Hey, hey, is this really okay?
Or can you pull out that standard set of lines?
As long as it’s something Naoya made, no matter what it tastes like, Mama will like it.
Is it that kind of loving-mother line?
No matter how you look at it, it totally is.
Ah, Naoya-sama!
Thank you for the treat.
No good.
This is completely no good.
The Zenin Clan has already become a mass-production base for raising brats with rotten personalities.
While Gintoki skillfully whipped the fresh cream, he watched every move Zenin Naoya made.
“Don’t even think about slacking off!”
“Yeah!”
Anyway, no matter how it turned out, Zenin Naoya seemed genuinely happy.
It made Gintoki look like some villain exploiting his labor.
How did things end up like this…
As Gintoki spread cream over the baked cake sponge, he thought about it.
Back then, when he was still the protagonist in his original production team, most of the people he helped either came to him in the form of a commission, or got caught up in some sudden disaster so miserable that his conscience could not ignore it.
Edo gathered all kinds of people, and Gintoki was only one of them.
He lived cramped above Otose’s bar in Kabukicho, running an unremarkable Yorozuya.
He could not save everyone.
The tighter he held on, the easier things slipped away.
Love and hatred were both like scattered sand, turning into wounds he could no longer fix.
So the Zenin Clan, rotten from the roots, was the same.
He could just leave it alone.
If he left it alone, then all the victims hurt by it, all the victims who hated it, would offer up the fiercest curse at the cost of the life of a younger sister who was like half of themselves.
But.
Gintoki had already gone against the path decided by the manga from the moment his mom hugged him.
After all, manga was manga, and the lives inside manga were still under the mangaka’s pen.
But their lives were real and alive.
Whether they were NPCs or background characters, every person was truly living.
Struggling with all their strength, trying hard to adapt and survive.
Gintoki could not say, “Anyway, the future will turn out like that,” then eat cake by himself while covering his ears.
Right now, he wanted more to pull down the hands covering other people’s ears.
Gintoki placed the last strawberry on top of the cake.
Under Zenin Naoya’s surprised gaze, he casually cut a small piece and handed it to him.
“Take it to your mom.”
“Why? This piece is so small, I can’t even get full eating it by myself.” Zenin Naoya was a little unhappy.
He had thought it was a reward for him, but in the end, he still had to give it to someone else.
And even if he came back after finishing the mission, Gintoki definitely would not share the cake with him anymore.
He would definitely eat it all by himself!
“What are you saying? This is enough. Your mom went through the pain of squeezing something as huge as one Earth out of her body just to give birth to you. You can’t take out one Earth to repay your mom either, right? So the amount doesn’t matter. You just need to send it over.”
“You say that like you really have Earth. Pretty ambitious, huh? You already have something high-level like the ambition of a swan.”
“Hmph. Save me a portion.”
“Got it, got it.” Gintoki waved his hand.
Zenin Naoya carried that piece of cake.
It was the cake he and Gintoki had made together, so in a way, it counted as a joint project.
And then he was going to give it to his mother.
Just putting that verb and that noun together made Zenin Naoya feel something unfamiliar.
Mother, huh…
Zenin Naoya did not remember his mother’s embrace.
Even though she was always there, always pointlessly busy with something he did not understand, his impression of her was less closeness and more habit.
And those unchanging forms of address, again and again.
Naobito-sama, Naoya-sama.
That kind of mother was no different from a servant, yet she was his mother.
Zenin Naoya had once stretched out both arms toward her, waiting for a hug.
The woman had indeed bent down and hugged him.
It was gentle, but it was not warm.
Because Zenin Naoya knew she was only responding to his request.
Just like now, she would probably react the same way.
“Eat it.” Zenin Naoya opened the sliding door and held that piece of strawberry cake out in front of the woman.
The mother did not ask anything at all.
She obediently took it, obediently ate it, then smiled and asked Zenin Naoya, “Is there anything else you need me to do? Naoya-sama.”
Naoya-sama.
Naoya-sama.
Zenin Naoya had not expected anything.
He also did not know what he was supposed to expect.
Looking at the cake plate that was already empty, he shook his head and turned to leave.
This was fine, right?
It had always been like this anyway.
He really did not get why Gintoki had to make him deliver cake.
Was it to prove that Naoya-sama, the genius of the Zenin Clan, had mastered a new skill?
His mother had always been like that.
As long as Zenin Naoya asked, she would do whatever matched that request.
Whether it was hugging him, treating his wounds, or praising him.
She was like an exquisite doll, an accessory to him and his father.
This was completely normal.
It was everyday life as usual.
Gintoki waited, staying together with a tiny piece of strawberry cake.
Aside from that little piece, the rest of the cake had been quickly taken care of.
Only a bit of cream left at the corner of Gintoki’s mouth proved that it had once existed.
That small piece of cake waited for him all alone, like it was waiting for a promise to be kept.
Seeing Zenin Naoya’s expression, Gintoki knew for sure that nothing like a mother’s frozen heart being melted by her son’s gesture, then the two of them crying tears of joy and hugging, had happened.
drama kind of plot at all.
He silently pushed the small cake toward Zenin Naoya.
Zenin Naoya sat down beside him and ate the cake with elegant restraint.
“It tastes awful.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not sweet at all.”
“Yeah.”
“…”
“Special people really are only you, Gintoki-kun.”
“…”
Gintoki silently tilted his head up and looked at the ceiling.
Ah, an unfamiliar ceiling.
Honestly, the special thing here was your twisted family relationship!
Why did he have to come to the Zenin Clan!
Why!
Ever since he got here, every place was like an 8 p.m.
drama set!
Did they have to pack up a huge pile of tangled relationships that could not be cut apart or sorted out and throw them in front of him?
He was not a relationship expert, hey!
Gintoki patted Naoya on the shoulder.
“Hurry up and take out Gin-san’s money too. I even made another cake, so it should be at least 100,000 yen, right?”
Naoya immediately hugged his arm.
“Are you leaving already? No way.”
“How could I stay here forever? Hurry up and pay me, brat! If you want extra time, renew your fee!”
“Put 300 million on my tab!”
“No way!”
In the end, Gintoki staggered back to his residence like he had been drained dry.
Today was really too tiring.
Mental work and physical work were both tiring.
He really was not good at giving emotional advice!
But fundamentally speaking, there was no saving it!
The Zenin Clan!
Gintoki fell asleep the moment he lay down, then was picked up again late at night.
The people of the Zenin Clan seemed to raise kids like that.
The moment something went wrong, they just picked them up and carried them away.
From tiny details like this, you could tell they did not care about a child’s thoughts at all.
Gintoki wanted to protest, but he stayed completely still, like he was only a corpse.
Because even though he was exhausted in both body and mind, he had still remembered the thing he forgot.
He had messed up.
He had messed up.
After running out of the small dark room, he had forgotten to casually run back in like nothing had happened.
This was basically a successful jailbreak!
Happy reading!