He doesn't choose to stay in Edo because Gintoki and Zura are there, each of them growing roots that are sprawled underneath its numerous streets, or because Sakamoto visits almost every month, laughing how there's no place like home when he gets thrown out of his favourite snack bar.

He chooses to stay because he knows Bansai thrives while listening to the heartbeat of a big city, finding inspiration on every corner, because he wants to give Matako an opportunity to have a life he feels they took away from her, because he hopes that in a place where there's always so much to do, Takechi will find himself a hobby that doesn't grate on Takasugi's nerves as much, something like gardening or cooking or solving sudoku puzzles, and won't notice he burned his lolicon collection, a dangerous glint in his eye as he watched the fire crackling in the bin.

He doesn't know when he started placing their well-being above his own, or when their well-being became his own, but it doesn't feel like it's weighing him down like he thought it would when he was a schoolboy, listening to lessons on duty and responsibility, or like it did during the war, when he was too weak to hold the weight up and all of them broke under the pressure.

Instead, when he's trying not to wobble on his way back from the Kabuki district (because Sakamoto visited again, and Zura said they needed a fourth person for UNO, and after his last victory Gintoki owed him a drink that turned into a drinking contest), and he notices the lights are still burning and he can pick out faint notes of the shamisen over the sounds of bickering and laughter, he doesn't think he's as drunk on sake and shochu as he is on the pure exhilaration of finally being free.