western myth with the underworld and the pomegranate?”

Toushirou put down the cup.

Am I dead? What the hell are you? He had questions, bursting forth, but none of them particularly wanted to actually get asked. It seemed like a really big chore, suddenly, to try and open his mouth and work his tongue and form words, so they sat in silence for a long while. He’d just decided that he wanted to try saying something when the door slid violently to the side. Toushirou blinked: it was Yomotsu, panting, Shinsengumi uniform torn and bloody. She took one look at him, and immediately burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “Hijikata-dono, Vice-Captain-dono, I’ll commit seppuku immediately, I swear, if only I had bowels to disembowel, I’m sorry, I’m really really –“

Toushirou unsheathed his katana and brought it down on her head. The blade got stuck halfway down her face and he pulled it out with some effort, grimacing as her body collapsed onto the floor.

She sat up, blood streaming from her forehead. “I completely understand, and if I were in your shoes, I’d kill me too, but let me explain that I’m already dead so you can’t, and so are you now, that’s my fault, I’m sorry –“

“Yomotsu, dear,” Izanami said in her rattling voice. “Please, calm yourself. I’m sure Hijikata-kun doesn’t blame you.”

Toushirou suddenly had no problems speaking. “Wait, I do blame you! You stabbed me! What the hell!?”

“I-I’ll make it better. I swear!” Yomotsu said, bowing low. A pool of blood was slowly collecting underneath her.

Toushirou pointed his sword at her. “No, you won’t, because I’m going to find a way to make you stay dead, first.”

“Y-yes, Vice Chief!”

“Whatever. I’ll deal with you later,” Toushirou said. “For now, I have to get back. Thanks for the tea, Izanami-san. It’s the thought that counts, I guess. Now, how do I leave?”

From Izanami’s eye sockets, maggots stared back at him. “Leave?”

“Is that dramatic emphasis, or are your ears actually decayed?”

Izanami set her cup down and crawled forward, arms bracing against the table. The insects in her legs were dislodged as she brought her knee onto the table and leaned in. She brought her face close, and from here Toushirou could see all the way to the back of her skull through her rotted skin.

The bugs nestled in her flesh had all stopped moving and stopped eating – instead they turned towards him, silently watching with their unblinking eyes.

“Go back,” the corpse repeated, then giggled. The centipedes watching him from her hair clicked their mandibles, bodies rippling, segment by segment, like they were amused. Toushirou tried to back away, but he couldn’t – his limbs felt like dead weights, and there was a tingling at the tips of his fingers spreading down into his arms, like needles all over his skin, wriggling into flesh, seeking bone. “No,” the decaying mass of rot said, though it felt more like a reverberation straight into his skull, “you belong to me, now, Toushirou Hijikata.”

And suddenly it retreated, lurching back with too many arms all bent the wrong way, crawling away like a spider, off the table and out the door until the tap-tap-tap of Izanami-no-mikoto’s hands faded completely and Toushirou was alone.

He looked down: the cup on the table that had once contained tea was now filled with pupae of some sort, shiny and pill-shaped. There was an eye staring back at him where one of them had cracked. He set the cup on the table, suddenly exhausted, and lay down sideways on the couch.

From here he could see the door was open where Izanami had left, and he could make out shadowy figures in the yawning darkness beyond, but every time he thought about getting up and moving, his eyes slipped closed and he felt the weight of fatigue like a heavy blanket crushing him.

Maybe he’d feel better after a nap.

*

There was a centipede crawling on his face when he woke up and he flicked it off irritably. A fly was circling his head and he waved it off once, then twice, but it always returned and after the tenth swat he couldn’t really be bothered anymore. He was starting to regret not drinking the tea – his mouth had become dry, and he vaguely entertained notions of leaving the room in search of a drink before dismissing the notion. It wasn’t that bad, yet, and there was no point in getting up.

There was an ant on Toushirou’s hand. It climbed up his pointer finger, crossed the back of his palm and climbed the protruding carpal bone on his wrist before starting up his arm. He watched it for an eternity maybe, as it crawled aimless loops from his forearm to his wrist to the back of his hand. He thought about nicknaming it Gintoki, maybe, or Sougo – it could be metaphorical or something. Symbolic of how they wer all as insignificant as ants, or some shit like that. Maybe he’d name it Tosshi instead. It eventually walked onto his palm where he lost sight of it, and he was starting to mourn the loss of his tiny friend when it emerged with another ant, and Toushirou realised somewhat alarmingly that there were now two ants on his hand.

This was concerning, he thought. But now the ant wasn’t lonely anymore, and now there were three ants, like a little ant party (they were officially named Gintoki, Kagura, and Shinpachi) and then a fourth joined them and then he stopped counting.

God, he was so fucking thirsty.

His stomach was beginning to hurt with hunger pains, until at some point he looked down and realised that the pain was not hunger but the maggots feasting on the soft skin of his belly. He thought about thworing up, or getting up, or drawing his katana and storming out to find the hag who had trapped him here, but every time he began to rise he’d pass out and wake dizzy and disoriented on the couch. So he napped often, and when he woke he’d carefully assess his condition (tired), his situation (weird) and his surroundings (unchanged), like he’d been taught at the dojo (gone) so long ago. He kept it up until he coundn’t remember what he was doing it for, but the routine seemed good, so he kept waking up and clawing back to focus.

Sometimes a girl visited him: she was vaguely familiar and wore a uniform that he knew he should recognise but didn’t really care enough to remember. Mostly she looked at him and talked or cried as he stared at her blankly. He tried to ask for water, but every time he coughed out dry papery insect wings instead. When he tried to count the hours before she returned the numbers slipped from his mind too fast.

The only way to keep track of time here was by the progression of decay in his body: the girl was there when the maggots were burying into his chest, then back when they exposed the wet bones of his rib cage, and again once they’d eaten the viscera off his lungs and heart and were starting on the soft organ tissue.

At some point he realised it was easier to just not think about it at all, so he stopped keeping track of time and left his body to rot away slowly on the shitty fucking couch he was still stuck to. He cycled through mundane topics idly: first he counted all the things he could put mayonnaise on (an admittedly short list, since it was just “everything”), then all the things he had put mayonnaise on, then all the things that someone else whose name he couldn’t quite grasp had put mayonnaise on to kill him. Then he thought about sitting on someone’s shoulders as they walked along some fields, and a woman in a pink and green yukata waving goodbye at him. Then he realised that he couldn’t really remember his own name either, so he made a valiant effort at digging around his scattered memories which led to him passing out again and only waking when something started literally digging around his brain.

Eventually even remembering how much water to put in a rice cooker had him exhausted and there was really nothing to do except think about Gintoki, which strangely he could remember fine without causing another blackout. This pissed him off even though he couldn’t remember why, but at this point he was bored to death (ha ha, he thought) of lying there and doing nothing but decaying so he thought about Gintoki’s hair, and Gintoki’s hands, and how Gintoki owned eight yukatas all with the same pattern (one for each weekday and a spare). And eventually that name slipped too and hanging onto anything at all was like trying to catch smoke in his hands.

He was really just a pile of flesh and bone now. He was a corpse, which made sense. Corpses were dead and he was dead. There was nothing left to do but stare at the darkness. The girl came and went and the corpse hoped its eyes would go last. It liked watching even though there was nothing to see.

And then the girl brought someone else.

The stranger had silvery-white hair, so bright that the corpse would have blinked if it still had eyelids to blink with. Seeing him made something in the corpse stir, something that had been asleep for a long time and was just starting to wake up.

The stranger said something to the girl which the corpse didn’t quite hear because its eardrums were bitten through and full of holes. But it knew that the low tone of the stranger’s voice was dangerous: it was setting off alarm bells in some long destroyed part of the corpse’s consciousness.

It didn’t matter.

It knew the stranger, it realised, and it knew that voice. It wanted him to stay forever.

It had missed him, so much, enough to struggle through the heavy fog coating its mind, enough that he managed to unhinge his broken jaw with a click and unstick his tongue from the bloody roof of his mouth and rasp a broken, “Gintoki.”

It probably didn’t sound anything like that considering Toushirou’s throat was currently home to things he’d rather not think about, but Gintoki heard him anyway. In an instant he was crouched by his side and there was a hand coming up to cup his face even though Toushirou was pretty sure he was in some advanced stage of decay and that had to have been disgusting. There was a refreshing clarity to his thoughts now and a lot that he wanted to do (punch Yomotsu, kiss Gintoki, eat some fucking mayonnaise again) but when he tried to talk again all he could get out was a croaky, “Hurts.”

Gintoki stared at him and said nothing for a very long time. Toushirou was beginning to gear up for word lucky-number-three when he stood up. He had some kind of huge sword attached to his obi where Lake Touya normally sat. He patted Toushirou’s head (probably full of spiders or something, ew) and said, “I get it. Go to sleep, mayo bastard, you look like shit.”

Fucking rude!

But he was still very, very tired and Gintoki’s hand in his hair was achingly familiar. He’d called him mayo bastard and the cold look in his eyes was gone so it was all too easy to trust him and close his eyes and let himself fall, slowly, into sleep.

*

He was being carried on someone’s back. His head was resting on a shoulder, jolting slightly as the person carrying him took a step, and his arms were hanging down loosely. There was white hair in front of him, and Toushirou groggily looked around.

“Ah, you’re fucking heavy,” said the person carrying him. Gintoki. Toushirou let his head drop down again wearily.

A voice drifted from behind him. “His body is still in the world of the living, actually. That’s his soul.” Yomotsu? Was she really going to keep stalking him through life and then death, as well? Seriously?

“Well, your soul should lose some weight,” Gintoki said. “It’s the excessive mayo consumption – don’t you know all the cholesterol is bad for your heart health?”

“Sh’t the f’ck up,” Toushirou slurred. He could barely keep his eyes open. “Wh’ s’going on.”

“You got sick, so we’re taking you to the doctor’s now,” Gintoki said with that particular tone he always used when he was bullshitting particularly hard. “Where’s your health insurance certificate?”

“Really?” Toushirou said, trying to force himself awake. “I got sick?”

“Yep. Unfortunately, you came down with an acute case of stabbed in the neck.”

“Sorry!” Yomotsu said.

Toushirou sighed and gave up, closing his eyes. He faded in and out of consciousness, focusing on the rhythm of Gintoki’s steps, Gintoki’s warmth, and the fainter sound of Yomotsu walking behind them.

After a while, Gintoki said, “Is that the exit? Ah, finally, my back’s really about to give out.”

The words took a little while to process but when they did, Toushirou tried lifting his head again. “Yes,” the blurry figure of Yomotsu was saying. “Just stay nearby here, and you’ll return shortly.”

“Okay, okay,” Gintoki said, setting him down on shaky legs and catching him when they gave out. All this swooning and passing out is starting to get a little excessive, really, Toushirou thought. “Time to go to sleep, mayo bastard.” He set them both down, pulling Toushirou into his lap.

In the distance, Yomotsu’s figure was shrinking: getting blurrier and blurrier until she was just a vague shadow, standing in the darkness and watching them go. He saw the shadow raise a hand and wave bye-bye, and then the wave of exhaustion became too heavy and he felt himself drift all over again. Gintoki was still holding him, not talking, and between one moment and the next, someone else joined them.

Toushirou could only barely see her, but he’d long since memorised the sight of her visage. He tried even harder to keep his eyelids from drooping, fighting against the pull of unconsciousness.

The figure giggled. “I missed you too,” Mitsuba said.

Toushirou couldn’t move. Above him, Gintoki hadn’t given any indication that he’d heard her – in fact, his head was bowed and his eyes were closed, like he was asleep, but he was still holding Toushirou up, grip solid and firm. Mitsuba crouched down until she was at eye level and smiled at him, and Toushirou was blinded by an intense wave of some horrible unknown emotion.

“I thought of you,” he tried, weakly.

“I know,” Mitsuba said, and added, “it’s okay,” because she knew. He wished she hadn’t said that. Her forgiveness hurt worse than he knew he’d ever deserve.

“I love you,” Toushirou choked out, because that would always be true, no matter what: some part of him was hers, always, easing the loneliness on particularly rare nights where he and Sougo got shitfaced on Strong Zero and watched the stars from the roof of the Shinsengumi HQ.

“I’m happy for you,” Mitsuba said, sweet and perfect like only a memory could be.

“You’re only saying that because I want you to say that,” Toushirou said.

Mitsuba giggled. “Even if I am, isn’t it still nice to hear?”

“Yeah,” he said, quiet: the sound was carried away by the breeze, gone in an instant, like he’d never said it at all. She sat with them – him and Gintoki – for a while more, calm like she’d watch them practice sword swings in the dojo, all those years ago; watching over them, almost. Toushirou wished he could burn the sight of her into his heart. He closed his eyes.

*

*

*

When he woke up, Sougo had his IV tube in one hand and a syringe of air in the other. He noticed Toushirou’s gaze and said, “Ah, there we go.”

Toushirou tore out the needle in his arm. “Sougo, you bastard, how—“ he started and then got cut off by thirty Shinsengumi officers simultaneously throwing themselves at his bed.

Contrary to popular belief, the most irritating thing about almost and-or actually dying and subsequently coming back to life was actually the way everyone around you would get so annoyingly sentimental for at least the next week. Considering how fucked up this particular instance had been, it probably warranted awkward crying from other officers in the break room and sudden compliments in the middle of random conversations for the next month. Jesus fucking Christ.

“At least ten of you were scheduled for morning patrol on weekdays,” Toushirou said, peeling Kondou off him. “How many days has it been this time, huh? How bad have you fucked things up? Have we been incorporated?”

Kondou sobbed and blubbered an undistinguishable mess. Toushirou kicked him off the bed.

From the edge of the room Yamazaki wiped his face and said, “I don’t know! We were so busy mourning you, and it’s just so hard to do paperwork when your tears keep ruining the paper.”

Toushirou narrowed his eyes. “Go commit group seppuku.”

“Yes, Vice-Chief!” Yamazaki said cheerfully and left the room.

“Hey, take everyone else with you! Group seppuku! All of you! Get off me –“

*

Later, in blessed, blessed silence, he went through the stack of cards next to his bed. Shinpachi’s was written in elegant, flowing script: Kagura’s was completely illegible and had worrying brown stains. Soyo had sent him a card, too, and ‘+ Nobume’ was written at the very bottom, which was probably as good as he was going to get. He flipped through the rest: paragraphs from Kozenigata and Haiji, an official report from Matsudaira, sincere message from Otae and Yagyuu Kyuubei, snacks from Otose and her employees, a mysterious device from Gengai, a polite letter from Tsukuyo, and even a note signed Zura, not Katsura.

Toushirou put them back down and traced a hand along his neck. There was a thin, pale scar; rough skin stretching from his throat to the left side of the neck – hardly noticeable at all. He sighed and dropped his hand back onto the bed.

It was just one more scar, anyway. Not all of them came with stories as interesting as this.

*

The next time he woke up, he had a visitor.

“I swear it’s not going to happen again!” Yomotsu said as his hand twitched towards his sword. “Really! Please don’t kill me! I won’t do you if you don’t do me?”

“If you keep saying it like that I might,” Toushirou said.

Yomotsu sighed. “I do feel bad, though, really. That’s why I came!” She paced around the room, agitated. “So… This normally isn’t allowed, but…we do operate in the realm of the dead. I’ll pass on a message for you, if you want. Just the one. Don’t tell anyone else, though.”

Toushirou said nothing, because what could you say to that? He could’ve told himself he wasn’t tempted, but that was a lie.

“Well, I’ll give you some time to think about it,” Yomotsu said with a hopeful smile. “That makes up for it, right? No? Um, please stop reaching for your sword…”

“Did you get the guy to go back in the end, at least?” Toushirou said.

Yomotsu stared at him, eyes wide. She was silent, before saying, rather suddenly, “My given name is Shikome.” She sat down rigidly on the chair next to his bed. “It means ugly woman.”

Well. The majority of Toushirou’s name said fourteen, but even that wasn’t that bad.

“My birth mother gave me that name.” Yomotsu sighed and fiddled with her hands. She was still wearing the torn Shinsengumi uniform, Toushirou realised. “She was, well, a very jealous woman. She was scared, I think, of my birth father loving me more than he loved her. She shouldn’t have worried about that, I guess. I hated it. It was like she’d labeled me, permanently. Like no matter what I did I’d always be ugly.”

Toushirou knew a thing or two about being a child and knowing you weren’t wanted. He had dreams, sometimes, of hiding in closets in Tamegorou’s house, ear pressed to the door, waiting for footsteps to fade.

“When I met Mother for the first time, she didn’t care at all. I told her my given name she laughed, and told me it didn’t suit me, and that was it. It makes her sound cruel, doesn’t it?” Yomotsu giggled, trailing off. “But…after that, it was like…like I’d been so caught up on what other people would think, about my name, and Mother just…didn’t think anything about it. She just laughed, like it was a joke. And somehow, that was better than if she’d thought it was a bad name, or if she’d made a fuss about changing it, because…it just suddenly didn’t seem like a big deal at all.”

Yomotsu was looking down at her hands. Her hair fell forward to cover her face: in the darkness, Toushirou could barely see anything at all.

“I understand what you said,” she said finally. “If you love someone and they love you back, it’s worth it. But you’re lucky. No one loves me except for her.”

There was a clock on the far wall, tick-tocking away steadily. Toushirou listened to the seconds passing by and thought about the pile of cards next to his bed.

“Would you still believe me if I said I didn’t want to?” Yomotsu said, standing up. She stretched her arms up above her head and walked towards the window, leaning out towards the moon. “I’ll even kind of miss this place, you know. Besides, I only did it like that because I was certain.”

“Certain about what?” Toushirou said.

But she was already gone.

*

Days later, when he was released, the first thing he did was track down Gintoki. It wasn’t particularly hard, anyway – Kagura and Shinpachi had been texting him his location at ten minute intervals every day since he’d woken up.

Gin-san left for Jiyugaoka Sweets Forest, been a few hours, probably still there, Shinpachi had written.

toushi bring back ichigo daifuku PLEASSSSEEEEE, Kagura had sent.

Gintoki was on his way out of the Sweets Forest when he arrived. Toushirou grabbed his collar and threw him into an alleyway.

“Ah, it’s just you,” Gintoki said, fixing his yukata. “I thought maybe with the savage way I just got assaulted while I was doing my daily, normal activities, I must’ve gotten kidnapped by some real shady characters. But surely the police wouldn't have done something as horrible as that, right? Or that might be police brutality, which would be terrible, and then I’d have to –”

“Shut up,” Toushirou said. “No one’s been giving me any straight answers, lately. Your two useless employees keep trying to avoid the subject, and they must have learned subtlety from you, which I trust is the case, due to your general ineptitude at teaching and the obvious way they keep suggesting I talk to you.” A passerby who’d started to walk down the alleyway quickly changed his mind and left. Gintoki was watching him, amused. “I’m not gullible enough to believe it was all some weird dream sequence,” Toushirou pointed out.

“Well,” Gintoki said leaning against the wall with a yawn, “turns out our client, Saisho – which is a fake name – was actually Izanami’s husband or brother or something. They had some kinda argument and he ran off, and Kagu-tsuchi and that Shinsengumi officer of yours were sent to drag him back along with some of his siblings. Ah, but since we did such a good job of protecting him –“

“Excuse me, did you forget who saved you from Kagu-tsuchi?”

“– neither of them managed and Izanami was getting really pissed off. So Yomotsu-chan decided she wanted to hire us too, to bring him back to Izanami.”

Toushirou blinked. “You mean, to kill him?”

Gintoki shrugged. “Apparently it doesn’t work that way for them.”

The things you missed out on when you were busy passing out, apparently. “So you did it. Killing a client, really?” Toushirou did know that it really wasn’t the same if Yomotsu was any indication, but he couldn’t resist the urge to prod.

Gintoki grumbled and looked away. “Look, it was after – well, I wasn’t really –“ He was determinedly not meeting Toushirou’s gaze. “I mean, that girl paid us really well. Rent for the next four months. You know.”

That was a lie: he knew from experience that if Gintoki ever managed to pay even a week of rent Otose would’ve been ringing out doomsday warnings all across the city. But when he’d seen her earlier she’d barely paused to acknowledge Toushirou’s updated living status before launching into some long-winded lecture about financial assets and household income brackets.

Besides, Toushirou had his own suspicions about what had happened anyway.

“Tamegorou told me about a legend, once,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I forgot for a while, but I remember now. It was about two divines, Izanami and Izanagi, who were married, and through their union –“

 “Oh, so they had sex.”

“– they created the islands of Japan, and heaps of gods. Fuujin, god of wind; Amaterasu, goddess of the sun; Tsukuyomi, god of the moon; Susano’o, god of storms; Raijin, god of thunder.

“But Izanami died while giving birth to the god of fire, Kagu-tsuchi, and Izanagi was so angry he killed the child. Then he went to the land of the dead to find her and bring her back, but she was already trapped there. She told him that he couldn’t look at her, and that she’d try to ask for permission to leave. But Izanagi looked while she was asleep and saw that she had become a rotting body, covered in foul creatures, instead of the beauty she had once been. And so he abandoned her, and she sent Yomotsu-shikome after him, but he trapped them both in the underworld.”

“Well, who can blame him? You really were disgusting down there, you know.”

And you still carried me out, Toushirou thought. He’d probably die if he said that out loud, though. He was kind of dying inside just thinking about it. “Oi, Gintoki,” he said and Gintoki turned his head. “Are you in love with me?”

If Toushirou had been trying to provoke a reaction, he would’ve have been disappointed. Gintoki stared at him, tips of his ears turning red, but looking almost thoughtful.

“Yeah,” he said finally, turning away. “Ah, isn’t it enough that I have to put up with you almost every evening? You filled up the fridge with spare mayonnaise, then spare-spare mayonnaise, and there’s no room left for my red bean paste now. I put up your domestic abuse and your corrupt job, and you still had to make me say it, huh? Well? How are you going to make up for this?” he added expectantly, staring intently at the wall.

This was Gintoki being shy, Toushirou realised. Gintoki couldn’t shut up in a normal conversation: it wasn’t surprising that he’d turn into a rambling mess when it came to things like this. He couldn’t confess his love like a normal goddamn person – Gintoki had to take that roundabout way of expressing himself, with that deceptively bored tone, even as he blushed and kicked at the ground.

As for Toushirou, well –

The truth was that Toushirou already knew. He knew, back when he was wasting away alone in Izanami’s domain, exactly why Gintoki had been the last thing he’d hung onto, even after he’d lost the Shinsengumi and Sougo and Kondou and even Mitsuba and finally himself. It was one thing to be oblivious, but sometimes Toushirou liked to think he wasn’t entirely stupid.

Some part of him that he was trying his hardest to ignore was elated: Gintoki, who he’d thought would never love him back, had literally pulled him back from hell because that was just how Gintoki dealt with things now. He’d decided that Toushirou had a place somewhere next to Kagura and Shinpachi and everyone else the idiot had pledged his heart to, and was something he’d decided that he wanted and would fight for, and Toushirou was kind of really, really fucking happy.

But he was also kind of an asshole.

“Eh, I dunno,” he said with a shrug, “maybe if you tried a little harder…”

Gintoki blinked, mouth falling open. “Hey, what kind of half-assed reply is that?!”

“Darling,” Toushirou said in a high pitched falsetto, “I chipped my sword, but they say the original yawarakai-te is on sale for two billion yen. If anyone was nice enough to buy me that sword –“

“Are you fucking kidding me –“

“– who knows, I might even fall in love wi- mmph.” Gintoki had apparently decided that kissing him was the most effective way of shutting him up. He was smiling, though, and when they separated, Toushirou pulled him close with arms looped around his shoulders. Gintoki pressed a light kiss to his forehead.

It was fine. Gintoki wasn’t entirely stupid either, despite how much he pretended. Besides, Toushirou had never known how to be subtle about these kinds of things.

For now, they breathed together, leaning on the wall at Toushirou’s back. Gintoki was pressed up against him, warm and solid and so alive, and when he pressed his face to his neck he could feel every pulse of Gintoki’s heartbeat. It was embarrassingly fast, and Toushirou wondered if his was the same. If the rhythm of their hearts were intertwined, as one of Kondou’s shitty ero-novels would say. Toushirou almost gagged.

*

At dawn, he slipped out of Gintoki’s arms and onto the Yorozuya office’s balcony, breathing in cold air and pulling his yukata tighter around his shoulders. He lit a cigarette and waited. Between one blink and the next, Yomotsu was sitting on the railing next to him, legs dangling over the rooftop below.

“Vice-Captain,” she greeted. “Alright! Who’s it for? Let me know, I swear I’ll get it all down.” Her notebook was out and her brush was hovering over the page.

Toushirou looked at her and hesitated: not because there was nothing to say, but because there was too much to say. Images and words were flashing through his mind. Everything he’d never penned to his older brother, everything he’d never managed to tell Itou. Even things he wished he could’ve said to Sasaki, in the end.

And Mitsuba: everything about her, beautiful and forever gone.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m no good at these sorts of things.”

Yomotsu swung her legs. “Huh,” she said thoughtfully.

“Next time I see you, I’ll make you commit seppuku,” Toushirou said.

Yomotsu laughed. “Well, I hope it’s not too soon, then.”

He closed his eyes and took a long drag of his cigarette: when he opened his eyes, he was alone, and the smoke he’d blown out was already drifting away.

Below, the street was beginning to wake up. Lights turned on in the café opposite. There were birds, building a nest, on the roof next door. Behind him, Gintoki was wrapping an arm around his waist sleepily, grumbling about the cold. They stayed on the balcony and watched the sun rise.