The former Shimura dojo bustled with activity behind its walls, even this early in the morning when the frost still covered the grass. The panting sounds of men training hard with the sword can be heard inside, along with the laughter and conversations of people taking a break. It was hard to believe that back in the beginning of the anime, this place was on the verge of closing down.

Shinpachi the Kendo Instructor stood at the front of the training hall swinging his shinai downwards in repetitive movements. His students consisted of a feeble old man holding his practice sword with skeletal arms that wouldn't stop trembling, and another old man sitting on the floor doing yoga.

The panting came from outside. A dozen hobos laid sprawled on the ground in the courtyard, panting hard as if every breath could be their last. Tae's victims.

Tae stood behind a cauldron, scooping liquid Dark Matter into the bowls of unwitting hobos who had lined up for free food. She stirred the liquid with a ladle with a smile on her face. Unidentified objects floated in the dark waters and purples fumes erupted out of the bubbles.

The hobos who had already experienced the horrors, the Author herself included, loitered around in the courtyard. They laughed and talked with each other on their morning breaks, some of which had lasted for years.

The place which had once been almost empty was now far from desolate. The Shimura homeless shelter had been revived.

"What?! It's a dojo! Still a dojo!" Shinpachi screamed at the description. "Not a homeless shelter!"

Tae looked over from her soup kitchen. "Shin-chan, when you're running a business, you have to be flexible enough to change your business model to meet the demands of the market." She turned to the next hobo in line and offered him a ladleful of "soup". "There you go. Enjoy."

"Sis! You're killing off our market! At this rate, all the hobos in the city will disappear and we'll go out of business!"

Tae turned to the next hobo in line with a pasted smile. Her face darkened when she saw him.

A gorilla stood at the front, a butt-naked gorilla-hobo too poor to afford clothing. He didn't even have a bowl.

"Otae-chan~! Feed me!" Kondo opened his mouth wide before her face.

With a battlecry, Tae thrusted the ladle into his mouth like a spear with so much force that it sent Kondo flying back, knocking over the line of hobos like dominoes.

A madao, wearing a cardboard box around his waist, stood frozen at the spot, just about to get in line for some food to eat. He stared at all the fallen comrades at his feet and sauntered away with quick steps, glad he got lucky for once and didn't have to join them.

He made his way to the corner of the yard where a group of about twenty hobos sat in a circle on the gravel. One of the hobos wore an expensive-looking black suit and a koala mask over her head— the Author, who pretended to be a koala so she could live in the zoo.

Madao stopped beside the circle. "What's going on over here?"

"Ah, Madao, wanna join us?" The koala turned to him. "The Unemployment Support Circle just isn't complete without a madao."

"Stop pretending I don't have a name! All of you!" Madao pulled at his hair in desperation. "And what the hell is an Unemployment Support Circle?"

The Author smiled. "It's a new program, Madao, to give underprivileged madaos a chance to vent on how they ended up falling to the rock bottom of rock-bottom and offer them the encouragement that they need to pull their lives back together."

Madao's brows twitched. "H-Hey, you think we're rock-bottom? You calling us lowlifes who deserve to be looked down on and pitied and stepped over and laughed at? How's that supposed to be encouraging?!"

He sat down anyways after some hesitation, just in case this could help him find a job.

The Author gave an eager smile and surveyed the faces of the hobos that had gathered. Most of them stared ahead with soulless hooded eyes. Some of them picked their noses out of boredom, then picked at the gunk between their toes. But one of them stood out from the others— a short old man with thick swirly glasses sitting cross-legged with a stern look on his face. Despite his lack of pants, he had the unwavering aura of a noble warrior.

"Let's start with you, Musashi. Would you like to tell us what your life was like before you ended up here? Er... spoilers."

Musashi stared ahead, his expression unchanging.

Musashi stared ahead, the swirls of his glasses going loli... loli... loli... pop!

"I don't remember."

The shadows hanged in the hard corners of his face, motionless as the wind blew against his silver hair.

The Author quickly googled some encouraging words on her laptop. "Good job! I'm so proud of you! Okay, next!"

"What 'good job'?!" Madao screamed like a straight-man. "He didn't even do anything! If you're gonna give encouragement, don't say something so generic. At least make it fit the situation!"

He took some deep breaths and calmed down. His sunglasses gleamed as he looked to all the madaos sitting here in a similar situation as himself.

"I guess it helps to have people who'd listen to my troubles." His expression became serious as he pushed up his sunglasses. "Don't need encouragement or anything like that, just someone who'd lend an ear."

The others in the circle yawned and scratched their butts. A few of them curled up to take a nap. One of them got up and left.

"You probably wouldn't believe me, seeing how I look now," Madao kept talking. "And even I'm starting to believe it was all a dream, but I used to be up there all the way at the top of the ladder. It used to feel like I had the whole world in my hands and my whole life laid out before me. Never thought I'd end up here..."

"I— I made a mistake somewhere along the way," Madao continued. "Punched an Amanto in the face. Don't even know why I did it. A spur-of-the-moment thing, I guess. But that one little mistake, just one little thing—"

"So who wants to share next?" The Author looked to the hobos sitting in the circle. "Anyone?"

The words blew Madao over like a punch in the face. "Hey! I was in the middle of my monolog—"

The guy beside him elbowed him in the forehead, the final blow. Madao fell back, knocked out on the ground.

The assailant came into view as Madao fell. He looked over with round guilt-free eyes... gleaming crimson in sadistic innocence. "Oh, is it my turn?"

Sougo slouched cross-legged on the ground, his katana laying by his side.

The Author turned to him in surprise despite being the one who wrote it. "Sougo! What are you doing here? You're not a madao yet!"

"I'm not a madao, just unemployed. There's a difference." Sougo shrugged. "I thought this place was for unemployed people, so hear me out, would you?"

The other hobos ignored him like they ignored Madao, so he turned to the camera to the readers who cared to listen.

"You see, my old job was kind of a dead-end job. The skills I learned there weren't really transferable." He put on his inspirational storytelling face as he recounted his job-hunting experience.

***

Flashback: A few days ago

Sougo sat on a chair in a small meeting room facing his two interviewers. He dressed in a clean suit with his hair combed back until not a single strand was out of place. He sat with his back straight and had a pleasant smile on his face in attempt to disguise himself as a decent person.

One of the interviewers, a grumpy-looking man who wore a baseball cap on his head, looked Sougo up and down with dull unblinking eyes and curled his lips unimpressed. His cap had an emblem of an eggplant on it, the symbol of the Edo Eggplants, the city's football team, probably there to hide his bald spot.

The other interviewer, a spindly man who proudly showed off his half-bald samurai haircut, was busy flipping through a pile of paper and didn't even look at Sougo.

The unwillingly bald man cleared his throat. His gaze fixed on Sougo as if judging his every response. "So you want to be Captain of the Edo Eggplants? Are you good at football?"

"I'm good at being Captain."

"That's not enough!" The unwillingly bald guy slammed his hands on the table. "You gotta be good at football to be in a football team! Do you even play football?"

"Of course~." Sougo's smile widened at his memories. "I played footàball with my former boss all the time~. I think I'm really good at it."

The proudly bald guy stopped at one of the papers and spoke with his eyes still glued to it. "It says on your resume that you worked at the Shinsengumi for five years and before that you studied at the Shieikan dojo*. Tell me what you did there. Tell me your life story."

[* historical name of Kondo's dojo]

Sougo paused for a moment. He looked to them with innocent eyes and blinked. "Okay, where should I start? When I was twelve, I killed a person. When I was thirteen, I killed twenty people. When I was fifteen, I killed two people. When I was sixteen, I killed thirty people. When I was seventeen, I killed sixty people. When I was eighteen, I killed eighty people. This year, I only killed fifty people. I think I'm really going downhill. Oh, and I killed an important Amanto person a few weeks ago. Then some more Amanto who came looking for me."

The interviewers stared at Sougo frozen, both of them with eyes opened wide and jaws hanging loose. The papers slipped from the proudly bald man's hands, clacking against the tabletop.

The unwillingly bald man shot up from the chair, his face bright red. "Someone call 911! I think we got a serial killer!"

He stepped over the table and threw himself at Sougo, trying to tackle him to the ground. Sougo sidestepped out of the way without a crack in his calm expression. The man landed face first onto the floor in a clatter of chairs.

"Don't use that number. It's a hassle to go through the call center, you know?" Sougo took out his phone and scrolled through his contact list. "I'll call them directly for you. Just pick an officer~."

End of flashback

***

"And that's what I've been up to for the past few days, one interview after another." Sougo let out a sigh. "It's so hard for burakumin* to find jobs in this country..."

[* outcast communities in Japan composed of those with occupations considered tainted with death]

The Author looked to the next item on her list of encouragements. "Keep fighting! Don't give up!"

The hobos in the circle all stared at the murderer in their midst, wide awake now. Without a word, they ganged up, carried him off and threw him out the gates of the homeless shelter. The koala too.

***

Sougo sat on a park bench as the sun sank under the horizon and the sky faded from bright magenta to violet gray.

He used to always spend the day just sitting here, taking a nice long nap when he was supposed to be on patrol. Back then, it was called slacking off and getting away with it. Now when he could be as lazy as he wanted, it just made him feel like a madao.

He reached into his kimono sleeve and found a few coins in his sleeve pocket. He stared at a ten yen coin and a few fives.

"Shit. I'm broke."

Sure, he made a good salary as First Captain, but he never saved much. Didn't see the point in saving money for the future when he wouldn't have use for it anymore. He had already spent the little he had on hospital bills.

Kondo did try to help. He'd offered to find him a place to live and write a letter of recommendation for a new job. He didn't want that gorilla's help. The Melissans were keeping an eye on his Commander, trying to find every stupid excuse to bring down the Shinsengumi. It wouldn't do Kondo-san any good to get involved with a murderer.

The crows cawed in the dusk.

Sougo looked up. The black birds of death sat on an electric line, a whole row of them all staring at him, their beady eyes fixed on him, watching... and waiting...

"What are you looking at?" Sougo glared into their unblinking eyes. "I'm still long ways from becoming your food."

He put on his eyemask and drifted into a light sleep.

He didn't know how long he slept, but when he woke, the sky had already turned dark and streetlamps already lit. He woke to the feeling of a presence from the side coming closer. Could it be another assassin those stupid Melissans had been sending to kill him? He laid his hand over the hilt of his sword and remained still.

He relaxed at the sound of Kagura giggling. That stupid Chinagirl wouldn't leave me alone. 

Kagura stopped in front of him and a mischievous smile stretched across her face. She pulled  his eyemask down to his chin and froze at the sight of his sleeping face. His messy bangs hanged over his closed eyes and his eyelashes brushed gently against his cheekbones.

Kagura snapped out of it and pouted. "What are you doing here, stupid sadist? You homeless?"

"Camping~. I'm just camping~." Sougo yawned and took off his eyemask. "What are you doing here?"

Kagura dressed in her pink pajamas. Her hair fell down her shoulders uncombed. "Gin-chan's spending the night at Pachinko's and Sadaharu's on vacation in the Dog Star, so no one's home and it's so dark and—"

The corners of Sougo's lips curled up. "You're afraid of the dark."

"No way! I'm scared of that TV ghost coming out of the TV and drawing on my face when I'm asleep!"

"So you're scared of the Ring girl? Or scared of face drawings?" Sougo sighed and shook his head. "It's too cold here~. Go home."

Kagura remained where she stood, strangely silent, staring at him with her large blue eyes as the shadows hanged over her. She heard him cough before. People in real life would cough when they had a cold. They'd cough just because they had a sore throat. But fictional characters only coughed when they were about to die.

"What's this?" Sougo smirked at her. "You finally realize how good-looking I am?"

"The Shinigami Eyes..." She had seen it.

"You still holding onto them? I told you they're broken."

She knew they were broken. They had to be. But she couldn't get it out of her head— those numbers hanging over him like a death sentence.

Sougo stood up and patted down his kimono. He did look a bit gaunt, his neck a bit thinner, his kimono seemed to hang looser over his frame.

Kagura never got to meet his sister, but heard she died from some kind of illness. Was the incurable cough of death going to take that sadist too? She couldn't imagine him dying from anything. He couldn't possibly die, but she didn't know. She didn't want to find out, but just had to, but she didn't know how. How was she even supposed to ask him about something like that? He'd only lie about it.

She didn't know how to say it so she just turned to him. "Oi Sadist, are you gonna die soon?"

Sougo punched her square in the face.

It sent her flying. She sat up, vein throbbing and eyes narrowed in irritation.

"My~ my~, what's the matter with you?" Sougo walked over and circled her, looking down with eyes devoid of concern. "You let a guy who's supposed to be dying punch you in the face, so what does that make you? The Chinagirl I knew wasn't this weak. You're not sick with some weird Yato disease, are you?"

"Die!! Sadist!!!" Kagura shot up and threw her fist at him.

Sougo sidestepped and swung a punch to her abdomen, but Kagura grabbed his fist.

She gripped his arm with her super strength and flipped him over her head. Sougo locked his other arm around her neck and pulled her down with him as he crashed to the ground.

They wrestled, both with hungry smiles on their faces, neither of them backing down.

With a final kick in the guts, Sougo threw her off and freed himself. He rolled to his feet.

Kagura didn't stay down for long. She got up, glaring at his back. Her blood boiled in excitement for the fight she so craved. His every punch and every kick reassured her. A guy who could still fight like that couldn't possibly die.

She balled her hands into fists, ready to charge at his undefended back.

Cough.

Kagura's eyes opened wide. Her grin disappeared and her fists fell loose.

Sougo's shoulders shook with every cough. No, those weren't coughs. They sounded more like chuckles. He was laughing.

He looked back at her with a mocking grin. "Stupid Chinagirl, you should see the look on your face."

"Oi! What was that just now? You think it's funny?! You think it's fun to make everyone worry about you?!!"

"Who told you to worry?" Sougo shrugged. "Did you read that manga chapter where the immortal dude stabbed me in the chest? What about that scene two years later where I'll commit seppuku, spoiler alert? If I could survive all that, you think some stupid cough could kill me off?"

Kagura furrowed her brows and gave him a long look, but he seemed fine. He had his usual sadist face that always pissed her off.

Sougo turned around and started walking.     

"Oi, where you going?"

"A sleepover..." Sougo stopped and smiled. "A sleepover at your place. You gonna make a sick person spend the night out here in the cold?"

"Sadist! Who invited you?!!"

Kagura ran after him, the pitter-patter of her footsteps echoing in the night.

***

Next time: The Anti-Foreigner Faction offers help to someone who wants payback from the Shinsengumi...