Wasn't it just someone showing up on their own turf? What was the big deal? Climbing over the wall? What climbing over the wall? If Captain Sogo wanted to, even if he barged in with a bunch of machine gunners, shouting that he wanted to personally cut down the vice-chief, so what? Hijikata would be the one getting tormented anyway. Ueda felt that small fry like them had no reason to take it so seriously. Most importantly, the leader was Captain Sogo!
Though they had not seen their captain for a long time—or rather, even when the captain came back, he did not do anything to them—they would never forget the hellish days Hijikata had endured when Sogo was still around. As the Kondo Group members put it: "If the captain were still here, the vice-chief wouldn't have trained us until we puked!"
In the hearts of countless Kondo Group members, Captain Sogo Doma had actually been pretty good. Ahem, there was no helping it—people feared comparison. Before a certain someone stepped down from the Kondo Dojo, they could still slack off in secret, and even...
But after Sogo Doma relinquished his position and made Yamazaki the new captain, Captain Yamazaki simply did not dare defy Vice-Chief Hijikata. Training within the Kondo Group became brutally strict. Put it this way: even corporate drones lived more freely than they did!
If they had not been given weekends off, someone probably would have broken down long ago. Demon Vice-Chief was not just an external nickname; even within the group, Hijikata was a bona fide demon!
Did they know what mental training was? It meant sitting cross-legged beneath a waterfall without thinking about anything, cultivating like they did in some damn manga—many Kondo Group members had tearfully pleaded, "Vice-Chief, please don't treat manga