It's hardly difficult to notice that Hijikata has taken to carrying a kitten around with him. (Rumor has it that, when confronted about it, he claimed that "she gets separation anxiety", and then murdered the person who dared to ask with the sheer force of his ocular hate-beams [a previously undisclosed secondary mutation, probably] and hid their body in the lake.)

As a result, there's been a resurgence of rumors that Hijikata is just super whipped. This is probably exactly what Souji had planned when he got that damned cat, to tell the truth.

There's still a lot of meaningful eye contact and double entendre during his smoke breaks with Madame Desrosiers, though. Possibly they have some kind of incredibly scandalous threesome happening??? It seems like the kind of thing she'd be open to...