[Gintama] The Caged Bird

·People want pets at the most inconvenient times. ·It was one such inconvenient moment that sparked an urgent wish in me: I desperately wanted a fluffy, lazy cat, affectionate yet aloof, one who wouldn't open up to me but wouldn't leave me either. ·And it had to be white. ·A story about a cat and a bird. ·There were once two birds in a cage. ·One was a willful princess, full of worries, who dreamed of becoming a general but was sent off as bait in a political marriage. A canary who had lived in a cage since childhood. ·The other was a stand-in and playmate, brought in because she looked like the princess. She, too, was bait for a political marriage: a wild bird dressed in splendid plumage and forced to play the canary. If she couldn't wear the feathers, she would have to be a crow. ·Two birds in a cage. One was me, and one was her. But no one knew which of us was the real "canary." ·...Only I knew the truth. ·Birds in cages, fish in ponds: freedom has its limits. ·Just as I once told my cat, the world is vast, and beyond Earth lies a whole new, unknown universe. ·And just as I told my cat, the world is vast, but from beginning to end, we are all birds in cages, confined within our own. ·"Whose cage have you entered?" ·The heroine acts sweet and clueless, but is actually scheming. She's spent years playing the fool to catch the wise, all while evading one question: "Am I the princess or the stand-in?" ·Of the two birds in the cage, one is a canary, and the other is "a crow borrowed from the heavens above." But both became swallows. ·I've always wanted to write a rather unusual kind of relationship. The two people do everything lovers would do, and can openly admit in front of others that they like each other, but they never make a proper confession and never become a couple. They keep their relationship forever within their comfort zone: "affectionate yet aloof," never opening up, but never leaving. It's both straightforward and clingy. ·And that's how this story came to be. Premise: Birds in cages, fish in ponds: freedom has its limits.