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These days, they run out of shampoo so quickly. One day, the bottle will be full, and then the next, it will have been rid of a quarter of its contents, and then the day after that, it will be emptied of half, and then the very next day after that, it will contain simply nothing at all, and Kotaro will have to take a trip to the store to purchase three more bottles (and an extra one, just in case).
Kotaro has made so many trips that by now, he is sure that the cashier has memorised the majestic look of his ponytail blowing gently in the breeze of the industrial air conditioner, and would be able to identify him from at least twenty seven metres away.
The funny thing, though, is that despite being the one with the loveliest and most luxurious hair around, and yes, it really is hair—no, Gintoki, I've told you before, it's not a wig! You've felt it! You've pulled on it! You know that it's attached to my scalp!—the cause of this perpetual shampoo deficiency in Kotaro's household is not, actually, Kotaro himself.
"When do you think you'll go back home?"
Slumped over the chair in front of him, Gintoki makes an idle, innocent noise. He looks quite small and his cheeks rather squishy and Kotaro can barely stand to remind himself that Gintoki is not at all as adorable as he may look. The back of his neck is still wet from his shower. Kotaro frowns. He grabs a towel from the cabinet beneath the sink and plops it over Gintoki's shoulders. This is sure to keep his hair from dripping all over his clothes, and it'll keep him from complaining about the hot air touching his skin too. Kotaro personally thinks that Gintoki would do well to complain less, especially when Kotaro is the one blowdrying his hair for him, but ah — this is just the burden he must endure for his dear friend. It is just what he has to do as a good friend.
"When?" Gintoki scoffs. "When? No, no, Zura. It's a matter of if. Pfft, I'm not going back to smelling like a hipster perfume shop."
Kotaro considers this.
"Yoshida-san has been looking very wistful lately."
Gintoki, unfortunately, does not concede to this appeal to his pathos, but that's to be expected after years upon years of people (mostly Yoshida-san, really) appealing to his pathos with sad, mournful comments about Gintoki abandoning him for the wicked Jirocho-san in the house next-door to the Yoshida's, and more recently, the weeks upon weeks of little Kagura-chan from the preschool blackmailing Gintoki into buying her expensive 10-person meals at the Korean barbeque.
In fact, Gintoki's pathos may possibly have been drained out completely, swirling down the sink and into the drain along with the foam and suds from Kotaro's precious strawberry-scented convenience store shampoo. All of it, gone. Vanished. Gintoki's pathos, that is. Not Kotaro's shampoo — he still has a few millilitres left.
If he shakes it around, then there is a gentle sloshing to be heard from the bottom of the bottle. When the third shampoo container in four days emits that very gentle sloshing, well, that is when Kotaro knows for certain that he must trek down past the rows of houses to the corner shop, through the aisles, past the grieving figure of Yoshida-san who has been haunting the local park ever since Gintoki decided he would no longer suffer the indignities of residing in Yoshida-san's incense-filled home, and stuff his backpack with bathroom essentials.
Anyway, even when Yoshida-san was sorrowfully roaming the streets at twilight yesterday, Gintoki didn't even look out the window, even though he obviously knew that it was Yoshida-san who was standing despairingly under the tree outside of Kotaro's house.
"Good evening, Yoshida-san," Kotaro had said after a long while of watching Gintoki steadfastly watch the moth in the corner of his room. He had tried not to lean too far over the window sill. "How are you today?"
Yoshida-san smiled up at him with tears in his eyes and replied, "Nothing is everlasting, Kotaro-kun," and then he had sent his best wishes to Kotaro's grandmother.
Perhaps saying that Yoshida-san has been wistful lately is an understatement. Perhaps it might be more correct to say that Yoshida-san is, well, devastated.
After a short bout with the blowdryer, Gintoki is looking considerably less drowned and considerably more fluffy. He shakes his head and it sticks up in poofy bunches that Kotaro wants to stick his hand into. If this was any of the dogs and cats downstairs, he would do so without hesitation. However, this head of white fluff belongs to Gintoki, and Gintoki will not hesitate to throw Kotaro out of his own window.
"Shoyo's moping. So what?" says Gintoki. "It's not my business. I'm not involved at all. What Shoyo does isn't my responsibility. Instead, since you're so pressed about it, why don't you make it your business?"
"Well," says Kotaro. "I think I've made Yoshida-san's business—I'm talking about you, by the way, you're the business—I think I've made his business my own, now, so that's actually a moot point, since it's already happened."
"Huh," says Gintoki. "That sucks."
"It's very troublesome," says Kotaro.
Gintoki doesn't sound apologetic in the slighest. He tumbles out of the chair and pushes it back up against the bathroom wall, strolling leisurely back to Kotaro's room as if it is his own. Well, he isn't quite so wrong. He's been here for a week and counting. Kotaro does not know when he will leave.
"You could at least say 'Thank you, Katsura!', you know," he says as Gintoki flops onto the bed. "I worked really hard to dry your hair. And wash it. You could also stop rubbing your face into my sheets."
"Hmmgh," retorts Gintoki meaningfully.
Kotaro sighs.
Gintoki does not stop rubbing his face into the sheets. What he does instead is, he cranes his head at an awkward angle, still pressed stubbornly to the fabric, limbs shoved here and there and everywhere, and then he looks Kotaro in the eye.
Casually, so easily: "Thanks Zura."
With great distress brewing in him, Kotaro decides to let him stay for a little longer.
The next day at the playground, Sakamoto plops down beside him on the old bench. At first, there had been some harried looking businessman taking a phone call, but Gintoki and his posse of small children swiftly heckled him away. The bench is now occupied by Kotaro, who is guarding all their schoolbags, and Sakamoto, who takes one look at Kotaro's face and says:
"So he's still sleepin' on yer floor, huh?"
"No," says Kotaro, and Sakamoto looks surprised.
He seems like he's about to give his congratulations for Kotaro's apparent success at finally removing Gintoki from his house, and by default, curing the neighbourhood of the suffocating, depressive aura that emanates nightly from the Yoshida household, now containing just a single occupant.
"Wow, Zura," he says, eyes wide and admiring. "Congrats! I thought ya'd never be able to say no to him!" Sakamoto claps his hands and leans forward. "So he's gone home, that's great, haha—finally stopped sleepin' on yer floor—"
"No," says Kotaro. He looks away. Leans his chin against a sober fist. "No. That's wrong. He's sleeping in my bed now."
The silence is deeply judging.
"Ah, Zura," says Sakamoto pitifully. "You really did adopt another stray."