"Rats?"
Harada sat up straight from the tatami in an instant.
"Mrs. Kondo, didn’t we already exterminate all the rats in Shiwei Hall today?"
Earlier in the day, Abi led the leisurely Saito and Harada to search every corner of Shiwei Hall, counting over a dozen rats eliminated, stopping only after they could no longer hear any strange noises coming from the ceiling and the walls.
"I found some stragglers! They’re on the dojo’s ceiling! The sounds are very faint, there should be 2 or 3!"
Abi clutched the broom tightly, looking serious.
"We can’t ignore these stragglers!"
"If left unchecked, these stragglers could turn into dozens in a few months! All our efforts today would be wasted!"
"The dojo’s ceiling is too large for me to clean alone, if anyone has some free time, come lend a hand!"
Nagakura, Saito, and Harada were all dining at Shiwei Hall; the hall’s hygiene conditions were closely related to their living conditions.
Exterminating the rats at Shiwei Hall means ensuring the cleanliness of their living environment.
Even beyond the practical reason of benefitting themselves, the kindness of the Kondo family in allowing them to treat Shiwei Hall as their home was enough motivation for them to readily undertake this rather trivial task.
"Alright!" Harada bounced up like a spring, straightening his legs in mid-air as he moved directly from sitting to standing, "Let’s go and bring justice to those remaining stragglers!"
"I told you... ’bringing justice’ isn’t used like that..." Saito slowly propped himself up from lying flat on the tatami, sluggishly moving like a corpse.
Hijikata, Nagakura, Kyūbē followed Harada and Saito closely, their actions silently declaring their willingness to contribute to the "rat extermination task."
Except for Aoto, who was bathing with Toshisuke, all the guests in the dining area swarmed together with Abi towards the dojo at Shiwei Hall.
Once at the dojo, they saw Zhouzhu, Kondo, and Inoue waiting there from the morning.
"Master," Hijikata asked, "are you joining us in catching the rats?"
"Hohoho," Zhouzhu touched his smooth chin, "The dojo at Shiwei Hall is so large, the more help, the better."
The dojo at Shiwei Hall covers nearly one hundred square meters, and thoroughly inspecting the ceiling of such a large space is quite an undertaking.
"Father, Mother, Mr. Kyūbē, let us young ones handle the task of climbing to the ceiling," Kondo said as he forcefully patted his robust chest muscles, "you just help by holding the ladder and passing tools."
Kondo’s suggestion was unanimously agreed upon by Hijikata and the others.
Zhouzhu, Abi, and Kyūbē, all with graying hair, were elderly and shouldn’t have been given the potentially hazardous task of climbing to the ceiling.
"Are you sure you can handle it?" Zhouzhu asked with some concern.
"Hahaha, leave it to us!" Laughing heartily, Kondo was the first to take up a wooden ladder, climbing to the nearest point to the ceiling.
Just as he pushed open the wooden panel above his head, Zhouzhu saw a small cloud of dust drift down through the gap as the panel shifted.
The ceiling of Shiwei Hall is only cleaned near the New Year.
After more than half a year of accumulation, the ceiling was laden with a thick layer of dust and a significant number of unpleasant spider webs.
Kondo extended his neck, using the crown of his head to push against the panel, inserting part of his head into the ceiling, and after a quick glance at the dust and webs filling his field of vision, his cheeks flushed with a wry smile:
"Looks like... after killing the rats, I’ll need to visit Qianxun House for another bath..."
Strictly separate the "bathing area" and "bath pool."
The "bathing area" is generally a fairly large room without partitions, where everyone washes their bodies drawing water, needing to clean themselves thoroughly before heading to the bath pool.
When soaking, you can only soak, no swimming, and no further cleaning of the body.
It goes without saying that no one would be so disgusting as to use the bathwater, which has been soaked in by countless others, to wash themselves.
All of the above are essential rules to abide by when bathing in the bathhouse.
At this moment, in the bathing area of Qianxun House, Aoto cast a puzzled look toward Toshisuke.
"Mr. Chokata, why are you sitting so far away?"
Maybe because he realized there was no escaping Aoto’s grasp tonight, once Aoto had dragged him forcibly into the men’s bath, he seemed to resign himself, no longer struggling much.
Just as naked as Aoto, Toshisuke sat with his back to him, quite a distance away.
While undressing in the changing room, it was the same; Toshisuke stood far from Aoto, facing away as he took off his clothes, and once undressed he rushed solo fast into the bathing area.
Toshisuke moved quickly into the bathing area, so when Aoto, just having removed his upper clothes, heard Toshisuke’s "I’m going in" and turned his head, Toshisuke’s figure had already vanished into the bathing area.

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