closed to (his) souji.

[hakodate]

Where are you.

[Look, he's so worried about you that he's going to play nice and not say "fuck."]

Comments

[creatic]

...I'm pretty sure I told you I was fine and you didn't need to bother going out of your way.

[ he sounds a little begrudging as he says that, tone a little quieter. ]

Go worry about everyone else. There's a lot of us again and you can only look in so many directions at once.

[ it's not just the two of them, anymore, and maybe that too is just another reason he's being such a hardhead about this. it's hard enough to open up even just a little to Hijikata alone; now that they're swarmed again with the others, they might as well have not only gone back to zero, but progressed backwards, in the process. ]

[hakodate]

Everyone tells me they're fine.

[He doesn't finish that thought, but it's obvious enough where he's going with it - that he has a hard time believing it unless he sees it with his own eyes, because most of the Shinsengumi would cheerfully tell Hijikata they were fine even if their intestines had just been removed via their throat.

But he doesn't go into that - he just stands up, dusts himself off.]

[creatic]

That's because it's not like if you were told otherwise it would change a single thing.

[ other than make Hijikata more miserable, that is ]

[hakodate]

[What, and having the wool pulled over his eyes doesn't make him feel worse? He shouldn't have ignored it, he shouldn't have assumed, he should have realized -]

Maybe not.

[But there's something very noncommittal about the way he says that - because he's thinking that it's not like being told they're fine changes anything, either, except perhaps for leaving him a little further in the dark, when he of all people shouldn't be.]

[creatic]

[ . . . ]

Hajime-kun is gone, right?

[ subject change don't you go there with your brackets JFC. ]

[hakodate]

...I haven't been able to find him since I remembered who I am.

[So yes, gone. In some dungeon dimension or...who knows where. He's not sure how to feel about it, because he doesn't see any particular reason to believe that the Trumps would do anything so generous as send anyone home when they tire of playing with them (and home doesn't always sound like such a great mercy, for them), but -

He doesn't know whether it's easier or harder without Saitou around.]