[Gintama] Immortal

The sunset more than ten years ago was as red as blood, and the red maple was scattered everywhere, and the promenade of the temple was full of shadows.

Maple shadows intertwined on the mirror-like floor, that figure stood in the depths of the darkness, the gentle and handsome face in the past was not smiling, and the soft voice was full of cold malice.

"The Matsushita village school is nothing but a beautiful lie."

Xu sighed mercilessly at the foolishness of his other self.

As if he had seen the predetermined ending of this farce, he sneered softly: "The beloved teacher is actually a bloody executioner, and Yoshida Shoyo is just another identity conceived by "I" in a whimsical way. "

That voice crossed the barrier of time without hindrance, and sounded clearly in her ears again:

——"Accompany "me" to play meaningless house, are you also immersed in this role-playing game, Yae? "

The water in the tea kettle is ready.

The soft water smoke permeated above the stove, and the thin boiling foam spread to the edge of the tea kettle, agitating cautiously and restrainedly.

Yae looked at the window, it was already evening, and a large swath of twilight covered the sky, like wet kite paper, hazy with hazy colors.

The figure standing by the window with his back to her before turned around at some point, his expression was mostly covered by the bandage, and he tried his best to endure without saying a word.

Yae realizes that she missed her only chance to play dumb.At the moment when she was in a trance, her silence had already given Takasugi some kind of answer.

She looks aside:

"...The water is already boiled, would you like a bowl of tea first?"

The thick silence was unbearable, and she just wanted to break the suffocating atmosphere.

"...You haven't answered me yet, who is the teacher?"

Takasugi's voice was very low, so low that it was a little hoarse.

The tea bowl is thick and thick porcelain, with a warm texture, low-key and simple.

The scalding water flows into the bottom of the bowl, and the powdered tea melts, like algae in the pool unfurling green tentacles.

Yae brushed away the tea dust at the bottom of the bowl with a tea whisk.

"Who else is Yoshida Shoyo? He is the teacher of Matsushita Village School."

She doesn't think it's a lie.

"Yoshida Shoyo" was born for Matsushita Village Juku.

It is no longer "Xu" who has neither life nor death, but "Yoshida Shoyo" with warmth and smile.

That person became a teacher just as she expected, a fact she would undoubtedly defend with her life.

"...but before?"

Takasugi desperately endured, the emotion in his chest seemed to be about to break the dike, and it was about to crush his ribs, and let out a mournful cry that only he could hear.

"Before Matsushita Village Juku existed, who was the teacher?"

"Jin..."

"answer me!"

Yae raised her head, and Takasugi stared at her.

"What are those hints you kept giving us before?"

She was dumbfounded.

Seeing Yae's momentary aphasia, Takasugi laughed softly: "The hidden identity of the teacher is related to Naraku of Tenshoin. I figured this out a long time ago. How could a teacher in a remote village need Naraku to take him into custody, but what about those reminders? "

Those seemingly ordinary bedtime stories, the allusions she always mentioned to the private school students repeatedly, the tragedy of Urashima Taro's long life, the fate of Kaguya Hime and her relatives forever separated, and the Noh drama in which the protagonist is a dead soul, wearing a mask in the world Wandering ghosts—

"You always tell stories like this." The boy from more than ten years ago had bright eyes and a clear voice.

Yes, she used to tell those stories all the time.

Because the teenagers who listen to stories will grow up, but their teachers will not grow old.

Day after day, day after day, one day they will no longer ask questions about the story, and their puzzled eyes will turn to look at the forever young teacher.

The boy's answer back then still rings in my ears.

"The protagonists in the story are people who do not belong to this world, and the time that passes through them is different from the people around them."

Takasugi lowered his voice, his voice seemed to be laughing, but there was no smile in his eyes.

"Why do you keep giving us hints? Because sooner or later you plan to speak out? Or because sooner or later it will be exposed?"

He is such a smart person, but at the moment of pause, he could clearly see the subtle changes in Yae's expression.

"It seems to be the latter."

Takasugi smiled coldly, that smile was really sad.

"What is the fact that you are worried about being exposed? Let me guess, it must be related to the content of the story, right?"

"...I'm sorry." Yae gathered her hands on her knees. "That's not my intention."

She gave those reminders back then, not to see the current situation.

After all the calculations, she never thought that the teacher who could watch her students live until they died would be the first to leave.

"Teacher is not an ordinary human being, is he?" Takasugi's gaze was extremely hot. The loss of his left eye did not dim his vision. On the contrary, his gaze was sharper than ever, like burning hot fire.

"It's not entirely impossible, because you are not. At least, you cannot be classified as an ordinary human being."

He didn't want to push her like this, but he couldn't help it.

Yoshida Shoyo is Shinsuke Takasugi's heart disease, the scar that rots in his blood, the root of his nightmares day and night for the past ten years, the reason why he can't die, and the reason why he is still alive.

He is still alive today, and his only purpose is revenge.

To the world, but also to yourself.

Takasugi Shinsuke has a blood feud with himself.

The tea kettle was quietly boiling water, until it overflowed, and slowly trickled down the body of the kettle, and fell into the rectangular lacquer tray.No other sound could be heard in the tea room.

"...Yes." After a long while, Yae put down his hands, "I am not a human being. Just like I occupy someone else's body now, I used someone else's body when I was in private school."

——"As for you," Xu Xu's voice in the memory contained cold sarcasm, "you can't even call it a ghost, it's just an existence pretending to be a human body."

"The Yae of Matsushita Village School you know is not my real appearance."

She is not a girl whose life stays in her twenties.

She doesn't have the body temperature of a human being, nor does she have hands that can truly embrace others. When she exists in the posture of her own self, she can't even touch the pale cheek of a man who is no longer a teenager.

She doesn't know what she looks like because she exists in a world without reflections.

Xu and Songyang seem to be the only ones who know the answer to this question.

Gao Shan was silent for a long time.

When he spoke again, he only said one sentence:

"...Who killed the teacher?"

Every word was paused, and there was a bloody smell between the lines.

Since Yoshida Shoyang is not an ordinary human being, with his strength, if he hadn't had hidden secrets back then, how could he have been easily manipulated by the shogunate, and he ended up being beheaded by his disciples in the end.

The tea soup in the bowl has long been cold.

Yae lowered his gaze slightly, looking at the condensed tea green in the bowl.

"I can't tell."

With his expression covered by shadows, Takasugi took a trembling breath, his knuckles turning white from his fingers.

"What do you mean you can't tell?"

"It's literally. I have an appointment with someone, so I can't talk about it."

Seeing what Takasugi wanted to ask, Yae sighed softly: "I'm not a human being, so I can't break the contract. Language has a different binding force on me, Jinsuke."

At this moment, she was almost grateful for the contract.

"What are you going to do if I tell you that person's name?"

Gao Shan's figure trembled uncontrollably, as if he could no longer suppress the majestic killing intent, his voice contained biting hostility: "I will kill him."

He will drag everyone to hell with him.

"I will not let anyone who has hurt the teacher go."

As if seeing the scene where the head of his mentor fell to the ground ten years ago again, Takasugi tightened his jaw, and the monstrous hatred burned in his chest. The governor of the ghost army who was strategizing lost all his composure when it came to the name of Yoshida Shoyo, baring like a wounded beast. Showing your fangs is more extreme and dangerous than ever.

Yae held the thick porcelain tea bowl that had cooled down long ago and remained silent.

Letting the current Takasugi face Kaigoro is tantamount to courting death.

She was silent, but Takasugi didn't stop.

He suppressed his rapid breathing, tried his best to calm down and think, and his voice was very hoarse:

"Why did you become Naraku's target? You are still alive, which means you didn't die at that time. During this period...you were in Naraku at Tianzhaoyuan, didn't you? Since you are restrained by others, it means you have mastered what they don't want You know something. If you don’t kill you, maybe it’s because it’s useful for them to keep you, or maybe they can’t kill you.”

Almost unconsciously, he rested his fingers on the saber at his side, tapping his knuckles on the painted scabbard.

After knocking on the scabbard, Gao Shan suddenly raised his eyes.

"Are they the same person?"

Yae's expression didn't move.

The inside of her mouth smelled of blood, but she didn't seem to be shaken.

"The person who made you shut up is the same person who killed the teacher back then?"

This question is too sharp, like a straight knife, so sharp that it will stab the questioner himself.

"is not it?"

"..."

"Is it right!!"

"Takasugi Shinsuke." Yae suddenly opened his mouth, and the person opposite paused slightly.

She maintained a calm expression, but her eyes were extremely sad:

"Do you have to be so unwilling to let yourself go?"

After a very short silence, Takasugi laughed.

"Let it go?" He raised his hand to cover his face, and let out a low-pitched laugh that was almost broken from the depths of his throat, "I just said that I will not let anyone who killed the teacher back then go."

Ten years ago, in order to get back their teacher, the students of Matsushita Village School crossed mountains of corpses and seas of blood, stepped over the corpses of comrades-in-arms and classmates, and saw hell with their own eyes, but in the end they could only survive by trampling on the life of their teacher.

Yae couldn't bear it: "...Songyang didn't make the choice to see you now."

"Teacher shouldn't have died in the first place!" Gao Shan's voice was full of distorted pain.

He should be the one who died.

He did die then, too.

Takasugi Shinsuke's world collapsed with Yoshida Matsuyo's death.

"...Don't you hate it?" Gao Shan asked her in a hoarse voice, "We students are also responsible for killing the teacher. Haven't you hated it?"

Isn't that person very important to you?

hate him?

Hate Songyang students?

Yae shook his head.Then shook his head again.

"...It's not like that, Jinsuke."

There was very slight moisture in the eyes, but the strange mist quickly faded away and disappeared without a trace.

"It was you who made that person a teacher."

The twelfth generation of Tenshoin Naraku wants to become a human.

The gentle breeze blew across the foot of the mountain, and the man wearing the mask of the yata bird once looked at the distant sky, his deep voice seemed to be filled with melancholy and also seemed to be smiling.

——"If possible, I even want to mix in with the children and study with them."

Learn how to wash your bloody hands.

Matsushita village school is not a false lie.

It may be as short as a dream, but for 500 years, the monster who only knows how to kill has indeed obtained pure love from humans.

The monster gave love and finally got love.

It was those seemingly ignorant children who taught the immortal monster what it means to be human.

It was Yoshida Matsuyo's student who made him a teacher.

Until the last moment, that person can also die as a teacher.

Yae spoke softly:

"You are the treasures of Songyang."

She had seen such a gentle look in the eyes of the students chattering and laughing in the teacher's arms.

Such tender love can give people the courage to embrace any pain.

She raised her eyes and quietly stared at the dazed Takasugi.

"So no, I don't hate you. On the contrary, I'm happy to see you alive again, I'm really happy."

During those seven years in the Matsushita Village School, when playing the role of human beings who are dying in the blink of an eye——

She used to feel happy from the bottom of her heart.

The author has something to say:

The Takasugi Line is almost over, and the next step is to take over the Yingui Line

I have to say that Takasugi before the Assassination of the General was really... very sick

After Yin Gao beat the other party to death, he finally beat Shu Tai. Most of his illnesses were cured, and after a good night's sleep, he could calmly fight back

These two people have to fight, the kind of fight to death-"Because I have you; because you have me"

The one who can bear Takasugi's pain, and the one who understands Takasugi the most in this world, is Gintoki

Speaking of this, I have to admire Zi'an's skills. The assassination chapter is really well deserved, so good that I am at a loss for words

Especially the part where Takasugi presses Gintoki to the ground and beats him to death without a clear line

... Anyway, I'm at a loss for words

I used to be very worried about Takasugi. I thought this person took all of Huiji's bound to hurt and deep love and longevity, and his body was full of flags.

Recently, I saw Takasugi getting closer to the direction of the funny role in the comics, which made me feel a little more at ease.

Funny service will not be short-lived! ... the young general does not count