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"You didn’t have time to waste on flowers." With both hands, Tae smoothed the sheets she’d just taken off the clothes line against her lap, slightly damp with evening dew.
"Huh?"
"You were looking at that boy the whole time."
"I wasn’t looking at him.” Kagura coughed on the bit of sukonbu she’d inhaled at the mere suggestion of spending any amount of time on Okita Sougo.
"Okay, more like locking eyes with him the entire time. What was that all about?" Tae’s smile was simple enough, but her eyes glittered in the flickering light of the mosquito coil with something more suspect.
"I don’t like the look of ‘em." Kagura spat out the offending sukonbu into her hand and wiped it on Sadaharu, who slept with his big head lolled against her side.
"How do you mean?"
"He’s got a dumb face." Tae suppressed a laugh, hand pressed demurely over the upward quirk of her lips. Kagura felt the heat rise in her cheeks. "Y’know…such a blank face. There’s nothing to see there. Just soulless, hollow eyes and a stupid grin whenever he manages to come close to landing a blow. He never even grazed me, of course." She sat up straighter and managed to regain some of her composure, shoving the remainder of the sukonbu into her mouth.
"You’ll be seeing him again this evening, you know." Tae’s smile was the opaque, vague sort she often got when concealing her motives. A Mona Lisa smile.
"The Shinsengumi’s coming to the yozakura? I thought they were police. Don’t they got something better to do?"
Tae laughed aloud this time, and a muffled yell and scuffling emanated from beneath the kotatsu on which she was folding clothes. The smile remained, but her right hand was balled into a fist, while her left held the scruff of a certain gorilla’s sprained neck.
"Otae-san! I - OW - was just checking up on you!”
"Checking up, my ass!"
"N-no! Not your ass!"
Tae grinned with a dangerous vehemence. “That’s not what I meant. A fine Freudian slip, you perverted beast!” Two-handed, she flung him from the living room. “See yourself out, if you please. You’ll be seeing me tonight, at any rate. Since you Shinsengumi apparently have nothing to police at night.”
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"What’d you think of the girl, Hijikata-san?"
"Which one?" Hijikata eyed Sougo warily, rubbing the back of his neck in anticipation of a ghostly pricking at its nape. Sougo looked up at him from where he sat on the front porch of the Shinsengumi compound, eyes brown and innocent as a doe’s even as he finished trussing up another voodoo doll doubtless meant for Hijikata.
"The little red-head."
"Strong. She’s amanto, you know."
"Yeah…" Sougo looked out into the middle distance, twirling with an idle finger the voodoo doll on the floor of the porch on which the two of them sat.
As was so often the case with Sougo’s behavior, Hijikata didn’t know what to make of this. Did he need reassurance of some sort? Did Sougo ever really need reassurance? Was this all some sort of mind game, Sougo having resolved to branch out into psychological as well as physical sadism? No, Hijikata determined, he wasn’t yet that far gone. Awkwardly, he angled himself down from where he leaned against the porch post to pat the boy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, she didn’t beat you. It was a draw, and that’s a positive assessment in her favor. You may have no brains, but you’ve got the strongest sword arm in the Shinsengumi!”
Sougo said nothing and bent studiously over the remaining pile of sticks and twine in his lap.
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"Hey. Hey, China Girl." Sougo eyed her curiously, the bright orange of her hair muted and somehow sharper around the edges in the shadows cast by the paper lanterns.
"What?" The jut of her chin told him she was going to be no easier to handle at night than she was during the day. Yato meant "Night Rabbit," he remembered.
"I’d like a rematch." He tossed her a voodoo doll.
"What’s this for?"
Sougo smiled, eyes half-lidded as he looked down at her. “I’d like you to use it to fight me. I’ve got my own of you, you see. I managed to save some of your red hair from our last scuffle and weave it into this doll here.”
Kagura leapt up to grab it, but he managed to hold it just beyond her reach. “I brought some nails for both of us to use on the dolls, so if you’ll just hold still, I’ll give them to y-” But she was climbing him like a monkey now and pulling on his hair, trying to reach the Kagura doll. She jumped away from him, using his now bruised ribcage as a springboard, even as he tried to wrench her back by the arm.
"What’s with you? You…you freakin’ Super Sadist!" Sougo grinned and opened his mouth to continue, but was halted by a quick flurry of punches, which he managed to dodge most of between snatches of conversation.
"Come on, it’s just a friendly offer! I thought you might like to try a different medium than a bare-knuckled fight this time. Thought you might like to try something more supernatural, since we’re evenly matched when it comes to the physical."
In reply, Kagura launched herself across the half-lit clearing at Sougo, knocking him to the ground in a near-sleeper hold, a flurry of cherry blossoms swirling around them - stark white against the dark and upset by their tussling.
"Evenly matched?" she sneered, flipping him over to meet her gaze, her face inches from his own and her breath hot on his scuffed cheeks. "Like hell."
His eyes were a curious thing, innocent as a deer’s. They gave Kagura pause, pause long enough for Sougo to pull one over on her. But he didn’t. He just lay there, staring, his face still with wonder. So she launched herself off him again, wiping her hands frenetically on her cheongsam though they were unsoiled, and if any amount of dirt were on them she wouldn’t have cared.
"You didn’t really win," he said nonchalantly as he picked himself up, his composure seemingly regained. "Since you were supposed to win by supernatural means. But I’ve no use for these, so I suppose I’ll give them to you."
Sougo tossed two dolls across the clearing. “Oh, and what are these for?”
"Add anyone’s hair to ‘em and you’ve got yourself a working voodoo doll."
"I don’t believe in that crap." Sougo shrugged.
"Hmph." She blew some loose strands of hair out of her face, and before he’d turned on her completely, Sougo watched them shine vermillion in the lantern light.
"Suit yourself," he said, turning on his heel and receding into the shadows beyond the clearing. "They serve me well enough when purpose dictates."
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"How about that," Gintoki said tonelessly.
"Yes, how about that." Tae replied, eyes soft and bright beneath the lanterns’ warm glow. The two of them sat on the Yorozuya’s tatami mat, which Shinpachi had long since abandoned to take a stroll with Yamazaki and bemoan the general idiocy of their employers.
"She rivalzoned him."
"What?"
"Rivalzoned. He clearly carries a torch for her, and she just hocked a big loogie all over it. She only sees him as competition."
"I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Gin-san. I have a woman’s intuition." Gintoki shrugged. "It’s all about violence."
Gintoki picked his nose absently, perplexed. “What d’you mean?”
"I’m well acquainted with the concept of violence - for me, it’s a tool and a physical manifestation of emotion, for Sougo-kun, it seems to be more like a way of life. I can see it in his eyes. There are many things he doesn’t know. He uses violence to test the worth of other people, and he’s finally found someone who’s worthy. Kagura, for her part, has risen to the occasion."
Gintoki laughed quietly. “I knew you’d be trouble since you first hitched that ride on my moped. Who knew your violent tendencies could make you so insightful.”
He was surprised when she did not take this as a slight. “You’re not so daft yourself, Gin-san. You should really talk to Kagura about men. She’s getting to that age. And being a consummate pervert yourself, you could explain to her what kinds of men she ought to avoid.”
"Hey now," he groused, "if I’m such a pervert, why would you trust me with her instruction in the ways of love?"
"Because she looks up to you, more than anyone else, I think. You’re the only man she’d ever listen to, so far as I can tell."
Gintoki scratched the nape of his neck distractedly, a faint flush in his cheeks. The sake, he reasoned. “I don’t think I agree.”
"Well, give it some thought then." Tae slid a spoon into his hand and passed him a small box. "Here’s something we can agree on. I’ve only got one pint, so don’t be a glutton!"
He held the pint up to the lamplight to read its label. Strawberry Baagen Dash. “Dango over flowers, or so they say. Ice cream over flowers.”