Gintama Fan Fiction ❯ salarymen go to heaven ❯ part 3 ( Chapter 3 )

I still don't own Gintama.

 

 

* * Part Three: In Which Hijikata Learns that the Fact He Can't Remember the Previous Night Doesn't Mean He's Had a Good Time, No Matter what People Tell You in College * *

 

 

Sitting in front of a small, traditional restaurant, gripping a bottle of mayonnaise, Hijikata observed there were no birds in the sky. It was his day off, but even then, he couldn't find any peace if he didn't put his uniform on and do a quick round of Kabuki district. Without his uniform, he felt naked and without seeing first hand what kind of atmosphere prevailed in the town, he felt irresponsible.

 

Usually, he could tell right away, from the second he opened his eyes, what kind of day it was going to be. There was a certain feel, an ineffable conviction that the next 24 hours of his life will either be a well spent 24 hours or utter shit. Today, his tingly senses told him he was up for shit.

 

First off, he woke up with a headache of biblical proportions. His head was pounding so bad he had to wonder how could something that size cause such a massive amount of woe. Next he realised he was still fully clothed in the uniform he was wearing yesterday which had some suspiciously sticky stains of a chunky quality possibly classifiable as vomit.

 

At the precise moment he was unbuttoning his blouse with fingers made of sausage meat that were completely powerless against the rebelliously small buttons, Yamazaki entered the bedroom and started the usual morning report in his shrill, annoying voice totally unbecoming of a spy. Right around the first sentence, though, just as Hijikata was looking for his sword or his shoe or the filthy shirt he just managed to take off, anything to throw at the man, Yamazaki gave a cry of supreme distress and fled all on his own. Confused, Hijikata glanced down his body in search of disturbing deformities, only to find a pair of buttocks next to his feet. Which was rather strange. He followed the buttocks into a muscled back that should have led to a head, but instead ended in the bottom part of a pair of blue pyjamas. Hijikata assembled all of his strength, swallowed a large clog of acidic saliva, and reached to uncover the man in pyjama bottoms.

 

Next to his feet lay Kondo, completely out cold, naked in a way that suggested gang-banging or worse, with a very interesting design on his strong face.

 

Gripped with a dread only describable as apocalyptic, Hijikata crawled to the mirror and looked at his own face. Quite cleverly starting in the hairline above his ear, a rather generously proportioned…phallus was drawn in black marker pen across his cheek, ending in the corner of his mouth. On his other cheek were scribbled profanities and sound effects, written by a hand he should have been able to recognise and now barely legible from sleep.

 

The apocalyptic dread subsided into a rage that would shame the Four Horsemen themselves. Hijikata racked his brain for clues. How the hell did he end up with a…phallus on his face? And, more importantly, was it by any chance drawn after a live model?!

 

He remembered vaguely going to Kondo's favourite club with him and Sougo despite the fact rain was pounding down on Edo. Then there was the series of mental images of Kondo getting beat up by the Shimura woman, Okita staring teary eyed at the monstrous strength of the escort girl and Hijikata finally dragging both of them out into the wet street while Kondo mumbled something about her warming up to him after all.

 

They went around the Kabuki town red-light district, deciding finally it was most prudent by far just to sit in a bar, have a few drinks and call it a night, especially in the light of some very weird alien shit that was on display that evening. However, at the first bar they entered they met the silver haired menace and his brain-damaged friend who laughed a lot and, even though Hijikata thought he was very clear about there being other places to drink and that just ignoring the loud and severely embarrassing calls they received from the two men would be a better option, Kondo wouldn't hear of it. With Sougo shrugging and following his commander, Hijikata was left with no choice but to sit at the same table with these, the two most obvious of Mother Nature's bloopers, royally plastered as they already were at that time.

 

He could also remember the laughing man proposing a drinking competition, the Freelancer adding that Hijikata lost one to him already and then the two of them (Sakamoto might have been the name of the laughing one) giggling about something they did with some other people once that ended up with alcohol poisoning and a very wild night they couldn't quite recall. He remembered himself taking them up on it, Kondo saying something along the same lines (even though he was notoriously quick to succumb to booze, as everyone knew) and Sougo just shrugging again, mildly interested in the proceedings.

 

Somewhere around midnight, though, everything became fuzzy and, ashamed of it as he may be now, Hijikata could remember himself thinking that maybe hanging out with retarded people from time to time had its benefits, both morally and spiritually. Sougo said something about it being Thursday already and him being on patrol in the morning. At that point, Kondo gave one of his long speeches about the dangers of teen years and how they are crucial for the building of character to which everyone at the table shrugged in a very Sougo-ish manner and Okita slipped away, followed by loud boo-s from the Freelancer and his friend (who was obviously every inch as much of a good-for-nothing as his drinking buddy). After that, though, everything just took another turn for the brainless, with recounts of odd sexual encounters (odd, to say the least) triggered by Kondo's improvised sonnet cycle dedicated to the Shimura girl, followed by weeping for olden times, singing of war songs that none of them thought they could still remember (and they couldn't) and another lesson about the maturing of a young male from Kondo with footnotes provided by the audience.

 

Everything after that was white noise.

 

The only thing Hijikata knew beyond a doubt was that today, now that it was upon him with all the wrath of a jealous wife, was going to be a fun-filled collection of shitiness. So, as he observed a rather peaceful midday in a sunny, clear-skied Kabuki town, completely at odds with his gut feeling, his mood was getting fouler and fouler with every passing child smiling at the world, every old man bending to pick up a pretty pebble from the mud and every loving couple pointing at his mayonnaise and giggling to themselves.

 

Nothing was happening, nothing that would indicate the continued shitiness of this morning, nothing he could cut open and watch bleed just to make himself feel better and this bothered him to no extent. His first impression of a day was never, never wrong. And slowly the dread crept back up his spine as he wondered what made him so sure of the shit factor in the first place. It was something somebody had said last night, before he blacked out in drunken bliss.

 

Hijikata rubbed his cheek, still red and raw after the scrubbing he had to perform on it this morning, when on the other side of the street he saw a Shinsengumi uniform scurrying through the crowd. A breathless young man appeared before him, looking somewhat ill; green in the face, like he swallowed a great juicy cockroach and was told about it in detail later.

 

“Good day, Vice-commander,” said the man politely and made to sit next to him.

 

“Un,” said Hijikata. “You on patrol?”

 

“It's my break, sir, but yes,” said the man, his voice shivering slightly as if he had a fever.

 

“Ah,” concluded Hijikata and started to get up and let the man eat his lunch. Just as he called the shop keeper in order to pay for his own food, the man doubled over pathetically and made the choking sound of someone who was going to throw up an adult hedgehog but didn't have any animals left in them to do so.

 

“You OK, man?” asked Hijikata from up high. Lurching sounds tickled a memory he had already decided to keep locked away until Judgment Day, maybe longer if they let him hold on to his sword in the court room.

 

“Oh, sorry, sir,” said the man in a thick, tearful voice. “I couldn't eat anything in the morning. Or last night. Actually, I didn't eat anything yesterday either.”

 

“If you're sick, ask for a fucking substitute, that's what we provide them for. I can't have you people going around town, looking like you are going to barf on criminals as a method of capture,” lectured Hijikata in an overly dramatic voice, thankful even for this small outlet for his anxiety.

 

“No, no, sir, I'm not sick. It's just that…”

 

“What?” demanded Hijikata, wondering if the man was, in fact, making the whole thing up so he could get out of patrolling duty.

 

“Well, sir, it was my turn to accompany a senior officer on tour.”

 

“And?”

 

“Well, sir. It's Thursday.”

 

“…” commented Hijikata and pocketed the half empty bottle of mayonnaise in haste.

 

Oh, shit.

 

 

* *

 

 

Ah, Yamazaki. He gets his time with the band later on.