The words hurt more than the blade is going to, he's fairly sure - and isn't that funny, that they're both a pain he should be used to? Because there's not a single goddamned thing he's ever done that met with Souji's approval.
Not as though he's ever sought it. Whether it's Souji or whether it's any person on the streets of Kyoto, he's never needed to be liked to get what he's after (just as Serizawa didn't need Hijikata to like him to impress that very point upon him, those years ago). Hijikata knows what he wants, and Souji's approval has never been part of that -
- but maybe, Souji just being able to look at things his way for once in his goddamned life is.
"I listened once and look where the hell that got us." He listened to Kondou and he'll never forgive himself for it, and yet even now he doesn't know if he could do it differently, if they had to do it over again right now, because even if Hijikata will never be able to bring himself to believe that his life is worth more than Kondou's - even he isn't blind enough not to have seen that somehow, it was what Kondou wanted.
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Not as though he's ever sought it. Whether it's Souji or whether it's any person on the streets of Kyoto, he's never needed to be liked to get what he's after (just as Serizawa didn't need Hijikata to like him to impress that very point upon him, those years ago). Hijikata knows what he wants, and Souji's approval has never been part of that -
- but maybe, Souji just being able to look at things his way for once in his goddamned life is.
"I listened once and look where the hell that got us." He listened to Kondou and he'll never forgive himself for it, and yet even now he doesn't know if he could do it differently, if they had to do it over again right now, because even if Hijikata will never be able to bring himself to believe that his life is worth more than Kondou's - even he isn't blind enough not to have seen that somehow, it was what Kondou wanted.