Chapter Text
They've been residents at the inn for a while now. It's a good place, and strange occurrences are nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of reincarnated brats are nothing more than a day's work for the owner, so they're allowed to keep their room so long as they pay.
Shinsuke seems to think a pair of reincarnated brats is not normal. He claims that Wangshu Inn actually has a policy against extended stays. He claims that the amount they have to pay is lower than other guests. Gintoki's never been one to think too hard about things, or to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he pretends he doesn't hear Shinsuke and tells Shinsuke to keep his mouth shut as well.
“Enough already!” Gintoki berates Xiao, who only shows up in Yanxiao's kitchen once in a blue moon but when he does absolutely ruins Gintoki's day. Who the hell eats so much of one thing! At least if the guy ordered some variety, this would be less boring. Yanxiao just laughs quietly at Gintoki's suffering from somewhere else in the kitchen, and Xiao looks mildly disgruntled. Gintoki makes a fuss every time he comes, but the bastard keeps showing up. He thought bad attitudes drive away customers!
“What do you like so much about this, anyway?” Shinsuke asks.
Gintoki's about to start ranting about how Xiao sucks and how Xiao should eat different foods, but Xiao says, “The texture.”
It's the first time Xiao has told Shinsuke anything other than ‘fuck off’ or ‘mind your own business’ or ‘eat shit’ or other things Gintoki can absolutely imagine Xiao saying but hasn't heard himself. The most Gintoki's interacted with him is when he complains about the guy to his face and gets glares in response. Everything Gintoki knows is from Shinsuke's recounts, and he likes to replace words with ‘fuck’ in places he shouldn't. So.
Gintoki wants a hundred other foods to come to mind that have the same texture as almond tofu, but there's nothing he can think of on the spot. “You suck,” he tells Xiao. “You had to like the one thing that has the hardest to replicate texture known to man?” Gintoki clicks his stirring chopsticks in front of Xiao's nose. He just made that up, but he's in a terrible mood, and Xiao can take it. Xiao's pretty much always in a terrible mood.
“Yes,” Xiao says tersely. That's the last thing he says, and a while later he takes all his tofu and leaves without so much as a thanks.