Heaven Knows Everyone Is Miserable Now

Chapter 9: A Good Thing

Hijikata's eyes opened slowly like those of a child after a long night's sleep. He had slept a deep sleep without dreams, without nightmares - a respite of dark bliss from which he remembered nothing. He was wrapped comfortably in soft fabric. A pillow had been put under his head. If he remained still he had no way to gauge the weight of his body nor the condition of his injuries. In those first few minutes as he stirred awake he was suspended in a state of relaxation he hadn't known in a while. It took him a lengthy yawn to draw back into the confines of his body, to realign his senses to his whereabouts and the reason why he had come to be where he was.

White light broke through window blinds to his left. He was able to make out the four walls of a room and the shadows of its contents: a dresser, a chair piled with books, one shelf equally full and a night table next to his futon. Wooden paneling covered the ceiling. The house was old.

Hijikata tried to sit up but pain shot up his leg and he slumped back down. He cursed, raised the covers tucking him in and glanced at his feet. It was too dark to discern anything. He wiggled his toes and felt bandages wrapped around his foot. They were too tight. He could feel his veins throb, his foot swell. He leaned on his elbows and tried to sit up again, gritting his teeth through the pain. He reached down and dug his fingernails under the bandages to loosen their knot, eager to get rid of the tight dressing. A shadow appeared at the door of the room and he stopped, shoulders hunched, ready to fight.

"You awake, Mr. Policeman?" It was a girl's voice.

Hijikata started at the moniker then at the unfamiliar shirt over his skin, the absence of his jacket, his clothes.

The girl waltzed into the room without worry. She walked to the window and pulled up the blinds. Hijikata flinched at the dazzling light yet he shielded his eyes with his free hand to keep his focus on the girl. She wore a pair of denim overalls over a shabby pink shirt, timeworn, beloved, Hijikata recognized the wear and tear of the fabric. Around her neck was a dark red kerchief and whether she had tied it for the purposes of protection or fashion Hijikata didn't know, though he knew what the wakizashi hanging around her waist was for.

The girl propped down beside him on the futon and lifted an arm towards him. Hijikata jerked back instinctively.

"I just wanna check your temperature." she said.

"I'm fine," Hijikata replied, "Who are you? Where am I? Wha-"

"Hey, hey, calm down. One thing at a time, mister."

She spoke with a provincial accent, cutting words short.

"Me and Pops saved your hide, you should be more respectful n' all," she grumbled, then, noticing Hijikata poking at the bandages with his fingers she slapped his hand away, "Oi, what do you think you're doing ruinin' my fine work!? Don't ya know your foot ain't right?"

"You call this fine work? It's too tight."

"No, it ain't. Pops taught me how to do it and he said I did good!"

Hijikata grunted.

"I don't care what your Pops said, girl. Don't you have something to cut this off? I'll wrap it up again myself."

"My name is not girl. I'm Doromizu Pirako! And if you wanna do it yourself, be my guest, you ungrateful jerk!" Pirako turned around and pulled out a small sewing box from a closet drawer. She took a pair of embroidery scissors from an inside compartment and handed them to Hijikata.

"Let's see you do it, then." she said.

Hijikata snatched the scissors from her grasp and proceeded to cut the bandages slowly, inch by inch, his breath hitching as the cold metal of the scissors touched the tender skin. He frowned as the wrappings came off and the ugly state of his foot became apparent, deformed with blood clots and blisters at the base. The skin was marred with wrinkles and marked red in the places where the bandages had squeezed too hard.

Pirako leaned in to check as well. The dumb pigtail on top of her head almost poked Hijikata in the eye.

"Oh, it's lookin' better already," she said, uncrossing her arms, "You're lucky, Mr. Policeman, Pops said we might have to amputate your foot altogether if the infection started to spread. How long did you walk like this?"

Pirako's voice was full of life, lacking the exhaustion that came with surviving the world as it was. She barely gave Hijikata time to answer. She babbled away from one subject to the next as she took out clean bandages from the box and passed them to Hijikata.

"...and then it really started to pour! I hate thunder! I asked Pops if we could stay longer at that place but the flashes were too near. He said no. He said it would be worse if we stayed 'cause lightning could strike someplace dangerous and a tank of gas could explode or even a car, anything. So we left and y'know I don't mind the uglies so much but I reeeaaally reeaaaally can't stand thunder. If we had to walk all the way back I would'a cried. I mean, if it weren't for old Su-chan we wouldn't have made it. Oh, Su-chan is Pops's Subaru. Well, it ain't really Pop's, we snagged it from Kirara-san after she...ya'know," Pirako drew a finger across her neck, fake gagged, "Pops knows how to work Su-chan when it doesn't wanna cooperate, so we get by. In a way, life is a lot easier now. It was just the two of us before too but now it's less of a hassle. Pops didn't have the easiest life, y'know? Mommy died when I was little, I don't remember much of her, but I know I wouldn't want her here for this. It's better this way, right? Pops says it all the time, this world ain't for everyone-"

"How old are you?" Hijikata's voice startled her.

Pirako paused, thinking deep, biting her tongue in an effort to remember.

"Nineteen years old, sir!" she answered with a salute.

Hijikata nodded, she didn't look much older than she claimed, yet the hairs at the back of Hijikata's neck rose of their own accord. Above the dresser and under proper light, Hijikata caught a glimpse of a framed photograph of a little girl sitting on the lap of a smiling woman. The girl had dark hair. Hijikata's eyes flew to the roots of Pirako's flaming red and his newly wrapped foot twitched.

"Is this your house?"

"Sure is," Pirako said, her eyes big and dark, Hijikata could not distinguish between her iris and pupil unless he squinted, "Been here five months or so. Longest place we stayed at so far."

Too many years of police interviews had twisted Hijikata's belief in people and their willingness to tell the truth. His own standoffish personality, sometimes confrontational and raucous, had allowed him to bear down hard on tight-lipped criminals and cocky youngsters so that not many had managed to get under his skin, but this girl Pirako unnerved him. He didn't know why. A part of him refused to pursue the question, wondering if he was sabotaging himself, running from his own fears. He had been saved by strangers before, he had been a recipient of their kindness, but where had that got him? Hijikata's thumb sought the familiar touch of the silver wedding band on his ring finger. He rubbed dry skin.

He opened his mouth to speak but words came to him in a jumble. He didn't know where to start. His mind had suddenly forsaken every other worry to focus on a single one.

Gintoki. Where was Gintoki?

"When you found me…" he began tentatively, interrupting Pirako's rant about the floral pattern of a new duvet she had found in the middle of a street, "Was I alone?"

"Yeah. Su-chan broke down in the middle of this bridge, you see. We were checking the engine when I heard a strange sound coming from below. Pops gotchu' no problem. We dragged you into Su-chan 'cause you were still alive but your foot didn't look so good. Pops said…" Pirako's voice withered away, she lost her composure, looked down, her eyes dodged Hijikata's, "Pops said…"

"Pirako."

As soon as the man entered the room, Hijikata's last moments under the bridge returned to him sharp and clear. The rats sniffing at his foot, the gravel biting into his skin, the rain-shower, the rotter he had stirred his way, his attempt to join the eaters. It had been the grizzly man in front of him who had put a stop to his reckless plan. Hijikata's eyes arrested on the buzzcut hair, silvery white, Gintoki's fold. The girl hadn't been lying. Her father was real, as real as the blisters on Hijikata's foot.

"Pops!" Pirako jumped up at the sight of her father.

The older man's eyes fell on Hijikata. Hijikata bared his teeth.

"You hit me." Hijikata spat.

"You remember that much?" the man sneered.

Hijikata had enough sense to know when an apology was due. It was due.

Pirako looked between the two men. A heavy mood settled in which she undertook to dispel.

"What Pops is trying to say is that it's easier to carry dead weight, right?" she said with a pointed finger.

"Is he?" Hijikata muttered.

"People ain't as noisy when you knock them out. We couldn't have you cryin' out the whole way home, could we? You would have called the uglies our way."

"You owe my daughter your gratitude." the old man said.

"I almost lost my foot because of your daughter. What the hell have you been teaching her?"

"I could slice your head clean off your shoulders, fool."

"Pops, don't!" Pirako held back her father by the arm, "Let's start from the beginning, alright? My name is Doromizu Pirako, this is my father Doromizu Jirocho, pleasure to meet you, mister…?"

Pirako's wiggling eyebrows cued Hijikata in. He sighed as Pirako waved her hand.

"Hijikata Toushiro." he answered.

"See, ain't it nicer this way? Now I don't have to call you The Sad Policeman in my mind. I can skip right to your name."

"Who do you think you are callin-"

"Pirako-chan, please leave us. I want to speak with this man alone."

Jirocho's tone was final. Pirako pouted, opened her mouth to retaliate then closed it knowing better.

"Pops don't go crazy, we just saved him. It would be a waste."

"It's alright, I won't take long. Why don't you go check the fence?"

"Right'o!"

Pirako left the room. Hijikata heard her walk down a flight of stairs. As the sounds of her footsteps faded, Jirocho hurled his gravelly voice toward Hijikata mercilessly. Hijikata noticed the scabbard by the old man's waist like a samurai's. He had seen men wear it like that before, along streets and neighborhoods where the police had not been welcome.

"I don't give a damn about you or your foot but my daughter saved your life," Jirocho said, "You owe her. I could have left you in that ditch like you wanted to, let that thing take care of you but I didn't because of her. You so much as look at her the wrong way and I'll scalp you. She is a good kid, and there ain't much good around nowadays. You should know better than to scorn a good thing."

Hijikata paused. He searched Jirocho's eyes.

"Are you speaking from experience?"

"That's the problem with folks like you," Jirocho said with a sigh, "You only believe in things if you experience them."

"Good things don't come from simply believing in them," Hijikata replied, "I know that."

"I believe in my daughter. That is all."

Jirocho left the room to let Hijikata ponder his threat, though Hijikata had taken Jirocho's words for more than a threat. He envied him. He saw strength in Jirocho which he had seen in few people throughout his life, people who took their strength from believing in something other than themselves, people who placed their prospects outside the limitations of their own achievements. Hijikata had been one of those people once. Jirocho was lucky. He still had his dream, his belief, his daughter. Hijikata no longer had his. And fate would have it that he should never have it again. Not Mitsuba, not a place beside Kondo, not the modest role he had shaped for himself in the company of two kids and a scruffy, infuriating adult. There he was again, a mutt left by the side of the road; instead of stuck inside a bloody car stranded on the highway, he had been left to the damp, reeking underbelly of a country bridge. Cold, injured, unconscious.

Jirocho had a point. Hijikata did owe Pirako. Not only had she rescued him from that bridge but she had given him shelter, clean clothes, a roof over his head - for however long she and her father would have him - and, despite her inadequate but well-intentioned efforts, she had treated his foot. Hijikata owed her too much to condemn Jirocho's threat.

Hijikata caught himself staring into nothing, thinking of ways he could show his gratitude towards the girl when he realized neither Pirako nor Jirocho had mentioned Gintoki. He got up with strenuous effort, grunted as his bandaged foot touched the tatami floors and gripped the back of the nearest chair. He was halfway down the stairs when Pirako appeared from a corridor to his left, expression startled.

"Where do you think you're going? We don't have an infinite supply of clean bandages, ya' hear?"

"Take me back to the bridge." His voice was soft, pleading.

Pirako furrowed her brows concerned.

"What?"

"There was someone else with me, I need to go back and find them."

"You mean to tell me someone left you there in that state and you wanna go back and find them? Are you an idiot?!" she put her hands on her hips and shook her head, "No, no, no. They abandoned you there. You- you-" she stammered, her eyes evading Hijikata's again, "You were losing it back there, don't you remember?"

Hijikata was silent. Admitting he had tried to kill himself was a wound he didn't dare touch. He hurt all over. His foot throbbed, the bruises he had picked from the Sweepers's beating stung whenever he caught his breath but it was the pain in his midriff that seized him most fiercely. Hijikata recalled the origin of that particular ache, the act of being carried. Memories came to him in flashes, fleeting glances of Gintoki's struggle down the mountain. The surety of his grip, his unintelligible whispers before Hijikata heard him no more, just the rain. He wished he could remember the exact words Gintoki had said. Hijikata might have had a better idea of where to look if he did. Leaving Pirako and her father would be selfish, ungrateful, but Hijikata owed Gintoki more. How many times had Gintoki saved his life? From the moment they had first met to the last stretch of a flight through a horde of rotters. Even if all Gintoki had done in the end had been looting Hijikata's corpse and abandoning him, Hijikata would find him. He would get his ring back and he would pay his debt.

He wondered if that had been the reason why Gintoki had taken his ring. An unspeakable contract between them. Gintoki's way of reminding Hijikata of his obligation. His debt.

"Well, I won't let you." Pirako said, stretching out her arms to block Hijikata's path, "Your foot needs more time to heal. I saw the marks on your body, you should rest. If your buddy is brave enough to continue on his own I bet a few more days won't make much of a difference."

"I'm sorry, kid," Hijikata said, "Thank you for getting me here. But I have to go."

"I won't let you!" Pirako shouted.

"I promise to pay you back."

"No, I don't care about your promises. I won't let you go!"

I won't let you see her ever again.

Hijikata froze. Something inside his chest shrunk and twisted itself until he was choking.

"Look at you, you're pale as a ghost. Keep standing like that and you'll end up lookin' like one of them outside. Garr'garrin' your way to an early grave. C'mon I'll help you get back in bed. Just sleep tight. Pops is cooking tonight, his omurice is super tasty- Oi!"

A terrible urge prompted Hijikata forward. He overtook Pirako with a sidestep, leaning on his good foot, and made for the nearest exit. His plan entailed little more than getting out of that house and moving in the direction of the nearest mountain. He could not be far from the bridge where Pirako and her father had found him. The mountain still had to be in sight. It was all a matter of getting a grip on their position, nothing he couldn't figure out with a map.

Jirocho, however, was a harder problem to circumvent. He blocked Hijikata's passage as Hijikata opened the front door with a frenzied look on his face, feet bare, shoes forgotten. He had stormed outside the house ablaze with the desire to find Gintoki. Jirocho regarded him impassively, expression unreadable. Hijikata wanted to explain, throw him a line that would send the old man out of his way, but as soon as he heard Pirako's cries behind him, he knew no convincing lie would be able to remove Jirocho from his path.

"Pops! Pops! Stop him!"

Jirocho's scabbard met Hijikata's chest below his sternum. Hijikata stumbled back into Pirako's arms. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she held him down until he was on his knees struggling to catch his breath. Turbulent thoughts of Gintoki raced through his mind. The fear of being too late and finding Gintoki dead gripped him irrationally. A trespassing emotion had mixed in with his hate, something much stronger and debilitating.

Take it off. It's gonna get in the way.

Hijikata looked at the pale strip of skin where his wedding ring used to be. He clenched his hands into fists. Anger and shame overwhelmed him. He took deep breaths to calm himself down. He shrugged away from Pirako's hold, and heard her mumble something to Jirocho. The older man's gaze detained on his knuckles. Hijikata picked himself up and leaned against the frame of the front door. Pirako's face appeared beside him with a concerned look.

"Let us help ya', mister. We will help ya' look for your friend, won't we, Pops?"

Jirocho's eyes met Hijikata's. Hijikata looked away.

"Won't we, Pops?" Pirako pressed, voice thin, "As soon as Hijikata-san is better."

Jirocho adjusted the knot of the scabbard by his waist and turned around with a grunt. He left towards the back of the house without further comment.

"Don't worry, Pops always goes back there when he's mad. It's alright."

Pirako placed a hand on Hijikata's arm, her touch feathery, seeking consent. When Hijikata didn't budge she interlaced their arms and pulled him back slowly.

"Let's get ya' back in bed, shall we?"

Hijikata got no rest. He tried closing his eyes but his thoughts ran too fast for him to settle into anything that resembled sleep. From behind the house, the rhythmic sounds of Jirocho working his hoe into the fresh earth drove Hijikata half-mad. He rose to the window to inspect the old man at work and wondered at the small plot of land Jirocho and Pirako had managed to farm so far. A variety of vegetables grew each in their own row and stacks of seed trays piled on a corner waiting their turn on the ground. A reinforced wooden wall surrounded the garden with strategic holes cut into them so they could easily check the perimeter outside. The surrounding area was quiet at the moment, without a trace of rotters. The silence was devastating if not for Jirocho's digging and Pirako's washing downstairs. The mundane sounds traveled through the house's wooden structure like the house itself was a beating heart pumping a little humanity into a world which had forsaken it.

After a brief nap that had amounted to no more than twenty minutes of rest, Hijikata decided to put himself to use however he could. If he stayed any longer in that room licking his wounds and thinking about the past he feared he might lose the will to leave it again.

He walked downstairs to find Pirako folding clothes in the living room. She smiled at him and passed him a clean shirt.

"If you insist on disobeying my orders, how about you help me here?"

Hijikata sat beside her and reached for the clean shirt.

Five days passed in a haze of small tasks that had Hijikata ingrained into the bizarre, humdrum routine of father and daughter. The day started with fence checking and reinforcing - which included the disposal of gathering groups of rotters - weapon inventory, then a rotating schedule of household chores like meal prepping, sorting clothes for washing, sweeping floors and, Jirocho's favorite, farmwork. Forays into the outside world were planned the night before with Jirocho deciding the main objectives and imposing curfews. Hijikata was exempted from the incursions and stayed confined to the house on account of his recovering foot, though he was not left alone. Jirocho and Pirako each went out alone while the other stayed behind to watch over the house and Hijikata, an imposition which Hijikata would have found easier to resent if he didn't feel his debt of gratitude so acutely. He knew Pirako's attentions were genuine and not out of some deranged wish to keep him imprisoned. He kept testing her to chase away his suspicions. He asked her about the old photograph in his room, a picture of the original owner of the house and her daughter, an old friend of Jirocho's.

"She left town after she got married. Pops was really sad. I think he had a little crush on her." Pirako giggled, "I think it may have been the reason for Pops to leave too. I think he only stayed around 'cause he was waiting for her. He's a romantic deep down, ya' know?"

Hijikata grunted, watching Pirako clean her blade. She had returned from a supply run and had brought Hijikata, among many fashionable items of clothing for herself which Jirocho had rolled his eyes at for their lack of usefulness, a pair of new boots. They fit almost perfectly, though Pirako was unable to perceive the magnitude of the gesture, nor the soft smile on Hijikata's face as he put them on. The memories that surfaced, the ache.

"So, you like'em?" Pirako asked.

"Yeah."

"Thinkin' you can finally bolt outta here?"

Hijikata turned around to stare at Pirako's devilish grin. She was a good kid.

"You shouldn't have brought me these." he said, gesturing towards the boots.

"I didn't want to," Pirako pouted, arms crossed, "It was Pops who-"

"Pirako, there's tracks of blood all over the hall." Jirocho's voice cut through the air evenly, starting Pirako. She flinched, reminded of her duties, then played the innocent part.

"Oh-y-yeah, sorry Pops, don't worry, I didn't drag an ugly after me-"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I know you don't like it when the house is dirty."

"Do you want to live in filth?"

"No, of course not, Pops. I just wanted to show Hijikata-san my dresses and the boots you told me to get for him-"

"That's well enough. It's your mess, you clean it."

Pirako nodded, the fake pout on her lips her only weapon against further admonishment from her father whom Hijikata realized had a tendency to capitulate to every whim of Pirako's. Hijikata held back a smirk as he watched her go. Her sullen steps brightened as she walked past Jirocho to grab the handful of clothes she had claimed in her run.

Jirocho's expression did not waver. He stood motionless, eyeing Hijikata with an icy glare as he waited for the sound of Pirako's footsteps to fade.

"I'll leave early in the morning." Hijikata said. He supposed he could give the old man the answer he wanted if the question burning in Jirocho's gaze had anything to do with the gift Pirako had brought him. His foot was better, he could walk properly now, his bruises were healing, he had repaid his stay and now it was time to leave. That's what Jirocho had meant by having Pirako get him a pair of boots. Hijikata wasn't so dense he couldn't figure it out.

Yet Jirocho's reply was not what Hijikata had expected.

"You can stay if you want."

Hijikata lifted his face to look Jirocho in the eye.

"My daughter likes you. I see her smile around you. I know life with just the two of us is painful to her."

Hijikata was silent.

"Those boots are not an invitation to leave if that's what you're thinking," Jirocho sighed and sat down beside Hijikata on the open deck to the vegetable garden outside, "Don't misunderstand me, punk. All I'm saying is that it's a good thing we have found each other. It will make her sad to see you go."

"I'm sorry." Hijikata said.

"No, you are not." Jirocho replied with a chuckle.

Hijikata looked down at his hands, wrinkled but soft with idleness, the good kind of idleness, the one that had him peeling onions instead of piercing skulls. He flexed his fingers and paused to look at his ring finger. The pale ring of skin where his wedding band should be.

"Is she gone?" Jirocho asked him.

Hijikata nodded, instinctively understanding the question. He had caught Jirocho staring at his ring finger before and had wondered why it had taken him so long to pry into the matter.

"Was it before?"

"No. Right at the beginning." Hijikata said, "There was an outbreak at the government shelter we were staying at."

"Did you keep hers?"

Hijikata couldn't answer. It was too shameful. No, he hadn't kept her ring. He had been too lost. Too blinded by grief and fear to even think about it. He remembered Jirocho's words the day he had met him.

"What good thing did you scorn?" Hijikata asked him.

Jirocho was slightly taken back by the question but one corner of his mouth curled up. He rustled the inner pocket of his haori and took out a cigarette pack. He offered one to Hijikata who took it wordlessly, both delighted and enraged at the old man for coveting the nicotine to himself and never having offered him a smoke before.

"I scorned good things all my life," Jirocho said, "My previous life, before the dead woke, wasn't much different from what it is now," Jirocho pulled down the back of his collar and Hijikata caught a glimpse of the tattoos covering his back, "Always violence, always at war with some gang or another, not really living, just scraping by. But mostly my war was with myself. I couldn't see it that way until they locked me up. I hurt a lot of people. I abandoned my wife and my daughter. I was too busy trying to prove to myself that every bad thing I did was to protect them. I lost them all the same. I got out of jail and reunited with my daughter less than a year before it all happened. Funny, I was determined to start anew and I did in the way I least expected. This time now is my second chance. I mean to do right by her."

Hijikata inhaled the smoke slowly, letting the familiar addiction permeate his entire being. Jirocho's confession tethered him, it uprooted his previous feelings of jealousy. In a way, the similarities between the two of them gave him hope. It was not inconceivable that other people like Jirocho struggled as much as Hijikata did to forgive themselves, nor that they clung to the minuscule sliver of hope they thought they did not deserve. Before or after the dead awoke, forgiveness was hard-earned. Hijikata sought it desperately, he knew. Yet the line was thin between forgiveness and permission.

Permission from whom?

Permission for what?

"Pirako told you we have been keeping our eyes peeled for your friend out there?"

Hijikata mumbled a faint response. Delving into the subject was the quickest way to have him in a rush to leave.

"She keeps me updated." Hijikata replied.

"Tomorrow we'll go together."

"You found something?"

"Yeah, this morning I passed by the village's old primary school. It's a few miles out. Lots of dead wiped out nearby. Were you two with a group?"

"Yes, a while ago."

"Maybe they're out there looking for you. We'll stop by again to make sure."

Something about Jirocho's voice unsettled Hijikata. He remembered the Sweepers, the gunshots at the shrine, the horde of rotters they had brought forth. Hijikata would rather play the villain himself if it meant keeping Jirocho and Pirako out of harm's way.

"No, I'll go alone. Just show me a map. I'll be fine. There's no point in hassling you."

"My daughter gave you her word she would help you find your friend."

"She has already done much for me. You too, Doromizu-san."

"Save it, punk. I don't want your gratitude. Your death won't do me any favors either," Jirocho blew out a long cloud of smoke and closed his eyes, "I know you have withheld your questions, same as me. I noticed that line on your finger the day we found you. I've stripped you and bathed you while you were unconscious. I've seen the bruises on your body. I've been out there in hell long enough to know what a biter can and can't do to a person, and before the biters there were gangsters, crooks, thugs, every type of goon you can think of. I'm well acquainted with them all," Jirocho's pupils shrunk to the size of a pinhead, Hijikata felt a shiver run down his back, "So I'll ask you, just this once, is your friend out there waiting to finish the job?"

"What, you mean kill me?" Hijikata's voice dwindled to a rasp.

"You were desperate enough to run away when you woke up." Jirocho replied coldly.

"No, I-"

"Why did your friend leave you then?"

"He didn't. He-" Hijikata caught his breath, beads of sweat gathered at the back of his neck.

"You sound sure."

"No, I-"

"Are you and your group planning to take this place from me and my daughter?"

The cigarette had disappeared from Jirocho's complacent hand and been replaced by the handle of his sword. Hijikata leaned back away from the glistening blade. He raised his hands alarmed and cigarette ash fell all over his clothes.

"Are you nuts, oldman?!"

"Answer me."

"No, I don't know why he left!"

"Then why are you in a rush to find him?"

The crime was in Hijikata's line of sight. That naked finger. Reality and fiction clustered together and Hijikata blurted it out, his conviction a fruit of delusion, despair, the wish to see Gintoki again.

"He has my ring! He took my wedding ring, I have to get it back!"

Jirocho was silent for a beat. He read Hijikata's expression while keeping a steady grip on his blade. He acquiesced with a shake of his head.

"Pitiful."

Pirako walked in as Jirocho sheathed his sword.

"What's going on? Pops, what have you done now?"

"Nothing."

"What's all this about?" Pirako demanded, hands on her hips.

"Just making sure this punk isn't pulling our leg now that he got what he wanted."

"Oh and what was that, Pops? Stealing our dying crops and the bag of rice we've been rationing for a month?"

Jirocho grunted and refused to reply.

"Are you okay, Hijikata-san? Pops didn't mean it. He can be such a meanie sometimes."

"I'm fine," Hijikata said, brushing away the cigarette ash that had fallen on his lap, "Your father is right to be wary. Trusting the wrong people is the reason you found me under that bridge in the first place."

Jirocho raised one inquisitive brow and Hijikata nodded, forcing himself to speak, to repay Jirocho and Pirako with that which was most dear, most valuable, the truth. Hijikata believed an ex-yakuza would appreciate the gift of chivalry; hear the echoes of a life ruled by a code.

"Me and my friend, we were running from a mercenary group before you found me," Hijikata started, "They ambushed us at a shrine not far from here. The people we were with escaped first. We stayed behind to buy them time but those bastards managed to herd a mass of rotters our way. The rain helped slow them down. We- we did what we could to blend in," the memories evoked the stench of rotten blood and a phantom pain tickled Hijikata's foot, "We walked for hours down that mountain. I must have hurt my feet at some point, I remember I collapsed and he…" Gintoki's name rang desolate in Hijikata's mind, uttering it would shatter him, "I don't know what happened to him…"

"We could take Su-chan back to the bridge. See if there's any sign of your friend there." Pirako suggested.

"Yes. But first we make sure that whatever happened at that school is nothing to worry about." Hijikata said.

"You think it might be those mercenaries you spoke of?" Jirocho wondered.

"I'm not sure. Better be safe than sorry."

Jirocho smiled.

"You're learning already."