Disclaimer: I don't own Gintama.
GRAVITATE
At some point in time, Shinpachi had resigned himself to being the outsider, the trailing third wheel of the Yorozuya.
Gin-san and Kagura both had their respective roles to play, as eccentric hero and cute heroine.
But Shinpachi? He was nothing much.
"A pair of glasses", people would joke. Something vague, maybe, like "he's a nice boy".
He was a nice boy.
He was kind and polite, mindful of others, sensitive. Very nice. And that was about it.
He didn't have Gin-san's years of war-tempered experience, honed skills, or tenacity. He didn't have Kagura's exotic appearance, wild personality, or her raw power.
He didn't have any of that, and he would never, because then he wouldn't be Shinpachi. He knew that, but it rarely stopped him from being jealous.
The jealousy was absolutely stupid and dumb and childish, and he knew that just as well.
It wasn't like their strengths had come free; Gin-san and Kagura had both suffered greatly, more than Shinpachi could ever understand. Most of the time, it was hard to see. Gin-san had his laziness and go-with-the-flow attitude as a mask, and Kagura always lived in the present, but it was the moments where their pasts came back to haunt them that Shinpachi felt the most isolated.
Sometimes Gin-san would drift off in the middle of a conversation to stare dully with half-lidded eyes at a fallen apple, or at the fraying strands of a passing straw sandal and Shinpachi would snap his fingers a few times before the silver perm's face to bring him back. (After the first time, when he had placed a hand on Gin-san's shoulder and gotten a sword to the throat with an accompanying bruise, he didn't dare to make contact again.)
"...Shinpachi?" Gin-san would say. "Oh. It's just a pair of glasses." Then he'd sling an arm over the boy's shoulders and pull him closer to suggest some alcohol or a trip to the casino. Shinpachi would be angry and indignant, pull out his straight man act and remind Gin-san that Shinpachi was underage and the Yorozuya had no more money to waste on its leader's frivolous activities.
And that was the thing; it was all an act. Gin-san and Shinpachi, they both would ignore Gin-san's trembling and Shinpachi would always wish he could take it away. He never could, but Kagura knew how.
Like double negatives, her own shaking canceled out Gin-san's, and the times when Kagura would shoot up from a nap with screams fighting their way from her throat, Gin-san knew what to murmur soothingly into her bird's nest of brilliant hair to ease the shadows flitting across her face. Shinpachi placed the warm tea she liked on the coffee table and wondered how he fit into that world, that Yorozuya, that seemed to only have two.
There were three Yorozuyas sometime. One with the three of them all, another with Gin-san and Kagura and the glasses, and one with just Shinpachi toiling to give the Yorozuya a place to call its own.
To most, it seemed that the Yorozuya only had an office because of a miracle, likely several. Those who knew them personally, and maybe even Gin-san and Kagura too, assumed that their center of operations was mainly dependent on Gin-san's unique brand of charisma that swept Otose-san to his tune and allowed them to live there, essentially, rent free.
Otose-san's heart was certainly big enough, but Snack Otose's coin purse wasn't so generous as to be able to support long term loafing. Housing in Kabukicho wasn't cheap, after all.
The Yorozuya's presence on the second floor of Snack Otose was dependent on the one thing that seemed to move everyone, the thing that breathed life into the sleepless city: money. What else?
Some of it Kagura and Shinpachi snatched from the mouth of the various pachinko machines that Gin-san liked to visit in flashy bars and parlors with hazy air and handsy patrons. The bulk was brought in by Shinpachi's efforts.
There were so many in Kabuki-cho that knew of the Yorozuya, yet more that didn't, and Kabuki-cho was only a little place encapsulated within another, so not many physically stopped by the Yorozuya office. Shinpachi found customers himself.
In the mornings, before Shinpachi arrived at the office at twelve, when there was a general flurry of activity to set up tents and stalls and stores, that was when he did the real work.
The little jobs maybe didn't bag as much money as the "odd" jobs did, but was certainly stabler, and it got him freebies sometimes. If it wasn't enough, which happened more often than he would've liked, then it was a matter of looking around during twilight, when Kabukicho shed its lamb's skin and bared its fangs of neon lights, greed, and desperately sly prostitutes. If nothing could be found in the sleepless city, then he explored the rest of Edo.
Once, wandering through Yoshiwara after doing Tsukuyo-san a favor, he picked up a job at a brothel for a time. When his predecessor was kicked to the street in front of his eyes for assaulting one of the women, the brothel keeper had hired Shinpachi on the spot after examining him and determining that he was a "gutless virgin" and hadn't the balls to even look at a woman's naked shoulders.
"You'll never get laid," the woman added unnecessarily, gems flashing on her knuckles under the glimmer of her cigarette. "Come on in. Maybe you'll learn something." She turned and beckoned him forward, and Shinpachi followed, because the pay was good, because he wanted to prove that he wasn't, in fact, a gutless virgin, and because maybe he thought he might find some of the samurai soul that he chased after behind the wooden bars of the prostitutes' cage.
Five seconds after the keeper left him with instructions to kick out any unruly patrons, or loiterers, and to keep time on paying customers, a pale, delicate hand grasped onto his sleeve, and Shinpachi showed that he really was a gutless virgin. She was a high ranking courtesan, one of the tayu, and her kimono slid down to the crease of her elbow, revealing a smooth expanse of skin and the dip of her che-
Shinpachi averted his eyes before he could go further, a blush warming his ears and cheeks.
"Another virgin. How dull," she scoffed, fixing her clothes and refolding her legs to assume the regular prim and proper position.
"W-what's wrong with being a virgin?!" he spluttered.
"I'm Kasuga," she said, ignoring his protests, "and you're Shinpachi. Nice to meet you."
Then a customer called for her and he didn't see her again until the next night.
/
"Hey, Pachi-boy, want to know something?" Kasuga asked, her eyes slanting up towards him mischievously.
"O-ok," he said, unused to attention from the opposite gender.
"I'm turning twenty eight this year," she said, straightening her spine and tilting the corners of her lips at a passing man, his tabi-covered feet making soft pats against the hand-polished wood. "I've got a kid out there, somewhere," she added, almost like an afterthought. "A girl."
Like Seita and Hinowa, he thought, though far more of a tragedy. There was no Gin-san in Kasuga's story that would reunite her and her child. "What's her name?"
"Ayame. Pretty name, isn't it?"
Shinpachi nodded wordlessly.
"I hope she looks like you." At his quizzical look, Kasuga smiled sweetly, looking far younger than her twenty eight years. "Like a nobody, I mean."
"Hey!"
Kasuga almost laughed. "Nobodies have it easy. Trouble doesn't come looking for them. You must be somewhat brave, a nobody working in this kind of place. It means you went after trouble."
Shinpachi thought of explosive Kagura and gambling Gin-san then. "I guess so," he said.
It was nearing the end of his shift, so when a drunk man began shrieking his lungs out about some bad luck at the pachinko parlor, and it turned out to be Gin-san, the keeper let Shinpachi off early to get rid of the "ugly, silver perm-head".
"Gin-san," Shinpachi said, chewing on a meat skewer bought from a nearby stall because he forgot to eat dinner. Or lunch, for that matter. "You two really are trouble, you know? But now I can't imagine a life without you or Kagura."
"Whassaaat, Pa-chi?" Gin-san slurred drowsily. "Feeling….sentamenal?"
Then he leaned over and puked. Shinpachi, all too used to his drunk antics, stepped neatly out of the way of the torrent with a face of weary disgust. A whole lot of trouble, for sure.
Shinpachi dragged the samurai back to the Yorozuya and dumped him unceremoniously in the entryway, throwing a stray jacket over him.
The next day, at noon, when he opened the sliding doors, Gin-san was still sprawled in front of it, blearily blinking himself awake.
"Hey Shinpachi…."
"Good morning, Gin-san. Get up and get to work already! We're still behind on last month's rent!"
Gin-san didn't move, only stared resolutely at a brownish swirl in the wall. "...Me too, by the way. I couldn't imagine it either." Then he propped himself up, swayed for half a second, and ran for the toilet.
End.1
A/N: My first fanfic for Gintama! Shinpachi is so underrated in my opinion, and his role isn't explored so much in the manga, so here this is. I kind of took liberties on what happens behind the scenes, obviously. Feedback is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for reading!