Gintama: Toll (1/?)
Jan. 21st, 2011 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
what_we_dreamTitle: Toll (1/?)
Series: Gintama
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13 for Jyoui war flashbacks
Notes: I'll probably finish this. Someday. Also I began writing this before seeing the ghost ryokan episodes, so I suppose it's AU.
Summary: The Yorozuya get sent on an exorcism. Unsurprisingly, things do not go smoothly.
“My building,” says their client, a withered old man with a bent back and a voice that’s so soporific even Shinpachi’s fighting to stay awake, “is haunted.”
He tells them he’s the ancient retainer of a mansion whose actual owners passed away in the Jyoui war, digressing for several minutes to lament that tragedy before moving on. With no next of kin to inherit and most of the government’s documents destroyed in the conflict, the house has been left empty and forgotten as the years passed. Except, that is, for the single elderly servant pottering through its halls, cleaning rooms no one uses and tending to a garden no one sees. Shinpachi thinks drowsily that that must be some kind of haunting all on its own, the resident ghost sitting in front of them staring down at the table with threadbare clothes and milky eyes.
“And?” asks Gintoki, cleaning his ear with his pinky. Shinpachi is too busy trying to stay awake to rebuke him. Kagura, whose sense of social conscience is entirely dependent on her mood and how many people she’ll get to beat up exercising it, is stretched out asleep on the couch next to their client like some giant red sausage with her mouth wide open.
“My family is insisting I move in with them; they say I’m too weak to live alone. There will be no one left to care for the estate once I am gone. But as long as it is haunted, no one will purchase it,” explains the man in a faltering tone. “I couldn’t stand to see it fall into ruin, with no one there to care for it.”
“You want us to chase away the ghosts?” asks Shinpachi, and kicks Kagura as she rolls over to scratch at her stomach. He nearly loses his leg when she launches a return blow in her sleep; it misses him and lands against the table, adding another hairline crack to the already abused piece of furniture. She sits up, blinking at her reddening hand in puzzlement.
The old man nods, apparently not having noticed the random spat of violence beside him, and leans forward on his walking stick. “That’s right.”
“Why us?” asks Gintoki, staring in a kind of fascinated horror as their client yawns, exposing two full lines of toothless pink gums. “Y-you should use a priest for exorcisms.” His eyes are wide as saucers, staring into the depths of the old man’s wrinkled mouth.
“Don’t argue with clients,” hisses Shinpachi.
“What’s going on?” asks Kagura, turning to look at the man she’s sharing the couch with as if he hadn’t been there for the past fifteen minutes. “Who’s this old geezer?”
“He’s our client,” says Shinpachi, beginning to work up momentum again now that it looks like the long answers are out of the way.
“I tried that,” explains the old man, apparently several comments behind, “but they said they couldn’t do anything about it. Priests these days… when I was young, we had real priests full of vim and vigour; they could throw out twenty ghosts before breakfast!” He shakes his fist in some kind of gesture possibly meant to embody vim and vigour, voice wavering with the motion.
“Look Gin-chan, he doesn’t have any teeth! Is he growing in more? Will they be big and sharp, like a shark’s?”
Shinpachi regrets suggesting Kagura try to educate herself about Earth’s ecosystem. Especially since she set about it, like she sets about all her educational endeavours, by finding a likely-looking channel on TV.
“Maa, Kagura-chan, it’s just another reflection of the inequalities of society. As men grow old and lose their teeth, the rich ones replace them with diamonds, and the poor ones have to eat their wives’ horrible soup for the rest of their lives.”
“When I get old, I’m going to replace my teeth with a shark’s,” declares Kagura.
“That is not how it works,” cuts in Shinpachi, before any more idiocy can take place. “You can get perfectly acceptable dentures from the dentist. And anyway, you should be listening to our client.”
“Oh, right,” says Gintoki, as if he’s somehow forgotten about the stranger sitting three feet across from him. “Well, what do you want us to do about it?”
“You already asked, Gin-san. He wants us to exorcise his house.”
“I don’t think Sadaharu would let us use his leash.” Kagura frowns, contemplating. Behind Gintoki’s unused desk, the giant dog barks at his name.
“Not exercise, exorcise. Get rid of evil spirits, ghosts. His house is haunted,” adds Shinpachi, recalling who he’s speaking to, and wondering whether it will be his fate to spend his life acting as a tape player.
“Wow! A haunted house! We get to beat up ghosts!” Kagura shoots up like a bright red rocket, startling the old man.
“Just ignore her,” advises Gintoki. And then, “So do you know whose ghosts these are, anyway?”
“No. No one ever sees them. They leave me alone, but they don’t like strangers.”
“You said everyone in the family was dead,” says Shinpachi. “Could it be them?”
“No, no, the masters would never do that!”
“I don’t think it works that way…”
“The masters would never do that!” repeats their client. Shinpachi sighs. It’s going to be one of those cases. The ones that are like… all the rest of their cases, really.
***
Gintoki can tell before they’ve even arrived at the gate that the estate is going to be the typical walled high-class mansion, complete with manicured grounds including zen garden and koi pond. The old man has given them the key and they enter without any difficulty, although really, hopping the fence and breaking open the front door wouldn’t have been very hard at all either. In today’s world of advanced laser anti-burglar systems and butterfly-sensitive landmines, the mansion’s rusty lock is a startling anachronism.
“This place is amazing!” says Kagura, staring around the wide gardens – greenery is scarce on a world with no sunlight, and she still hasn’t quite come to view expensively-landscaped gardens with the desiccated cynicism she’s capable of applying to most everything else.
“Aa,” agrees Gintoki glumly. “You can learn all about the evils of our discriminatory class system here, Kagura-chan. Pay attention, and learn how the wealthy have always unfairly beaten down those cursed by fate with natural perms.”
“That is completely untrue,” says Shinpachi, grabbing Kagura by the back of her dress before she can disappear into the grounds.
“Let go, Shinpachi! I’m going to look for ghosts!”
“The ghosts are inside.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe they’re in the garden. Maybe they’re having a picnic. Just because you don’t know how to have fun doesn’t mean ghosts don’t, Shinpachi. Gin-san, Shinpachi is discriminating against dead people!”
“Maa, Shinpachi, I would have thought you knew better. And after all the time I’ve spent trying to instil the ideals of the samurai into you.” Gintoki shakes his head in disappointment.
“What time? You haven’t spent any time, you just make me cook your meals and clean your apartment!” Shinpachi momentarily stops towing Kagura, the three of them now standing in the mansion’s doorway. They’ve long since mastered the ability to bicker and work at the same time; otherwise, they would have starved ages ago.
“Well, it seems I was right after all not to advance you to the more complex lessons. We may have to start again from the beginning.”
“Don’t say such ridiculous things!” Shinpachi opens his mouth, no doubt ready to start more admonishing. Before he can a long, low moan drifts out from within the house. All three of them freeze, Kagura in the process of poking at the furin, Gintoki picking his nose, Shinpachi pinwheeling as usual. They turn to each other and break out in low whispers, faces stuck in masks of confidence.
“W-w-what was that?”
“Was it the ghost? The ghost? But what about the picnic?”
“Should we still go inside? What do we do? Ah, Gin-san, come back!” Shinpachi grabs the retreating Gintoki’s shirt and swings him around, using the momentum to toss him at the front doors. His weight, combined with the momentum, causes him to knock the doors right out of their thin grooves and he tumbles into the dark corridor beyond with an echoing crash. Scrambling hurriedly to his feet, the samurai draws his bokutou.
“Ah, ah, pardon the intrusion,” he stutters, glancing frantically around. “Is anyone home? Even as I say it, I really hope you aren’t. I mean – hello?” Behind him, Shinpachi and Kagura creep up, holding shinai and umbrella in white-knuckled grips.
The poor light slanting in from the doorway isn’t strong enough to light the long corridor stretching the length of the house. From within the thick darkness there comes a slow, heavy shuffling. The sound of something moving down the hallway with uneven movements, encumbered by heavy layers of fabric. Gintoki laughs nervously, eye twitching.
“Ahaha, maybe we’ll just come back later. It really isn’t anything important at all. Sorry to disturb you!” He tries to back out, and finds himself shoved forward by Shinpachi and Kagura.
“You can’t, Gin-chan! We have to fight the ghost!” Kagura shoves him in the small of the back, causing him to bend in an awkward U curve as he struggles to keep from advancing.
“That’s right, Gin-san! Our job is to get rid of it!” Shinpachi lends a hand, causing the silver-haired man to flail.
“If you two are so eager, why don’t you take the lead?!”
Ahead of them in the musty corridor, a form begins to solidify out of the darkness. Long dark hair, pale skin, a plain kimono. It advances with unsteady, slightly staggering movements, pale hands stretched out as if searching for something.
They all three of them stare, caught in a single instant of immobilizing fear. And then Gintoki turns to run. And Kagura and Shinpachi, acting in whiplash unison, shove him forward together.
“Go deal with the ghost, Gin-chan!”
“Good luck, Gin-san!”
“You bastards, you just want to sacrifice me to save yourselves!” He nearly has the upper hand of them, but Kagura – who has no scruples about fighting dirty – kicks his leg out from under him at the same time as Shinpachi slams forward into his shoulders.
Gintoki goes flying down the corridor, hitting the ground hard and rolling.
Right into the ghost. Which feels suspiciously tangible when he slams into its legs.
They end up on the floor together, Gintoki uppermost and scrambling to pull away from the dark kimono and yellow obi before the thing, whatever it is, recovers and –
Wait. Dark kimono. Yellow obi. Long black hair. Gintoki’s brain operates at break-neck speed.
“Zura?” he asks, eyes narrowing.
On the floor in front of him Zura sits up, rubbing his head. “What are you doing here, Gintoki? And it’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
“I should be the one asking that.” Leg muscles wobbling like jelly due to being marinated in adrenaline, Gintoki drops to his haunches and rests some of his weight against his bokutou. “The hell are you doing, wandering around this mansion like goddamn Okiku?”
Zura brushes his hair out of his face, expression flat as always. “As it happens, I was having a nap. My apartment was recently discovered by the Shinsengumi, and I haven’t been able to secure a new one yet. It’s too dangerous to sleep on the streets, and the Jyoui facilities are currently under renovation; we had an incident last week with a time bomb.”
“So you’re just squatting in random peoples’ houses like some kind of bum now? That’s pretty lame.”
“I’m not a bum, I’m Katsura. But this house isn’t a random choice. For one thing, it’s widely known to be mostly abandoned.” Zura stands, patting the dust from his sleeves. Behind him there’s a flash of white and Gintoki tenses, only to relax again. It’s the ridiculous duck.
“Ah, Elizabeth, there you are. No need to worry, it was just these idiots moaning around out here.”
“Moaning?” says Gintoki, ignoring the idiots remark for the moment. “Wasn’t that you?”
Zura’s lip turns slightly. “No. That disgusting sound woke me – I was coming out to see what it was when you cannoned into me.”
“Wait. If it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t us –” Gintoki looks around slowly, as if expecting a white-robed figure to appear out of thin air.
Zura folds his arms. “One of the other reasons for my choosing this mansion,” he admits, “was its reputation. It is supposed to be haunted.”
“Normal people take that as a reason to STAY AWAY!”
“Precisely. No fear of being bothered.”
Gintoki’s opening his mouth to respond to this, when he’s hailed from behind.
“Gin-chaaaaaaaaaan? Are you still alive? Gin-chaaaaaaaan?” Kagura pokes her head around the open door, peering into the darkness. Gintoki sighs.
“Aa. You’d better get your asses over here, you pair of useless cowards.” He waits while they creep in, alert to the possibility of a trap.
“Ah, Zura!” exclaims Kagura when her eyes have adjusted enough to be able to identify the long-haired man. “And Ellie!”
“Not Zura, Katsura,” says Zura.
“Good afternoon, Katsura-san,” adds Shinpachi. “What are you doing here?”
“Squatting,” interrupts Gintoki before Zura can answer. “But now that he’s here, he can help us look for the ghost.”
“Yay! Zura’s going to come ghost-hunting!” Kagura throws up her arms and does a little dance, making her seem for a moment like an innocent little girl rather than a violent bloodthirsty demon in human guise.
“I don’t remember agreeing to work for you,” says Zura, ignoring her.
“I don’t remember asking you to barge in on our work,” replies Gintoki. “But if you want to try to go back to sleep WHILE WE CRASH AROUND HUNTING FOR GHOSTS, GO RIGHT AHEAD, ZURA.” He finishes the sentence at a full-bore yell straight in Zura’s face. Zura stares back at him flatly, the two of them immediately locked in a staring war.
“Um,” says Shinpachi from behind them, “I’m sure that would be really helpful. But maybe we should get started? I think we should try to finish before nightfall, since we didn’t bring any flashlights.”
“How like you to come unprepared for your work,” says Zura, smirking.
“How like you to be squatting in someone else’s house.”
“How like you to be unaware of whose house it is.”
“How like you to – wait, what?” Gintoki stumbles to a halt and backs up, replaying the previous sentence. Zura’s face hardens and he looks away.
“Fine, then, We will help you. It will be faster if we split up into two groups. Elizabeth, will you go with Gintoki?”
“Hey, no way am I going anywhere with the creepy duck. Besides, explain your previous statement, you bastard!”
“Fine then, Elizabeth and I will go with Shinpachi-kun, and you can go with Kagura,” says Zura, ignoring him.
“Like hell. You can come with me and damn well tell me what’s going on here!” He grabs Zura’s collar and, slamming open the shoji door into one of the house’s inner rooms, drags Zura forward into the poor light.
Behind them, Elizabeth’s sign reads GOOD LUCK.
***
Even with a caretaker, the house hasn’t weathered the years well. The dark rooms smell of mildew and rotting tatami, air thick and musty. In the dim light, with Katsura’s ki restive beside him, it’s irritatingly reminiscent of the old days. Of spending nights in tiny forgotten shrines and temples, their ancient timbers dark with age and still smelling of incense infused over centuries while everything else was broken and stained and dust-covered. They visited more than Gintoki can remember, the smell and the sense of age and emptiness and abandonment all running together in his mind. And bringing with them the inevitable final memory: that by the time they left, the ancient buildings always smelt more of blood than anything else.
Below their stocking feet, the floorboards creak. The ones in the temples always did too, he remembers. When they didn’t collapse all together.
“So,” he says, as they walk through one dim room. The light is just enough to make out vague shapes by, to detect screens and walls before he runs into them. “Whose house is it?”
“I don’t see why I should tell you what you should already know,” says Katsura. “I’m not your nursemaid.”
“You could pass for one.” They reach a wall, and grope along it until they find the sliding shoji door and push it aside; it no longer sits properly in its grooves, and rattles in protest as Katsura shoves it along.
“That dowdy look is much more your style,” replies Katsura as they step into the new room; it’s even darker than the last. They must be in the very centre of the mansion, away from all windows and the bright sunlight outside. Gintoki looks around out of habit, but can hardly see anything here. Can’t even detect the far wall.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he mutters.
Off in the distance, there’s a prolonged thumping followed by a clatter; probably Shinpachi and Kagura breaking something. Losing his vein of thought, Gintoki glances in Katsura’s general vicinity. “Whose house is it, Zura?”
It’s cold here, with no light to warm the air. It may be that a cold breeze is coming up through the floor – possibly the wooden floorboards have begun to give in. Gintoki shivers slightly, and hitches his yukata higher on his shoulder. He draws his bokutou and uses it to sweep in front of him like a blind man with a cane, searching for obstacles. “Zura?” he says, when there’s no answer. It’s only then that he realises the Jyoui leader’s ki hasn’t followed him into the new room – has he developed a fear of the dark? – and turns back to the room they were just in. “Whose house is this?”
“Not yours,” hisses a wet voice from directly in front of him. There’s a burst of ki now, cold and clammy, like sweat on cooling skin. No one feels like that; there is no human alive whose vital energy, however weak or corrupt or evil, feels cold. Ki is the fire of the spirit, and although it’s a clichéd metaphor it’s also a valid description. The sensation of it against him makes Gintoki’s skin crawl.
Gintoki reacts before he’s actually identified the noise of a naked katana slicing through the air, swivels and blocks the blow whistling down at his head from behind and then pushes his attacker back into the better-lit room. He waits for the second strike, bokutou held in a stance ready to meet any attack, but it doesn’t come. He becomes aware, as he waits in the gloom, that there is only one silhouette here. And that he never heard Zura leave.
“Zura?” he says, very blandly.
“Wrong,” says Zura’s silhouette, as the sword whistles towards him.
***
Kagura kicks her way through the dark mansion, followed by Elizabeth and Shinpachi. When she heard they were going ghost hunting, she’d been thrilled. Last week on the Midnight Hour they showed five episodes of Haunted Edo, complete with green light and groaning people in white kimonos and things flying around rooms all on their own. The Ghost Hunters had run around with big sticks covered in paper and bells and beaten the ghosts out. She’d been looking forward to beating some ghosts with her bare fists. But so far it’s all been boring.
The old house is smelly and dark, and Shinpachi keeps running into things, and Ellie keeps knocking over the cold sconces for the candles they don’t have. Kagura herself has broken several shoji doors by accident and a few walls on purpose, completely ignoring Shinpachi’s horrified screaming in her ears, but it hasn’t done anything. The ghosts don’t want to come out even for full-scale property damage, and she’s getting bored.
“Let’s go outside,” she suggests, shoving open a pair of shutters with complete disregard for the distressed whine they make before snapping under the force of her palm. “Look, it’s nice and sunny! Maybe the ghosts are in the garden!”
I LIKE SUNSHINE, reads Ellie’s sign.
“See, Shinpachi! Ellie agrees!”
“For the last time, the ghosts aren’t outside! If there are any, they’re in here somewhere. Probably down in a cold, pitch-black basement filled with spiders and rats. Or in the attic where the floors creak and the shutters knock in the wind and…” Shinpachi pauses, and then continues on in a brighter tone. “You know, maybe we should go look in the garden. Gin-san and Katsura-san are already search the house, after all…”
Kagura likes the garden; it has koi big enough to eat for dinner and a real shishi-odoshi that thunks down onto the rocks below with a satisfying sound. She happily heads towards the shutter-covered doors which doubtless open onto an engawa, currently-useless umbrella resting on her shoulder. And realises that, although Ellie’s pattering feet are following, they’ve lost the second pair of footsteps.
Kagura stops, and slowly looks to the side. Ellie’s standing there staring at her. Her sign reads: IT’S ALWAYS A MISTAKE TO TURN AROUND.
Kagura turns around.
It’s a mistake.
Series: Gintama
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13 for Jyoui war flashbacks
Notes: I'll probably finish this. Someday. Also I began writing this before seeing the ghost ryokan episodes, so I suppose it's AU.
Summary: The Yorozuya get sent on an exorcism. Unsurprisingly, things do not go smoothly.
“My building,” says their client, a withered old man with a bent back and a voice that’s so soporific even Shinpachi’s fighting to stay awake, “is haunted.”
He tells them he’s the ancient retainer of a mansion whose actual owners passed away in the Jyoui war, digressing for several minutes to lament that tragedy before moving on. With no next of kin to inherit and most of the government’s documents destroyed in the conflict, the house has been left empty and forgotten as the years passed. Except, that is, for the single elderly servant pottering through its halls, cleaning rooms no one uses and tending to a garden no one sees. Shinpachi thinks drowsily that that must be some kind of haunting all on its own, the resident ghost sitting in front of them staring down at the table with threadbare clothes and milky eyes.
“And?” asks Gintoki, cleaning his ear with his pinky. Shinpachi is too busy trying to stay awake to rebuke him. Kagura, whose sense of social conscience is entirely dependent on her mood and how many people she’ll get to beat up exercising it, is stretched out asleep on the couch next to their client like some giant red sausage with her mouth wide open.
“My family is insisting I move in with them; they say I’m too weak to live alone. There will be no one left to care for the estate once I am gone. But as long as it is haunted, no one will purchase it,” explains the man in a faltering tone. “I couldn’t stand to see it fall into ruin, with no one there to care for it.”
“You want us to chase away the ghosts?” asks Shinpachi, and kicks Kagura as she rolls over to scratch at her stomach. He nearly loses his leg when she launches a return blow in her sleep; it misses him and lands against the table, adding another hairline crack to the already abused piece of furniture. She sits up, blinking at her reddening hand in puzzlement.
The old man nods, apparently not having noticed the random spat of violence beside him, and leans forward on his walking stick. “That’s right.”
“Why us?” asks Gintoki, staring in a kind of fascinated horror as their client yawns, exposing two full lines of toothless pink gums. “Y-you should use a priest for exorcisms.” His eyes are wide as saucers, staring into the depths of the old man’s wrinkled mouth.
“Don’t argue with clients,” hisses Shinpachi.
“What’s going on?” asks Kagura, turning to look at the man she’s sharing the couch with as if he hadn’t been there for the past fifteen minutes. “Who’s this old geezer?”
“He’s our client,” says Shinpachi, beginning to work up momentum again now that it looks like the long answers are out of the way.
“I tried that,” explains the old man, apparently several comments behind, “but they said they couldn’t do anything about it. Priests these days… when I was young, we had real priests full of vim and vigour; they could throw out twenty ghosts before breakfast!” He shakes his fist in some kind of gesture possibly meant to embody vim and vigour, voice wavering with the motion.
“Look Gin-chan, he doesn’t have any teeth! Is he growing in more? Will they be big and sharp, like a shark’s?”
Shinpachi regrets suggesting Kagura try to educate herself about Earth’s ecosystem. Especially since she set about it, like she sets about all her educational endeavours, by finding a likely-looking channel on TV.
“Maa, Kagura-chan, it’s just another reflection of the inequalities of society. As men grow old and lose their teeth, the rich ones replace them with diamonds, and the poor ones have to eat their wives’ horrible soup for the rest of their lives.”
“When I get old, I’m going to replace my teeth with a shark’s,” declares Kagura.
“That is not how it works,” cuts in Shinpachi, before any more idiocy can take place. “You can get perfectly acceptable dentures from the dentist. And anyway, you should be listening to our client.”
“Oh, right,” says Gintoki, as if he’s somehow forgotten about the stranger sitting three feet across from him. “Well, what do you want us to do about it?”
“You already asked, Gin-san. He wants us to exorcise his house.”
“I don’t think Sadaharu would let us use his leash.” Kagura frowns, contemplating. Behind Gintoki’s unused desk, the giant dog barks at his name.
“Not exercise, exorcise. Get rid of evil spirits, ghosts. His house is haunted,” adds Shinpachi, recalling who he’s speaking to, and wondering whether it will be his fate to spend his life acting as a tape player.
“Wow! A haunted house! We get to beat up ghosts!” Kagura shoots up like a bright red rocket, startling the old man.
“Just ignore her,” advises Gintoki. And then, “So do you know whose ghosts these are, anyway?”
“No. No one ever sees them. They leave me alone, but they don’t like strangers.”
“You said everyone in the family was dead,” says Shinpachi. “Could it be them?”
“No, no, the masters would never do that!”
“I don’t think it works that way…”
“The masters would never do that!” repeats their client. Shinpachi sighs. It’s going to be one of those cases. The ones that are like… all the rest of their cases, really.
Gintoki can tell before they’ve even arrived at the gate that the estate is going to be the typical walled high-class mansion, complete with manicured grounds including zen garden and koi pond. The old man has given them the key and they enter without any difficulty, although really, hopping the fence and breaking open the front door wouldn’t have been very hard at all either. In today’s world of advanced laser anti-burglar systems and butterfly-sensitive landmines, the mansion’s rusty lock is a startling anachronism.
“This place is amazing!” says Kagura, staring around the wide gardens – greenery is scarce on a world with no sunlight, and she still hasn’t quite come to view expensively-landscaped gardens with the desiccated cynicism she’s capable of applying to most everything else.
“Aa,” agrees Gintoki glumly. “You can learn all about the evils of our discriminatory class system here, Kagura-chan. Pay attention, and learn how the wealthy have always unfairly beaten down those cursed by fate with natural perms.”
“That is completely untrue,” says Shinpachi, grabbing Kagura by the back of her dress before she can disappear into the grounds.
“Let go, Shinpachi! I’m going to look for ghosts!”
“The ghosts are inside.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe they’re in the garden. Maybe they’re having a picnic. Just because you don’t know how to have fun doesn’t mean ghosts don’t, Shinpachi. Gin-san, Shinpachi is discriminating against dead people!”
“Maa, Shinpachi, I would have thought you knew better. And after all the time I’ve spent trying to instil the ideals of the samurai into you.” Gintoki shakes his head in disappointment.
“What time? You haven’t spent any time, you just make me cook your meals and clean your apartment!” Shinpachi momentarily stops towing Kagura, the three of them now standing in the mansion’s doorway. They’ve long since mastered the ability to bicker and work at the same time; otherwise, they would have starved ages ago.
“Well, it seems I was right after all not to advance you to the more complex lessons. We may have to start again from the beginning.”
“Don’t say such ridiculous things!” Shinpachi opens his mouth, no doubt ready to start more admonishing. Before he can a long, low moan drifts out from within the house. All three of them freeze, Kagura in the process of poking at the furin, Gintoki picking his nose, Shinpachi pinwheeling as usual. They turn to each other and break out in low whispers, faces stuck in masks of confidence.
“W-w-what was that?”
“Was it the ghost? The ghost? But what about the picnic?”
“Should we still go inside? What do we do? Ah, Gin-san, come back!” Shinpachi grabs the retreating Gintoki’s shirt and swings him around, using the momentum to toss him at the front doors. His weight, combined with the momentum, causes him to knock the doors right out of their thin grooves and he tumbles into the dark corridor beyond with an echoing crash. Scrambling hurriedly to his feet, the samurai draws his bokutou.
“Ah, ah, pardon the intrusion,” he stutters, glancing frantically around. “Is anyone home? Even as I say it, I really hope you aren’t. I mean – hello?” Behind him, Shinpachi and Kagura creep up, holding shinai and umbrella in white-knuckled grips.
The poor light slanting in from the doorway isn’t strong enough to light the long corridor stretching the length of the house. From within the thick darkness there comes a slow, heavy shuffling. The sound of something moving down the hallway with uneven movements, encumbered by heavy layers of fabric. Gintoki laughs nervously, eye twitching.
“Ahaha, maybe we’ll just come back later. It really isn’t anything important at all. Sorry to disturb you!” He tries to back out, and finds himself shoved forward by Shinpachi and Kagura.
“You can’t, Gin-chan! We have to fight the ghost!” Kagura shoves him in the small of the back, causing him to bend in an awkward U curve as he struggles to keep from advancing.
“That’s right, Gin-san! Our job is to get rid of it!” Shinpachi lends a hand, causing the silver-haired man to flail.
“If you two are so eager, why don’t you take the lead?!”
Ahead of them in the musty corridor, a form begins to solidify out of the darkness. Long dark hair, pale skin, a plain kimono. It advances with unsteady, slightly staggering movements, pale hands stretched out as if searching for something.
They all three of them stare, caught in a single instant of immobilizing fear. And then Gintoki turns to run. And Kagura and Shinpachi, acting in whiplash unison, shove him forward together.
“Go deal with the ghost, Gin-chan!”
“Good luck, Gin-san!”
“You bastards, you just want to sacrifice me to save yourselves!” He nearly has the upper hand of them, but Kagura – who has no scruples about fighting dirty – kicks his leg out from under him at the same time as Shinpachi slams forward into his shoulders.
Gintoki goes flying down the corridor, hitting the ground hard and rolling.
Right into the ghost. Which feels suspiciously tangible when he slams into its legs.
They end up on the floor together, Gintoki uppermost and scrambling to pull away from the dark kimono and yellow obi before the thing, whatever it is, recovers and –
Wait. Dark kimono. Yellow obi. Long black hair. Gintoki’s brain operates at break-neck speed.
“Zura?” he asks, eyes narrowing.
On the floor in front of him Zura sits up, rubbing his head. “What are you doing here, Gintoki? And it’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.”
“I should be the one asking that.” Leg muscles wobbling like jelly due to being marinated in adrenaline, Gintoki drops to his haunches and rests some of his weight against his bokutou. “The hell are you doing, wandering around this mansion like goddamn Okiku?”
Zura brushes his hair out of his face, expression flat as always. “As it happens, I was having a nap. My apartment was recently discovered by the Shinsengumi, and I haven’t been able to secure a new one yet. It’s too dangerous to sleep on the streets, and the Jyoui facilities are currently under renovation; we had an incident last week with a time bomb.”
“So you’re just squatting in random peoples’ houses like some kind of bum now? That’s pretty lame.”
“I’m not a bum, I’m Katsura. But this house isn’t a random choice. For one thing, it’s widely known to be mostly abandoned.” Zura stands, patting the dust from his sleeves. Behind him there’s a flash of white and Gintoki tenses, only to relax again. It’s the ridiculous duck.
“Ah, Elizabeth, there you are. No need to worry, it was just these idiots moaning around out here.”
“Moaning?” says Gintoki, ignoring the idiots remark for the moment. “Wasn’t that you?”
Zura’s lip turns slightly. “No. That disgusting sound woke me – I was coming out to see what it was when you cannoned into me.”
“Wait. If it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t us –” Gintoki looks around slowly, as if expecting a white-robed figure to appear out of thin air.
Zura folds his arms. “One of the other reasons for my choosing this mansion,” he admits, “was its reputation. It is supposed to be haunted.”
“Normal people take that as a reason to STAY AWAY!”
“Precisely. No fear of being bothered.”
Gintoki’s opening his mouth to respond to this, when he’s hailed from behind.
“Gin-chaaaaaaaaaan? Are you still alive? Gin-chaaaaaaaan?” Kagura pokes her head around the open door, peering into the darkness. Gintoki sighs.
“Aa. You’d better get your asses over here, you pair of useless cowards.” He waits while they creep in, alert to the possibility of a trap.
“Ah, Zura!” exclaims Kagura when her eyes have adjusted enough to be able to identify the long-haired man. “And Ellie!”
“Not Zura, Katsura,” says Zura.
“Good afternoon, Katsura-san,” adds Shinpachi. “What are you doing here?”
“Squatting,” interrupts Gintoki before Zura can answer. “But now that he’s here, he can help us look for the ghost.”
“Yay! Zura’s going to come ghost-hunting!” Kagura throws up her arms and does a little dance, making her seem for a moment like an innocent little girl rather than a violent bloodthirsty demon in human guise.
“I don’t remember agreeing to work for you,” says Zura, ignoring her.
“I don’t remember asking you to barge in on our work,” replies Gintoki. “But if you want to try to go back to sleep WHILE WE CRASH AROUND HUNTING FOR GHOSTS, GO RIGHT AHEAD, ZURA.” He finishes the sentence at a full-bore yell straight in Zura’s face. Zura stares back at him flatly, the two of them immediately locked in a staring war.
“Um,” says Shinpachi from behind them, “I’m sure that would be really helpful. But maybe we should get started? I think we should try to finish before nightfall, since we didn’t bring any flashlights.”
“How like you to come unprepared for your work,” says Zura, smirking.
“How like you to be squatting in someone else’s house.”
“How like you to be unaware of whose house it is.”
“How like you to – wait, what?” Gintoki stumbles to a halt and backs up, replaying the previous sentence. Zura’s face hardens and he looks away.
“Fine, then, We will help you. It will be faster if we split up into two groups. Elizabeth, will you go with Gintoki?”
“Hey, no way am I going anywhere with the creepy duck. Besides, explain your previous statement, you bastard!”
“Fine then, Elizabeth and I will go with Shinpachi-kun, and you can go with Kagura,” says Zura, ignoring him.
“Like hell. You can come with me and damn well tell me what’s going on here!” He grabs Zura’s collar and, slamming open the shoji door into one of the house’s inner rooms, drags Zura forward into the poor light.
Behind them, Elizabeth’s sign reads GOOD LUCK.
Even with a caretaker, the house hasn’t weathered the years well. The dark rooms smell of mildew and rotting tatami, air thick and musty. In the dim light, with Katsura’s ki restive beside him, it’s irritatingly reminiscent of the old days. Of spending nights in tiny forgotten shrines and temples, their ancient timbers dark with age and still smelling of incense infused over centuries while everything else was broken and stained and dust-covered. They visited more than Gintoki can remember, the smell and the sense of age and emptiness and abandonment all running together in his mind. And bringing with them the inevitable final memory: that by the time they left, the ancient buildings always smelt more of blood than anything else.
Below their stocking feet, the floorboards creak. The ones in the temples always did too, he remembers. When they didn’t collapse all together.
“So,” he says, as they walk through one dim room. The light is just enough to make out vague shapes by, to detect screens and walls before he runs into them. “Whose house is it?”
“I don’t see why I should tell you what you should already know,” says Katsura. “I’m not your nursemaid.”
“You could pass for one.” They reach a wall, and grope along it until they find the sliding shoji door and push it aside; it no longer sits properly in its grooves, and rattles in protest as Katsura shoves it along.
“That dowdy look is much more your style,” replies Katsura as they step into the new room; it’s even darker than the last. They must be in the very centre of the mansion, away from all windows and the bright sunlight outside. Gintoki looks around out of habit, but can hardly see anything here. Can’t even detect the far wall.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he mutters.
Off in the distance, there’s a prolonged thumping followed by a clatter; probably Shinpachi and Kagura breaking something. Losing his vein of thought, Gintoki glances in Katsura’s general vicinity. “Whose house is it, Zura?”
It’s cold here, with no light to warm the air. It may be that a cold breeze is coming up through the floor – possibly the wooden floorboards have begun to give in. Gintoki shivers slightly, and hitches his yukata higher on his shoulder. He draws his bokutou and uses it to sweep in front of him like a blind man with a cane, searching for obstacles. “Zura?” he says, when there’s no answer. It’s only then that he realises the Jyoui leader’s ki hasn’t followed him into the new room – has he developed a fear of the dark? – and turns back to the room they were just in. “Whose house is this?”
“Not yours,” hisses a wet voice from directly in front of him. There’s a burst of ki now, cold and clammy, like sweat on cooling skin. No one feels like that; there is no human alive whose vital energy, however weak or corrupt or evil, feels cold. Ki is the fire of the spirit, and although it’s a clichéd metaphor it’s also a valid description. The sensation of it against him makes Gintoki’s skin crawl.
Gintoki reacts before he’s actually identified the noise of a naked katana slicing through the air, swivels and blocks the blow whistling down at his head from behind and then pushes his attacker back into the better-lit room. He waits for the second strike, bokutou held in a stance ready to meet any attack, but it doesn’t come. He becomes aware, as he waits in the gloom, that there is only one silhouette here. And that he never heard Zura leave.
“Zura?” he says, very blandly.
“Wrong,” says Zura’s silhouette, as the sword whistles towards him.
Kagura kicks her way through the dark mansion, followed by Elizabeth and Shinpachi. When she heard they were going ghost hunting, she’d been thrilled. Last week on the Midnight Hour they showed five episodes of Haunted Edo, complete with green light and groaning people in white kimonos and things flying around rooms all on their own. The Ghost Hunters had run around with big sticks covered in paper and bells and beaten the ghosts out. She’d been looking forward to beating some ghosts with her bare fists. But so far it’s all been boring.
The old house is smelly and dark, and Shinpachi keeps running into things, and Ellie keeps knocking over the cold sconces for the candles they don’t have. Kagura herself has broken several shoji doors by accident and a few walls on purpose, completely ignoring Shinpachi’s horrified screaming in her ears, but it hasn’t done anything. The ghosts don’t want to come out even for full-scale property damage, and she’s getting bored.
“Let’s go outside,” she suggests, shoving open a pair of shutters with complete disregard for the distressed whine they make before snapping under the force of her palm. “Look, it’s nice and sunny! Maybe the ghosts are in the garden!”
I LIKE SUNSHINE, reads Ellie’s sign.
“See, Shinpachi! Ellie agrees!”
“For the last time, the ghosts aren’t outside! If there are any, they’re in here somewhere. Probably down in a cold, pitch-black basement filled with spiders and rats. Or in the attic where the floors creak and the shutters knock in the wind and…” Shinpachi pauses, and then continues on in a brighter tone. “You know, maybe we should go look in the garden. Gin-san and Katsura-san are already search the house, after all…”
Kagura likes the garden; it has koi big enough to eat for dinner and a real shishi-odoshi that thunks down onto the rocks below with a satisfying sound. She happily heads towards the shutter-covered doors which doubtless open onto an engawa, currently-useless umbrella resting on her shoulder. And realises that, although Ellie’s pattering feet are following, they’ve lost the second pair of footsteps.
Kagura stops, and slowly looks to the side. Ellie’s standing there staring at her. Her sign reads: IT’S ALWAYS A MISTAKE TO TURN AROUND.
Kagura turns around.
It’s a mistake.
