Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all begins on one sunny, really hot and really humid afternoon, and— as fate would have it, on one of those rare days when the Yorozuya and Otae both have a precious day off.

The latter is standing under the shade of a dingy little teashop with Shinpachi and Kagura, wating for Gintoki to buy their popsicles from the Ice Cream shop down the road. For the past two weeks, Kagura had been nagging about going to the beach for a swim, and Shin-chan had been giving her not so subtle hints that they should take the next day-off to actually do something about the heat –-other that complaining in front of their lone fan that whirls piteously even in its maximum speed setting.

So here they are.

Gintoki slowly ambles into view— just as she has started wondering if he got lost, or ran into that ninja stalker of his— scratching his hair and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else than here. It’s his default expression, Otae isn’t too offended by it now— she knows he has the bigger fish to fry in this casual beach trip. There is a pachinko parlour on the opposite end of the road, and Otae may or may not have spied a familiar pair of sunglasses slinking about the trinket shops and food stalls lining up the near the beachside.

She moves to take the packet of popsicles from his hands and graces him with a vacant smile when he mutters something about unpaid labour. Kagura and Shinpachi’s shouts of relief are almost palpable. They bustle around her and Otae patiently distributes the popsicles among them. She is a frugal kind of woman even when out on a vacation, but the kids need to experience the luxury of treats every now and then.

Gintoki hands her the change back and she wordlessly hands him his favourite strawberry-rainbow-flavoured popsicle with blueberry flakes. It’s the most gaudy one in the bunch; Otae can hardly miss it. His tastes change every year and probably every damn month, but somehow she can always tell even before he gets the chance to whine about it.

It scares her sometimes, how well she has learnt to read Gintoki through the years.

The trio of yorozuya eagerly start towards the beach, and Otae hangs back for a minute to adjust the straps of her shoes.

That’s when she hears the new voice.

“How nice.” It’s the old woman whose dingy little shop they were waiting under. “Going for a beach visit with your husband and kids?”

The actual implications of the woman’s words don’t quite sink in her mind, because Otae whirls around immediately and plasters her deadliest smile on the face. “Kids? KIDS?? Do I look like someone who’d have teenage kids, you shitty old hag?”

Her words are said in the sweetest voice possible, but the face accompanying it is the stuff of nightmares.

The old shopkeeper shrinks back in fear.

It’s a reflex, obviously— at the face of the newly christened DEVA of Kabukicho.

Then slowly, ever so deliberately, her eyes sweep down to Otae’s chest and back up again.

“Hmm, maybe not… doesn’t look like that.” the woman mumbles. She is valiantly trying to feign nonchalance, and Otae would actually a be impressed by the sheer balls of the hag if she wasn’t trying to hold back from unleashing violence in broad daylight.

Patience Otae, patience.

Shin-chan and Kagura-chan deserve a relaxing and fun day off after all their gruelling work. It would simply not do if their Aneue/Anego ruined the day.

It’s one of those rare times when she appreciates Kondo’s relentless stalking habits. Lately, they’re doing wonders on her anger management issues. When you realize that there’s only so many times you can make a human-shaped hole in the dojo walls without going completely broke, you inevitably learn to hold back on your temper bit-by-excruciating-bit, and let the stalkers get away once in a while.

Otae lets out a slow, shuddering breath.

“Boyfriend and his kids from previous marriage?” The shopkeeper hedges again, like the nosy old prune she is. “Married man having an affair, with his underlings in tow? Sugar daddy and his escorts?”

Otae abandons all pretences of peace and grabs the woman by her fraying kimono with a promise of a painful headbutt. If she’s lucky, the hag will get a concussion and forget about this conversation entirely.

“Wait!” A panicked voice interrupts her. A large hand swings into view and grabs Otae’s wrist like a vice. Before the cabaret girl can throw the owner of the hand over her shoulder, Gin-san’s constipated face shows up strategically placed between her and the old shopkeeper. He sweating like he’s run a marathon in this July heat.

“I leave you for 5 fucking minutes and you get into a physical altercation with an old hag, you gorilla woman! What did she even say to you for getting so riled up?!”

“Gin-san.” Otae has beaten this into his head countless times that when it looks like an argument between her and literally ANYONE else, she is never the wrong one. Never. It’s one of those mysterious laws of the universe. An undisputed fact.

Looks like she needs to beat it into his head again.

“Otae.” The permhead makes a desperate face and tries again. “You can’t abuse the elderly in broad daylight. At least do it in the shady alleyways where people can’t see you! I don’t want those damn tax thieves breathing down my neck on my precious day off!”

She can hear the silent plea in his voice.

Otae opens her mouth to argue her case but Gintoki cuts her off before she can get a word out.

“AND YOU!!” He whips his head at the old hag, who is looking at their interaction with a glee that should be reserved for the afternoon TV dramas. “What part of this person here looks like a friendly gossiping woman to you? Don’t have any survival instincts? Do you have a death wish?! Can you please go pester someone that will not land me in all kinds of trouble?!”

“How romantic. Worried about your wifey?” Coos the shopkeeper, who indeed, has a death wish.

Gintoki’s jaw drops open in surprise.

It is then that he finally seems to connect the dots together, and goes completely rigid in his place, eyes darting between the shopkeeper and his alleged ‘wifey’. Otae watches his face turn unreadable, and for a small, horrifying moment— feels shame and confusion course through her body in tandem. Shame, because for all that she preens and brags about her beauty— Otae knows it with a bone-deep certainty that Gintoki isn’t really attracted to any part of her. It must have been annoying for him to have someone mistake her for his wife.

Confusion, because when had such things mattered to her in the first place?

There is a strange pinch in her chest, which Otae really doesn’t want to investigate right now, so she raises a fine eyebrow at the permhead, as if to say ‘Now do you understand why it’s so tempting to beat her up?’

The permhead says nothing.

Otae waits for him to open his mouth and deny it, to start a long-winding rant about how only an actual gorilla will want to marry this female gorilla, about how he only has eyes for Ketsuno Ana and not some batshit insane woman who casually cooks weapons of mass destruction in her kitchen— but he doesn’t.

Because Gintoki is Gintoki and he makes it his life’s purpose to never do the things she expects, he neither confirms nor denies the statement in the end.

“Che! You’ve gone senile in your old age, stupid hag.” His voice is blasé, but there a hint of desperation in his voice. Like he wants to be done with this conversation really fucking fast. Faster than you could say ‘Patriot’. “You better stop watching all those afternoon soaps. I get that you grannies love those hunks in TV, but real life is as boring as watching a dog take a dump in your living room. Trust me, I’d know.”

Or maybe Otae is imagining it.

Maybe.

Probably.

Most definitely.

The heat has definitely fried her brain.

Gintoki lets go of her wrist. Otae feels numb, and she very much would like not to.

“He really loves watching his dog take a dump!” She supplies with a sunny smile, if only to forcibly return that numbness to where it belongs. Otae doesn’t even know where it came from.

The shopkeeper gives them both a baffled look as they step out in the sun.

For a moment, they stand motionless in the dirt road, watching the crowd of old and young eager beach-goers mill around them with their families and friends.

“What a pain in the arse.” The permhead finally breaks the silence, scratching his perm like it was just another day of haggling in the market for sweets. “Oi, stop spacing out. The kids are waiting.”

There’s nothing in his voice. Not even a hint of fluster or annoyance or disgust.

Or interest.

…Otae doesn’t even know why she expects something like that.

As she watches him spin on his heels and head towards the beach, Otae finally decides to peer into her heart and dissect the feelings that suddenly sprang up in her chest in the last few seconds.

What was it?

Did she feel flustered or embarrassed that someone mistook Gintoki for her husband?

No. That idiot Sarutobi and that Gorrilla stalker of hers do it almost regularly: thrice a week and twice on weekends, depending on their stalking schedules and their side-jobs. She has long since accepted her fate.

Did she feel disgusted ?

No.

As strange as it feels to admit, Otae has come to accept Gin-san as someone precious to her. Sure, he is the butt-scratching, nose-picking, lazy sack-of-bones who wastes his meagre paychecks on pachinko parlours and Weekly jumps, but he is her saviour too. He is the man who once lost everything in the war, and yet unhesitatingly picked up his battered sword to protect his home one more time. He carried the hopes of every Edo citizen and returned home victorious.

Disgust is far from what she feels towards this man.

And yet….

And yet.

Did she… did she feel anything different from what she used to feel about him once upon a time?

No.

What she felt was always the same—

Otae widens her eyes.

Oh.

Oh, that’s what it was.

The word pushes itself at the forefront of her mind like a neon sign.

Unbothered.

She felt unbothered and unconcerned about it.

And it bothered her that she felt so unbothered about it.

It isn’t any earth-shattering revelation that she was feeling, but rather the lack of it. It isn’t any strange reaction from her heart, but rather the absence of one. That is what was bothering her this entire time.

Sure, she regularly loses her temper when idiots like that hag act like somehow she is the one at fault here. Or makes a comment or two about her age. 

Or her chest (rather-- the lack of it).

But Otae feels normal. Content with life. Utterly, bafflingly at ease. She is so used to people assuming things about her and Gin-san that it no longer fell in the realm of ‘embarrassment’, ‘fluster’ or ‘disgust’. She feels fine about it. Perfectly peachy.

Like it’s one of those undisputed facts of her universe.

‘Gintoki and Tae Shimura look like husband and wife.’ Yes, so what? In other news, the sky is blue and Hijikata-san hoards mayonnaise. Get a move on.

That’s what brought about the strange pinch in her chest. The bewildering shame. Because what unmarried woman is utterly unconcerned about people mistaking a family friend (FRIEND!!, her mind supplies like a blaring ambulance horn) for her husband?

How has she got so used to it so much?

Really, what does it say about her? About Gintoki?

And why would it matter?

(Because in the end, he does not belong to you, her meddlesome mind quips. And Otae suppresses the urge to wince because she cannot beat up, run or hide from her mind.)

It didn’t matter to Gintoki, that’s for sure.

Because his voice was exactly as blasé, bored and uninterested as the other times when people accuse them of flirting (Kondo) or shacking up and making babies (Sarutobi— it’s insane how her brain reaches the most absurd conclusions). Like it’s merely an annoying statement. Like it’s a done deal to him too.

The cabaret girl ends up wondering how he feels about it.

Kagura’s enthusiastic voice finally brings Otae out of the curious spiral of thought she is going down into. “Anegoooo! What are you waiting for? Shinpachi says he will eat your share of popsicle if you don’t come over quickly!”

Otae watches the kids for a few heartbeats, with Shin-chan’s insistent “I did NOT!”s and Kagura’s teasing face and Sadaharu’s delighted woofs as he glomps over them both like the giant teddy bear he is. Her eyes land on Gintoki, who tilts his head to the side and rasies an eyebrow— and she swears that she almost heard his deadpan voice in her head like: “I found a good stalker-free spot over there. You coming or what? Don't complain to me when it gets crowded.”

There are a lot of thoughts starting to take root in her heart, but Otae shoves them down, plasters her most guileless smile on the face, and joins her idiots down the beach.

Chapter Text

The trigger for second incident happens at the end of a long day of work for Yorozuya, which included a particularly nasty accident while working on a dilapidated rooftop in one of the older houses of Kabuki-cho.

It’s a terrible mess, the kind that leaves debris and hammers scattered around the road… with a trail of blood from its white-haired victim. Apparently, Kagura’s antics ended up resulting in the rickety steel ladder getting kicked off the rooftop just as Gintoki was about to descend down it. The permhead had clutched the ladder in the last minute and went down with it in a freefall from the third-storey, hammer, nails, tiles and all.

Kagura, upon seeing a pool of rapidly increasing blood and hearing none of the usual smartass complaints from Gintoki, had reportedly burst into tears right there. Otae could hear the young Yato’s cries all the way as her “deader than a dead fish Gin-chan” was hauled into the Shimura residence.

The permhead actually looks a little more bruised than he usually does, and if that’s not concerning— his lack of constant jabbering definitely is. Otae suspects that he hit his head during the fall.

She soothes Shin-chan’s rapidly detoriating nervous breakdown with a well-aimed head chop, stops Kagura’s ear-splitting calls to the “Horse-pedal” with a firm duct tape on the mouth, and drags Gintoki’s body inside the guest bedroom with the help of the old client who had accompanied the kids home out of guilt.

“Stop fussin’ about it, ‘s not even that bad…” Gintoki slurs against her arms, which only serves to prove exactly how bad it is. Otae knows this particular brand of stubbornness— the greater the injury, the more he’ll try to pretend otherwise. It’s not even some weird idea of machismo, because she has seen Gintoki moan and complain about ditching work due to excuses ranging from a papercut, to a chipped toenail and even a facial pimple.

No, it’s simply his way of pushing away people when he’s hurting the most.

“Thank you, I’ll take it from here.” Otae tells the client who hands her the day’s payment and nervously babbles about covering the hospital bills if need be. She agrees and keeps his contact information with her, only because she knows that Gintoki will try to wave away the matter when he wakes up.

He might be the fearsome warrior of the Amanto war, but even he is human in the end.

“Aneue..” Shin-chan finds her standing in the engawa, his worried expression mirrored in the duct-tape bound Kagura chan’s face. “Gin-san will be alright, won’t he?”

Otae doesn’t answer in affirmative immediately. She knows this face of her little brother, and she knows that it isn’t what he needs to hear the most right now.

“Bring hot water and clean towels, as many as you can.” She barks at the two teens instead, even as her hands are busy rummaging around the cupboard for the First-aid kit. “Go to my room and get me the tweezers from the top drawer. I need to sterilize them.”

Shinpachi snaps his mouth shut and scrambles away with Kagura to obey her orders, his nerves dissipating instantly. Otae hasn’t spent 19 years with her brother for nothing. She understands how important it is to have a purpose in this moment—if only to follow mindless instructions, instead of feeling useless and spiralling down into the pit of despair.

Shinpachi and Kagura get the items in record speed, and Otae rolls up her sleeves instead of thanking them. They don’t need to hear it now. They only need to know that their Gin-san is safe.

After a long, agonizing hour, Otae finally manages to pull out all the little nails and pieces of broken tiles from Gintoki’s legs bit by excruciating bit. She bites her lips until they bleed, working in utmost concentration and ignoring Gintoki’s painful cries that echo against her chest. They use up all the bandages in their house and wrap up Gintoki until he vaguely begins to resemble a mummy. Thankfully all the wounds are non-lethal. She has a fair amount of confidence in her skills— her father was too busy with the Dojo to kiss away his kids’ boo-boos or bother with their scrapes when Shin-chan came home with a litany of bruises.

Still, Otae looks at Gintoki’s pale face and worries about the blood loss. There’s also the matter of tetanus from all those rusty nails. She busies herself with cleaning up the bedside when a new pair of footsteps come from the engawa.

“I have made a call into the hospital.” Kondo tells her as he stops just before the guest bedroom. “They have some special provision for the Shinsengumi requests even late in the night. A doctor will be coming in an hour to check on him.”

It’s worth noting at this point that Kondo had not made a single peep from his usual hiding place to make his presence known while Otae was working, and that Otae had not made a single sound of protest even as she heard him silently tip-toeing away through the back door and dashing towards the direction of the hospital.

She appreciates his quiet help at times like these, although she wouldn’t ever admit it to him. Kondo-san’s face is serious, and she knows that he isn’t doing any of this to woo her. He of all people should know how fragile the human life is.

“Thank you, Kondo-san” She tells him regardless, and is momentarily distracted by how steady her own voice is. Even though one part of her brain is telling her that Gintoki has survived far worse situations, the other— less optimistic part brings up every single time she thought she’d lost him in the war. If Kondo notices her trembling hands, he doesn’t say anything about it.

The doctor arrives exactly one hour and 3 minutes later.

Otae shoves all her worries into the box that her mind keeps locked up in emergency situations. They won’t do any good for Gin-san anyway. Shin-chan might disagree, but Otae knows that she is no warrior. She cannot save her precious people with superhuman strength like Kagura-chan, or swing the sword confidently like Shin-chan, Gintoki or Kyuubei. She cannot command the respect of an entire army of hot-blooded, rebellious youth like Kondo-san or Matsudeira. She cannot lead the Hyakka or the Oniwabanshu. Hell, she cannot even be the Yorozuya’s or Kabuki-chou’s pillar of support like Otose-san.

The only thing Otae is good at… is waiting. It’s all she can do, really. She can only wait and patch her precious people up when they come back to her all broken. Then she’ll watch them leave again (sometimes with her favourite umbrella), and the cycle will start all over.

The young cabaret girl neatly jots down the doctor’s instructions and prescribed medicines for the white permhead, while the man in question lies motionless. Surprisingly, it is Sarutobi Ayame that pops down from the ceiling right in front her (nearly giving the poor doctor a heart-attack) and wordlessly takes off with the written prescription. Otae supposes that she should have had something to say about the fact that her house has become a regular meeting place of stalkers, but all she can feel is numbness.

The next morning, Otose brings Gintoki and Kagura’s clothes for their stay in the dojo for the next few nights.

The next week is spent in a whirlwind of bitter medicines, injections, and swathes of bandages. Gintoki regains his usual sass at the end of day 3, which is an impressive record in and of itself. Otae had expected him to be bedridden for longer (or at least pretend to be bedridden, while he can laze around and read his Jump), but Gintoki had mumbled something about being haunted by spirits of ruined eggs and promptly packed himself back to the Yorozuya Office 10 days later.

Kagura cries at her bosom about the abrupt end of her ‘looong fun sleepover with Anego’ (ignoring Gin-san’s cries of “What d’you mean by fun sleepover, you brat?!”), but immediately beats a hasty retreat when Otae starts to invite her for dinner.

It worries her, how carefree they are about their bruised bodies. The kids had bounced back almost instantaneously, and their stubborn boss had sneaked off to buy his strawberry parfait in the first chance he got. But Otae has long since learnt to keep all her worries to herself.

If they were 2 normal people, she would have tearfully begged Gintoki to take it easy or get more days off, and Gintoki would have thanked her for all her help. Instead, she nags at him about changing his bandages and taking his medicines on time, because she knows he isn’t the type to rest for injuries like these. Gintoki never thanks her; he scratches his butt and responds to her nagging with his noncommittal “Hn”s or “Tsk”s, because he knows she will always be the one nagging and waiting and patching him up.

It's their oldest routine. Like a strange dance, Otae thinks. Neither of them will ever admit any affection for the other in coherent sentences like normal people, but will still go out of their way to do roundabout things.

Two days after Gintoki’s return back to his Yorozuya office, Oryou-chan casually asks the questions which again triggers the nagging suspicions in her mind.

“Oh, by the way, how is Gin-san doing now, Otae-chan?”

Otae, under the impression that Oryou had probably heard the news from Shin-chan or Kondo-san, and wasn’t updated of the permhead’s recovery, tells her that the man is already back to work against all common sense.

But Oryou chan isn’t the first or the last one. Ane-chan brings up the topic again one day later after the women are closing Snack Smile in the first hour of dawn and tallying up their profits.

“Is Gintoki doing alright now? I heard he got injured in a job.”

“Yes, the idiot is already up and about. Acting like it never happened.” Otae squints at the woman. “Why don’t you go visit Yorozuya sometime to see with your own eyes? I wish someone could knock some sense into that white haired sugar-addict …”

Ane gives her funny look and goes about her way.

Two days later it is Katsura Kotarou, who pops in the Shimura residence instead of the Yorozuya— for reasons unfathomable— and politely asks if “Gintoki is still alive enough to play Special Mariko Broken with him”. Otae tells him that Gintoki is alive indeed, and then makes the Joui warrior mow the grass around her dojo for his trouble.

Three days later, Hasegawa stops her from one of the cardboard boxes he has been camping under, to question about Gintoki and his absence from the Pachinko parlours. Four days later it Tetsuko, the mild-mannered swordsmith of Edo who calls her out through the crowd and asks about Gintoki's recovery.

A week later, Sarutobi Ayame pokes her head out from under the kotatsu to inquire about her ‘darling Gin-san’s health’. Otae kicks her out from the other side and yells at her to go check straight from the source. The same evening, she finds the infamous Hyakka leader- Tsukuyo loitering around Snack Smile looking for her, and wanting to ask about Gintoki’s accident from Otae. The blonde feigns disinterest but Otae can still make out the concern in her eyes.

The final nail is hammered by Otose of all people. It has been more than three weeks since the accident, when Otae bumps into Otose during a midday errand of stocking up on her Bargain Dash. The cabaret girl nods her head in greeting, which Otose returns genially.

“And how is that white-haired brat faring now? I heard that he got back to work within 2 weeks of his accident?” is the first thing she says to Otae.

Otae pauses in the mechanical task of inspecting the cups of her Bargain Dash, and narrows her eyes at the ex-Deva of Kabuki-chou.

“Otose-san, shouldn’t you be the one to know that better than me?” She is beginning to think that the old lady is toying with her. “He literally lives one floor above your shop!”

“Bahh, that cocky brat is always conveniently absent whenever me or Catherine try to enter. He’s too paranoid about his unpaid rents to think about possibilities of a social visit.”

“And you think I would know about his whereabouts? Why does everyone think I know about his whereabouts?!”

Oryou, Ane, Katsura, Hasegawa, Tetsuko, Sarutobi, Tsukuyo. And now Otose. That’s 8 people in a span of little over a week that seem to think that Otae is Gintoki’s babysitter. After her revelations in the beach, Otae has somehow become hyper-aware of every trivial moment she spends with the permhead.

Otose blows out smoke from her cigarette and laughs raspily. Otae doesn’t know what’s so funny.

“Is that so? Well, I suppose, in some way— everyone expects you to know about him the most.” The old hag smirks at her like she is missing out some private joke. “I have known Gintoki from the beginning. He easily gets people to open up to him, but he rarely used to mingle with a fixed group of people all the time. Scars from the war, I suppose. Anyway, we all know you’re always hanging out with the Yorozuya.”

“That’s only because my brother works for him.”

“You also go shopping with them. You spend Christmas and New Years together. You visit family restaurants and Sushi restaurants together. Oh, there’s that one time you went for a trip to a haunted Ryokan with them!”

That’s because you sent us there and tricked us! Otae wants to scream.

“You’re also there to feed them and heal them. Those brats get in all sorts trouble, saving Kabuki-chou and saving Edo and then saving the world. They can do that only because you’re there to patch them up, isn’t that right?”

Otae rapidly fills her cheap plastic bags with the chilled cups and pretends to laugh. “That only makes me a pit stop.”

A wrinkled hand on her wrist stops Otae in her tracks. Otose’s wise eyes bore into hers. “You know that’s not true.”

“Uhh, yes it is. Otose-san, you of all people should know what I’m talking about”. Otae tries not to meet her eyes. “I’m only there to patch them up, as you said. That’s all I can ever do, waiting for them and patching them up again, only for them to up and leave for work like nothing happened. I wish those idiots would stop jumping into trouble headfirst. I'll get wrinkles from all this worrying.”

Otose goes quiet for a heartbeat, and the cabaret girl feels like laughing louder. It’s not funny. Nothing is ever funny, but Otae cannot stop rambling to herself.

“Oh, I see now. You’re right, Otose-san. I bet that’s why everyone keeps asking me about Gin-san. Of course, they would, everyone knows that he would always end up in the Shimura residence when he’s injured. I'm the only one who has to deal with all his broken bones. It’s common knowledge. So trivial, really…”

Otose grip on her hand becomes tighter. She throws the cigarette on the ground and puts it out with her sandals. Otae wants to swat her hands away, she wants to look elsewhere, but she cannot.

“You speak of this like it’s trivial, my girl, but it’s not.” Otose tells her seriously. “Gintoki is a man moulded and shaped from war. No matter what, he will always be a warrior in his core. It has not been easy for him to trust people to watch his back— it is simply against his nature. You have seen him fight alongside others. You have seen him hold the hopes and lives of the entire Edo and fight with that burden. But how many times have you seen him place his own life in someone else’s hands?”

And Otae cannot respond to that.

“He can do that in front of you because it is YOU. It couldn’t be anyone else but you and Shinpachi-kun and Kagura-chan. You are someone he can show his weakness to, Otae-chan. You are someone who he has trusted and surrendered his body in its most vulnerable, and it’s not trivial at all.”

Otae stops struggling as the gravity the words sink into her. It’s easy to forget Gintoki’s true nature. He is the lazy slob who reads Weekly Jump and craves Strawberry milk like a dramatic teenager, but he is still the infamous Shiroyasha underneath it all.

“That brat keeps running his mouth and keeps acting tough like he’s invincible. But even an invincible person needs someone who will accept him at his weakest. It’s not just anyone, Otae-chan.”

“I—I’m not—”

The old woman pats the stammering girl on her head and leaves with a sad smile. “You’re not just a pit stop, Otae-chan. Never. You are the beginning and the end. You are the place they will always come back to. Do you understand?”

Otose leaves the cabaret girl frozen on street, holding her frozen ice-cream and head filled yet again with more questions than answers.

Chapter Text

They say third time’s the charm.

Otae’s questions and nagging suspicions slam back with a vengeance one muggy morning when she’s on her way back home from Snack Smile. The sun is already high up over the horizon. Edo citizens have started their day’s work under the stifling August heat of the mid-morning sun, and the shops are bustling with hagglers and shopkeepers shouting over each other like rabid dogs.

Even Sadaharu would look tame by comparison, Otae thinks.

 She passes by a local green-grocer’s which is just beginning to open its shutters, but her feet grind to an automatic halt when she spots the two familiar people standing in the shade of the shop’s awning. One of them is scratching his butt and the other is smoking a kiseru while eyeing his actions with a poorly concealed disgust.

It’s Gin-san and Tsukuyo.

Otae doesn’t know why this particular fact made her stop, or why it matters at all, but it does. She opens her mouth to call out to them (to Gintoki, really, who was supposed to have returned last evening with the haul of ingredients for their monthly hotpot night today), then closes it without saying a word. She frowns, reassesses the strange force of feelings that well inside her heart, and decides to try again— this time with a particularly foul word of greeting to break the ice.

She never gets to let her voice out.

Tsukuyo’s drawl with her distinct accent floats over from the distance. “Fancy seein’ ya here, Gintoki. They don’t sell Jump at the grocer’s, yanno?”

Gin-san grumbles something that sounds like “…already bought this week’s Jump, idiot.”

“Then what are ya doin’ here anyway?” The hyakka leader asks, the smoke from her kiseru curling around like a haze. “Yer deadfish eyes look like they’re upto no good, as always.”

Otae stops, and nods to herself. That’s a fair statement.

“And what’s with the load of ingredients? Never think I’d see the day ya being responsible for grocery shopping.”

Well… he has his days, Otae muses.

“Oi, lay off!” Gintoki makes his usual irate face like he would like to commit murder in broad daylight if it wasn’t such a pain in the arse. “What I do in my day off is none of your business! A man’s gotta take some responsibility for his life once a while! I can do grocery shopping JUST FINE, thank you very much! I even made it through school! What d’you even take me for, you drunk terminator?!”

A sharp heel digs expertly into his boot, relishing from the string of “Ow! Ow! OWW!!”s from the owner of the boot.

“What were you doing before this?”

“I wasn’t—Fine! FINE! I was at the pachinko parlour where that stupid Zura found me and dragged me halfway across Kabuki-cho with the bribe of free soba!” Gintoki yells, attempting to yank his foot free. “Who the hell refuses free soba?!”

Tsukuyo smirks at the rapidly reddening face. “I knew yer upto no good.”

“Of course you don’t!” The permhead yells, and then shrinks back as she turns to glare at him. “You’re just looking for ways to use my head as free target practice and mumble mumble mumble…”

His words end up in a mumble which get quieter and quieter the more Tsukuyo glares at him. For all his bravado, Gintoki knows better than to anger the woman who commands the whole of Yoshiwara’s formidable forces.

Otae will never admit it aloud, but she has a grudging respect for Tsukuyo— which has only increased since the war ended.

Gintoki manages to manoeuvre himself away from Tsukuyo’s heels and her free hand. “And what are you doing here? Do the Hyakka also do grocery shopping from cheap supermarkets around here? Listen.. you noob, I have all the Sales and Bargain Day dates memorized. If you want my secrets, you better pay up—”

He gets a smack across his head as response.

“I don’t need yer secrets, idiot. I jus’ finished up my patrol shift.”

Gintoki scoffs at the Hyakka leader. “Suuuure, whatever you say.”

Tsukuyo doesn’t respond for a long time, just stands there watching him pick up the fresh vegetables and turn them around. She stares at the ground after a few minutes. “Say, Gintoki…?”

“Hmm?”

Something in Tsukuyo’s voice makes Otae strain her ears.

The blonde woman takes a deep drag of her pipe and blows smoke into the distance. “You should come ta visit Yoshiwara sometime. Hinowa an’ Seita miss ya.”

Gintoki is busy inspecting some carrots. “What’s that? Is that a request I heard? A favour?”

“Don’t be dramatic. Seita’s been asking about you for a while. His summer vacation is about to end too.”

“That brat’s just going to ask me stupid question about my stash of dir— ahem, educational magazines. I don’t have the time.”

“Oi, Seita ain’t a pervert like ya!” Tsukuyo's face takes on a cold glint that Otae knows comes from the heart of an overprotective older sibling. “And ‘sides, Hinowa helps ‘im with homework all the damn time! He knows how lethal his puppy eyes are, that little brat.”

Gintoki lets out a chuckle. His irritated face melts into something fond and familiar. Otae feels like she is intruding upon a sacred, intimate moment. She feels like she should leave, which is strange, because Otae has long since learnt to accept the unscrupulous side of herself.

“How’s Hinowa by the way? She still makes her monthly visits to Housen’s grave?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah. Not a single day goes by without me reminding her that we don’t owe that asshole a thing. But you know how Hinowa is— kind to a fault, and grateful to the fucker who broke her legs and stashed her away like a used piece of cutlery.” Tsukuyo grumbles, the anger in her voice unmistakably softening up when she speaks of the sun of Yoshiwara. “She goes all way up to those damn cliffs in her wheelchair, smiling like he’s some old chum.”

Otae has heard of Hinowa.

From what Shin-chan and Kagura have told her, a Yato named Housen had been obsessed with her. He had mercilessly caged the woman and the entire red-light district in his shadow. It was the Yorozuya and the Hyakka that had ended his long reign and finally freed the Sun of Yoshiwara. Hinowa reserves a reverence in the hearts of the anyone who has seen her or met her. Otae hasn’t done either, but judging from the way Gintoki and Tsukuyo speak of the woman— she knows undoubtedly that that Hinowa is someone who lives up to her epithet.

Otae tunes out the rest of their conversation as they begin exchanging stories of a shared past together. It’s strange, hearing stories and anecdotes of a time that she doesn’t share with the Yorozuya. Of course, she isn’t arrogant enough to believe that they spend all their time with her (that would probably drive her nuts, thank you very much)… but Gin-san, Kagura and Sadaharu have become such an inextricable part of her life that Otae can no longer imagine the life she had before they waltzed in and made themselves home in her heart.

Even now, she still cannot envision a future without them.

It’s Tsukuyo’s voice that jolts her out of her thoughts again.

“I’m done with my patrol duty for the day. Come over for dinner tonight, why don’tcha ? I could have the Hyakka send a message to Hinowa ahead of time. Now that the war’s over, she’s been itchin’ to feed ya guys all her handmade cooking.” Tsukuyo’s face is alight with naked hope, even as she struggles to hide her eagerness beneath a mask of casual indifference. “Bring the kids too. ‘S been ages since I saw Shinpachi and Kagura. Bet they’ve grown up so much after all this time. Kagura-chan has put on some muscle too, or so I hear from Soyo-hime.”

The white-haired permhead grumbles something about Kagura’s ever increasing appetite.

Otae doesn’t know what bothers her more— the face of a woman obviously in love, or the fact that it bothers her in the first place.

Or the fact that Tsukuyo is talking about Shin-chan and Kagura like they are her kids. (Well, they aren’t Otae’s kids either, but—)

“Dinner with the Hyakka, huh?” Gintoki says, and Otae’s heart leaps into her throat.

Of course, it makes sense. The Hyakka control all of the Yoshiwara now. Ever since Housen’s defeat, and then the consequent weakening of Harusame after the war, the place has prospered beyond the walls of what was known as the Night King’s realm. The residents are no longer living under a shadow. And Tsukuyo? She is the courtesan of death herself. The one in-charge of the entire Hyakka forces who rule over the new paradise in the aftermath of the war.

A dinner with the sun and moon of Yoshiwara….

It simply doesn’t compare against a measly hotpot, made of cheap supermarket ingredients and local green-grocer’s produce, eaten under an old kotatsu in a cramped six-tatami room.

Tsukuyo squints up at the ex-samurai through her lashes. “You don’t have any plans, do you? Who am I kidding, you’ll probably be getting wasted on your sofa or running back to the pachinko parlours with your sunglasses friend.”

Gintoki masterfully ignores the last statement and starts picking his nose in response.

“Oi Oi, if you guys had enough cash to throw up a grand feast, you couldn’t have done this before??” He somehow makes his gratitude into a complaint— classic Gintoki. “Do you know how much money you could have saved me from Kagura’s endless stomach?! I could have bought the Akamaru Jump for the last three months without going broke! They had a special feature for One Peace! And an Extra Chapter of Dragon Nuts! I missed that!”

“You and your Jump.” The blond Hyakka leader’s eyes crinkle in amusement, and Otae has to look away. “So yer coming, right? Kagura can have all her meat and rice she wants. Shinpachi-kun will love it too. Honestly, Hinowa dotes on them too much.”

Gintoki snorts softly, but there’s a fond grin on his face. “You’ll regret this someday. Don’t come complaining when you go broke.”

Tsukuyo’s face is jubilant in happiness, like the most beautiful woman in the world, basking in the springtime of her youth. A soft smile plays on her lips as she looks at the permhead with an expression of unadulterated affection. Even with the scars on her face, the Courtesan of Death looks like an angel that has descended upon the earth.

(Standing together with Gin-san, she looks radiant. All strength and confidence and charisma of two people who have fought their bloody battles and emerged victorious. They complement each other perfectly.)

The sight makes Otae feel like curdled milk. Splitting apart in gross shapes and sourness curling up in her gut. It’s jealousy. It can’t be anything but jealousy.

She feels disgusted with herself.

“Nah. Not tonight.” Gintoki’s words cut the turmoil in her heart like a knife. “Sorry, can’t do it tonight.”

“Huh?” Tsukuyo deflates, “Oh, you have any plans tonight?”

But Gin-san waves his hand dismissively. “Not a plan. Okay, maybe several small plans. It involves cooking. Slavery, if you will. Unpaid labour for one night of ruthless competition.” He finally enters the shop mumbling something about ‘Nabe Shoguns’.

“Gotta get going, or I’mma get another earful of nagging.”

“Nagging?” The Hyakka leader’s confusion is growing by the second. “Is Shinpachi-kun making Nabe?”

“Not Patsuan.” He cracks a fat yawn and moves to step inside the shop with his carrots. “His gorilla sister. Handed me a list of ingredients yesterday, complete with the name of shops that I’d need to get them from. She’s like a military commander, y’see? Needs perfection in every little thing, or yer dead.”

“Oh, Otae-san? ” Otae would have marched right there and kneed him in the groin if not for the badump-badump of her heart in the wake of this unexpected turn in the conversation. “She’s coming over to Yorozuya today?”

“Yes, and she’ll harangue me about the exact change, damn nagging woman.” Gintoki scratches his hair and looks at the list again. “Oi Ojisan, give me your best cabbages, will you? The ones outside look saggier than your old granny’s tits.”

“Angry woman at home?” The toothless guy flashes a toothless smile, shuffling around the shop to where his cabbages are lined up. He weighs several ones in his wrinkled hand and places few down in front of Gintoki.

Gintoki takes the biggest cabbage and plops it into his bag, patting around his kimono for the money. “You have no idea. I’m already 30 minutes late— it’s all that damn Zura’s fault. Dragging me around to look for his freaky pet. Any later and the woman will be back from work already. I need the ingredients laid out in the kitchen like a peace offering, and then hope she’s too tired to do any cooking herself. I’ll have to wrangle in Patsuan and Kagura for the actual cooking while she sleeps.”

“No clue who this Zura fellow is, but you better not let your lady wait.” The shopkeeper nods at him like he’s speaking from decades of experience. “Life’s easier and happier when the women in yer life are happy.”

Gintoki makes a face. “Yes, well… it ain’t easy to make her happy. I was supposed to finish this errand yesterday evening. Now I gotta find an Ice cream shop to cool down her anger before she comes back home. So damned annoying...” He grumbles while walking out. There’s no comment on the ‘your lady’ bit.

Tsukuyo’s face is unreadable to Otae. The blonde woman wordlessly follows Gintoki out of the shop as he fumbles with the bag of groceries. A stray dog walks up to him and expertly raises one hind leg to relieve itself on his boots right there. Gintoki yelps like a girl and narrowly escapes the stream, dropping a bunch of spring onions in the process.

Tsukuyo sighs and picks it up for him.

“I didn’t know you guys made plans beforehand to have hotpot with Otae-san.” She tells him and as he takes the bunch from her hands. Her voice is deceptively light. “I mean, it’s not my place to pry an’ all. Sorry, I shouldn’t have invited ya’all outta the blue…”

“I don’t need your sorry.” Gin-san mutters. “I just need your word that the offer still stands for some future date. Preferably when Kagura is out of her stock of sukonbu. No way am I passing up this opportunity, nuh uh.”

Tsukuyo fidgets with the edge of her kimono. “I mean, sure. I’ll make sure ta check ya first though. I jus’ didn’t know that Otae-san would be coming over an’ all. It’s Friday night, after all. I thought she might have other plans, yanno, with Kuubei-san… but I should have known she’d be hanging out with ya’ll. Ahh wait, I don’t mean anything weird about it! She’s really busy these days, I guess, so I don’t really see her very often--”

Gintoki’s clear voice interrupts the nervous blabber. “It’s her payday.”

Otae startles at the words, staring at him.

Tsukuyo goes silent.

“That woman would never say it out loud, but she looks forward to the hotpot night the most. She’ll nag and yell and casually dish out German Suplexes on others for disobeying her, but she never really takes a break for herself. It’s always ‘Shin-chan’ this and ‘Kagura-chan that.’ Working herself to the bone for the whole month for a dojo that her old man left behind. Always trying to act strong, like she's the last pillar left standing in Kabuki-cho. Even if you show concern, she’ll just give you that damned innocent smile and wave it away. She doesn’t listen at all.”

His words wash over Otae like tide.

Why is he saying all this? She frantically thinks back to their past, and wonders when it became so easy for him to read her. Shimura Tae has always prided herself in being graceful and strong and the perfect woman in every way, so that no one would have to worry after her. So that she becomes someone to rely upon, not the other way around. When in the world did Gin-san ever look at her this way, that he was be able to see the little cracks in her elegant façade after all these years?

The permhead continues, oblivious to her inner turmoil. “Tonight’s the only time she gets to indulge and celebrate. Shinpachi and Kagura are busy working these days as well, so she doesn’t get to spend time with them as often she’d like. So no matter what plans she has, no matter how busy she is, Otae will never miss the Hotpot night. Never."

His eyes are resolute. The rare kind of sharp when he stops being the bumbling fool and dons the mantle of Shiroyasha.

"I’ll make sure of it.”

Gin-san you idiot. Why do you say such complicated things just when I’m trying to uncomplicate them with all my might?

Tsukuyo furrows her brow like Gintoki is some advanced math equation, but speaks no further of it. “Don’t tell this to the gorilla woman.” The man in question grins lazily at her, his smile conspiratorial and secretive. “She’ll just play hard to get if she ever gets wind of this.”

Otae watches Gintoki fish out the rest of the money that she had handed him to buy his cooled Strawberry milk. He ambles towards the lone ice cream parlour squished between the grocery store and the old candy shop. There is a brief haggling with the dour-looking shopkeeper, after which the white permhead emerges with two cups stacked in his free hand.

Otae doesn’t know to what to think of it anymore.

The truth is, she had long since figured out the art of making him run errands that he didn’t want to run. Nagging and promises of violence seldom bothered him now— because somehow, he’s gotten miraculously used to her daily threats. No, the art of making Gintoki run errands consisted of giving him some extra cash as payment that he’d use to buy his parfait or strawberry or jump or whatever. Or perhaps he blows it all up in his Pachinko parlour and horse races. She never asks and he never tells. But there’s always one cup of vanilla-flavoured Bargain Dash sitting in her refrigerator after each errand he runs. Without fail.

Tae Shimura is always meticulous about maintaining her supply of Bargain Dash. Which is why she has never thought to question the existence of an extra.

Until now.

Now, watching him unhesitatingly use the extra money to buy her Bargain Dash, makes her hesitate again. The lingering confusion and questions return in a thousandfold.  All the careful thoughts of ‘family’ and ‘friend’ and ‘it's just Gin-san, after all’ come tumbling down. She can feel the seeds of doubts growing steadily and taking root in her heart. Otae watches numbly, as a satisfied Gintoki gives a final wave of goodbye to Tsukuyo and slowly saunters back home.

Chapter Text

Shimura Tae is in love with Sakata Gintoki.

Denial has run its course. Otae has long held onto the delusion that it would go away on its own. It was merely admiration, she told herself. Or familiarity. Or just gratitude. She was just swept up in the first morsel of kindness that a stray samurai had thrown at her. An orphaned girl who spent the better part of her childhood going from part-time job to part-time job— fell for the first person who saved her like a knight-in-shining armour.

How much more desperate and pathetic could she be?

(She imagines why Gin-san is kind to her. Despite every part of her nasty personality that should indicate otherwise. Sympathy-by-association, you know? Gin-san cares a great deal about Shin-chan, and by familial association— perhaps he felt compelled to care about her too.)

…Only, none of this is true.

Otae didn’t fall in love with the Gin-san who is a dashing knight from those cheap paperback novels. She fell in love with the Gin-san with dead fish eyes and messy perm, the one who spends his salary on Jumps and parfaits, the one who picks his nose in public and pisses her off at every chance he gets. She fell in love with the Gin-san who silently picks up his battered sword without asking and protects everyone without making any grand promises.

Gin-san wasn’t just kind to her because she was Shimura Shinpachi’s sister. He was kind to everyone. His kindness came disguised in barbs and insults, but it showed itself to her when it truly mattered.

Perhaps his crude kindness felt so novel and shiny and new that she couldn’t help herself.

Otae doesn’t know where the feelings came from, where they had been hiding, or if they have existed for a long time now. Nothing has ever changed between them, she thinks, and yet the list of things that points to her love for him is only increasing. It has been increasing since the day he wagered his own life instead of hers to save her from a bet that nothing to do with him in the first place.

If Otae was the blushing school-girl type, she would ponder upon her feelings and carefully think about the life-altering revelations. But she’s not. All notions of subtleties were thrown out of the window when her father left behind a pair of barely teenage children with a large dojo drowning with debts instead of students.

No, Otae doesn’t have those luxuries anymore. So she decides to rip the band-aid right off the festering wound before either of them gets too comfortable with it. Before the spark erupts into a flame that burns her whole with it.

This is the only way to end it. She has to douse the fire before it spreads further.

She gets the perfect opportunity on a cool, balmy night when Gin-san and Kagura are crashing at the Shimura residence after a particularly late day of work. The kids have gone to bed early, tired from arguing and pulling hairs about whose turn it is to bathe Sadaharu tomorrow. The dog in question is draped over Kagura’s listless body and occasionally grunting in sleep from her stray kicks.

Otae silently pours steaming tea into two cups and makes her way outside. Unsurprisingly, Gintoki is lazing around in the engawa— lying down on his stomach and swinging his feet up in the air like a teenage girl—while trying to read his jump in the low porchlight. He wordlessly makes space for her when she puts the tray down. There isn’t even a nod to acknowledge her arrival.

As if he expected her presence here with the same scary conviction that she expected his.

Otae makes herself comfortable against a wooden post. The sounds of crickets fill the night, only interspersed by Gintoki turning the pages of his magazine.

She looks at the permhead for a long moment, preparing her heart for the inevitable.

“Gin-san?”

“Mmh.”

“I have a question.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Gin-san, listen.” She tells him seriously, before the conversation is derailed or she loses her courage.

She hears the rustle which indicates that he has abandoned his Jump and sat up a bit straighter. The tremble in her voice must have given away something. Otae curses her cowardice.

She takes a deep breath and starts. “Gin-san, do you know that you turn 30 this year?”

“Gee thanks, I didn’t know.” The silver permhead tilts his head to the side and scoffs.

“Gin-san, it is way past the age when normal men and women of Edo settle down. Most men of your age already have 2 kids and more on the way.”

“Since when do you think I am normal?”

“Gin-san, you’re wasting this time.” Otae turns to face him fully, and hopes that the steel in her eyes betrays how serious she is. “You’re wasting your youth. There might come a time when Shin-chan and Kagura leave Kabuki-chou, or decide to get married somewhere far away. There WILL come a time when Otose-san will not be around for you anymore. You’ll be all alone.”

Otae carefully pretends to exclude her own name from the equation.

Gintoki throws away his wrinkled Jump and scoots away from her. “Oi Oi, what is this?! Is this your version of pep-talks for marriage and such? ‘Cuz I’m too old for these lectures! Where is Patsuan? I’ll tie him in place and force him to listen if you want to play mother-in-law that badly. God knows that brat needs to graduate from 2D to 3D. And no, idols don’t count—”

A pair of feminine hands clasp over his cheeks, forcing the permhead to stop rambling and bring his eyes to hers.

“What will you do Gin-san, now that you are free of war and your sensei’s shadow?”

It’s a low blow, Otae doesn’t let herself waver. Gintoki’s adam’s apple bobs for a heartbeat, and then he her swats away her hands from his face. Before she can protest, he hastily picks up the teacup. A smart move. He knows Otae cannot manhandle him while he’s holding the hot tea.

“I’ll run the Yorozuya like I always have.” Comes a quiet mumble.

“You keep saying that, Gin-san.” Otae keeps her voice nice and steady, although her heartbeats are anything but. “But have you thought what you’ll do if you actually get a wife?”

Gintoki stops blowing on the tea and squints at her through the darkness. “Huh?”

“You must have thought about it, yes? It’s not like you’re getting any younger.”

The man in question continues to look at her like she has grown a second head.

Otae pushes through. “Just think about the accident. What if that happened when you’re well in on your years? What would happen if you’re bedridden? What if you get stuck in an accident with no one to look out for you? What will do when you’re truly alone?!”

Her breaths come out harsher, and Otae is horrified to realize that she has started panting.

She’s also hyper-aware of how Gintoki’s dead-fish gaze seems to be trained on her face, searching for something she cannot name.

“…I mean, you’ll still be there.” He jokes weakly, and then laughs at his own joke. “Man, I refuse to believe someone like you will die before me.”

Ah. There it is…

“Gin-san, if— if there comes a time when I’m not…” Otae doesn’t know how she can muster up the strength to continue, but she swallows the lump in her throat and tries. Her mouth opens and closes uselessly. She tries again, to muddle through words that she’s not sure are even her own.

But she knows that he needs to hear it from her.

“We are nothing but a woman and the guy her brother works for. Maybe friends at most. What does it mean for you to confidently declare that we will still be in each other’s lives for the foreseeable future? What d’you think people will think if they hear this, an unmarried woman coming and going from under the same roof with no reservations whatsoever?!”

Something in Gintoki’s eyes grow sharper.

“Is that what this is?” In a swift movement that almost blurs his silhouette, the permhead sits up straighter and leans into her personal space. “Are you worried about your social image or something stupid like that? Are you seriously panicking about dumb rumours from people that don’t know a thing about you or me?”

The lump in her throats grows heavier, and Otae vaguely realizes that she is about to cry. She has cried in front of him before, but never for something so unfathomable, so embarrassing. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she cries here and now. She doesn’t know what could have possibly make this worse. She doesn’t even know why a part of her still hopes and hopes and hopes….

She doesn’t even know what she hopes for in the first place.

“I mean, just think about it… what if you brought home a wife and she sees what a lazy slob you are? What if she thinks that you don’t love her enough and leaves you behind like the last episode of the first season which will lead to a long, boring arc of depressed monologues and pity-party? Or worse, what if she gets the wrong idea when she sees you with me?”

“Ahn? Wrong idea about what?”

“About you and me. About an unrelated woman involved in your life like a leech.”

The last word makes him flinch. Otae feels a sliver of nasty satisfaction curling in her bones at the sight. She has never had self-depreciating tendencies before, but the past few weeks seem to be dredging out the deepest, dirties parts of her that she didn’t even know existed till now.

“You’re flattering yourself. All that dark matter has finally started affecting your brain.” Gintoki swirls the tea in his cup, and Otae can tell that he’s trying to inject his usual indifferent, crass words into a conversation that he’s rather not have now. “No one sane would get any wrong ideas about a gorilla woman with Sekigahara plains for chest.”

The words sting in a way it hadn’t before. Gintoki isn’t pulling his punches, which means he really, REALLY doesn’t want to be part of this conversation.

But Otae knows how to play dirty too.

“It looks like Tsukuyo-san did, though.”

That stops his movements. The adam’s apple bobs in his throat as Gintoki swallows something invisible. Otae can’t help but trace the movement with her eyes.

“That woman’s hardly sane. Throws shuriken at everything that moves and drinks like a monster.” He mutters to himself, though his voice is softened by a fondness that wasn’t there before. A sour feeling shoots straight down Otae’s gut, and she has to remind herself that she’s not supposed to fight the feeling, but embrace it.

Accept the truth of it like a woman of Kabuki-cho.

She shifts her legs momentarily, posture as graceful as ever. “That woman has also carried a torch for you since a long time. Gin-san, you know that, right?”

There’s no way he doesn’t. Gintoki isn’t really the sharpest crayon in the box when it comes to the matters of a maiden’s heart, but he’s scarily in-tune with people’s feelings. Especially people who are close to his own heart.

Otae has long since suspected his own passiveness and pretend-obliviousness to be a sign of respect for Tsukuyo. For a girl who had once thrown away her own womanhood so that she would never be relegated to an object of desire like the rest of Yoshiwara. Or maybe he didn’t just want to change the status quo. Somewhere in her heart, Otae had hoped that it meant disinterest. She had hoped that Tsukuyo’s feelings were one-sided. She wasn’t ready for any change in the status quo herself.

Otae really is a scumbag.

“I know you treat Sarutobi’s feeling like a joke, and she seems to be chasing you out of sheer habit lately, if anything…” the cabaret girl tells him seriously, “But you should at least give Tsukuyo-san’s feelings some thought. She won’t be waiting for you forever, you know?”

“Since when did you start playing match-maker?” Gintoki grumbles under his breath.

Otae forces a serene smile on her face. “Since I figured that you might spend your life like a monk if I didn’t intervene.”

Gintoki flashes her an angry scowl and gulps down the entire tea in a single swig. His eyes squeeze involuntarily with the sting of hot liquid. The loud crack that echoes in the night when he slams down the teacup makes her flinch.

“Listen. What the fuck is this all about? Did the stalker gorilla finally make his move on you?” he whispers, though there is a hint of irritation colouring his voice, “Did he bribe you with complete reconstruction of the dojo? Or is it the Yagyuu clan nonsense again, trying to marry you off with Kyuubei and pass it off as true love?”

Otae suddenly feels a wave of fury wash over her. How dare he?! “And what if it is true?”

“Then grow a pair and accept one of them. Maybe it will put an end to all this stupidity and you’ll stop imagining yourself in a friggin’ soap-opera.”

Her eyes widen at the acerbity in his words. Gin-san is a lot of things, but he is never callous with her.

And he didn’t even care about the fact that someday she might accept Kondo or Kyu-chan’s proposal.

(Why would he? Her mind tells her-- the cold, cunning little thing that kept her and her little brother safe all these years– he’s not your lover, not your fiancé, nor your family. You are NOTHING to him. What did you expect?)

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

Gintoki must have realized it too. He clicks his tongue again and scratches his head. “Shit, that came out wrong. Look, what I want to say is—”

“Gin-san.” She interrupts his stilted, half-formed apology. All her courage will falter if he starts being nice to her now. “So you realize that I won’t be with you all the time? You understand that things can’t go on like this forever, don’t you? That someday I might really end up marrying someone and stop being involved with Yorozuya as much as I do? That I might not always be a constant in your future like.. l-like that?!”

Otae is aware that she is rambling, but she doesn’t know how to stop now. Gintoki is looking at her with a strange expression on his face, like he is torn between running away and comforting her. Only, he has never been good at comforting people. Otae knows this.

He will never say something that he doesn’t mean. Otae knows this too.

His kindness will always disarm her.

“You’re not a leech, idiot.” Comes his reply. It’s the closest thing she’ll get as an apology, though Otae wishes she never got one in the first place. “If anything, you’re a bear. You come barging and sniffing in out of the blue, and the only way to survive your fists is by playing dead.”

She resists the urge to whack him across the head. That might be his intention, she realizes. That’s familiar territory for them, meaningless banter and rude comments and one-sided physical violence. But Otae refuses to return to that familiarity.

“I guess you’re worried about Shin-chan and Kagura-chan.” Otae ignores his words and flashes him a measured, diplomatic look. “Or what Otose-san or Catherine or Tama would think. You’re worried that Shin-chan might suddenly go through a second rebellious phase just because I got married, or Kagura-chan would keep sulking away and empty all the rice in the house. You’re worried that Otose-san wouldn’t be around to tolerate your lazy-bum till the end of your life, or that you’ll not be getting the free food from the Koudoukan-dojo anymore…”

“Otae”.

“Because if you’re worried about Shin chan, don’t be! He’s almost 18 now, an adult. He can take care of himself.” Otae vaguely realizes that she is spiralling down. “Sure, he is a bit of a worrywart, and God knows he’s been protective of me ever since father left the dojo behind, but that’s no reason for him to stop working in Yorozuya, Gin-san.”

“Otae.”

“… A-And Kagura chan’s gotten stronger too! She is still like a child sometimes, but I hardly think she will be missing me much. Her world has gotten much bigger since she has returned from her journey. She returned to fight a war at your side, for God’s sake, Gin-san! She’ll never leave you all of a sudden just because—”

“Otae, listen.”

Shimura Tae falls silent, and for the first time that night, she hears the Shiroyasha in Gintoki’s voice. The confident, polished voice of the ex-Joui warrior, who is used to command and be obeyed.

“Otae.” His voice is the most serious she has ever heard, and yet it is the gentlest. His clear eyes bore into hers like the full moon in a tranquil lake. “Yorozuya was formed because of you.”

The words drown out the hammering of her heart like white noise.

She doesn’t know what he means, or why it shakes her so. Otae almost drops her cup and barely manages to place it on the floor with trembling hands. Gintoki is utterly serene in the face of her sudden fluster.

“G-Gin-san, wha—” Otae stops, swallows her spit, and tries again with a calmer voice. Her heart feels like it is running a hundred miles per minute. “Whatever do you mean? Don’t be silly! Just because I happened to be there when you invited Shin-chan doesn’t mean Yorozuya was formed because of me. I was just a bystander, a victim caught in that stupid underwear scheme…”

Shiroyasha smiles. It’s not a smirk, not a smug expression, but a genuine smile. “Be that as it may, you were the one who forcefully hitched a ride on my scooter on that day and dragged me into this mess. Why, I’d have just left Shinpachi in the dust and continued along with my boring-ass life after that. Perhaps I’d have kept running Yorozuya all alone, instead of picking up those two idiots that I can call family now, y’know?”

A delicate hush falls over the engawa. It isn’t like Gin-san to admit these things out loud. Otae gapes at his smiling face.

“Th-That hardly means anything in the grand scheme of things. You’d have met them even if I wasn’t in the picture, I’m sure.”

“Hell no, I wouldn’t have. No one in the entire Edo is capable of dragging people into life-altering messes like you are.”

“Gin-san, don’t be an idiot. You meeting Shin-chan and Kagura-chan was destiny. It is what saved the entire Edo. It’s the Yorozuya that was always meant to be, with or without me.”

“Oh, so you’re a Psychic too, now?”

Otae lets out a sound between a sob and hiccup.

Gin-san stops talking abruptly, and she has a horrific realization that her cheeks are wet with tears. Her resolve was weak after all. She angrily swipes at her face, trying to shield her eyes from his, but callous fingers clasp her wrist and pulls her hands away.

Gintoki’s concerned face comes into her blurry view.

“O-Okay, that might have been a miscalculation.” The permhead says nervously, “I didn’t know that ‘gorilla woman’ is fair game but ‘psychic’ is where you draw the line… Is this due to that weird rivalry you have going on with Ane?”

Otae swats away his hands viciously.

Why? WHY does he keep doing this? Why is it so difficult to make him turn away from her?! Otae knows she cannot have him. The same way you cannot have the sky all to yourself. You can reach out all you want, but your arms will still not be enough to hold the vastness of sky together in its own.

Otae is tired of wanting what she can never have.

“Gin-san, you idiot.” She bites out under gritted teeth, new tears of frustration stinging her eyes. “You absolutely incorrigible moron—”

“Yes, okay, okay— geez! I’ll stop now. You can insult me and hit me all you want, just stop crying—”

His reply is panicked, but the words are so utterly normal, coming from him. As if it’s a forgone conclusion that he’d suffer her wrath just to see her stop crying.

It's a trivial thing, but Otae has been noticing a lot of trivial things lately that she had never bothered to notice before.

Alas, she noticed them too late.

Cease this at once, her brain warns her. Do not mistake his kindness for what it is not.

The anger fizzles out as soon as it came. Otae is left with a pain so hollow it feels like her heart has been ripped out and replaced with a gaping, burning hole. She feels a bone-deep exhaustion. She doesn’t know how long she can keep fighting a losing battle.

She will never not be in love with Sakata Gintoki.

Her listless eyes sweep over to the man in question, who stares at her— dumbfounded— like he doesn’t recognize her at all.

(…Like the old Shimura Tae, elegant and strong and infallible— has been replaced by this inconvenient snivelling mess of a girl who cannot even string together a coherent sentence.)

Her voice sounds dead to her own ears. “I’m sorry for hijacking your scooter and dragging you into our mess that day, Gin-san. I didn’t imagine it would hurt so much to let you go.”

She stands abruptly, turns on her heels and runs away from the conversation she had started, like the absolute coward she is. He calls her name into the night, like he has no idea what his voice does to her resolve.

Father would weep in the heavens if he saw her like this. But Otae doubts he would care to see her all that much anyway.