Cinders
(Hijikata/Mistuba)
„You don't have to do morning patrols."
„I know," he says, and stumbles upon a bundle of crumpled old newspaper. The bundle is lying helplessly in the middle of the street, pale and creased and smudged with black stains from streams of endless rainpours like face of a hostess right after a dawn.
He attempts to light a cigarette. But the dew has not set yet, and the air is heavy and humid. He fumbles with a plastic switch of a lighter until his fingertips feel numb. He would curse, but the officer of the night patrol is long gone and there is no point when there is nobody to see him. The Demonic Vice Commander curses and shouts and threatens. Hijikata Toushiro chews unlit cigarette until the paper breaks and bitter taste of tabacco fills every pore of his mouth to the point it hurts.
He hates morning patrols.
Everyone does. Kabuki-chou is hideous in the light. And thrice as much in that faint white mist that comprises of petrol fumes and flickering neon lights and precipitated air breathed out of lungs of countless beings wandering the streets and sake stands and host clubs. They are all asleep now, in a dreamless drunken haze, with drink coasters plastered on their cheeks. Hijikata assumes. He never felt any need to join them in their vain search for entertainment or forgetness or meaning of life or whatever are you searching for in the bottom of booze cup.
He assumes that as well; maybe they are not searching for anything.
He spits out crumbled tabacco leaves in the general direction of trash bags and leans on the wall next to the already closed snack bar. A cat with one eye and half a tail is sleeping on its threshold. Its ginger fur moves softly with each breath and had he been more of a poet, he would say that it embodies the whole town in its hideousness and beauty and whatever else could be said about Kabuki District.
„You wouldn't like it here," he says instead to the empty air, and watches the cat startle and look at him judgmentally with one amber eye before returning back to sleep.
He does not say anything else after that. He takes out another cigarette to chew and, with a feeling of yet another fullfilled duty, moves down the street on the prescribed route of mornig patrol.
He carefully avoids the bundle of newspapers, pale and creased and smudged like face of a woman that never let anyone see her cry.