Hey everyone!
First of all, I'm a non-native English speaker, so I'm sorry if there's any mistake.

This fic is just me putting Gintoki in my place at my summer job and imagining how he would react to it, that's silly, but quite funny to think about while working! (It's angsty, though, just to warn).

See you at the end!

Gintoki is used to rough jobs. He wouldn't say that he did them all, but enough to know what he's talking about. And the job he's doing right now certainly isn't an easy one.

Right now, he's working at a cheese factory 30 minutes away from the agency, 8 hours a day, with only a half hour break in the middle. It's not that physically hard, to put stickers on cheeses, and to put cheeses in boxes. But mentally? 8 hours alone in his own head is more than Gintoki would like to be.

He's always hated factory jobs the most, but they pay best. Of course, having a fixed-term contract brings him a sense of financial stability most of the other jobs he does cannot offer him, but still. He's not sure he can say it's a necessary evil.

Once again, 8 hours is a really long time. He's working with two women, a teenager and an older woman, and the latter doesn't seem to really like him. Well, actually, Gintoki's pretty sure she hates him.

He sees it, he's not stupid, the way she sighs when he's unsure of what to do next once he finishes the order he's been working on. He'd thought the younger girl would have been nicer, but it seems like Kagura's excessive affection for him has skewed his perception on teenagers' sympathy towards him. Screw Kagura, kids are actually closer to Sougo's behaviour, Gintoki quickly realised it.

But at least the girl doesn't openly sighs when he's lost, and she tells him when it's break time. He's not sure the old hag would do likewise.

He thinks a lot about the kids when he's working. He's glad they're not here with him. Mainly because Kagura would probably eat the cheese she'd be supposed to pack up, and Shinpachi would be even worse than him at putting up with his bitchy co-workers. But also because it's not a job he wants either of them to experience.

Kagura's too young for that. Actually, Kagura's too young for any job, she already shouldn't even be at the agency in the first place, her place being in a middle school. Gintoki doubts she has ever been in a school once in her life, and he won't ask her about it. She probably wouldn't be able to stand sitting at a desk for 7 hours listening to some teacher talking about something she'd have no interest in anyway.

Gintoki's not so sure about Shinpachi. His father owned a dojo, after all, so there's high chances that the boy attended the same classes Gintoki did decades earlier. He was probably a good student, but his father's death forced him to get a job to support his sister. Maybe he'd like to get into some high school, but Gintoki couldn't be sure. Shinpachi had been the first one to willingly work with him, after all.

Anyway. Right now they're both outside investigating on a supposed adultery, something way much funnier and interesting than packing up cheeses. He hopes they're getting the job done, though. He's never really relaxed when he knows the kids are outside without him and could get involved in something dirty.

Thankfully, Hijikata offered to keep an eye on them, something Gintoki accepted easily. Kagura and Shinpachi were strong enough to defend themselves in a normal fight, but they were never really sure on what they would stubble upon once starting an investigation. At least, when it came to the kids, Gintoki went to work without worrying about them.

Still, it doesn't mean that he goes to work in a peaceful state of mind. Far from it. There was a reason behind him taking up a job at a plant even though he'd promised himself, ever since his memory loss incident, to never again work in one.

There is nothing that could make him transgress his own rules other than money problems. So obviously, the only reason he's here is because they need money. It's not that desperate, but Gintoki has recently started dating Hijikata, and when it comes to money, the Shinsengumi's Vice Commander is not to be outdone.

The man has actually started buying them all things, bringing them to restaurants, and gifting Kagura new clothes she probably wouldn't even wear. Usually, Gintoki wouldn't refuse easy money, especially coming from a Shinsengumi member, but now that they are dating, it's a whole different story.

He's fine with Hijikata buying them things, but he doesn't want to end up financially relying on him fully. The agency was, and would remain, their main source of income, no matter who Gintoki fucked.

Well, it was more than fucking, at this point, but Gintoki was still coming to terms with it.

Anyway, they were not in a dire situation like they had known in the past, but they needed the money nonetheless.

It doesn't stop Gintoki from whining about his current job at any given opportunity. Especially when his bossyboots colleague is around. He hates her, she's a real bitch with him and he's always only seconds away from walking away and clocking in forever when she's here. But when she's not, he starts to think.

He never has one preferred subject in particular, his mind often drifting from topics such as the content of his breakfast this morning, to the condition of Edo's roadways nowadays. These mostly happen at the beginning of his shift. But once the two first hours have passed, and the time seems to slow down, his mind starts to wander in more sinister territories.

No matter how much he tries to prevent it, to think about something else, each workday ends with a thought worse than the previous one. He doesn't understand why.

It wasn't like that before, his mind wasn't immediately flooded with ghosts when he slept in the streets. Not even when he was alone in his new room after Otose offered to take him in.

Ghosts let him rest when he was wretched, just a shell in a body that did not feel like his anymore. They didn't feed on his soul when it already felt like he lived amongst them.

He is not the same man as he was before. He was indeed alone at that time, but the context was different. Before, he was empty and unresponsive to the world. Now? Not so much. Not anymore.

It doesn't feel like he's living just to honour the death's memory anymore. He is not wandering in the streets with a heavy heart anymore, and, most importantly, his smiles are sincere now.

Now that everything has changed, he has turned into a prey for the very souls that guided him before.

He can't be mad at them, they're a part of him now, theses souls. He is no innocent man, he knows that if he hear their screams at night, it's because he has something to do with them.

Gintoki knows that he played a part in these people's deaths, and that theses memories are the price to pay to having survived this long.

He knows that all in due time, peace will come. Now is not this time, and so he has to endure it, with no complaints.

He cannot even atone for his crimes, apologise for being alive, so he puts up with it, and repeats the same boring task hours after hours, ears filled with screams of faces his eyes can't seem to remember ever seeing, and a pit in his stomach that never really disappears.

He accepts it. As long as it isn't getting bigger, he's fine with it. It's a familiar sensation, after all.

It is not the first time Gintoki works in a factory, and it will no be the last one. He puts up with it. He has kids to feed at home, after all.

Hey!

So I hope that you all liked it, this fic is a little different from my other Gintama fics purely and simply because this time it was not inspired by Gintama but by my own life. I'm currently working in a cheese factory for a summer job and the 8 hours of work are really not easy to go through, so I think about fics to pass time. I quickly thought about Gintoki because I'm pretty sure he has already done shitty jobs like it, sooo…. Here it is, me complaining about my job through Gintoki, haha! (Thankfully I have only one month left… I hope time will fly quickly!)

Also, this was certainly not supposed to be this gloomy, but I just realised that I didn't feel like writing a long fic, and that since it was supposed to be angsty anyway, I might as well fully embrace it.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless, please leave some kudos and comments, it always makes me so happy to read them! :D