Dawn of a New Life

by alter yi

"Hello, this is Gintoki speaking. We will now begin presenting the story of a crossdresser who is the boss of a place called Yorozuya Gin—Ow!" "Oi! What the hell are you doing, Seki?" Meet Sakata Sekishin, the impersonator and twin sister of Gintoki. It's her life's goal to make her brother insane. OC insert. No pairings. Failed attempts at humor.

11. Not-Lesson 9 point 5

Note: You are free to skip this chapter if you wish. You will not be confused in later chapters if you choose to do so. Just in case this is too OC-centric for you. Or just too OC

Side Story: OC Stands for Outrageously Convoluted

Takezawa had to wonder if he was cursed. Ever since he could remember, misfortune had always befallen him in some way. At five, his parents forgot about him and doted over his yet unborn little brother. At thirteen, he nearly lost a finger trying to chop vegetables. At nineteen...well, that year could just go burn in hell for all Takezawa cared.

And now, at the age of twenty-three, he lost his manly pride.

As he tugged at his wig for the umpteenth time that day, he silently vowed to kill Kozakura. She made him work at a maid cafe of all things! And what was she doing? Having relinquished her wig to Takezawa, she was happily wandering the city like some kind of tourist.

It all started a few days after they arrived in Kyoto.

"So to put it bluntly, we have no clues, no idea of where to go or who to look for, and quite frankly, we're going to have to stay in Kyoto for a while, maybe a couple months."

"Wonderful."

"And the worse part is, we don't have enough funds to keep paying for lodging."

"Uh-huh."

"So, I talked with the innkeeper, and now we're stuck together in one room to save money, and there's a maid cafe that's currently hiring."

"...Kozakura."

"It's Sekishin."

"Why the hell are you telling me this while you're putting your wig on my head?"

Sekishin stopped to admire her work. "Yeah, you would look good as a woman."

"...Don't tell me…"

"Well, your legs are hairy, but it's nothing stockings can't hide. Or tights." She added as an afterthought.

"I'm going to kill you!"

She beamed at him, seemingly oblivious to his threats. "You're starting tomorrow. Good luck at work! Since we can't really go with Takezawa Michio as your name, how about Takeda Michiko?"

"I'm going to kill you slowly and painfully."

And just like that, he was roped into crossdressing. How he survived so long already without snapping was a mystery to him—one that he was not keen on solving, especially since it seemed to involve digging through his subconsciousness.

It scared him was how comfortable he was getting with this.

The bell secured at the top of the front door rang, bringing Takezawa back to reality, and he turned around, the customary greeting already out before he could even register who the customers were.

"Welcome back, Master." Outwardly, he was all smiles. Inwardly, he was thinking up ways to kill a person.

He was going to kill Kozakura.

---

A long time ago, Takezawa had lead a life of crime, joining the yakuza to get money, not caring about how many lives he trampled on. It had been a foolish, rookie mistake that had landed him at the mercy of one Sakata Gintoki.

But Gintoki hadn't done anything. Didn't ask for his life or any part of his body, didn't ask for money even though his landlady looked just about ready to kill him for skipping out on so many months of rent and unpaid tabs, didn't even make him work under him.

All he did was shoo him away, promising pain if he ever caught Takezawa doing the same thing again.

Like he had the last few times he caught Takezawa and his partner-in-crime—a boy named Haruki.

Then one day, Gintoki said something different.

"I need you to watch over her," he requested as they sat in his office, pointing to the literal bed sheet ghost sitting up in the futon. "Hey, what are you doing?"

"I refuse to show my face."

Gintoki didn't push any further, though he did shake his head. "Anyway, that's Se—"

"Kozakura."

He looked back to the bedsheet. "Se—"

"It's Kozakura. My name is Kozakura Tsubaki. And I hope you die."

Gintoki sighed and scratched his head. "Whatever. Fine. Just remember to cut out some eye holes later."

Takezawa wondered briefly if maybe this Kozakura person was Gintoki's mistress or something. She denied it when he asked her, just a scant four minutes after Gintoki walked out the door.

In any case, Takezawa had spent the rest of his afternoon entertaining Kozakura with stories of Gintoki, at her request. As for Haruki...Well, he had a thing for lemons, so he was clearing out their fridge of lemons, much to Takezawa's dismay.

And also complaining to Kozakura about how Takezawa was neglecting his poor, terminally-ill brother in the hospital. Takezawa swore that Kozakura was giving him the evil eye behind the sheet.

---

At six in the evening, his shift ended. Takezawa emerged from the cafe's back door, wearing black pants, an olive jacket over an orange shirt, and the blue scarf that he had taken to wearing ever since his neck got injured. He closed the door behind him with an audible click.

Then it swung open and slammed right into his back.

"Oh no, who'd I hit?" A maid with neon pink hair (that couldn't be natural) peeked out from behind the door. Takezawa got up from the ground and glared at her. "Oh, it's Michiko. I was worried you left before us."

Behind her back, a cook named Kido smiled. "Micchan! There you are!"

It had become a routine to walk with them after work was over, mainly because they walked in the same direction to go back home, or inn in Takezawa's case. The other reason was because Tenshi was a busybody who took it upon herself to "take care of my sweet little kohai so she won't be lonely" and Kido was tagging along just for the heck of it.

Takezawa didn't mind Tenshi's company, not when she was a bubbling fountain of gossip and rumors about the shady going-ons in Kyoto at the moment...among other things that Takezawa would have been happier not knowing. Kido wasn't all that bad either, and sometimes Takezawa felt as if they had been friends since they were born.

"...and then I walk into the room and I'm like, 'Oh, so this is the poor soul who's being avoided by his brother,' so of course I have play with him. His brother's such a horrible person, and I bet if I go visit him again right now, he'll say that he hasn't seen his brother in weeks, if not months."

"That sounds like an awful brother," Takezawa muttered absent-mindedly. Kido gave him an amused look before calling out to Tenshi.

"So what's got you all happy and chipper today?"

Tenshi spun around, sparkles in her eyes. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"If it's about you stalking Mari and Yoshiko just to get some more details about their relationship, then no."

Tenshi grinned. "No, it's not that. Today, one of those Shinsengumi guys confessed to Naomi."

Takezawa nearly choked on his spit.

---

Nagakura spat out the water he had been drinking. Shimada's smile refused to fade, even with water dripping down his face though he did take a moment to wipe his face.

"You what?! You confessed?!"

"Yep!"

"To a girl working in that maid cafe?"

"Yep! She's a part-timer, so there shouldn't be any problems."

Casting a wary eye on the lovestruck man, Nagakura sipped his cup.

"So, she's coming to Edo with us!"

After another spit take, Nagakura could swear that he was doing this intentionally. Wiping his mouth, the captain of the Second Division turned to Sekishin, who was sitting in a corner, texting to an unknown recipient.

"Hey, Chi, talk some sense into this moron!"

"I'm busy!"

Well, she was no help. "Listen, Shimada, you really shouldn't! She'll stab your heart before I even get to say 'I told you so!'"

"Naomi's too sweet for that!"

"It's all an act. Women are vixen. Just look at Chi!" With a grand sweep of his arms, he gestured to Sekishin, who was giving Nagakura a flat stare. If she had a free hand, she would have slid her thumb across her throat.

"I think you're just saying that because she rejected you."

Nagakura really needed to stop drinking with Shimada around. He doubled over, coughing water out of his lungs.

"We don't—" He coughed again. "We don't talk about that! That's one thing I would rather never remember."

"Because of the pain from a broken heart or the pain from your broken bones?"

"I don't want to remember. Chi, stop laughing! It was all your fault in the first place!"

---

Nagakura frowned as he stared at all the splotches of red on white. He was in the hospital and had been there for more than a week, talking to other patients and occasionally playing Uno with them.

For some reason, the patients who were well-versed with the game were usually the one who started when he told them that he worked for the Shinsengumi.

And now, he was currently in dire straits. All he could see was red. Red and white and a hint of black, but mostly red.

Kouji, who landed in the hospital after an unfortunate accident with a saw, placed down a Draw Four card, declaring the color green.

There were three turns before Nagakura had to play a card. No worries.

And then Ayumu, an ill child barely past his teens, a poul soul trapped in the hospital with no family to visit him, put another Draw Four card on top of the pile.

"Red."

Ayumu was an angel and no one was going to tell Nagakura otherwise.

"Green," said hemorrhoids Hattori, placing on the pile a—who would've guess—Draw Four card.

Nagakura shook his head. He felt sorry for Ayumu's nurse, who was going to have to draw twelve cards.

"One, two, three…" She counted the cards out loud and stopped at twelve. She picked up the cards she laid on the floor and struggled to hold them all.

And then she put down a green Seven. A seven. He didn't have a seven and he certainly didn't have a green card. All he had was red! Six red cards in his hand and nothing else!

"I hate you," he nearly spat, not meaning it, but still feeling somewhat bitter.

"Hey, I drew twelve cards for you. If I had a Draw Four card, you'd be drawing sixteen."

"Minami, be nice," the thirteen-year-old admonished lightly as he shuffled his only two cards in his hands.

"I will if you agree to get your flu shot."

"No!"

Nagakura bit back a laugh when Ayumu quickly took cover behind Kouji. Minami—that was the nurse's name—held nothing back and giggled uncontrollably as she nudged Nagakura in the side to hurry up and draw his cards.

Even after he was discharged from the hospital, Nagakura found some time to return to the hospital to visit his friends and play a game of Uno.

It was always Uno, but they mixed it up using different rules. That was a thing, apparently. There were hospital rules, Earth rules, intergalactic rules, Jouishishi rules (which was exactly how he found out that some of his hospital friends once fought in the Joui war with Katsura Kotarou and some other wacky samurai), a combination of rules, and worst of all, no rules.

And that was how he got acquainted with one no-surname Haruki: over a game of Uno with no rules at all. That day was pure chaos. Chaos.

Years later after that chaotic first meeting, Nagakura could still smell the smoke.

---

Takezawa awoke that morning to find Sekishin already up. Odd since she liked sleeping in. The woman sat with her back to him, her fingers tracing the rim of the ceramic teacup on the floor, while she stared at something on the table.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, nothing much." As he got up, he noticed the map in front of her, covered in red and black X's. "Just figuring out where to sight-see next."

He sighed. "I get that you're excited to be in a new place, but don't you think you can do that after our work is done. I mean, we've been staying here for months and we haven't even begun our search."

"Patience. Rushing won't get you anywhere."

"Kozakura," he growled.

She turned her head and smiled. "I get it: you're worried! How very cute of you."

"I'm not worried!"

---

A long time ago, Haruki had been in the yakuza. He wasn't like Takezawa, who joined for the admirable reason of gaining money to pay for his sickly brother's hospital bills and surgeries. He joined because he had nothing else to do. He joined a whim.

He decided to leave the yakuza on a whim as well after hearing Takezawa wanting to gain money using less criminal methods.

At that moment, Ayumu became more of "the poor soul who's being neglected by his brother because his idiot of a brother was too much of a coward to face him without feeling guilty because he was also such an innocent soul."

After the duo announced their resignation, Takezawa talked with Gintoki about jobs, and Haruki visited Ayumu, the boy who recently made friends with a Shinsengumi captain.

He didn't know that he and Takezawa were being tailed by their former boss's orders. He didn't think that leaving would have such consequences. He didn't notice his stalkers until too late, when Nagakura suddenly whipped around and demanded that they reveal themselves, when they set the room on fire.

Through his panic, he had held Ayumu close to him so that his kimono could filter the smoke that the boy would breathe. So that all the boy could see was the sunny yellow of his kimono instead of his nurse pulling a knife out of somewhere and killing the three yakuza in the room and the four that prevented them from escaping the flames.

On that day, Nagakura was readmitted into the hospital after leading the evacuation, and Haruki's name was among the list of fatalities.

---

The Shinsengumi Second Division had been stuck in Kyoto for months as well. Almost nine months, in fact. Enough time for a woman to get pregnant and give birth. Takezawa couldn't imagine a mission that took nine months, but Sekishin could. She read the reports after Hijikata was done with them and knew exactly why they still weren't finished yet.

Because the Jouishishi faction hiding in Kyoto were too smart, too slippery, and too dangerous to leave alone. Especially since many men in the Bakufu were blinded by lust.

In comparison, Sekishin and Takezawa were sent to find a certain person hiding in Kyoto, spending three months working at a maid cafe in Takezawa's case. But Takezawa didn't know—would never be allowed to know—that the person they were searching for did not exist.

After helping Takezawa become more feminine, Sekishin saw him off.

Ignorance was bliss, they said, and she wanted him to stay ignorant. It was better for him to just worry about his job and not about the bandages around her arm and legs and torso.

With Takezawa gone, she lifted one foot off the ground. It was really painful pretending that she didn't have to limp. What kind of yakuza tried to cut off a woman's leg anyway?

---

Sightseeing. She had said that as a joke, but at this rate, she probably would end up seeing all the sights Kyoto had to offer after just three days.

Okay, so obviously, she wasn't going to find the yakuza hideout just by aimlessly wandering around in Kyoto. She expected that, but she still hoped that everything could have been that easy. Then maybe she wouldn't have to rely on Takezawa to bait them out and risk his life and risk Takeda kill her. And maybe she wouldn't have to go through with her plan and risk Gintoki killing her for risking her life.

Either way, she was going to get killed by someone.

She missed the days when everything was simple, and the worst she had to deal with were those arguments over who sat where on a four-sided table.

If she had to admit it though, sightseeing wasn't too bad. She passed by many different kinds of stores, like a flower shop, which she didn't see in Edo.

(Weeks later, Gintoki called her, using Yamazaki's phone, to tell her that some Amanto recently moved into the neighborhood, who was absolutely terrifying and sold flowers.)

Sekishin paused and looked back for a moment. There was yet another flower store, which was quaintly named Kido's Flowers, with a tagline that said, "Adopt a flower today."

(Weeks later, when Gintoki complained about all the pollen in the air because of his new neighbor, she would calmly mention that one of his former subordinates had opened up a flower shop in Kyoto. When he asked who it was, she said Kido. And then Gintoki went completely silent and she would revel in the fact that she wasn't the only one surprised by this.)

Kido Kouji was a man who Sekishin remembered as being a tall, imposing giant who rarely opened his mouth. He had been an apprentice carpenter before the war; during the war, he was the one who made tables out of broken shoji doors.

(Shoji doors made horrible tables, as evidenced when one broke when Sakamoto sat on it.)

In Edo, a few years after the war, he opened up a furniture store before closing up and deciding to move to Kyoto, where Gintoki and Sekishin had thought he set up another furniture store.

No, he just had to open up a flower store.

After staring slack-jawed for a couple minutes, Sekishin decided that she might as well pay a visit.

("Oh, and by the way, remember the kid he adopted?")

---

Sekishin entered the dojo at the Shinsengumi just in time to see Hijikata fend off a thrust from his attacker. Hijikata slid his foot forward, his sword coming from the attacker's left. The sound of steel clashing against steel was all she could hear.

"You can't be serious," she breathed. When Yamazaki had told her on the phone about an emergency situation, she'd been expecting damaged wings and burning wreckage because some idiot decided to test out one of the prototype weapons that Niki was creating. Not this.

Leaning against the outside walls of the dojo were the captains of the Seventh and Tenth Division, Oka and Harada respectively. Oka was dazed with bandages wrapped around his head, while Harada was sporting a sling around his right arm. The captain of the Fourth Division, Sugihara, turned away from the body lying on the floor to nod at her.

You would think, with three captains injured (because that was Toudou, captain of the Eighth Division, on the floor, trying to convince Sugihara that he was fine, he was immortal, for he was a demon king reborn), it would have been Takeda treating them, since the Fifth Division was the more medically inclined division of the Shinsengumi, but that wasn't the case.

Takeda Kannensai, the man who hadn't held a wooden sword—let alone a real sword in years—was the cause of at least half of those injuries. And he was fighting Hijikata. Sekishin was waiting for someone to yell surprise or pop out of the bushes with a camera or something that would tell her that none of this was real.

Nothing.

"Yamazaki, what did Hijikata do to piss Takeda off this much?"

"Ah, well, Vice Commander wanted to send Takezawa to Kyoto as bait...for the yakuza," he answered hesitantly.

Ah, that answered so much. Takeda was such a mother hen that if one of his men was threatened, this would probably happen. Even so, this was going too far.

"Hey!"

No answer. Whistling was no good, too. So there were two men fighting, and no way was she going in between that without risking the loss of her other arm. She didn't know what Yamazaki was expecting her to do when he called. It wasn't like she was some kind of miracle maker.

Okita usually was the one who broke up fights with a shot from his favorite bazooka, but he was out to get the bazooka repaired by Niki, who was also out to buy some parts, and neither of them were answering their phones.

(Okita was going to be upset when he found out that he missed a perfectly good chance to shoot at Hijikata.)

Sekishin sighed. A bazooka was out of the question, but they did have that water balloon launcher stored somewhere. Only they didn't have any water balloons, filled or otherwise.

Wait.

"Someone call the fire department and see if we can borrow a hose, preferably one that's safe to use on people," she ordered, light bulbs flashing in her head. "And call the ambulance, too!"

"Yes, Ma'am!" Yamazaki saluted before whipping out his phone.

Sadly, Kondou wasn't involved, so she couldn't quite have her revenge from all the time he dumped water over her, but this was fine.

Now all that she could do was wait, watch, and hope neither of them killed each other.

She recalled two similar numbskulls, always arguing and fighting. She remembered how Sakamoto came between them, stopping them before they hurt each other more than they hurt anyone else. She could hear Katsura scolding them and they would apologize with such insincere voices before glaring at each other while Katsura turned his back on them. And she was at their side, laughing as she bandaged Gintoki's arm or Takasugi's shoulder and sometimes causing more harm when she wrapped the bandages too tight because you were supposed to be resting for god's sake because you got stabbed in the gut and you almost got chopped in half so why are you causing more injuries, you pieces of shit?! You trying to kill yourselves?!

"Keyword is 'almost.'"

"Somebody get a saw because Gin obviously feels like he doesn't need the lower half of his body."

"We have a hose!" Yamazaki announced. While she was lost in her memories, Sugihara had already carried all three wounded out of the dojo and away from harm. Good.

"Connect it to the water pump!"

"Already did!"

Oh sweet Yamazaki, he was getting a pay raise. Takeda on the other hand was paying for the hospital bills with his paycheck. In a matter of seconds, Yamazaki was shooting water at them with someone from the sixth division called over to work the pump.

"Stooooop!" Takeda yelled frantically, waving his arms and jumping to the side to avoid the spray of water. "Stop! Stooop! Stoo—glubglub!"

"Okay that's enough!"

All able-bodied captains ran up and pulled the two away from each and pinned them to the ground. Sekishin picked up their swords, listening to Sugihara promise to give them curses if they tried to resist.

And then she remembered that these people were supposed to be cops. It was a wonder Edo hadn't burned down yet.

---

There was a picture, tucked away in the pages of a paperback book stained with ramen. A picture with Gintoki, standing in front of the door to Otose's bar, the signboard for Yorozuya Gin-chan visible above his head. A picture of Gintoki, a man Shinpachi recognized as a man from the Fifth Division, and someone wearing a fox mask.

"Who?"

"Hmm?" Gintoki wrapped an arm around Shinpachi's shoulder as he took a look. "Oh, I was wondering where that went. Oi, Seki, what are you doing, using a valuable picture as a bookmark?"

"What valuable picture? Which book? I don't know what you're talking about?"

"You know, the picture of the old Yorozuya—"

"Wait, wait, what?!" Shinpachi exclaimed.

"—in the book you spilled ramen all over? Ring any bells?"

"You mean the book you spilled ramen all over?"

"It was my evil twin."

"Your evil twin over here has no recollection of such a thing."

"Yeah, well, you got amnesia."

"Hey, who's the person who got hit on the head and lost all his memories a couple weeks ago? Not me."

"Um, this argument is nice and all—actually, not really—but can someone tell me what this 'old Yorozuya' is?" Shinpachi asked.

Kagura took the photo out of his hands and stared at it.

Gintoki cleared his throat. "Those guys right there were part of the second generation Yorozuya."

"Second generation?" Shinpachi repeated.

"Hey, what's this thing right here?" Kagura pointed at the space between Gintoki's and Fox Mask's heads. It was blurry and hard to make out, but it kind of...resembled...a human's face.

"Oh that? That's a ghost."

"What?!"

"Yes, the second generation Yorozuya had to disband because they were being haunted by the ghosts," Sekishin said gravely. Cheerily, she added, "By the way, the first generation Yorozuya disbanded because, well, Gintoki threw them all into a river."

"Wait, so...this is the ghost of one of the first generation? Are we being haunted by ghosts right now?!"

Meanwhile, Yamazaki, who was lounging on the sofa while Gintoki was using his cell phone to put Sekishin on speakerphone, was wondering if he should tell Shinpachi and Kagura the truth. That the picture had been taken while someone was jumping off the balcony, so that person had ended up as just a blur.

Takezawa complained about it for weeks, so naturally, Yamazaki heard the story at least once or twice.

"Joking aside, this here is Takezawa, who you've met. Next to him is me. Next to me is...Seki," Gintoki explained as he pointed.

"In spirit," she added.

"In spirit," Gintoki agreed. "But not the spirit in the photo. Fox mask is Kozakura Tsubaki, whom you will probably never meet. And this isn't the ghost of the first generation. This is the ghost of the poor, unfortunate soul who's being avoided by his brother and died in the fire over at Oedo Hospital four years ago."

"Ayumu was his name," Sekishin supplemented.

Shinpachi gave him a flat stare. "I can't tell if you're lying or telling the truth right now."

"Well, Ayumu did die; he has a death certificate to prove it," Sekishin said.

"Because you forged them," Yamazaki coughed. Shinpachi asked if all the pollen in the air was making him cough. Yamazaki nearly said that it was all the lies and half-truths that was making him cough, but decided to agree with the boy instead.

Great. The Sakatas were influencing him to go along with their lies. Next thing he'd know, he'd be locked up behind bars because they influenced him to join in their law-breaking ways.

---

Gintoki didn't know why he stopped Takezawa that day, a long time ago, when the boy had been running away from the wreckage of an with the other members of the yakuza. And when the boy, who couldn't be any older than sixteen, chomped on his hand, Gintoki had felt his veins pop and, for some reason that he couldn't remember, he carried the boy like a sack of potatoes, ignoring everything he did, and dropped him in the old hag's bar.

And when he found the newly-christened "Thugling" again, leaping off the roof of a home and drop kicking the owner of that very home, who had just left the front door ("He failed to pay back his debts," Takezawa explained later, leaving Gintoki to wonder whether he was working for the yakuza or loan sharks), Gintoki sighed, managing to walk two paces in the other direction before groaning and running a hand through his hair and deciding to drag Thugling back to Otose's bar.

Eventually, Thugling had become a regular customer, the only one of which who was still a minor, and Otose reluctantly combined his tab with Gintoki's, despite knowing that it basically meant everything was free.

Gintoki had gotten another headache when Thugling Two, a whole three years younger than Thugling One, had joined the yakuza and was sometimes dragged off along with Thugling One, evidently adding more money in the Tab That Shall Never Be Paid, to Otose's dismay.

"This place isn't a place for you to bring in strays," she had muttered as she poured Gintoki his fifth glass of alcohol.

Gintoki was so inebriated at the time that he couldn't remember what he mumbled in response.

Not even a year after that conversation, there was a stray hanging around in the floor above the bar, and the thuglings—caught in the middle of a weapon trade gone wrong—was brought to the second floor for once and ordered to keep the stray—who was going to ridiculous lengths to keep her identity a secret—out of trouble and in the office.

And then the stray decided to make herself useful and work as a nurse in the same hospital where Thugling One's brother was. And played card games with him. And made enough money to buy an electric kettle so they wouldn't have to keep buying smoke detectors. And Gintoki had hoped that she would have stayed in the hospital, if only so she could stay happy.

His hopes fell after an all too quick month.

---

Takezawa was worried. He was really worried.

"Wow, that doesn't look good," Tenshi proclaimed, looking over his shoulder to read the newspaper in his hands.

It really wasn't good, and if it wasn't good, then it could only be bad.

Kido looked over his other shoulder and read aloud.

"'Shinsengumi Captain Attacked! At around 9 pm last night, an unknown assailant was witnessed attacking Nagakura Shinshichi, Captain of the Second Division, which has been residing in Kyoto for several months now. Luckily, the assailant fled after the arrival of the rest of the Second Division. The identity of the assailant is unknown at the moment, and the Shinsengumi refuse to comment on any suspects that they may have. Captain Nagakura is currently recuperating in Kyoto Hospital and has yet to awaken. If anyone has any information on the attack, please contact the Shinsengumi at Koumon Inn.'" Kido turned to the two of them, confusion evident in his eyes. "So...Captain Nagakura's in the hospital?"

"Yes," Takezawa was forced to admit.

He should have known something was wrong that day the moment he woke to find Sekishin's side of the room completely untouched since he fell asleep waiting for her to come back..

"This is beyond bad," he grumbled, wondering how he was going to track down Sekishin. There was no way she was uninvolved in this mess.

As he became lost in thought, he didn't notice the hardness in Tenshi's eyes as she stared at the headlines once again.

And neither of them noticed when Kido lifted a corner of the page and saw an article about the unconscious yakuza men being found on a boat floating in the Kamo River.

Kido took the newspaper right out of Takezawa's hands and ran to the kitchen before either of his friends could follow.

Seconds later, smoke billowed out of the kitchen.

"Dammit, Kido! The stove's not for burning trash!" called out one of the chefs.

"It is now!"

Tenshi pointed at the smoke. "Did he just…"

Takezawa just snapped part of the handle from the broom he was holding and threw it at Kido the moment he emerged from the kitchen, an irate chef shaking a pan at him.

"We were still reading that!"

---

A long time ago, Ayumu was a sickly child. Actually, he was still sick, but medicine had evolved over the years, so he no longer had to spend entire days in the hospital. But back when he did have to spend his entire days in the hospital, there had been a terrible fire and his old room, his old room with the wilting flowers and the rare gifts from his brother, went up in flames.

He knew everyone who died that day, from the peppy, baseball-loving Takashi who broke his leg to the stern, taciturn nurse Natsumi who threw children out the window and into the waiting arms of an adult.

His name was also listed as one of the dead even though he didn't suffer anything more than the smoke in his lungs. Minami, his nurse, had said it was a precaution, in case any of the yakuza planned on using Ayumu as a hostage to force Michi out of hiding.

Four hours after news of the fire was broadcasted on TV and Minami called Gintoki to let him know that they were all right, two hooligans—one with silver hair and another with black hair—barged into a place that the police suspected had ties to the yakuza but could never prove it, and proceeded to commit the crime of property damage and hit anyone who interfered with their demolition with wooden swords.

The next day, an old woman who ran a bar in Kabuki-cho asserted that her two tenants, who coincidentally had the same hair as the hooligans, were in her bar the whole time, too drunk to even walk straight, when the police questioned her.

And if, when Gintoki and Michi visited, they sported cuts and bruises that they refused to talk about, then Ayumu wasn't going to complain. Much. It wasn't polite to bring down someone's good mood.

He did have a lot to say after Michi was admitted into the hospital, though, and it seemed to be the week of sibling quarrels because Gintoki and Minami—or Sekishin—were fighting over her faking her death again.

In the present, he recalled that week and laughed when he remembered Michi's face when Ayumu ate a lemon.

---

At a certain intersection, Takezawa, Tenshi, and Kido parted ways, walking by themselves.

Tenshi waved goodbye to the other two, waiting for them to go out of sight before dropping her smile. She checked her bag to make sure that yes, she did have a knife with her—shamelessly borrowed from the kitchen while checking up on Kido—and stowed the knife in her sleeve along with a pair of handcuffs.

As she ran through the streets of Kyoto, she could just hear the Nagakura in her head saying, "I told you so."

Because he did. And he was never going to let Tenshi live it down.

She turned the corner and saw just the person she was looking for.

"Naomi!" she called out, her voice harsh and lacking all pretenses of femininity.

Naomi stopped in her tracks and spun around in a manner that Tenshi couldn't help but call cute.

"All women are vixen."

"What is it, Ten-chan? You look so mad," she sang.

With long, brisk strides, Tenshi hurried to her.

And cuffed her hands.

"All women are vixen."

"You're under arrest—" Tenshi paused before swallowing saliva. " —for the attempted murder of Nagakura Shinshichi, Captain of the Shinsengumi Second Division."

Naomi looked at the cuffs and then at the honey-brown eyes of her captor. "My, Ten-chan, what are you talking about?" she asked, hands to her mouth in disbelief.

'Ten-chan' was a nickname that confused everyone in the cafe, because she used both to refer to Tenshi and to her boyfriend, Shimada Ten.

No one could have ever guessed that the two were one and the same.

Tenshi—whose real name was Shimada Ten and was shamelessly crossdressing—grit his teeth. This was a woman who he confessed to, who had tricked him, and who had tried to kill his captain and close friend.

Who worked part-time at a maid cafe and apparently full-time with the Jouishishi.

He grit his teeth and painfully let go of the feelings he held for the woman. Maybe this was how Nagakura felt when he pointed his sword at Chiyuki. He had told himself that she only worked part-time at the cafe, so there was no way she was actually with the Jouishishi. He hated when he was wrong and Nagakura was right.

Naomi smiled a vixen's smile. "You have no evidence that I did it, just a handful of witness testimonies that are riddled with holes and mistakes." With each word she spoke, she flitted closer at closer to him with quick, graceful steps befitting of a ballerina.

He felt something cold in his gut and watched his former girlfriend, their relationship lasting only for a few months, take a step back and spin a pair of handcuffs around her fingers, just like she spun and twisted him around her finger.

Looks like he wasn't the only one who thought to steal from the kitchen.

"She'll stab your heart!"

The last thing he heard was heard her laughter—her beautiful, melodious laughter—before it all went black.

---

She watched a shock of pink hair move this way and that, deftly avoiding all the other maids to deliver plates to their table.

"Thank you," she said, and, after some prodding, the man sitting next to her said the same thing.

Nagakura Shinshichi, currently wearing her wig for Akatsuki, tried a spoonful of "Love-flavored, heart-racing curry."

"Will you be needing anything else?" Tenshi asked.

"Yes. Could you not tell Michiko that I'm here?" She winced when Nagakura slammed down a cup of nothing but ice. Amazing how he wasn't breathing fire yet. "And a refill of water, please."

"Got it." Tenshi turned back and called out to his coworker, who was on her way back to the kitchen. "Can I borrow the pitcher you're holding?"

"Of course, Ten-chan!"

While waiting for Tenshi to retrieve the pitcher, Sekishin noticed that her cup was also empty and Nagakura pushed the plate of "spite-flavored, tongue-burning curry" towards her.

"It's like they know I'm Shinsengumi."

"They did say in the menu that anyone who finishes it gets awarded with a kiss from a maid of their choosing. They're just making it hard to get." Sekishin prodded the curry with her spoon, finding heart-shaped flecks of red mixed in with the sauce. She hummed in amusement. "Creative."

"Where did it say that?"

"At the very bottom in fine print."

"Of course."

Tenshi returned, smiling like an idiot as he refilled both glasses. Nagakura took his glass and took small sips. Sekishin ordered a slice of cake to replace the inedible curry.

"Really? Dessert for lunch?" Nagakura's raised eyebrow seemed to ask her.

Both men shook their heads at her, with Tenshi muttering about how she was slowly turning into a second Gintoki. She then pointed out that she was his twin, so being his clone was a given.

"Which of you is older anyway?"

This was not a question that she should answer without Gintoki in earshot. She avoided the question by asking him to point out who Naomi was. It turned out that Naomi was the maid who gave Tenshi the pitcher.

"Hmm, so that's the girl you want to marry." Sekishin ignored how Tenshi nearly dropped the pitcher and went on. "Well, at the very least, she has a cute face. There's something a bit fake about her though. Maybe her breasts."

Tenshi's ears went completely pink. "Sannan!"

"What? Can't handle a little teasing?" Sekishin laughed. "How innocent. You're acting like she's your first girlfriend."

"I, I have to work now!" Tenshi spun around on her heels and walked away.

"Eh? Eh?" That reaction… "No way, really?!" Raising her voice so Tenshi could hear her, she asked incredulously, "You've been single for twenty-six years?!"

Nagakura, who was unfortunate enough to be drinking a glass of water at the, promptly choked on it. Apparently, he was also shocked by this information. Maybe she should tell this to everyone else in the Second Division.

"Shut up! You don't need to announce it to the entire world!" As Tenshi's coworkers expressed their pity and the cafe's patrons expressed their willingness to date her, Sekishin could see Tenshi's face grow redder and redder. He came back soon, nearly slamming the plate on the table before leaving without a word.

Nagakura pounded his chest and coughed again to make sure that there was no water in his lungs. "Must you embarrass him?"

"It's fun. You should try it sometime."

"No."

Sekishin hummed absently, casting a furtive glance at Naomi, who was writing down the orders for a table of two men.

"Is your woman's intuition picking up on anything?" Nagakura asked.

"When a woman grows up surrounded by men, she learns to rely on instinct rather than intuition. It's kind of useless asking me these things because I don't have much of an intuition."

With a thoughtful look in his eyes, Nagakura set his chopsticks down. "Then let me be blunt. Do you think she's part of the Jouishishi?"

"That is not a question you ask when you're eating food made and served by potential Jouishishi. You're just asking to be poisoned."

"Chi."

She poked her cake full of holes with her fork. "I don't know. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. It would be easier to tell if she was a full-time worker."

"If she was a full-time worker, Ten would've known to stay away from her."

"Well, what's done is done. Shimada's completely smitten with her. We can only hope that she's innocent."

They both sighed at the dilemna. Why couldn't Shimada have fallen in love with some other woman? Or man?

"Maybe we should've sent Terajima instead. He already has a boyfriend."

"Yes, but picture him in a maid outfit for a moment. Picture all of your men in a maid outfit and tell me if any of them look better than Shimada."

Five minutes later, a maid came over to ask if her companion was okay or even conscious. His head hadn't moved from the table for a while. Of course, Nagakura was fine, so she politely told the maid to not mind him. And to refill their drinks.

Afterwards, she was just about ready to leave (and escape before Takezawa could see that it was her who was hiding behind the menu whenever he came near), so she poked him with an unused spoon. He let out a groan.

"I," he starts, still unable to lift his head up, "did not need that mental image in my head."

"In the first place, couldn't they just pretend to be a cook?" The Second Division was a group of men with broad shoulders and only one that was slim and dainty enough to pass off as feminine. If they wanted to infiltrate a maid cafe, that would have been the more obvious choice.

"None of them can cook."

"How did you survive?" Sekishin gasped, genuinely concerned for their well-being. Starvation was not fun, and she was speaking from experience.

"There are places called restaurants. They're really useful to people who can't cook. Maybe you should go to one instead of going into the kitchen."

"But I like going into the kitchen."

"For the purpose of actually making food or just to annoy us all."

Deciding not to answer, Sekishin drank the rest of her smoothie.

"And you complain to us when we're wasting money. How much have you wasted with all the repairs to the kitchen?"

"Don't ask me. Ask Akatsuki."

"You are Akatsuki!" Nagakura hissed, head snapping up.

"I am not some idiotic blond that gives people pay cuts willy-nilly."

Nagakura buried his head in his face. "I liked it better when you were Yamanami."

"Obviously. You aren't writing love letters to me anymore."

"Hate this woman. Officially. Hate. This woman."

---

Most of the staff in the cafe seemed high-strung, as if their whole world could crash down any minute. After glancing at the slightly strained smile on Yoshiko's face as she swept under the tables, Takezawa retreated back into the backroom, noting with some disappointment that Tenshi was still absent.

How odd, considering she was usually one of the first ones to arrive.

He spotted Naomi coming out of the kitchen and decided to talk to her. Tenshi and Naomi were so close that Takezawa had to remind himself that Naomi already had a boyfriend so she and Tenshi couldn't be lovers. Who better to ask about Tenshi's whereabouts?

(It was probably just a cold or something, and he was making a big deal out of nothing.)

"Naomi!"

The woman turned around smiled. It was her usual, natural smile that made Shimada fall in love with her, and the sight of it put Takezawa more at ease.

"Yes?"

"I was just wondering—Wow, what happened to your hand?" he exclaimed, catching sight of her left forearm, which was entirely wrapped in bandages.

"Oh, this? It's nothing serious. Ten-chan just worried too much and wrapped the whole thing." By 'Ten-chan,' she meant Shimada, right? "That aside, you needed something?"

Takezawa just kept staring at her arm, realizing that she never answered his question. Maybe because it was something she didn't want others to find out, like...Nah, it couldn't be. Mentally, he shook his head. "Do you know where Tenshi is."

"Oh, Ten-chan?" Naomi grinned. "She's playing hooky, it seems. My guess is that something happened last night, and now she's too sore to move." She giggled. "My, Ten-chan, did you finally get a boyfriend?"

Takezawa let out a small laugh in relief and nervousness. He didn't want to know. "That's good," he said simply, taking a small step back.

"Would you like to see her when work is over?"

It was a tempting offer but… "No. This morning, Kido was begging me to go to a temple with him. See the sights and all that."

She blinked. "Kido? Oh, you mean Haru-chan. Don't tell me...You two are dating?" Naomi squeed. "Oh, that's wonderful! Invite me to your wedding!"

She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, completely ignoring Takezawa's protests.

Kozakura was annoying at times, but even he had to admit that he was glad that she didn't act like Naomi. He wasn't sure his ears could handle it if she did.

Leaving Naomi to her own devices, knowing how futile it was to stop her, Takezawa decided to stop by the kitchen and warn his friend about the rampant Naomi.

He never did get there.

---

Kido slowly lowered the newspaper in his hands until he could look over it and see Takezawa trying to run away from a dog that was constantly barking at him. He and the dog were running in circles around the park, and the moment it looked like Takezawa was going to turn in his direction, he immediately raised the newspaper back up to cover his face.

"You're acting like some stalker. Is it really that hard going up and just saying hi to him?" asked the woman sitting next to him on the bench.

"But, Tsubaki, look at my face!" Completely ignoring her personal space, Kido's face was just inches away from hers, and Sekishin pushed him back.

"Your face is fine. Completely fine. You'd never know it was burned off just by looking at it," she muttered, wishing for another hand to help push him back.

"Yeah, but that's because I got plastic surgery, and now it's completely unrecognizable!"

"You can still charm the ladies with it! Or boys, if that's your preference!"

There was an uphill battle going on, especially since Kido was taller than her (crazy teenagers and their crazy growth spurts) and all he had to do was lean down, so she had to fight against gravity, too.

"I don't want to charm anyone!" he whined.

"Is...something...wrong here?" Takezawa asked between pants as he leaned against the back of the bench.

Kido was quick to pull away and cover his entire head with the newspaper. Takezawa raised an eyebrow and looked at Sekishin.

"If there's anything wrong, it's this guy's brain," she snapped, reaching out and pulling the newspaper. It tore quickly enough, leaving Kido fully exposed.

"Uhh, hi, Micchan," he greeted, smiling nervously. "What happened to the dog?"

Takezawa pointed to the left, where the dog's leash was tied around part of a distant bench and the dog was currently being placated by a toddler.

"How did you do that while running for your life?" asked Sekishin.

Pink dusted Takezawa's cheeks as he denied her claim. "I'm not scared of dogs!"

"But you are scared of cats, right?" Kido asked.

Takezawa glared at Sekishin. "What are you doing, talking about my private life to strangers?"

Sekishin threw her hand in the air. Why was Takezawa such an idiot? "He's not a stranger, he's—"

"Your new co-worker!" Kido cut in, placing both hands over her mouth. "She was telling me about how you working in a maid cafe, and I was coincidentally about apply to that same place. As a cook. So I don't have to cross-dress. Don't worry, I think you'll look pretty with a dress and a wig! Oh, and I'm Kido Haru. Nice to meet you."

Takezawa was growling. Meanwhile, Sekishin was giving Kido her stare of disapproval.

"Yes, it's very nice to meet you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just be going to the vending machine and getting a bottle of nice, cold water to dump on Kozakura." He stormed off.

With a sigh of relief, Kido uncovered Sekishin's mouth, bracing himself for some tongue-lashing, when her arm finally came down and karate-chopped his head. "I give up on the both of you!"

"Wow, we have a quitter in our midst."

"There's a spineless moron sitting next to—Why is it that you're only now eating your lemons?!"

---

A group of men wearing a very familiar black uniform stomped into the cafe, and Takezawa stopped to look.

"This is the Shinsengumi! Furukawa Naomi, you're under arrest for—uh-oh—the suspected attempted murder of Nagakura Shinshichi, resisting—whoops—arrest, the attempted murder of—Shoot! Danabe!—the attempted murder of—Ow—the attempted murder of Shimada Ten, and this!"

The loudmouth officer, also known as Bando Ryouji, threw down the notecards he was holding and cursed. "For Pete's sake, I've heard of battle butlers, but a cafe of battle maids? At least let me finish reading in peace and then we can start the battle! And—are you serious, you're not even doing anything while I'm monologuing?!"

Off to the side, Danabe winced as he tried to pluck out shards of broken porcelain plates out of his arm. To Takezawa's shock, it was thrown by Mari, who looked nothing like the meek little maid that she usually was.

Wolf in sheep's clothing.

Bando soon let out a string of expletives as the chaos resumed. Plates, utensils, glasses were being thrown, maids and chefs were suddenly drawing swords from somewhere, and everyone else was panicking. The only silver lining was that the Shinsengumi had come before opening hours, meaning that they didn't have to deal with frantic customers on top of everything else.

"What's...going on?" Takezawa asked, quickly joining one of the part-timers (Miki was her name) taking cover under a table.

Miki looked back at him with frightened eyes. "I-I-I don't know!"

"So here's the deal." Miki let out a small scream and Takezawa whipped his head back. Kido was crouched behind them, holding up a finger to his mouth while his other hand held onto a bag of...

Please tell him that wasn't what he thought it was.

"So, it turns out this cafe is run by a bunch of Jouishishi who were trying to evade the Shinsengumi by rooting themselves here in Kyoto while slowly branching out to Edo. Unfortunately, the Shinsengumi caught wind of their plan and sent their Second Division out to nip this problem by the bud. And there you have the jist of it." Kido nodded his head sagely. "I always knew some of these people were a little seedy. Let's just hope no one is going to be pushing up daisies."

"What are you talking about?" Takezawa asked.

"Well, by the looks of things, this place is going to be shut down soon, so I need to go back to doing my job as a florist. And the first step is to go back to a head filled with plants and flowers."

"Oh, you're a florist?" Of course Miki would be interested. She arranged the flowers in the vases on the tables on a daily basis, telling everyone who asked the flowers' meanings.

"Yes, yes. Very interesting. That tells us absolutely nothing about how you know that this place is a Jouishishi hideout," Takezawa muttered.

"Ah, that? Kozakura told me about it when she visited our store a couple months ago," he stated simply while digging into his bag.

Yep. Those were lemons.

Yep. That was Haruki.

Yep. He was an idiot.

Takezawa smacked his forehead. "I should've known."

"Yeah, I got plastic surgery last year. I didn't recognize myself either when I first looked at a mirror." Kido Haru—which was probably short for Haruki now that he thought about it—plopped another lemon in his mouth.

Takezawa shook Haruki's shoulders, hissing, "Tell me these things sooner, you lemon maniac!"

"Aw, but that'd ruin the fun!"

Haruki's 'fun' was abruptly cut short when a sword stabbed into the table, narrowly missing his nose. Miki shrieked.

"Shoot!" The head of Sasano peeked through the tablecloth. "What are you guys still doing here? Run!"

He pointed at a path clear of any obstacles and fighting. Miki quickly nodded and ran in that direction. Takezawa was about to leave and return with a sword when a voice called out.

"Sasano, you idiot! Duck!"

Sasano turned around just in time see a table get thrown at him. Takezawa quickly tugged his belt to bring him to the floor. The table slammed into the table behind the one Takezawa and the others were under. Nearby stood Yoshiko, panting from exertion.

"Maids...are scary."

Takezawa agreed. "Women in general are scary."

"You know what's scarier?" An officer named Kanagawa clamped his hand on Sasano's shoulder. "My face when dealing with slackers. What are you doing chatting with these people when you should be more worried about the killer maids?!"

"Yeah, that's a scary face," said Sasano.

"But Sakata-san's face is scarier when he's angry at Kozakura," said Haruki, biting a lemon. Sasano and Kanagawa made a face at that.

Mina, a small maid who evidently had the physique and talent for stealth, emerged from under the tablecloth, ready to strike Kanagawa from behind. Coming to his rescue was Bando, who looked none too happy.

"Why are you idiots just casually having a conversation in the middle of a battle? You want to die?" he snapped. He knocked the sword out of Mina's hand and stabbed her arm.

"Being dead does have its perks," laughed Haruki, making the three officers stare at him in disbelief.

Takezawa simply groaned, took his bag of lemons out of his hands, and slammed it against Haruki's face. Haruki's head reeled back, colliding against Sachiko's chin. Takezawa took a lemon and squirted its juices into her eyes. Sachko dropped her sword in favor of rubbing her eyes. Takezawa picked up her sword and swung.

Next to him, Haruki was curled up on the floor, rubbing the bump on his head. "Ow," he moaned, drawing the syllable for as long as he could go without taking in a breath. Takezawa cut through a maid's sword in the meantime. "What was that for?"

"Because of all the things you just had to learn from Kozakura, you just had to pick that as one of them, so I'm beating it out of your head."

Haruki stared at him with narrowed eyes. "By the way, you do realize that you're still wearing a skirt, right?"

"Boy, the last thing you want to do is tell a girl that her panties are visible," said Kanagawa, sporting a new handprint on his cheek.

"All men are perverts!" cried a maid in the background.

Sasano knocked out a maid with the back of his blade and looked back. "Oh, so you yell at me when I'm chatting with one of the non-Joui maids, but you're flirting with them. I see how it is," he said accusingly.

"It was an accident!" Kanagawa sputtered. "And stop looking away!" He pointed behind Sasano. "And can we please escort the cook off the battlefield?"

"You could, but then you won't have anyone to tell you where they stash the swords here." Takezawa made a move to hit him on the head with the hilt of the sword. "They're in the kitchen, in the third refrigerator from the left, behind the stacks of egg cartons if you need them," Haruki said before Takezawa could hit him.

Sasano and Takezawa stared at him.

"Tell us these things earlier!" Takezawa yelled, on his feet and ready to run to the kitchen.

"I would've if I'd known that the Shinsengumi were going to raid this place today!"

---

"I hate hospitals."

"Yes, you've mentioned that before."

"I did, didn't I? I told you that I hate hospitals so what am I doing in this hellhole instead of the infirmary of the Shinsengumi? I'd prefer being smothered by Takeda way more than being stuck in some place that smells like medicine!"

Nagakura sat up abruptly from his hospital bed, pointing at Gintoki accusingly. And then he regretted it because he moved the arm with the wounded shoulder.

He knew Gintoki only because Kondou mention him briefly as the man who was Chiyuki's twin brother, and he already hated him because of how alike he and Chiyuki looked.

Stupid hospitals and putting him and Gintoki in the same room. The only thing preventing Nagakura from reaching over and strangling him was the Great Wall of Not-China lying in the bed between them, also known as the brother who had been neglecting the poor soul named Ayumu, who happened to be lying in the bed across from Nagakura, attached to more machines than usual, but thankfully still alive.

He didn't know exactly why Gintoki and Ayumu's brother—Michi, if Nagakura remembered correctly—were in the hospital, but it had been more than a week since the fire, and they were hospitalized four days ago, so they weren't caught up in the fire.

He figured that they were also attacked by the yakuza.

(What his two roommates didn't tell him was that Gintoki knocked out all the yakuza that came after Michi, who was staying at his office. They also didn't tell him that four days ago, Michi sat behind Gintoki as the latter drove his scooter, and Gintoki accidentally drove into a wall because they were arguing about whether for dinner to be a bowl of just rice or a bowl of rice and expired fish.)

"I'm definitely not going to eat the fish," Takezawa said abruptly.

"What?" Nagakura asked.

"You coward. Even if it's been three weeks, it's still good," Gintoki retorted.

"Yeah, good enough to kill my stomach," Takezawa argued as the door opened.

Unnoticed by the two, Ayumu's nurse walked in and sat on the bed next to the window and across from Gintoki's bed. She had been the one occupying it until three days ago, when she had been considered fit enough to do anything but use her left arm, which was still stuck in a sling.

(Gintoki had glared at the sling long enough to bore a hole through it when she visited the day after getting discharged. Nagakura didn't know why, and asking Gintoki and the nurse had proved to be futile.)

"You're wasting food. That is an unforgivable crime. Hey, cop, arrest this felonist," Gintoki all but ordered, pointing at Michi.

"Making me eat rotten fish is more unforgivable. Why don't you arrest this permhead for attempted murder?" Michi said, pointing at Gintoki.

Seeing them point at each other reminded Nagakura of two brats placing the blame at the other person in order to avoid punishment.

(Sadly, Sougo and Toudou never grew out of that habit and continued to rely on the older Shinsengumi to fall for the evidence they planted to frame the other.

Those boys were going to grow up and become con artists one day, and the Shinsengumi were going to have their hands full just keeping them out of jail. Even though he did love her, Nagakura never hesitated to blame Yamanami for their habits.)

Nagakura placed his good hand on his forehead and sighed. "I'm not arresting anyone, so why don't you just give it a rest."

"This is why the police is useless. You bunch of tax robbers," muttered Gintoki.

Nagakura sat up abruptly and turned to glare at Gintoki and opened his mouth. "Why are you picking your nose?!"

Wait, that wasn't what he was going to say. He was going to say, "Don't just flick the booger away! That's unsanitary!"

Not that either.

"What? Now you're a clean freak? A germaphobe?"

Now Gintoki's pinky was digging into his ear.

"I'm not a—Hey, what are you doing!?"

And now, Gintoki was standing on his bed, pushing the ceiling panel up. There was something wrong with him. There had to be something wrong with his brain, if he even had one. Did all that ear picking also damage his brain or something?

"What are you doing, Sakata-san?" Michi repeated.

"What are you doing?" Gintoki asked, his head poking into the ceiling.

"That's what we're asking you!"

"Sannan? Who's that?" Nagakura heard some incoherent mumbling. "Oh, her. If you're looking for her, then shouldn't you check the office first? She hasn't come here yet," Gintoki said, unaware of everything below him. "Hey, don't say she's behind me like some kind of ghost. That's creepy. I mean—"

Unbeknownst to Gintoki, the nurse had been slowly inching forward while he was engrossed in his conversation with the mysterious ceiling lurker, so when he turned around, it was to see the nurse.

Before anyone could say "boo," Gintoki jumped up and stayed in the ceiling.

"Are you Kuroko?!" he hissed from above. "I didn't notice you come in!"

"You were busy chatting with Michi," said the nurse.

"I didn't notice you come this close!"

"You were busy talking to…" She looked up and made a face. "Kondou-san. Are you still stalking this guy?"

What? What?!

"I thought you said you were going to focus on your job now that—" Nagakura cut off his words when he saw Kondou's upside-down head appear from the ceiling.

"Don't worry about that! We hired a secretary! Speaking of which, you forgot these." He waved a sheaf of papers in front of Minami, who took them and looked over them briefly.

"Oh, so that's where I left them." She turned back to Ayumu and the mummy in the bed next to Ayumu's. "Good news, you're no longer zombies!"

Gintoki peered over her shoulder to see the papers. Then he turned back to Kondou with the expression of a father in a parent-teacher conference who just found out that his child was a delinquent. "You let her forge birth certificates and fake IDs. Aren't you supposed to be condemning these kinds of things?"

In the background, Ayumu was clapping his hands placidly, and the mummy was accusing Minami for being careless. Minami snapped back with a remark about the bandages around his face coming loose and an order to sit down because by all means, he should have been resting after losing almost a third of his skin and nearly dying.

Gintoki and Kondou briefly pause their argument (which was about arresting and not arresting and someone turning themself in) for Gintoki to cut in with a few words.

"For Pete's sake, Seki, you're acting like he's trying to go fight in a war. He's just sitting."

Nagakura had no idea who Seki was until he saw Minami turn around and glare at Gintoki, looking as if her eyes could shoot lasers that would burn him.

(He later assumed that Seki was her surname,

"Oh, don't remind me of all the times you did exactly that during the war, Shiroyasha."

"How about I remind you what you did two days ago, Akatsuki."

"Or maybe you can remind me of any time you disobeyed doctor's orders that didn't end with me stitching you back up!"

"How about the time when I was sick?"

Minami inched back, eyes wide and shocked and almost mocking. "You were sick? The mighty Shiroyasha can get sick?"

Gintoki sighed. "This was before the—"

"But I thought idiots couldn't get sick!" she finished.

Gintoki slammed his fist on the guardrail; Nagakura pretended not to see him wince.

"Now hold on! Why do you think I'm an idiot?!"

"Because you are!"

Around that time, Gintoki and Minami were up at each other's throats. Literally. Nagakura wouldn't have been surprised if he saw them pointing blades or guns at each other. He wouldn't even be surprised if one of them or both died.

But just because he wouldn't be surprised didn't mean he would allow it.

"Why don't we just sit back and talk this over like proper adults?" he said, trying to calm them down. Neither of them even spared a glance in his direction. Slowly, he inched his hand over to the red button that would call a nurse.

"Or," Kondou started, attracting everyone's attention with his loud voice, "we could not be proper adults and discuss this over parfaits and alcohol."

"Kondou-san, there are minors. Do you remember the last time we had minors drink?!" Nagakura asked, frantically making an 'x' with his arms.

Sougo and Toudou were only a little younger than Ayumu when they had their first taste of sake (made by the bride's family) and nearly ruined a wedding. And he told everyone—every single person including the bride, the bride's family, the groom, the groom's friends from the dojo, the minors, the baby that Kureha's aunt was holding, the portrait of Inoue's deceased parents, the priest, every single soul regardless of whether they were living or dead—and those two hellions had managed to down five shots each before going on a rampage during the wedding vows.

If Kondou was going to let three minors drink, Nagakura was not going to deal with the destruction this time.

Kondou stared at Nagakura for a second for grinning. "Let's see what happens."

Let's not.

An hour later, despite all his protests, Nagakura found himself lying on the floor with a half-empty cup (the pessimist) next to him and Gintoki sitting close enough for Nagakura to see an unbandaged cut in the middle of his hand. Minami stayed firmly sitting on her former bed as she leafed through papers and answered questions. Kondou was just enjoying the alcohol, not even listening to anything anyone said. The three minors were huddled around Ayumu's bed.

Only it wasn't Ayumu's bed. Between spoonfuls of parfaits and brainfreezes, after Minami explained mostly everything—the fake deaths and ways to avoid the yakuza's eyes—Gintoki asked his last question, his voice booming in Nagakura's head, making Nagakura wonder when he'd drunk twelve-and-a-half cups of wine.

"What do you mean you changed their names?!"

No, it wasn't Tashida Ayumu's bed anymore. It was Takezawa Ayuto's bed now. Tashida Michi became Takezawa Michio. And Haruki was now Kozakura Tsubaki, who apparently used to be Minami, but Minami was dead, so now she was going as Sakata Sekishin, which was actually her real name and he paused at that because wasn't Yamanami's real name Sakata something? He didn't understand anything. Anyway, the main point was that Nagakura's cup was officially empty, and Nagakura wanted his headache to stop.

Ugh. And he was going to deal with a hangover later.

Unfortunately, with Gintoki and Minami (Sekishin, Minami, whatever, a rose by any other name, where was the woman he fell in love with?) bickering again, his headache was only getting worse.

Later that day, a nurse caught them with empty bottles scattered around in the room and gave them a two-hour lecture. She would have fired Minami, too, but it was somewhat difficult to fire someone who was supposed to be dead.

"The perks of being dead," Minami laughed, flashing a peace sign.

"I hate this woman," Gintoki said, elbowing her side.

"The feeling's mutual."

---

Sometimes, Tenshi regretted waking up in the mornings. Today was one of those times. Slowly, he rubbed his head, soothing his headache, and turned back to Sekishin, who was currently smiling like nothing was wrong..

"I'm sorry. Can you repeat that?" Maybe he heard wrong. Maybe his squad wasn't charging to their possible doom.

"I said, 'You should've woken up earlier. Then we would've let you join the raid today.' Are you still half-asleep?"

No, but maybe he was dreaming. He pinched his arm. Nope. Not dreaming.

"But, before that, didn't you say I was only out for twelve hours?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

He had to remind himself that this was Sekishin he was talking to. This was a woman who had no qualms with just a force of four people being sent out to take care of an army as long as the four were healthy and borderline superhuman.

"The problem is that our best fighter is still recovering from an attack made by," Naomi, "a Jouishishi working in that very cafe and who knows how many are as strong as her. Not to mention there's no one to lead them."

"There's Nana."

"I just said that he's still in the hospital!"

"No, you said your best fighter is. And while I am flattered, I have to tell you that there are others who are better than me."

A long time ago, Nagakura had loved this woman, but Shimada couldn't see exactly what he fell for.

"You're not our best fighter," he said between groans. "I was referring to Shinshichi."

"But Nana's not in the hospital. I am."

"What do you mean he's not in the hospital? He's injured!"

He looked at Sekishin sitting in the bed next to him, who's smiling like someone waiting for a child to finish unwrapping their present. Shimada found that he didn't like this present.

He groaned again. "Forget the killer maids. Shiroyasha's going to kill us."

"No, he's only going to kill me."

No, he was going to kill everybody, including including.

She switched places with Nagakura. Sometime between Nagakura going outside and Naomi attacking him, he and Sekishin met up and swapped clothes or did something similar to it. Then one, maybe both of them, provoked Naomi into attacking them while the disguised Nagakura pretended to be an anonymous witness and alerted the Shinsengumi.

As he voiced his thoughts, Sekishin's grin grew broader and broader with each word.

"You're absolutely correct!" she said cheerfully. All her mirth faded away, however, as she spoke her next words. "Of course, Naomi being the culprit was something we hoped wouldn't happen, but…" She shrugged helplessly. "Sorry."

Shimada tugged at the collar of his hospital gown, looking down to see the bandages wrapped around his waist.

"I should've listened to him."

"To be honest, we all should listen to him because do you know how annoying he can be when he says, 'I told you so'? He takes pleasure in making it as annoying and ear-grating as possible."

"No, he doesn't."

"No, but it would make people more eager to listen to him if he did."

"Mm," Shimada hummed. He let go of his collar and turned back to her. "So how are your wounds?"

"Well, considering I wore a coat with one layer of padding and another layer of fake blood, not too bad."

He figured that was the case. Nagakura was taller than her and had a different body shape. It was obvious that there was something besides a mask and a wig was needed in order to be a convincing Nagakura.

"How tall were the heels?"

She gave him a scathing look. "I hate how men are so tall. Do you know how much I suffered when Gintoki hit his growth spurt? When Takasugi started catching up to my height? When Zura's hair was more silky than mine?!" She made a fist. "Stupid Zura and his hair giving even the prettiest courtesans inferiority complexes about their hair!"

Shimada let out a bark of laughter, remembering the days when she stared at Hijikata's hair, back when it was long.

"He reminds me of someone," she said once, quietly as they watched him face off against Okita in the dojo. "But then he turns around and all I can see are those bangs."

Katsura, drinking to another day of being alive, sneezed.

---

Tsubaki laughed as Takezawa paled and Gintoki took a step back.

"No," said Gintoki vehemently.

"No," Takezawa agreed, staring at the signboard with dread.

"Looks like fun," Sekishin noted, a camera hanging from her neck.

"Seki, your dear little brother's begging you. I'll eat your cooking and do all the housework, but this is the one thing I refuse to deal with," Gintoki said, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking them.

"Gin," she started sweetly, "don't deny your cute little sister her one joy in life."

Ahead of them, Tsubaki grabbed Takezawa's wrist and dragged him inside, the latter screaming protests.

"It's torture! You're too fragile to survive this. Now's not the time to be suicidal!" Gintoki exclaimed.

They could hear screaming from inside, no doubt from Takezawa.

Gintoki paled, losing all his bravado. Sekishin smothered a snicker. "You're such a pessimist. Come on," she urged, pushing him forward with one hand, "It's just a haunted house."

He still refused to budge, so she slapped him hard enough to cause both her hand and his back to sting.

"Well, if anyone's going to die it'll be you. The cause of death will be...I don't know, but you'll die protecting your dear sister." She resumed pushing him, and Gintoki's will to fight left him. "Besides, I've died thrice; you've yet to die even once. So go and die for me."

Gintoki stepped into the haunted house, and the door closed behind him with a creak and a thud that sounded the final nail of his coffin being hammered in. Darkness is all he saw before he remembered that they were given flashlights. After his initial panic, he switched the flashlight on.

Much better.

...Or not.

Afterwards, Gintoki had to drink tea because his throat had gone hoarse from all his screaming and singing.

"What kind of person sings the Doraemon theme song when they're scared, anyway?" Sekishin wondered.

"I wasn't scared."

Sekishin drank her bubble tea with a straw, looking at her brother with one eyebrow raised in skepticism. Gintoki narrowed his eyes. She raised the other eyebrow. He tilted his head slightly forward, glaring. Her mouth quirked up. He rolled his eyes.

'Ye of little faith,' his eyes seemed to say.

"What in the world are we seeing?" Takezawa asked as he and Haruki came back with food. Haruki lagged behind, his fox mask slightly askew as he ate takoyaki.

"Apparently, I have little faith in this guy," Sekishin replied, pointing at Gintoki with her drink.

"I don't blame you. Is he even going to be able to give us paychecks? Hey, Ha—Bakaki, what do you think?" He looked back at his friend and grimaced.

"We live a life of poverty," answered Tsubaki, squeezing lemon juice on a newly-opened box of takoyaki.

"Wait a minute! Save some takoyaki for us! The ones without lemon juice!"

"Oops."

"Haruki!"

---

"Yes...mm-hmm...Yeah. Ok, have a nice day." Nagakura ended the call, and turned around to face his men.

They were all sitting in a restaurant, around a long, rectangular table that seated ten. Truthfully, some of them were supposed to still be in the hospital, but some people were impatient and others pointed out that there was one person from the Fifth Division and one former nurse to make sure they didn't overdo it.

So here they were, waiting for the food to be served and their captain to relay the news. Nagakura took in their expectant faces and the ways they leaned forwards and opened his mouth.

"We can come back."

There were cheers and whoops all around, making the other patrons look at them in annoyance. Someone, while flinging his arms up in joy, knocked the chopsticks out of his neighbor's hands, and they flew into someone else's teacup, splashing hot tea onto that someone else's neighbor, who winced and drew his hand away, accidentally elbowing a waiter and making him nearly drop his tray. A bottle of sake did managed to fall, however, and it fell right over Nagakura's head, drenching him in sake.

"Terajima."

Terajima slowly brought his hands back down and had enough sense to look apologetic. "Oops."

Takezawa, his other neighbor, moved his crutches out of the way before he banged his hands on them and managed to injure someone else. It also prevented him from getting up, so that was a bonus.

Nagakura excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he came back minutes later, his hair was dripping wet. A waiter was in the middle of placing food on the tables.

"Don't tell me you dunked your head in the toilet bowl," said Sekishin.

Nagakura shot her a glare. "I put it under a faucet."

She waved her hand at his as if to say, "Same thing." Nagakura found himself, not for the first time and nowhere near the last, wondering how he had a crush on her.

Past him was such an idiot.

On his way back to his seat, he made sure to ruffle her hair. It was because he knew that she hated it, not because he was some schoolboy yanking on a girl's pigtails to show that he liked her—Not that Sekishin ever wore her hair in pigtails. Well, maybe she did when she was young. He'd have to ask Gintoki to know for sure…

No. Nonono. He was not asking Gintoki. That would make it seem like he was still interested in her and he was not. He was over his little crush. Over. The end. No more pursuing Sekishin for him.

He took his seat and raised his cup of sake. "To all the men who have to deal with this woman."

No one was really surprised when Sekishin threw a fish at his face. And when it missed. Sekishin wasn't known for her aim, especially when throwing something less aerodynamic than a pen. She did manage, however, to kick her neighbors in the shins when they agreed with him.

"You're acting like a man who's experienced his wife at her worst."

"We're not married," Nagakura was quick to say. He didn't say that there was a ring in a box, like a body in a coffin, buried under layers of dirt and stone somewhere in Headquarters. "And we never will be."

"Nope," Sekishin agreed, reaching over and stealing a piece of sushi from his plate.

Sasano leaned closer to Danabe. "They say they aren't married, but isn't there actually something between them?" he whispered.

Danabe rolled his eyes and whispered back. "Yes, it's called a table. You know, like the one you're sitting at?"

Not too far away, Bando asked Shimada almost the same question and received a very blunt answer.

"She what?! And he's just pretending like it never happened?!"

Shimada laughed. "Love ignores all."

"You there!" Nagakura turned to stare at Shimada, unable to point at him since his chopsticks locked in battle with Sekishin's. He was about to remind him of Naomi before remembering that it was still too soon to bring that topic up. "You can zip your mouth shut before I ask Takezawa to sew it shut!"

"Toro!" Sekishin exclaimed as she popped the said piece of sushi into her mouth and—wait a moment. He looked down. His chopsticks were still up, her chopsticks were jammed between two napkin holders, so...

"Did you just pick that off with your bare hands?!"

That had to be against the rules. Somebody needed to get a referee to blow a whistle and wave a yellow flag in her face.

"Hand, actually."

"One hand or two hands doesn't matter! When was the last time you washed your hand? How many other pieces did you touch with that? What are you going to do if I get sick because of this?"

"Blame it on food poisoning from eating raw fish?"

"If I die, I'm haunting you for the rest of your life."

"Oh, so if we both die, we can haunt Shinsengumi Headquarters together like married ghosts!"

"We are never getting married! Not even in the afterlife!"

Love ignores all. Yeah right. More like love makes you more susceptible to the wiles of women.

Sitting on the end of one of the tables, Haruki was laughing. "You two really act like you're married."

"No."

"I think we can all agree that no one will be surprised if it turns out that there a ring on her left ring finger. Her real left ring finger."

"Absolutely not," Nagakura denied even though most of his men were nodding and voicing their agreement. "You guys are supposed to be on my side!"

Let them never find the ring that he buried so long ago. He'd never hear the end of it otherwise.

Nagakura picked up his plate and brought it close to him and away from Sekishin's reach. She reluctantly returned her focus to her plate. And so, Nagakura spent the rest of dinner holding his plate in one hand, never setting it back on the table until it was clean of sushi.

"Now then, someone explain to me why Kozakura decided that I needed to come here."

Takezawa's question silenced many at the table, with a select few wondering the same thing.

"I thought he was sent here to be our emergency medic?" Terajima asked, looking around for confirmation. He didn't get any.

"Why didn't I use that as an excuse?" Nagakura heard Sekishin whisper. What kind of crazy excuse did she tell him instead to convince him to come to Kyoto?

"So," started Shimada, his voice sounding oddly cheery, "who wants to tell Takezawa that the plan was to use him as bait?"

"No, I'm pretty sure the plan involved me dressing up as Nana and acting as bait," said Sekishin, glancing at Nagakura, who came up with the plan.

"Chi." He glared at her. That wasn't the plan Shimada was talking about and she knew it.

She huffed. "Okay. It was actually Hijikata's idea."

"To use me as bait?"

"Yep."

"For the maids?"

"Nana?" she sang as she fixed him with a look that told him, "Your turn."

What, were they playing Uno again? "What?"

"It was your report that started this, so you should have the honor of explaining this to Michio."

"I think I should remind you that I prefer not to be the bearer of bad news. Shimada's the one who wrote that part."

"Can someone explain?" Takezawa asked, his irritation visible on his face.

Haruki cleared his throat. "So here's the deal. There's this group of women who don't really like the Amanto much and decide to join the Joui. But there's this guy who's extremely sexist and doesn't want women in his group, despite, you know, him having his butt handed to him by this one woman way back when he was misbehaving during the war."

"His name's Mushiba Katai," Sekishin piped up.

Nagakura guessed that the only reason she remembered his name was because he kept getting into trouble with her.

"Yeah. That guy. So after that, the women decided that Edo was a poor, poor place from female Jouishishi like them, so they moved to Kyoto. And then they started a maid cafe, and we all know how that went. But here's the thing Tenshi found out when she—he?—went undercover: More than half the women from Kyoto had ties to the yakuza and guess which yakuza group was coming to Kyoto to help them take over Kyoto."

Haruki stopped and looked up at Takezawa. There was a metaphorical lightbulb flickering on and off above his head as he was on the cusp of a realization.

"You can't be serious." Ding-ding went the bell, and there was that lightbulb, blindingly bright. "Whose idea was it for me to be bait for them?"

"Hijikata," answered Nagakura.

"Remember the day when Takeda and Hijikata and a couple others were taken to the hospital for a couple of bruises and cuts and sprained wrists? Yeah, that's the day Hijikata told him and he went full Mama-Bear on him. The soaked dojo? The result of us using a fire hose on them to make them stop fighting," said Sekishin.

Time out. Time out. Did Takeda fight Hijikata. Did that seriously happen? There was a limit to jokes, and Sekishin just went way over it. While Haruki informed Takezawa that Sekishin came up with to prevent him from nearly dying (and to prevent others from dying because if they went as far as to set fire to a hospital just to kill Haruki, who was to say they wouldn't do the same thing to get to Takezawa), Nagakura leaned forward to talk to Sekishin.

"Were you being serious just now?"

"I'm hurt that you think so poorly of me. Maybe you'd prefer it if I acted like this all the time? Oh, Nana, what ever did you do with that ring you bought?" She batted his eyelashes at him.

With a groan, Nagakura slumped against the back of his chair. "I get it. I will never doubt you again."

Sekishin laughed.

---

The incident, now referred to as the Meido Incident, for that was what the maids named their faction as, was wrapped up as cleanly as possible. The place where the cafe once stood was a pile of rubble. A couple Jouishishi were arrested, but many fled using the trapdoor underneath a potted tree that led to a dock in Arashiyama, where they escaped in motor boats.

"Totally didn't expect that," Haruki later commented when they talked about it in the hospital. No one knew whether he was referring to the boats or to the chain of six draw-two cards that he was unable to continue.

No one knew why the former cook and his father—Kido Kouji, who had once been dragged into games of Uno by Ayumu—were present in those talks. At least until they mentioned, when Takezawa was out of the room to get drinks from the vending machine, that they helped with preventing the yakuza from making the incident more deadly.

"Yeah, you'd be surprised to know that Kido here doesn't like the current Jouishishi's methods. He likes the yakuza even less. He volunteered to help search for the yakuza hideouts. He's very passive-aggressive. You wouldn't know he was declaring war on you unless you knew flower language," said Sekishin, right before she played a reverse card, making Kido go again.

(It was only natural that Miki later showed up in his store, requesting to be hired.)

The maids and cooks that were arrested were handed to the police in Kyoto with instruction from Nagakura to contact them if anything happened or any new information was disclosed. Nagakura said he checked up with one of them and there was nothing new. Then he changed the color to yellow, and Sekishin sent him a glare as she drew a card.

(Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—Naomi was among those who escaped.)

(By the way, Kanagawa won the game.)

Shimada was staring at the incinerator, a plastic bag in hand. Maybe he was concentrating too much on it because he didn't notice Nagakura approach until the latter yanked him by the back of his collar and dragged him back to the inn.

"Wha?!"

"Come on, what are you dallying for? We need to clean up and if you're just going to stand there wondering if you should burn your porn or not, then let me tell you: You leave it for recycling."

"I wasn't—It's not porn!" Shimada protested.

"Then what is it?"

"If you're going to burn anything, it should be that maid uniform," muttered Takezawa, walking from the incinerator. When did he get there?

"Aw, but I was looking forward to the day when you need to infiltrate a maid cafe again," said Sekishin as she dragged the laundry basket inside.

"Not in a thousand years!"

"It wasn't that bad," Haruki said from inside.

"You say that because you were a cook, not a—" The door opened, and Nagakura dropped Shimada. Wincing from the pain, he turned his head to see what was so shocking. Oh. "What are you wearing?!"

Haruki did a twirl, his skirt flaring just enough to see the boxers underneath. "It looks good on me, doesn't it?"

He was wearing a maid outfit. And he looked hideous. Not just because of the dress, but also because he applied makeup so badly that he looked monstrous. What even was this? And to top it off, he was eating a lemon and Shimada's eyes flitted back to Takezawa.

"This is painful on so many levels," he said, hands over his eyes.

Nagakura turned to Sekishin with an accusatory stare. "I blame you."

"Is it my fault his two closest friends were crossdressing most of the time? Haruki's the kind of guy who feels left out when he's the only normal person."

"This was not what I wanted to see right before leaving Kyoto."

"At least you'll never forget it, right?"

"I'd like to be able to forget!"

Shimada would like to forget, too, about Naomi.

"So, let's see what you tried to burn that isn't porn." Before he could react, Takezawa took his bag. And despite his protests, Nagakura also rifled through his very private belongings.

Meanwhile, Takezawa was pushing Haruki towards the bathroom and threw a spare yukata at him before shutting the door. Sekishin laughed as she went to the next room over to drop off the laundry.

Nagakura dropped his bag on the floor and crouched next to Shimada. A list of items in the bag ran through Shimada's head. A picture from their first date, of them standing at the stairs leading up to a shrine. A cat mask he wore during a festival while Naomi wore a rabbit mask. Another picture, this time of him carrying Naomi bridal style. A hairpin, decorated with small butterflies, that he was going to give her as a gift.

"You can go ahead and say it."

'I told you so.'

They hadn't broached the topic until now, and Shimada was just waiting for those words.

"You need help."

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead and...What?"

Not what he'd been expecting.

Nagakura looked around, looking very uncomfortable. "I'm not going to claim to know what you're going through. Unlike you, I was not dating that madwoman," he pointed at the door which Sekishin disappeared into minutes ago, "so my pain was probably much less than what you're feeling now. But you can't push it aside until and allow it to grow and fester."

"I wasn't aware you're such a certified therapist."

Nagakura smacked him lightly upside his head. "I'm just trying to help. I know that our situations aren't exactly the same, so this might not work for you the way it did for me, but I want you to get some closure."

"'Closure,'" Shimada repeated.

Nagakura made a face. "Just...go out that door and don't come back until sundown. At least."

Shimada didn't know what Nagakura was trying to accomplish by making him leave (a surprise party?), but he walked out the door anyway.

"So, are you ready for your final date?" someone asked.

Shimada saw a woman standing next to the door, wearing a turtleneck and a skirt and a cardigan. Her hair was dark brown and her eyes were hazel. Her face was just the wrong shape and her nose was kind of off, but she looked almost like Naomi.

But there's a left arm that's uncovered and he can see the joints.

"Sannan?"

"My name is Furukawa Naomi," she replied.

This was supposed to be his closure? Just Sannan dressing up as Naomi?

"So? Final date?"

"It's my first date with you."

"Then you can think of it as your first and final date. Your first date with me and your final date with Naomi."

She nudged him with her foot, and Shimada reluctantly walked forwards. He didn't even know where to go. It was… "This is dumb. It's not going to work."

"My, Ten-chan, when did you become such a pessimist?" And that voice.

That voice and that tone and that look.

"Stop it."

"I remember you being so hopeful, such an optimist. How long did it take for you to finally accept that I was a Joui—"

"Stop pretending to be her!"

He was shouting in the middle of a busy street, and he did not care that he was attracting attention. And Sekishin evidently did not care that he could not take this anymore.

"My name is Furukawa Naomi. I am you ex-girlfriend. Unless you still consider us lovers. Do you?" She tilted her head to the left. "Even after this?" She traced her finger over a line on his stomach, right over the bandages, right over the place where he was stabbed. "Do you?"

It was useless to confront Sekishin headfirst. He'd known that for a while. So he ignored her. He sidestepped her and briskly walked away, speeding up when he heard her footsteps follow him.

"My name is Furukawa Naomi," she said again, louder, and Shimada didn't want to hear it. "I am a Jouishishi. I am a murderer. I am the woman who stole your heart and stomped it mercilessly to the ground. It does not matter if you still love me or if you now hate me. It does not matter if you choose never to see me again after this. But know this."

Shimada was tackled to the ground, and her knee was digging painfully into his gut (but not closer to the area where he was stabbed). She leaned closer until their noses were almost touching, and he can see her eyes glinting as sharp as a knife, and she opened her mouth.

"Do not run away."

---

A long time ago, Nagakura had fallen in love with the woman who suddenly appeared it their dojo, swathed in bandages from head to toe. It wasn't love at first sight, however. He did not instantly fall in love with her even after her bandages were removed and he could see her entire face. He did not fall in love with her when she picked up a shinai and defeated him in their first match. He did not when she smiled for the first time as they gave her the name Chiyuki.

It was when she touched a kitchen for the first time and he found her at the source of the smoke filling the house. It was when he learned that this woman would not hesitate to try to cook again despite their misgivings, and he started to watch over her to make sure she didn't approach the kitchen again.

That was when he started noticing the little things, like how she smiled whenever Okita and Hijikata fought, the way she walked, and how his heart began to beat a little quicker each time they met eyes.

It was a while before he realized that the heat in his cheeks was not from his embarrassment at being beaten by a girl. It was a little while later that he began hiding scraps of paper, filled with his writing, under the loose floorboard in the dojo.

And then the years passed with his crush staying a crush, even in Edo. But in Edo, everything changed, and he woke up in the hospital, remembering how he pointed his sword at Chiyuki, pleading for her not to go—to stop what she was doing—and how Chiyuki shook her head.

He'd confessed that night, as a final resort in hopes that she would finally listen, but he was pushed away.

Off a roof.

Granted, it was only two storeys, so it wasn't life-threatening. But still. She pushed him off a roof. What if he fell on his head? What if he died? Would she even feel anything if he died?

When he was discharged, he buried the ring that he bought in Bushu, made of cheap metals and a cheap rhinestones and tried to forget. Kondou said she was dead. No use dwelling over the deeds of a dead person. He came back to the hospital to check up on Ayumu, the poor soul whose brother still refused to visit him. Then he ended up back in a hospital bed with burns and cuts from when he had to break windows to create an exit.

And then he was reunited with Yamanami, who called herself Sekishin now.

"My name is Sekishin," she said whenever he tried to call her Yamanami or Chiyuki. Most of the Shinsengumi had taken to calling her Sannan, but he didn't like that name.

"Chi," he called her. Blood, it meant. Like the color of her eyes. Like the stains on her clothes. It fit.

And she took in a breath, mouth opening in protest, before she sighed, a helpless expression in her eyes. "Why?"

"Because you can't hide from what you did just by changing your name. Don't run from your crimes."

He hated how she refused to be reminded of her old name. How she pretended that she was a different person. How everyone went along with it.

She stared him in the eyes. "My name is Yamanami Chiyuki and I pushed you off a roof. Why do you still talk to me? Why do you not hate me?"

He folded his arms. This woman. This woman. Did she wanted to be hated. "Give me one reason why I should hate you."

She kicked him into the pond behind him.

"You—" He wasn't behind serious!

"You told me to," she said, hand over her mouth and shoulders shaking. And then he tossed away the fish dancing atop his head.

She cackled at him, sounding very much like a witch.

And some people wondered how he could hate her.

---

Shimada got to his feet. "Fine," he huffed. "What do you want me to do?"

"My name is Furukawa Naomi," she said, and Shimada almost groaned. Not again! "I do not expect you to be comfortable around me. I do not expect this date to go as a date would normally go. I do not expect you to hold my hand or embrace me or kiss me. I do, however, expect you to act like a man and deal with this like a man."

She grinned as he nodded and twirled as she face her back to him. "Now then, where to go? It's our final date, so I'll let you pick."

Shimada rolled his eyes at her. "Let's go for a walk."

"Eehh? Just a walk? Nothing flashy? Nothing romantic? Booring."

"You're the one who let me pick. Just follow me."

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say, Ten-chan."

It...most likely was not the best choice for a final date. But this is not a date, he told himself. This was for closure.

"Ten-chan! Ten-chan!" She tugged on his sleeve excitedly.

"What is it?"

She pointed to the photographer standing on the sidewalk, a polaroid camera snapping a picture of a family of five. The camera printed out the photo without much of a wait, and the photographer handed it to the mother.

"Can we?"

"Why?"

"It's our final date! Don't you want something to remember it by?"

"I'd rather have one taken with the real—"

"My name is—"

Before she can say another word, Shimada pushed her towards the photographer.

"One photo please."

"Certainly."

And with a snap, it was over. He handed the photo to her.

"I hope you're happy."

"Yeah. I finally have a picture of Ten-chan to keep. You've been hogging all the other photos, that I wanted at least one to remember you by." She slipped the photo into her sleeve.

"That's because you kept insisting that I—How did you know?" How did she know that Naomi never kept their photos?

"That's because I am Naomi, silly," she giggled.

No, she wasn't.

"Don't tell me...Were you stalking us on our dates?"

"I felt the presence of two people following us many times."

"You and Nagakura?!"

"Why would I stalk myself?"

Shimada nearly groaned.

"But don't worry. There's no one following us this time. It's our final date after all."

He did groan that time and walked a bit faster.

"So that's why you know how to act like her."

"Act like who?"

Shimada looked into her eyes and gave up. He wasn't going to argue over this.

After minutes of walking, Shimada stopped her from going right at an intersection.

"We turn left here."

"So you do have a destination."

"It's more like a stop."

She hummed as he led her down the street. Shimada wasn't sure if he was going the right direction and looked around for a landmark. There. They turned right and he felt her slow down.

"Your stop is here?"

There was yellow tape in front of them, with a stain of long-dried blood still on the ground.

Well, it was a mix of blood and fake blood. He squinted at it.

"Tell me what happened here."

"Are you sure this is how you want to spend your final date? Going over the details of my failed assassination?"

This spot was where they found Sekishin, then looking like Nagakura, crumpled on the ground in a pool of red liquid. And when he asked her what had happened, she said Naomi's name.

He took in a deep breath. "This is so I can gain some closure and peace of mind. Not to play pretend."

She took a step forward and looked around. "I was hiding above in the rooftops when I saw the target walk out of a bar. He looked drunk, so I followed him quietly. And then, when he reached here, with no witnesses around, I jumped down and stabbed him through the back. I thought I stabbed his heart, but I was wrong."

She gripped her left shoulder as she talked.

"He suddenly bent down and I stabbed his shoulder instead. He wasn't drunk after all. And then he turned around, handcuffs in hand, and he...he stopped when he saw my face. I gripped my knife and dragged it down and down, and he screamed and tried to run, but I—"

"Stop!" He didn't need to hear more. She didn't need to tell more. He pried her hand from her shoulder and patted it gently. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. It must have been painful." He looked back at his hand and was relieved to find no blood. Her cardigan was black, so it was hard to tell.

She tilted her head and smiled. "It wasn't painful. I wasn't the one being stabbed in the back."

Shimada winced. This woman was scary.

"Now then, where to next?" she asked, her tone as jovial as before. As if she didn't just tell him how she nearly died. Was there really fake blood, or did Sekishin lie to him at the hospital?

"Are you telling the truth right now?"

He flinched when she fixed his with that same sharp glare. "Would you like me to go into more detail? Or perhaps you can ask that woman to show you her wound."

Touchy subject. He got it. "Let's...go eat lunch."

"Okay!"

They left the street behind them and walked to a stall selling taiyaki.

"This isn't much of a meal," she complained as he held the bag for her and she grabbed a piece of the fish-shaped pastry. And twitched.

"Oh, right. You recently developed ichthyophobia."

"I wouldn't go as far as to call it a phobia...Wait, no! My name—"

He shoved the pastry into her mouth before she could finish that sentence.

They found a place to sit in a nearby park and enjoyed their...rather lacking lunch. She stared at each fish for a good thirty seconds before biting it headfirst so she wouldn't have to look at its eyes. It eventually got to the point where Shimada was getting sick of the routine, so he split each taiyaki in half and gave her the tail halves.

"My name is Furukawa Naomi," she said when Shimada crumpled up the paper bag, "and I would like to ask you if there is anything else you would like to know."

Shimada was about to say that there was nothing until a question popped up in his mind. And so he asked if there was a reason Naomi was a Jouishishi.

"That is a very private thing you are asking."

"But do you know?"

"Tell me, do you think the Shinsengumi have the time to investigate anybody who they suspect to be a Jouishishi?"

She had a point.

"Never mind, then."

"And now, I have a question for you. Do you still love me? Or do you hate me?"

"I...This is a secret, okay? Take it to your grave."

She opened her mouth before closing it, scowling as she nodded. She was probably going to say something witty about how she already had a grave, but that would be Sekishin talking. Naomi did not have a grave...as far as he knew, anyway.

"Maybe, just maybe I still like her. It's hard, okay? It's hard to just forget about someone you loved and—"

"I asked you a yes or no question. You didn't have to explain."

It was his turn to scowl at her. "Should've stopped me earlier."

With a smile, she stood up. "Now then, there are about four hours until sundown! Where would you like to go next?"

"I don't think I can take another four hours with you."

"My, Ten-chan. Tired already? How do you expect to last all night with so little stamina?"

It took a while, but he got it. And he groaned. "Why? Why the innuendos?"

She giggled. "You make it so easy."

"That's it. I'm staying here for the rest of the day."

"Aw, just when I got up, too." She pouted.

"Nope. I'm staying here. Wake me up when the sun's setting." He lied down on the grass and positioned his arms over his eyes to block out the sun.

"That enough closure for you?"

"At the very least, I think I feel a little better."

She hummed. "Well then, have a nice nap."

"And what are you going to do?"

"I forgot something back at the inn. Don't worry, I'll be back before you wake up!"

"Don't bother coming back!"

"Not a chance!" She giggled before finally leaving.

Shimada shook his head at her. After letting out a yawn, he closed his eyes and drifted off.

He woke up when the sky was dark.

There's only light from the stars and a crescent moon, but he could still make out his companion of the day, sitting next to him.

"You're awake!" she exclaimed. "You sure slept for a long time. Couldn't sleep at night because another woman was keeping you up?"

"What have I told you about innuendos?" he moaned, sitting up. "What time is it?"

"Almost nine. Ready to go back?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

"As long as Shinshichi doesn't kick me out again."

She giggled and handed him a plastic bag. A very familiar plastic bag with two photos, a mask, and a hairpin inside.

"Because you are saying goodbye to me now. I wouldn't want you to regret anything."

And he didn't either. Even though he knew that the person in front of him was Sekishin, he reached into the bag and took out the hairpin.

This was to give him closure. To make sure there would be no lasting regrets. So he ignores how it's Sekishin in front of him. It's dark anyways, and he can almost pretend that it was Naomi in front of him.

"This is for you. It's something for you to remember me by because I'm leaving Kyoto and I'm probably never coming back."

"My, Ten-chan. I thought you were an optimist." She accepted his gift and looked it over in the dim lighting. "Thank you."

And it's the last time, so why not? He walked behind her and held her hair.

"I know you don't like having your hair styled, but it's a wig so deal with it," he said as he ran his fingers through her hair. No knots. Now for the hard part.

"My name is—"

"Oh shut up."

And she giggled, taking out a penlight and turning it on so he didn't have to rely on moonlight and starlight, no matter how romantic it sounded.

"Thank you."

She's quiet and still as he worked with her hair. He hadn't actually done this in a long time, and the last time she tried it with Chiyuki, she'd fidget the entire time. Shimada's glad she got over that habit.

When he was done, he stuck the hairpin in to keep it in place. She slowly reach up and touched the bun. A smile unlike any other he'd seen on Sekishin before spread across her face.

"Thank you."

They walked back silently, with her being a half-step behind. And she tugged on her sleeve, saying his name over and over and pointing at a photographer. Maybe the same one from earlier.

"Could you take another photo?" she asked the photographer without even waiting to consult him.

"Certainly. How many copies?"

"Two!" she said excitedly.

The photographer tipped the brim of his hat forward slightly in acknowledgement and when to his camera, which was positioned on top of a tripod now.

Two snaps, two blinding flashes, and the photos were printed out. She takes them without letting him see.

"I'll give one to you when we get back. I wouldn't want you to oogle it on the way, not look at where you're going, and cross a busy street."

He rolled his eyes at her. "As if I'd oogle a photo of you."

"You never know. Ooh, this bun looks very nice."

They waved goodbye to the photographer and continued on their way back to the inn.

"And this is where we part," she said, tucking one photo in her sleeve.

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

She gave him back his back, with one mask and three photos inside.

"Hey, Sannan?"

She turns around, and he can see the words forming on her lips.

"You don't have to keep the hairpin. You can throw it away or something. I won't care."

"No, I think I'll keep it. As a souvenir."

And Shimada stepped inside the inn and closed the door.

"How was it?" He jumped as Nagakura flipped on the light switch, revealing only him and Shimada to be in the room. "You feeling better."

There was something smug in his expression. Shimada was cautious as he said, "It was...beneficial."

"I told you so."

And Shimada bent over from laughing and Nagakura joined him. He slipped the photo in his pocket and went to sleep feeling lighter than ever.

(He didn't notice the message on the back of the photo.

"My name is Naomi," it read, "and I thank you for everything.")

---

"You're not gonna cry, are you?" Haruki asked Takezawa, back at the inn.

"Haruki. Haruki. You're making me chop onions and of course me eyes are going to water!"

"No, I mean, when you leave."

"Do you think I'm a crybaby?"

"Well, you're crying right now."

"It's these damn onions! You try chopping them without crying!"

"Uh-huh. Well anyways, tell your brother I said hi. And remember." Haruki leaned towards Takezawa's tearful face, completely ignoring personal space. "You are going to visit your brother because you are an officer, so you should visit him with your head held high. And don't you try telling me you're too busy. I'll ask Tsubaki to give you vacations!"

"Why does Michio need vacations?" Sekishin asked as she entered the room.

"Because he doesn't visit his brother enough! He's leaving that poor soul to rot in a hospital bed!"

"I am not!" Takezawa protested. "It's just that he's also in the middle of playing Uno when I visit, so I leave."

"You could just join the Uno game. It's not that hard," said Sekishin.

Haruki paused in chopping up carrots. "Wait, don't tell me. Don't tell me you don't know how to play Uno!"

Takezawa's silence was good enough an answer for them.

"You poor soul!"

"You poor, deprived soul," Sekishin agreed.

"Shut up!"

"Aw, don't cry. It's not anything bad," she said.

"It's the onions' fault."

"But you're wearing goggles."

"These goggles are defective."

"He just doesn't want to admit that he'll miss me," Haruki piped up.

"But," Sekishin tilted her head, "can't you exchange phone numbers. I mean, you both have phones."

"Phone numbers!" Haruki gasped. "You whippersnappers and your phones. Back in my day—"

Takezawa threw an onion at him.

---

Sekishin returned to Edo in the morning and knocked on the door of the Yorozuya office. She missed this place, even if it did stink of poverty and alcohol.

"Yes? Who is it?" Shinpachi opened the door. "Oh, it's Gin-san. Why'd you have to knock?"

"I lost my keys," she said, stepping inside. "Did a client come while I was gone?"

"No, business is slow as usual. Huh?"

Sekishin didn't need to turn around to know that Gintoki was behind her. She had a hand on her head.

She missed this.

"You're back for not even a minute and you're already back to your old tricks. Quit pretending to be me!"

"Seki-san, you're back!?"

"Oh, she's back!"

The two children cheered. Seeing them so excited, Sekishin scratched her cheek. "Should I be cooking sekihan to celebrate?"

"No."

"Pity."

"Did you bring back any souvenirs?" Kagura asked.

Sekishin dug into her sleeve. "Let's see, I brought...a lemon for Gintoki," she ignored his groan, "and a letter from the second generation of Yorozuya. They wish you luck at earning money and putting up with this guy."

"Hey," 'this guy' grunted.

Yeah. She really missed this.

---

If there was anything she didn't miss, however, it was the Shinsengumi's inexplicable inability to complete their paperwork.

"Why is the room filled with paper?" Akatsuki asked Kondou the moment he opened the door.

"We tried."

"Try harder. Think of the backlog? What if there were urgent papers and you just left them sitting here for three months? No bonuses for anyone!"

"To be fair, nobody's received a bonus since you went on vacation," said Yamazaki.

"Details."

And just when he thought he'd get some piece and quiet and some paperwork done, Shimada ran up to him, holding a familiar photo.

"Did you write this?" he asked, pointing at the back.

Akatsuki opened his eyes to give him a flat stare. "My name is—"

Shimada placed one hand over his mouth. "Forget I asked.

---

AN: IT IS DONE! After more than a year, I've finally finished this side story! (Remind me never to make another one of these again. Almost 19k words, holy shit.) So something would have been up earlier if not for the fact that this was a side story and I didn't want to split up a sidestory into more than one chapter (chapter 9.5, chapter 9.51? How would I name them?) So yeah. Sorry for the delay. Here's hoping that the next one won't be as long

IMPORTANT NEWS: I have a tumblr so people can check up on me and make sure I'm not dead. It's alteryi dot tumblr... It's still underconstruction, but go check there if you're interested in me ranting over THIS CHAPTER. Actually, it's less this chapter and more THESE OCS.

Never create an OC for the sole purpose of killing them off. It doesn't end well.

NAME TRIVIA: Hoo boy, there's a lot.

Tashida Michi (多志田 道) and Ayumu (歩) Tashida's just a random surname but Michi uses the kanji for path and Ayumu means 'to walk'

Michio (美智夫) uses the kanji for beauty and knowledge with 夫 being a common ending for male names.

Ayuto (明愉都) uses the kanji for bright and joy with 都 being another common ending for male names.

Naomi (なおみ) is just written in hiragana and could have a couple of different meanings.

Kido (木戸) is an alias that real-life Katsura took in his later years.

Kouji (光二) is written with 'light' and 'two'

Haruki (春木) has the very simple meaning of 'spring tree'

Danabe, Bando, Kanagawa, Terajima, and Sasano are all surname that I pulled from a hat and have no particular meaning

Mushiba Katai (虫馬 鹿体）I probably spent too much tie on this guy's name than I needed to. Mushiba is written with 'bug' and 'horse' but with other kanji (虫歯) it means tooth cavity. Katai is written with 'deer' and 'body' but can also mean stubborn when written as (硬い) Incidentally, horse and deer combine to make (馬鹿) which is pronounced baka and means exactly what you think it means

Nagakura Shinshichi (永倉 新七) is a name that Sorachi provided. It's based off of Nagakura Shinpachi (永倉 新八) who is the real-life captain of the Second Division. Shichi(七) means seven and is also pronounce 'nana' hence Seki's nickname for him.

Shimada Ten (島田 てん)...I uh, kinda forgot what kanji I used for his name, but he's based off of Shimada Kai(島田 魁) the real-life second-in-command of the Second Division.

I think that's all the names.

And by the way remember when I said Takasugi and Seki met during the festival with Gensai? Officially retconned.

And I would like to thank every reader who made it through this OC(outrageously convoluted) side story and hope it wasn't too confusing. Tried a different style. Might do it again next chapter because (laughs) there's a certain past event that really ties in with the Benizakura Arc like ridiculously well.

Fun fact: Sekishin has not been single all her life.