Not-Lesson 3: Cut down on the spices or else it'll be the only thing you can taste
One day, out of the blue, Shinpachi invited the residents of the Yorozuya to a restaurant. Rather, it was more like Shinpachi wanted to meet up somewhere other than the office, Kagura was getting hungry, Gintoki was broke, and Sekishin pointed out a sign that offered a free meal if you could finish eating a bowl of jumbo ramen under three minutes. An easy feat for Kagura.
And accompanying them was his sister. The only introduction needed was between her and Kagura. The elder Shimura had already met with Sekishin when the Yorozuya were out on a job.
"Good morning," she greeted after Sekishin answered the door.
"Morning," Sekishin replied uncertainly because she didn't know who the woman in front of her was. "Anything you need?"
"Oh, I just thought that I'd give you a gift for employing my brother," she said, presenting a box. The word "brother" set the gears in the silverette's head in motion. Brother. In other words, Shinpachi? Well, he did mention that he had a sister. What was her name? Otae?
"Thank you." Sekishin accepted the gift.
Before leaving, Otae turned to Sekishin and asked, "By the way, Gin-san, why are you dressed up like a woman?"
"It was for a job. Now drop the subject."
The next day, Otae visited again.
"Hello."
"Shit, she's back," Sekishin muttered under her breath before greeting her back. "Hello. What is it this time?"
"I was just wondering how you liked my gift."
Sekishin paled slight at the memory of the horrible burnt...what was it? "Oh, that. It was very..." To be honest or lie? "...unique-tasting." To be honest, she didn't even touch it after looking at it. She just threw it in the trash.
"Really? That's wonderful. I hope you don't mind if I send you more!"
"No, don't! I mean, I really don't want you to bother with making them. We're just fine over here!" As if she could hide the fact that she was throwing away her cooking forever.
"No, no. I insist."
"You insist what?" a voice asked behind her. When the young women turn around, there was Gin in all his mascaline glory. She turned around again to see the Gintoki-crossdressing-look-a-like. It was a reaction both of them were experienced with. "Seki, why do you always insist on pretending to be me?"
"But isn't it amusing to be known as that okama Yorozuya boss?"
"No it's not! You introduce yourself properly right now!" her twin ordered.
And to the confusion young lady caught in the middle, Sekishin smiled politely. "I'm very sorry for tricking you—" At this, Gintoki snorted a no-you're-not snort. "—I'm this guy's twin, Sakata Sekishin."
After the introduction, everyone took their seats, and Gintoki ordered the bowl of jumbo ramen for Kagura, and Otae began to recount the story of her stalker.
The entire story took less than three minutes of their time.
"How nice. You can become a happy little bride," Gintoki remarked as he ate his parfait. "If he had a sword, then he's probably a member of the Bakufu."
"Or the Joui," added his twin.
"You can marry him for the money and then file for a quick divorce before he gets to know the real you."
"'The real you'?" Sekishin asked, but her question was soon answered when Otae stepped on the table and smashed his head down. She mentally agreed that the real Otae would scare away any and all potential husbands.
"I thought he would just give up, so it didn't really bother me. Then I realized, wherever I went, there he was. Ahh, it was weird," the elder sister admitted.
"Are you guys even listening?" Shinpachi demanded as the three minutes were slowly ticking by and Kagura had yet to finish her bowl.
"Three minutes are up," the owner of the restaurant announced.
"Just in time!" Gintoki exclaimed. Next to him was Kagura in front of an empty bowl.
"Hey!"
"Cool your jets. Now we can get down to the specifics. What do you want me to do? If it's part of the job, I'll do what I have to," said Gintoki.
"By the way, Gin-san, I haven't been paid in two months. Do what you need to do and I'll call it even," said Shinpachi.
"All right." Gintoki stood up. "You damn stalker! Where are you? I'm going to kick your ass!"
"What the hell! Just try it and see!" A figure emerged from underneath a neighboring table. Sekishin immediately kicked him back under.
"Gin, I could have sworn I saw someone here, but he suddenly disappeared," she said looking everywhere except back under the table.
"Yeah. Maybe we were imagining it," Gintoki decided, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
"That's mean! I'm still here!" The figure tried to emerge again, but this time, both twins kicked him back under.
"Gin-san, Seki-san," what are you two doing?" Shinpachi wondered.
"It's that, you know. That. We're having a twin telepathy moment and experiencing the same auditory hallucinations," Sekishin explained, beads of sweat also forming on her forehead.
"No, I'm pretty sure neither of you are hallucinating."
The twins shared a look and then peeked under the table.
"You two…" a ghastly voice called out. A bloody hand grabbed a hold of the table from underneath and an equally bloody face popped out. Seeing as there was no kicking yet, the man stood up.
"What are you talking about, Shinpachi?"
"There's no way this guy could be your sister's stalker."
"After all, that would hurt the Shinsengumi's reputation."
"I mean, really? This guy's the commander, you know."
The twins laughed together, trying their best to avert their eyes from reality. But the truth was, Kondou never did have a clean reputation in the first place. And the Shinsengumi were not known for being model officers.
"What the hell are you doing?!" they both asked, uppercutting him at the same time.
"Hey! We're leaving now!"
Later that night, Sekishin received a call from Hijikata who scolded her for hitting her superior and demanded that she commit seppuku. Luckily, Kondou managed to talk him out of it. And the next day, Kondou greeted his subordinates, sporting a black eye and a swollen cheek.
Three weeks later, Sekishin came home only to be greeted by a gigantic dog in the doorway. "What the hell?"
"We got a new pet," Gintoki said unenthusiastically.
"He's name's Sadaharu!" Kagura announced, her tone on the opposite spectrum.
And then another couple weeks after that…
"Oi, what's with all these time skips?!" Gintoki demanded.
"It can't be helped. The author's getting lazy and wants to get the early chapters over with," replied Shinpachi.
"That's right. Because at the time of writing this, there's 532 chapters of Gintama," Kagura pointed out.
"So she just settles everything by saying I was at work and nothing's changed from the original. Except maybe a few dialogues, but the author's too lazy to type an entire chapter just for a couple lines of dialogue," Sekishin explained. "Just hurry up and go to your client's house, so we can move on with the story."
The woman kicked Gintoki to the door while he complained about his hangover. "Itterasshai!"
"Ittekimasu!" Kagura replied.
The door closed, and Sekishin went to watch TV. Two hours later, the doorbell rang. The woman looked up from a magazine. Then she heard the door rattle.
"What? Is it Gin? No, Gin wouldn't ring the doorbell. Neither would Kagura. Then who opened the door?" As she walked to the doorway, she saw Sadaharu there with something in his mouth.
A person? He was wearing a blue kimono and a pale blue haori.
"Sadaharu, bad dog! Spit the poor man out right now. You'll get sick!" she scolded.
Whining, the large dog reluctantly opened its jaws. A face covered in blood and saliva was spat out. Sekishin raised an eyebrow when she recognized the face.
"What are you doing, Zura?"
"It's not Zura, it's Katsura!" Sekishin offered him a towel to wipe his face with. "Huh? Gintoki? Did your hair get longer? And you're wearing a female kimono?"
"And I see your hair is as long as ever. Tea?"
"That would be nice. And maybe a shower."
"Don't be such a girl. You can handle some grime in your hair for a bit longer." She led him to a table. A while later, she heard the door rattle closed. Turning around, she saw Sadaharu with his paw on the door handle.
"Good boy. I'll give you a treat later."
The dog barked with delight.
After giving Katsura a cup of tea and Sadaharu an extra-large dog treat, Sekishin sat across from him.
"This is good tea, for once. Reminds me of the tea Sekishin used to brew. For someone so bad in the kitchen, she was strangely adept at this." He stiffened then and looked up at the face of his friend. Contrary to what he expected, it was a serene face.
"Good to know."
Silence reigned for the next few moments. Katsura opened his mouth countless times only for his words to die in his throat. After that, he stared at his reflection in the tea, deep in thought.
"Um, Gintoki, that appearance...Are you possibly trying to act like someone else?" He worded his words carefully and cautiously, as if he was handling a bomb that could go off at the slightest touch in the wrong place.
Sekishin smiled. "What do you think?"
For a moment, Katsura thought he could see a phantom take the place of the one in front of him. She had long silver hair that was styled in a bow and held in place with two criss-crossing, black hair pins. She usually wore a red kimono with sleeves that where just the right length. Sometimes, just to match with her brother, she was called Beniyasha.
He blinked and there was the one he believed to be Gintoki, still possessing that un-Gintoki-like smile on her face. The smile resembled the one who he thought was dead.
Katsura didn't like it. Even if they were twins, the resemblance was too much. "I'm going for a walk," he said.
"What? Leaving so soon. What did you come here for in the first place?" asked Sekishin.
"When I get my thoughts straightened out, I'll come back." Or when he stopped seeing Sekishin in Gintoki.
The smile lingered on her face, but the woman made a fist with her right hand, hidden under her overly-long sleeves. "Sadaharu, remind me to punch that brother of mine when he comes home."
The dog tilted his head and gave a confused whine.
Katsura's walk took him to a rather shady part of Edo. He didn't know what led them there, but the Yorozuya office was too far away now. The sound of shattering glass alerted the Jouishishi of the events above him. He glance up to see Gintoki fall along with someone else. They fell on top of a pile of garbage.
It didn't make sense to him. Gintoki was supposed to still be in his home, so how could he be there? But nothing ever made sense when it came to Gintoki. He ran up to them and felt for a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief when he discovered they were both alive. However, they were not unharmed, especially Gintoki.
So he carried them both to a safe house and had them treated.
Unaware of the misfortune that had fallen her brother, Sekishin sat at a table, a blank sheet of paper in front of her. A brush was held loosely in her right sleeve, staining it with black drops of ink. But she didn't mind. Rather, she wasn't aware of it. Sakata Sekishin had her head down on the table and her mind off in a dream.
Countless dirt mounds stood before her, some with swords stabbed into them and some without. But they all marked the resting place of the ones that died in the war. Sekishin clapped her hands in prayer and in gratitude for their service.
Then, the mounds disappeared, leaving just one in front of her. It was a proper grave that could be found in a cemetery. Gintoki was kneeling in front of it, hands clasped in prayer. He turned around and asked her a question.
"Do you regret it?"
But before Sekishin could answer, her pen slipped from her loose and cloth-covered hand, clattering to the ground, causing her to awaken from the dream.
Slowly, the woman sat up and glanced down at the paper, her expression unreadable. "All right, I know what I' going to write now," she grumbled as she picked up the brush and started writing.
Meanwhile, Gintoki was…
"Hello. We'd like to join the crew please."
"Oi, Zura, what kind of pirate says 'please'? Are you some kind of pansy pirate? Listen. Real pirates should go 'Arr!' and 'Me matey' and all that slang."
"It's not Zura, it's Katsu— Captain Katsuura!"
"Anyway, let us join the crew."
"We don't take new members, especially if they're human," the sentry stated.
"Come on, don't be like that. It's been our dream to be pirates, hunting for that One Pack— though to tell the truth, I'd rather go for a six pack; I think I might have gained some fat from all those parfaits," Gintoki admitted, casting a look at his stomach.
"If you want to work out, there's a gym somewhere you could go to."
"Don't say that. Look at my hand. It's a hook. You think I can lift weights with a hand like this? You think I can do anything like this? Come on, I can either be a pirate of a coat hanger! That's it!"
"Not my problem." The sentry turned his back and started to walk back inside the ship, but two swords at his neck stopped him.
"Let us have an interview, at least." Gintoki grinned.
Katsura waved a paper in his face. "We even have our resumes."
...Gintoki was being Gintoki and charging in a Harusame ship. Seki was not surprised at all when she heard the story from Shinpachi.
"Seconds," Kagura requested, holding out her empty bowl.
As Sekishin refilled the bowl with rice, Shinpachi turned to Gintoki.
"Speaking of which, Gin-san, are your injuries okay?" he asked.
"Now you ask after making me carry you two all the way here and having me cook dinner on top of having a hangover!?" Gintoki exasperated, shoving rice into his mouth as fast as he could with chopsticks.
"You've been through worse," Sekishin reminded. "I mean, there was that one time when—"
"Seki, mention that one incident and I will kill you."
The woman looked at her brother and soon turned to face the two children again. "Okay, so what happened was that Gin here got injured from an explosion."
And at that moment,the man in question covered his face with his hand and groaned. "Not this story."
"I don't really remember what the doctor said, but anyway he wasn't allowed to even walk for at least...I think it was four weeks. But Gin is Gin, and he can't be Gin without going against doctors' orders. Caused me a lot of trouble."
Sekishin's face only looked calm on the surface, but underneath that, she was remember the "fun" times back then, and under the table, she was stabbing her brother's left hand with chopsticks. Her brother was trying to keep the pain from showing in his expression. Just because he couldn't move his hand didn't mean he couldn't feel it.
"At first, he was resting because, well, he was unconscious for a week. But then he woke up and despite us telling him he had to rest and him telling us that he would…" At this point, Gintoki had to drop his own chopsticks to grab hold of Sekishin's because she was applying too much pressure, and his pain tolerance was at its limit. "...this goddamn natural perm charged headfirst into the battlefield the moment we took our eyes off of him. You really haven't changed one bit!"
"Owowowow! I get it. It was my bad! Now quit it!"
Sekishin looked down and quickly retracted her hand. "Oh. I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. Is your hand okay?"
"It isn't okay at all! Is this your revenge? Are you trying to make me lose my hand?!" Gintoki grabbed his wrist and shook his hand at her.
"No, of course not. "I wouldn't do something as mundane as that," she denied, waving her hand while Kagura was telling Gintoki, "Gin-chan, something like that isn't enough to make you lose your arm."
"M-mundane?" Shinpachi parroted.
The conversation on the other side of the table continued. "I don't care. Seki shouldn't be that violent with me!"
"I mean, why would I get rid of his hand when I can just chop off his entire arm?"
Shinpachi promptly spit out his tea. Gintoki instantly slammed his hand down on her head.
"All right, Seki. Joke time's over. It's late, so go to sleep."
At Gintoki's words, Shinpachi glanced briefly at the clock and widened his eyes. "It's already this time!?" he exclaimed.
Outside, the sky was pitch black, save for the stars that speckled it. A crescent moon hung suspended in the darkness, emitting little light. And with his and Kagura's eyes out the window, they missed Gintoki shooting his twin a glare.
"Hey, Gin-san, is there a place for me to sleep here?" Shinpachi asked, looking away from the window.
"If you can sleep on the sofa. We don't have any extra futons," Gintoki answered before dragging his twin to her room.
"Couldn't he sleep with you?" Sekishin wondered as she hid behind a folding screen to change out of her kimono.
Gintoki grunted. Sekishin sighed. In other words, Gintoki had his reasons and refused to voice them, and Sekishin was sighing about how it was always his reasons. It was a form of communication only they understood.
"Oh, by the way, Zura visited this morning."
There was a just-when-I-thought-it-couldn't-get-any-worse groan. "How did your meeting go?"
"There was no meeting. He thought I was you pretending to be me and left."
"And you didn't correct him?"
Sekishin stepped out from behind the folding screen, clad in a pale yellow yukata, and shrugged. "Oh, I almost forgot." She punched her brother on his right cheek. There was no real strength behind it, but Gintoki still shot her a confused glance. In reply, the woman smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, which were giving a you-deserve-it look.
Moments later, something could be heard breaking. Gintoki quickly ran out to check up on his two employees and the mess they caused. If there was anything Seki was thankful for, it was the fact that, for once, she wasn't the one being scolded by the silver-haired man.
Chapter 3 done. Lessons 1-15 done. The future looks bleak. My motivation is slipping. Let me just cut to the Benizakura Arc so I can skip everything in between. But then I'd be skipping about 70 lessons, and that's so much.
In other news, there's too much Seki and Gin interaction and not enough others. I am such a horrible writer.
To Mr Miliardo: I'm sorry if it may be confusing, but Seki is Gintoki's sister. And also, I don't know what you're talking about because Gintoki's always been mellow and thoughtful... *laughs nervously*
I am a horrible writer...