Disclaimer: I do not own "Love Hina" or its characters.
Fifteen Year Fall
"Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales," Haruka had once tried to warn her nephew Urashima Keitaro. He did not listen. If he had, it probably would have spared him a lot of pain by now. He thought of all this as the girl of his dreams punched him into the sky with a thousandth time since they met. As he flew through the air, white heat of a lightning bolt passed through Urashima Keitaro's body. Clothes charred and electrocuted, Keitaro landed in a forest and realized he could not find the way back to the Hinata-sou.
Scared and confused, Keitaro's blood pressure rose as he realized that someone had accompanied him on his flight through the sky. In all his clumsiness and flailing arms, he had pulled Narusegawa Naru up into her own punch.
Fortunately, a series of fortunately placed branches broke her fall, but Keitaro accidentally yanking her into the sky had dislocated her shoulder. As the pain seemed prepared to drive Narusegawa to unconsciousness, Keitaro grabbed a hold of her arm and proceeded to push it back into its socket. Before he learned the correct way to land from a super-punch, Keitaro had popped his own dislocated shoulder back in quite a few times. Narusegawa's sudden and animal-like scream of pain confirmed that it hurt her as much as it hurt him the first time. It always hurt the first time.
Keitaro admired Narusegawa's strength. Sure, she probably could not survive a Ki-charged sword technique from Aoyama Motoko or an accidental explosion from one of Su Kaolla's machines, but Narusegawa could take quite a beating nonetheless. Keitaro looked around and saw the all-girls dormitory in the distance. The girls (except perhaps Maehara Shinobu) all enjoy watching him fly through the sky on a super punch. And since he had no real problem absorbing blows and surviving falls from incredible heights, he generally found happiness in seeing everyone having something to watch and busy their minds with. But if they found out that he had nearly killed Narusegawa when she tried to super punch him, they would definitely accuse him of foul play.
If only they knew Keitaro's real feelings, they would understand how little it bothered him to fly over Tokyo every night. Suspended in the air above this fine cosmopolitan city, Keitaro could see sights only the people in helicopters or those flying on commercial airlines usually saw. It felt wonderful to see the world as if he stood on top of it, temporarily free from its worldly restraints and its endless list of pressures and obligations. No, Keitaro enjoyed the flight, even if it started out with false accusations, humiliating pleas for mercy and the pain of a well-formed punch colliding with his face. Plus, if he got that angry, he would leave Narusegawa in peace. Unlike the other girls, he had to take the higher road and not blame other people for his frustration. 'A regular knight in shining armor,' Keitaro thought condensingly of his own overdone moral values.
Besides, if he started making a blame list, the list would start with his aunt Haruka and never end. He always felt he could never believe in himself after she told him never to believe in fairy tales. Her advice had not improved his life and did not improve Haruka's life apparently either. Old beyond her years and given to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, Haruka, Keitaro could tell, desperately yearned for the fairy tales of her youth to save her from her present condition. 'Another victim of the reality bug,' Keitaro observed as he remembered his aunt Haruka in the present day, struggling to keep her teahouse open and utterly abusive to her former lover and all-around-nice-guy Noriyasu Seta. Sometimes Keitaro wondered if Naru and Haruka operated on the same wavelength somehow, so alike in how they handled life's troubles by suppressing their child-like fantasies and wishes under the weight of the real world.
Keitaro brushed himself off and realized that Narusegawa had pulled a Mutsumi on him. Strange, Narusegawa did not have anemia like Otohime Mutsumi, but before Keitaro could comprehend what she had done, she had fainted from the shock.
Keitaro excused her behavior with good cause. Thanks to Haruka, he knew about the legendary duality of man, how everyone on earth fell into two distinct breeds of humanity, those can dish out pain and those who can take it. Narusegawa looked more like the first breed of human while he looked more like the second. It drove him to tears to think about himself and his Narusegawa a breed apart from each other, but then again, they do say opposites attract. It definitely worked in his case. His every fantasy centered around him and Narusegawa as the main characters. In this mixed moment of pain and pleasure, Keitaro felt enough courage to have asked Narusegawa what kind of fantasies she had about him.
But with her unconscious and alone with Keitaro for even a fraction of a second she could not account for, Keitaro would have to dedicated that growing reserves of courage to devise a convincing argument that he had done nothing to her in her state of lost consciousness she would consider improper.
Keitaro grimaced. He now remembered another bit of useful advice: 'Careful what you wish for.' Keitaro had wished for a girlfriend and instead the gods found it funny to give him one that enjoyed long walks at twilight and launching accused perverts into geosynchronous orbit. Yeah, he brought this on himself. Vague wishes always lead to trouble.
At this moment, he decided to make a new wish. 'I wish Narusegawa could show me affection more often,' he thought-wished. 'There, try to mess that one up, I dare you to.' Keitaro smiled as no one replied.
These laughing gods could not possibly turn such a specific wish into a sadist punch line. Keitaro gathered Narusegawa and lifted her onto his shoulders. Surprising, Narusegawa did not weigh as much as he had imagined her to. With her ability to generate such high concentrations of pressure along the area of her hand during a super punch, he always imagined that Narusegawa weighed more than she appeared.
Apparently, Narusegawa did not weigh much more than the average seventeen-year-old girl and despite his impressive lack of physical strength, Keitaro managed to lift her up and bring her to the front porch of the Hinata-sou, fueled mostly by adrenaline and contagious fear that he might, perhaps, even if such for a second, feel tempted to do something improper with Narusegawa's body. Listening to Narusegawa's loud explanations on the nature of his "accidents" had him almost convinced him of the lecherous impulses of his own subconscious mind.
"Who gave a her a degree in psychology?" Keitaro asked himself bitterly as he hauled Narusegawa the last ten yards to the Hinata-sou. He barely knew what went on in his mind and thinking about it only seemed to make it worse. How could Narusegawa possibly know what went on in his mind when he discovered new things going on everyday? Tired and scared by the sounds of nightly creatures roaming about, Keitaro rested Narusegawa on the front porch and threw himself against the steps, breathing erratically and calling for Shinobu, Kitsune and Motoko for help between breathes. When no one answered, he started to yell for just about anyone capable of helping an incapacitated couple in their late teens. "A couple? Did I say that?" Apparently his accidental reference to Narusegawa and him as a "couple" caught someone's attention and Keitaro could hear small footsteps rushing up to answer the door.
In seconds, Keitaro looked up to see a lady a little younger than Shinobu dressed like a cleaning lady with a cigarette in her mouth. 'What?' Keitaro thought panicked by the sight. 'A twelve-year-old with a cigarette in her mouth!' Without his brain for any further developments, he snatched the cigarette from the little girl's mouth and set work on stumping out the cursed cancerstick. Frustrated by what a stranger she obviously did know had done for her own good, the girl defiantly reached into her pockets and produced another one which she slid into her mouth. As Keitaro fumbled for a speech about the dangers of nicotine and substance abuse, Keitaro looked down at his shoe and realized he had once again turned a simple misunderstanding into a chance to humiliate himself again. He just smashed a girl's cigarette into the ground, a candy cigarette like the ones the Vietnamese celebrate their new year with. 'What a surprise. Keitaro humiliated himself in front of a girl he just met.'
Keitaro bowed repeatedly. As he kept asking for forgiveness for his overreaction, the girl calmly brushed past off his frantic pleas and examined the unconscious and beautiful Narusegawa, still under the thrall of unexpected fainting spell. "What happened to her?" the girl asked calmly. Then, a sly adult smile emerged on the face of the girl who a moment ago reminded Keitaro as a close spiritual relative to Maehara Shinobu. As if she finally recognized Keitaro's relationship to Narusegawa, she guessed out loud about what had happened to them.
"You sly devil," the girl commented, the smile slowly changed her likeness to Shinobu into one of the Kitsune persuasion. "You wore her out, didn't you?" Keitaro bulged as she said those words. 'You sure don't look like the type, but, God, this girl sure looks like she couldn't take what you had to offer her."
Keitaro shook his head profusely. "No, no, I did no such thing. And girls your age should not say hentai things like that." Keitaro nervously looked through the door to try and find the other girls. Kitsune must have taught this girl her new vocabulary words. No twelve year old could end up naturally this cynic.
"Well," the girl replied as she stood up and dragged Narusegawa through the door. "First off, I don't believe you," she commented pulling her across the threshold. "Unless you have some kind of blood relation to this girl, I doubt anyone, especially a physically challenged weakling like yourself would carry her all this way out of pure chivalry." Keitaro blushed a bright neon red. This jaded little lady stabbed his heart with a strong point. Only a self-deluded superman with no sex drive whatsoever would act so kindly around a girl as beautiful as Narusegawa without expecting something in return. This girl seemed to have an idea of the "something" he wanted in return from Narusegawa and he did not have the wit to argue against her. This girl, like Kitsune, always seemed fully armed for a battle of wits and he had only known her for the last couple minutes.
"How did you get here?" Though no one took his authority as superintendent seriously most of the time, he had made it very clear that all decisions that involve new tenants go through him first before they gave anyone a room to stay in.
As swirling pattern started to emerge in Keitaro's eyes, the little lady seemed ready to continued her critical deconstruction of his motives. She wanted to keep guessing at his reasons for aiding a girl who derived emotional release from beating him rigid on a daily basis. "And, what do you mean by 'how did I get here?' " The girl took a drag on her candy cigarette, something that looked oddly familiar to him. "My mother owns this place."
As Keitaro prepared to tell her that he knew for a fact that his grandmother owned this property before he did, he looked inside to see a sign. When he confused the Hinata-sou for the Hinata-ryokan his grandmother used to run, Aoyama Motoko had used that very sign as a visual aid to show Keitaro the error of his assumptions.
Now, the sign read something different. Instead of reading [Hinata-sou: All-girls dormitory, no men allowed], the sign read [Hinata-ryokan: hot springs hotel, couples welcomed]. As he started to feel himself losing consciousness from the shock, he fell face first into the space between Narusegawa's legs where his clumsiness had delivered him to quite a few times, almost as often as it did to her breasts. He hoped this girl, who he safely identified as his aunt Haruka at age of twelve, would have enough decency to put their bodies into a more flattering arrangement when Narusegawa regained consciousness.
*****
'What happened to me?' Narusegawa Naru fluttered her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. She could not believe she had lost consciousness back in the woods or that Keitaro had pulled her up into her own punch. Her hatred of Keitaro faded as she remembered how he had shortly afterwards heroically popped her dislocated shoulder back in. As Naru started to wonder if she had misjudged Keitaro, she looked down at her waist she felt something pressing against her body. From experience, she knew exactly what she would find when she looked down, but she did it anyways.
In a moment, Naru quickly recognized the top of Keitaro's head as he had his face shoved into her … body. Outraged, she tried to shove Keitaro off of her and quickly resorted to her super punch. Still not fully ready after the dislocating of her shoulder, her punch had only caused his nose to drift inside of her and moving her arm filled every inch of her body with paralyzing pain. She then realized that Keitaro had not reacted to her attack. Keitaro had already lost consciousness and thanks to his gift for accidents fell on top of her in this not-so-innocent position as he did. She decided to kick his unconscious body off of her, but she realized very quickly that she could not move her legs due to the paralyzing pain, let allow kick Keitaro off her.
Still, she could not allow Keitaro to think she would let him get away with this, even with unconsciousness as an alibi. 'Not until the honeymoon ...' With all her remaining strength, she inched away from Keitaro, causing him to drive his own head into the floor. The force of hitting his head against the floor sparked the embers of consciousness in Urashima Keitaro.
In moments, Keitaro elevated his consciousness to something resembling a fitful sleep. As he did with every sleeping moment, Keitaro started to fantasize about her. She had the similiar fantasies about Keitaro, but she at least hoped she did not mumbled in her sleep the way Keitaro did. "Hmmm … Narusegawa," Keitaro moaned half-asleep. "I had a wonderful dream that …" Keitaro opened his eyes and witnessed the look of death she could feel molding itself onto her face. " … that I acted like a perfect gentleman around Narusegawa and did nothing out the ordinary. Oh, hello, Narusegawa."
The look of death fell off her face and gave way to a smile. For the first time in Hinata-sou history, Keitaro had actually tried to play it cool when caught in the act of perversion. According to her understanding of her somewhat predictable Urashima Keitaro, he should have started to panic by now and babble about his innocence in the matter. But Keitaro, except for when his voice cracked once during his "perfect gentleman" comment, had remained calm and controlled. Good for him.
"So, Keitaro," Naru started in looking over this room which seemed simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It seemed like she recognized this place from somewhere, but could quite place where she had seen this place before. "What happened to us?"
Keitaro turned around, the look at Narusegawa with a spark of renewed intelligence and insight. "Su Kaolla's reverse time theory just happened to us." Narusegawa Naru blinked and pleaded for Keitaro to explain himself. Unlike him, Naru did not spend her spare time testing to Kaolla class weaponry and listening to her crackpot theories.
"Kaolla once suspected that I possessed an ability to alter gravity. She believed it would explain how I can manipulate gravity and control the effects of concussion on my body at the same time. She tried to test her theory, but it came up inconceivable when the machine kind of blew up on me."
Narusegawa started to realized what Kaolla meant by this theory. She remembered the first time she had attacked Keitaro with her super punch and sent him bouncing off the walls. If Naru had really hit him that hard, he should burrowed through the first wall, instead of bouncing all over the place. Narusegawa sweat-dropped and grew impatient. This theory explained how she turned him into a human pinball, but how could this theory possibly explain why this room looked so eerie and familiar?
"Don't you get it, Narusegawa? We read that physics books to prepare for the Toudai exam?" Narusegawa remembered that week quite vividly. Desperate not to fail the test third time, Keitaro had gotten a number of strange books to refine their understanding in a wide range of fields of study. His obsession did not pay off since they both failed that test that year, Keitaro failed for the third time and Naru failed it for the first time.
Keitaro continued as soon as Naru nodded yes. "You remember the part of the book that explained the relationship between gravity and time?" Naru nodded impatiently. "It basically said that anything that happens to gravity happens to time as well. If I can alter gravity, I can alter time as well."
Naru's eyes bulged out their sockets as the truth hit her like her own punch to the face. Plasma pulsing through his body rose in Keitaro such intense sensations it forced him to overreact and accidently tear a hole through time. Because Keitaro had pulled her along for the ride, she entered the hole created by Keitaro and arrived back in time with him. Since he could in theory control when they landed, Narusegawa imagined that Keitaro had opened a tear to the era of the promise, which took place fifteen years old to a five-year-old Keitaro.
Naru took a seat on the mattress and stared into Keitaro's eyes. "How do we get home?" she asked. Keitaro looked into her eyes as if communicating the words he dare not speak out loud. Su Kaolla knew he could manipulate gravity, what he did only happened because he had a few thousand volts of electricity flowing through him. On his own, he could recreate the conditions that allowed him to open the time rip, much like close it. He needed a source of intense stimuli to push him over the edge and Narusegawa could not imagine anything as eye-opening as getting struck by a bolt of lightning. In that moment, she realized the answer to her question.
'They would get home to their time the long way, back to the future one day at a time.'
"So what should we do until then?" Naru never realized Keitaro and her often had quiet moments like these interrupted by someone bursting in and stopping them half way. She had never got an opportunity to know Keitaro's lips felt like against hers. They probably felt quite soft when he did not spent his life freaking out over every little thing. Keitaro's nose bled with anticipation, but he did not plead for forgiveness or cower away. Keitaro looked ready to accept whatever Naru wanted to do to him or have him do for her.
Suddenly, a wild and decidedly imprudent idea entered her mind as a solution to their problem. Perhaps, Keitaro could finish what he had started and then they could let their imaginations figure out what to do after that. If this worked, she and Keitaro will return to the present before anyone missed them. Naru grabbed Keitaro by his head with her good arm and lowered his head back onto her … body. Before she got around to handling Keitaro's happiness, she wanted to enjoy herself with Keitaro for once. If this didn't work, she would spent quite a few years together with Keitaro and violence would only make it worse on both of them. Keitaro did not put up any resistance, but his face turned neon red as he realize the position Naru had lowered him into.
'Don't play me stupid, Keitaro, I know you want to.' In his spare time (which he did not have much of) Keitaro studied those magazines hidden in his room almost as much as he studied his textbooks. If he had not learned something of value from them, Keitaro probably did not possess the higher brain functions necessary to pass the Toudai college exams. But she could not judge him so much, she did not have any experience dealing with this, but her best friend Kitsune kept her well-informed about forbidden issues.
Of course, another terrifying possibility entered her mind. 'What if he doesn't want to?' She worried that her constant beatings had finally had their effect on Keitaro. 'What if he wanted nothing to do with you?' Her fears of having broken Keitaro's spirit quickly faded as he grabbed hold of Naru's hand and came to his senses. Naru could feel sparks flying from his hands into hers. Keitaro looked ready to reopen the tear in time already, but not quite. Years of repression and self-denial made him almost as hard as herself to crack.
At that moment, he probably realized the same thing as she did. The trip back would take a long time. By then, they would have aged fifteen years and no one they knew would recognize them anymore. They had only each other to spent the next fifteen years together. If this didn't work, at least they would have this wonderful opportunity to get to know each other. As Keitaro started in after Narusegawa, her mind drifted back to the day she met him and to every moment after that. As Time had finally stood still for them, she now felt ready to let Keitaro know quite intimately well how happy he made her, always supporting her through her violent outbursts and harsh words, never pressuring her to make up her mind the way she pressured him to. Narusegawa smiled as Keitaro apparently started to remember some valuable pearls of knowledge from his off-hours studies.
*****
Her nephew Keitaro rested in bed as Urashima Haruka came in to read him a bedtime story. Haruka always enjoyed the enthusiasm Keitaro had for bedtime stories, but often he would grow impatient with the story. Sometimes, she wondered if she could just come in and say "they lived happily ever", beginning and ending the story right there. She wondered this a lot, because Keitaro did not like any part of the story as much as he did that last line, the one where everyone lived happily ever after. Someday, Keitaro would have to learn that real life just does not work like that, but Haruka hoped she could wait a couple years for him to learn that lesson.
But as soon as Keitaro started expressing his impatience with the slow pace of the story, Haruka stopped and put down the book. To heck with what she hoped for, Keitaro needed to learn this lesson now, before he got carried away and ruined his life over it.
"Keitaro, listen to your auntie," Haruka said, she enjoyed having Keitaro call her auntie, it made her sound all grown-up and important. "Sometimes, these people have to wait a long time for their happy endings."
Keitaro stared questioningly as Haruka, holding onto his blanket. "How long?"
"Well, you know the story of Sleeping Beauty." Keitaro nodded quickly. He knew every story by heart. "Well, the good prince had to wait one hundred years before he could see Sleeping Beauty and awake her from her sleep."
Keitaro loosened his grip on the blanket and looked at Haruka. She looked away. Keitaro had overwhelming adorable puppy eyes when he wanted to look cute "Haruka, do you think I'll have to wait that long for my happily ever after?"
Haruka removed the candy cigarette from her mouth. "Call me auntie, Keitaro. And I really don't think that question means anything," Haruka commented watching a sad look sweep over Keitaro's face. "Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales. It doesn't happen in real life." What possessed she to say that? Haruka stayed calm as Keitaro broke down into tears, Keitaro needed to learn this lesson for his own good. People who believe in fairy tales never get a chance to grow up. Like herself, she had to surrender her fairy tales at Keitaro's age and it did not hurt her one bit.
Keitaro fought back the tears and spoke to Haruka. "No, Haruka, I don't believe you. You have it all wrong. Happily ever after can to happen in real life. I'll prove it to you someday, you'll see." Haruka hated herself for getting Keitaro all worked up like this before bedtime. Keitaro looked up at the ceiling. Haruka watched helplessly as Keitaro constructed a small stepping stool and pushed the broken floorboard out of the way. Haruka did not encourage Keitaro to take up her bad habits, but he caught on to some things no matter how much she tried to stop him. Keitaro peeked through and pointed at the couple upstairs.
"Haruka, if happily ever after doesn't happen in real life, what do you call that?" Keitaro pointed at the couple she had place upstairs. Shielding little Keitaro's eyes, Haruka watched as the couple wasted no time finishing what they started. Haruka had misjudged the guy physically and his girlfriend seemed to have recovered her strength quite quickly. As things started to reach a high point, a bright light enveloped the two and sent Haruka tumbling to the floor. When she looked up from the broken floorboard, the couple had vanished without a trace. Keitaro sprung up and looked around. "Hey, where did they go?"
Haruka did not know. Haruka needed a distraction to keep Keitaro from realizing she did known the answer to his question. "Oh, yes, the story," Haruka remembered collecting the book off the ground and seeing a renewed hope in her nephew's eyes. "After slaying the dragon, the knight and the princess returned to their kingdom and lived happily ever after. The End."
Haruka tried to remembered what the couple looked like, but like her nephew, she had a horrible time remembering faces. 'Oh, yeah, perhaps, I'll see them again someday.'
-----
Fifteen Year Fall
"Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales," Haruka had once tried to warn her nephew Urashima Keitaro. He did not listen. If he had, it probably would have spared him a lot of pain by now. He thought of all this as the girl of his dreams punched him into the sky with a thousandth time since they met. As he flew through the air, white heat of a lightning bolt passed through Urashima Keitaro's body. Clothes charred and electrocuted, Keitaro landed in a forest and realized he could not find the way back to the Hinata-sou.
Scared and confused, Keitaro's blood pressure rose as he realized that someone had accompanied him on his flight through the sky. In all his clumsiness and flailing arms, he had pulled Narusegawa Naru up into her own punch.
Fortunately, a series of fortunately placed branches broke her fall, but Keitaro accidentally yanking her into the sky had dislocated her shoulder. As the pain seemed prepared to drive Narusegawa to unconsciousness, Keitaro grabbed a hold of her arm and proceeded to push it back into its socket. Before he learned the correct way to land from a super-punch, Keitaro had popped his own dislocated shoulder back in quite a few times. Narusegawa's sudden and animal-like scream of pain confirmed that it hurt her as much as it hurt him the first time. It always hurt the first time.
Keitaro admired Narusegawa's strength. Sure, she probably could not survive a Ki-charged sword technique from Aoyama Motoko or an accidental explosion from one of Su Kaolla's machines, but Narusegawa could take quite a beating nonetheless. Keitaro looked around and saw the all-girls dormitory in the distance. The girls (except perhaps Maehara Shinobu) all enjoy watching him fly through the sky on a super punch. And since he had no real problem absorbing blows and surviving falls from incredible heights, he generally found happiness in seeing everyone having something to watch and busy their minds with. But if they found out that he had nearly killed Narusegawa when she tried to super punch him, they would definitely accuse him of foul play.
If only they knew Keitaro's real feelings, they would understand how little it bothered him to fly over Tokyo every night. Suspended in the air above this fine cosmopolitan city, Keitaro could see sights only the people in helicopters or those flying on commercial airlines usually saw. It felt wonderful to see the world as if he stood on top of it, temporarily free from its worldly restraints and its endless list of pressures and obligations. No, Keitaro enjoyed the flight, even if it started out with false accusations, humiliating pleas for mercy and the pain of a well-formed punch colliding with his face. Plus, if he got that angry, he would leave Narusegawa in peace. Unlike the other girls, he had to take the higher road and not blame other people for his frustration. 'A regular knight in shining armor,' Keitaro thought condensingly of his own overdone moral values.
Besides, if he started making a blame list, the list would start with his aunt Haruka and never end. He always felt he could never believe in himself after she told him never to believe in fairy tales. Her advice had not improved his life and did not improve Haruka's life apparently either. Old beyond her years and given to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, Haruka, Keitaro could tell, desperately yearned for the fairy tales of her youth to save her from her present condition. 'Another victim of the reality bug,' Keitaro observed as he remembered his aunt Haruka in the present day, struggling to keep her teahouse open and utterly abusive to her former lover and all-around-nice-guy Noriyasu Seta. Sometimes Keitaro wondered if Naru and Haruka operated on the same wavelength somehow, so alike in how they handled life's troubles by suppressing their child-like fantasies and wishes under the weight of the real world.
Keitaro brushed himself off and realized that Narusegawa had pulled a Mutsumi on him. Strange, Narusegawa did not have anemia like Otohime Mutsumi, but before Keitaro could comprehend what she had done, she had fainted from the shock.
Keitaro excused her behavior with good cause. Thanks to Haruka, he knew about the legendary duality of man, how everyone on earth fell into two distinct breeds of humanity, those can dish out pain and those who can take it. Narusegawa looked more like the first breed of human while he looked more like the second. It drove him to tears to think about himself and his Narusegawa a breed apart from each other, but then again, they do say opposites attract. It definitely worked in his case. His every fantasy centered around him and Narusegawa as the main characters. In this mixed moment of pain and pleasure, Keitaro felt enough courage to have asked Narusegawa what kind of fantasies she had about him.
But with her unconscious and alone with Keitaro for even a fraction of a second she could not account for, Keitaro would have to dedicated that growing reserves of courage to devise a convincing argument that he had done nothing to her in her state of lost consciousness she would consider improper.
Keitaro grimaced. He now remembered another bit of useful advice: 'Careful what you wish for.' Keitaro had wished for a girlfriend and instead the gods found it funny to give him one that enjoyed long walks at twilight and launching accused perverts into geosynchronous orbit. Yeah, he brought this on himself. Vague wishes always lead to trouble.
At this moment, he decided to make a new wish. 'I wish Narusegawa could show me affection more often,' he thought-wished. 'There, try to mess that one up, I dare you to.' Keitaro smiled as no one replied.
These laughing gods could not possibly turn such a specific wish into a sadist punch line. Keitaro gathered Narusegawa and lifted her onto his shoulders. Surprising, Narusegawa did not weigh as much as he had imagined her to. With her ability to generate such high concentrations of pressure along the area of her hand during a super punch, he always imagined that Narusegawa weighed more than she appeared.
Apparently, Narusegawa did not weigh much more than the average seventeen-year-old girl and despite his impressive lack of physical strength, Keitaro managed to lift her up and bring her to the front porch of the Hinata-sou, fueled mostly by adrenaline and contagious fear that he might, perhaps, even if such for a second, feel tempted to do something improper with Narusegawa's body. Listening to Narusegawa's loud explanations on the nature of his "accidents" had him almost convinced him of the lecherous impulses of his own subconscious mind.
"Who gave a her a degree in psychology?" Keitaro asked himself bitterly as he hauled Narusegawa the last ten yards to the Hinata-sou. He barely knew what went on in his mind and thinking about it only seemed to make it worse. How could Narusegawa possibly know what went on in his mind when he discovered new things going on everyday? Tired and scared by the sounds of nightly creatures roaming about, Keitaro rested Narusegawa on the front porch and threw himself against the steps, breathing erratically and calling for Shinobu, Kitsune and Motoko for help between breathes. When no one answered, he started to yell for just about anyone capable of helping an incapacitated couple in their late teens. "A couple? Did I say that?" Apparently his accidental reference to Narusegawa and him as a "couple" caught someone's attention and Keitaro could hear small footsteps rushing up to answer the door.
In seconds, Keitaro looked up to see a lady a little younger than Shinobu dressed like a cleaning lady with a cigarette in her mouth. 'What?' Keitaro thought panicked by the sight. 'A twelve-year-old with a cigarette in her mouth!' Without his brain for any further developments, he snatched the cigarette from the little girl's mouth and set work on stumping out the cursed cancerstick. Frustrated by what a stranger she obviously did know had done for her own good, the girl defiantly reached into her pockets and produced another one which she slid into her mouth. As Keitaro fumbled for a speech about the dangers of nicotine and substance abuse, Keitaro looked down at his shoe and realized he had once again turned a simple misunderstanding into a chance to humiliate himself again. He just smashed a girl's cigarette into the ground, a candy cigarette like the ones the Vietnamese celebrate their new year with. 'What a surprise. Keitaro humiliated himself in front of a girl he just met.'
Keitaro bowed repeatedly. As he kept asking for forgiveness for his overreaction, the girl calmly brushed past off his frantic pleas and examined the unconscious and beautiful Narusegawa, still under the thrall of unexpected fainting spell. "What happened to her?" the girl asked calmly. Then, a sly adult smile emerged on the face of the girl who a moment ago reminded Keitaro as a close spiritual relative to Maehara Shinobu. As if she finally recognized Keitaro's relationship to Narusegawa, she guessed out loud about what had happened to them.
"You sly devil," the girl commented, the smile slowly changed her likeness to Shinobu into one of the Kitsune persuasion. "You wore her out, didn't you?" Keitaro bulged as she said those words. 'You sure don't look like the type, but, God, this girl sure looks like she couldn't take what you had to offer her."
Keitaro shook his head profusely. "No, no, I did no such thing. And girls your age should not say hentai things like that." Keitaro nervously looked through the door to try and find the other girls. Kitsune must have taught this girl her new vocabulary words. No twelve year old could end up naturally this cynic.
"Well," the girl replied as she stood up and dragged Narusegawa through the door. "First off, I don't believe you," she commented pulling her across the threshold. "Unless you have some kind of blood relation to this girl, I doubt anyone, especially a physically challenged weakling like yourself would carry her all this way out of pure chivalry." Keitaro blushed a bright neon red. This jaded little lady stabbed his heart with a strong point. Only a self-deluded superman with no sex drive whatsoever would act so kindly around a girl as beautiful as Narusegawa without expecting something in return. This girl seemed to have an idea of the "something" he wanted in return from Narusegawa and he did not have the wit to argue against her. This girl, like Kitsune, always seemed fully armed for a battle of wits and he had only known her for the last couple minutes.
"How did you get here?" Though no one took his authority as superintendent seriously most of the time, he had made it very clear that all decisions that involve new tenants go through him first before they gave anyone a room to stay in.
As swirling pattern started to emerge in Keitaro's eyes, the little lady seemed ready to continued her critical deconstruction of his motives. She wanted to keep guessing at his reasons for aiding a girl who derived emotional release from beating him rigid on a daily basis. "And, what do you mean by 'how did I get here?' " The girl took a drag on her candy cigarette, something that looked oddly familiar to him. "My mother owns this place."
As Keitaro prepared to tell her that he knew for a fact that his grandmother owned this property before he did, he looked inside to see a sign. When he confused the Hinata-sou for the Hinata-ryokan his grandmother used to run, Aoyama Motoko had used that very sign as a visual aid to show Keitaro the error of his assumptions.
Now, the sign read something different. Instead of reading [Hinata-sou: All-girls dormitory, no men allowed], the sign read [Hinata-ryokan: hot springs hotel, couples welcomed]. As he started to feel himself losing consciousness from the shock, he fell face first into the space between Narusegawa's legs where his clumsiness had delivered him to quite a few times, almost as often as it did to her breasts. He hoped this girl, who he safely identified as his aunt Haruka at age of twelve, would have enough decency to put their bodies into a more flattering arrangement when Narusegawa regained consciousness.
*****
'What happened to me?' Narusegawa Naru fluttered her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. She could not believe she had lost consciousness back in the woods or that Keitaro had pulled her up into her own punch. Her hatred of Keitaro faded as she remembered how he had shortly afterwards heroically popped her dislocated shoulder back in. As Naru started to wonder if she had misjudged Keitaro, she looked down at her waist she felt something pressing against her body. From experience, she knew exactly what she would find when she looked down, but she did it anyways.
In a moment, Naru quickly recognized the top of Keitaro's head as he had his face shoved into her … body. Outraged, she tried to shove Keitaro off of her and quickly resorted to her super punch. Still not fully ready after the dislocating of her shoulder, her punch had only caused his nose to drift inside of her and moving her arm filled every inch of her body with paralyzing pain. She then realized that Keitaro had not reacted to her attack. Keitaro had already lost consciousness and thanks to his gift for accidents fell on top of her in this not-so-innocent position as he did. She decided to kick his unconscious body off of her, but she realized very quickly that she could not move her legs due to the paralyzing pain, let allow kick Keitaro off her.
Still, she could not allow Keitaro to think she would let him get away with this, even with unconsciousness as an alibi. 'Not until the honeymoon ...' With all her remaining strength, she inched away from Keitaro, causing him to drive his own head into the floor. The force of hitting his head against the floor sparked the embers of consciousness in Urashima Keitaro.
In moments, Keitaro elevated his consciousness to something resembling a fitful sleep. As he did with every sleeping moment, Keitaro started to fantasize about her. She had the similiar fantasies about Keitaro, but she at least hoped she did not mumbled in her sleep the way Keitaro did. "Hmmm … Narusegawa," Keitaro moaned half-asleep. "I had a wonderful dream that …" Keitaro opened his eyes and witnessed the look of death she could feel molding itself onto her face. " … that I acted like a perfect gentleman around Narusegawa and did nothing out the ordinary. Oh, hello, Narusegawa."
The look of death fell off her face and gave way to a smile. For the first time in Hinata-sou history, Keitaro had actually tried to play it cool when caught in the act of perversion. According to her understanding of her somewhat predictable Urashima Keitaro, he should have started to panic by now and babble about his innocence in the matter. But Keitaro, except for when his voice cracked once during his "perfect gentleman" comment, had remained calm and controlled. Good for him.
"So, Keitaro," Naru started in looking over this room which seemed simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It seemed like she recognized this place from somewhere, but could quite place where she had seen this place before. "What happened to us?"
Keitaro turned around, the look at Narusegawa with a spark of renewed intelligence and insight. "Su Kaolla's reverse time theory just happened to us." Narusegawa Naru blinked and pleaded for Keitaro to explain himself. Unlike him, Naru did not spend her spare time testing to Kaolla class weaponry and listening to her crackpot theories.
"Kaolla once suspected that I possessed an ability to alter gravity. She believed it would explain how I can manipulate gravity and control the effects of concussion on my body at the same time. She tried to test her theory, but it came up inconceivable when the machine kind of blew up on me."
Narusegawa started to realized what Kaolla meant by this theory. She remembered the first time she had attacked Keitaro with her super punch and sent him bouncing off the walls. If Naru had really hit him that hard, he should burrowed through the first wall, instead of bouncing all over the place. Narusegawa sweat-dropped and grew impatient. This theory explained how she turned him into a human pinball, but how could this theory possibly explain why this room looked so eerie and familiar?
"Don't you get it, Narusegawa? We read that physics books to prepare for the Toudai exam?" Narusegawa remembered that week quite vividly. Desperate not to fail the test third time, Keitaro had gotten a number of strange books to refine their understanding in a wide range of fields of study. His obsession did not pay off since they both failed that test that year, Keitaro failed for the third time and Naru failed it for the first time.
Keitaro continued as soon as Naru nodded yes. "You remember the part of the book that explained the relationship between gravity and time?" Naru nodded impatiently. "It basically said that anything that happens to gravity happens to time as well. If I can alter gravity, I can alter time as well."
Naru's eyes bulged out their sockets as the truth hit her like her own punch to the face. Plasma pulsing through his body rose in Keitaro such intense sensations it forced him to overreact and accidently tear a hole through time. Because Keitaro had pulled her along for the ride, she entered the hole created by Keitaro and arrived back in time with him. Since he could in theory control when they landed, Narusegawa imagined that Keitaro had opened a tear to the era of the promise, which took place fifteen years old to a five-year-old Keitaro.
Naru took a seat on the mattress and stared into Keitaro's eyes. "How do we get home?" she asked. Keitaro looked into her eyes as if communicating the words he dare not speak out loud. Su Kaolla knew he could manipulate gravity, what he did only happened because he had a few thousand volts of electricity flowing through him. On his own, he could recreate the conditions that allowed him to open the time rip, much like close it. He needed a source of intense stimuli to push him over the edge and Narusegawa could not imagine anything as eye-opening as getting struck by a bolt of lightning. In that moment, she realized the answer to her question.
'They would get home to their time the long way, back to the future one day at a time.'
"So what should we do until then?" Naru never realized Keitaro and her often had quiet moments like these interrupted by someone bursting in and stopping them half way. She had never got an opportunity to know Keitaro's lips felt like against hers. They probably felt quite soft when he did not spent his life freaking out over every little thing. Keitaro's nose bled with anticipation, but he did not plead for forgiveness or cower away. Keitaro looked ready to accept whatever Naru wanted to do to him or have him do for her.
Suddenly, a wild and decidedly imprudent idea entered her mind as a solution to their problem. Perhaps, Keitaro could finish what he had started and then they could let their imaginations figure out what to do after that. If this worked, she and Keitaro will return to the present before anyone missed them. Naru grabbed Keitaro by his head with her good arm and lowered his head back onto her … body. Before she got around to handling Keitaro's happiness, she wanted to enjoy herself with Keitaro for once. If this didn't work, she would spent quite a few years together with Keitaro and violence would only make it worse on both of them. Keitaro did not put up any resistance, but his face turned neon red as he realize the position Naru had lowered him into.
'Don't play me stupid, Keitaro, I know you want to.' In his spare time (which he did not have much of) Keitaro studied those magazines hidden in his room almost as much as he studied his textbooks. If he had not learned something of value from them, Keitaro probably did not possess the higher brain functions necessary to pass the Toudai college exams. But she could not judge him so much, she did not have any experience dealing with this, but her best friend Kitsune kept her well-informed about forbidden issues.
Of course, another terrifying possibility entered her mind. 'What if he doesn't want to?' She worried that her constant beatings had finally had their effect on Keitaro. 'What if he wanted nothing to do with you?' Her fears of having broken Keitaro's spirit quickly faded as he grabbed hold of Naru's hand and came to his senses. Naru could feel sparks flying from his hands into hers. Keitaro looked ready to reopen the tear in time already, but not quite. Years of repression and self-denial made him almost as hard as herself to crack.
At that moment, he probably realized the same thing as she did. The trip back would take a long time. By then, they would have aged fifteen years and no one they knew would recognize them anymore. They had only each other to spent the next fifteen years together. If this didn't work, at least they would have this wonderful opportunity to get to know each other. As Keitaro started in after Narusegawa, her mind drifted back to the day she met him and to every moment after that. As Time had finally stood still for them, she now felt ready to let Keitaro know quite intimately well how happy he made her, always supporting her through her violent outbursts and harsh words, never pressuring her to make up her mind the way she pressured him to. Narusegawa smiled as Keitaro apparently started to remember some valuable pearls of knowledge from his off-hours studies.
*****
Her nephew Keitaro rested in bed as Urashima Haruka came in to read him a bedtime story. Haruka always enjoyed the enthusiasm Keitaro had for bedtime stories, but often he would grow impatient with the story. Sometimes, she wondered if she could just come in and say "they lived happily ever", beginning and ending the story right there. She wondered this a lot, because Keitaro did not like any part of the story as much as he did that last line, the one where everyone lived happily ever after. Someday, Keitaro would have to learn that real life just does not work like that, but Haruka hoped she could wait a couple years for him to learn that lesson.
But as soon as Keitaro started expressing his impatience with the slow pace of the story, Haruka stopped and put down the book. To heck with what she hoped for, Keitaro needed to learn this lesson now, before he got carried away and ruined his life over it.
"Keitaro, listen to your auntie," Haruka said, she enjoyed having Keitaro call her auntie, it made her sound all grown-up and important. "Sometimes, these people have to wait a long time for their happy endings."
Keitaro stared questioningly as Haruka, holding onto his blanket. "How long?"
"Well, you know the story of Sleeping Beauty." Keitaro nodded quickly. He knew every story by heart. "Well, the good prince had to wait one hundred years before he could see Sleeping Beauty and awake her from her sleep."
Keitaro loosened his grip on the blanket and looked at Haruka. She looked away. Keitaro had overwhelming adorable puppy eyes when he wanted to look cute "Haruka, do you think I'll have to wait that long for my happily ever after?"
Haruka removed the candy cigarette from her mouth. "Call me auntie, Keitaro. And I really don't think that question means anything," Haruka commented watching a sad look sweep over Keitaro's face. "Happily ever after only happens in fairy tales. It doesn't happen in real life." What possessed she to say that? Haruka stayed calm as Keitaro broke down into tears, Keitaro needed to learn this lesson for his own good. People who believe in fairy tales never get a chance to grow up. Like herself, she had to surrender her fairy tales at Keitaro's age and it did not hurt her one bit.
Keitaro fought back the tears and spoke to Haruka. "No, Haruka, I don't believe you. You have it all wrong. Happily ever after can to happen in real life. I'll prove it to you someday, you'll see." Haruka hated herself for getting Keitaro all worked up like this before bedtime. Keitaro looked up at the ceiling. Haruka watched helplessly as Keitaro constructed a small stepping stool and pushed the broken floorboard out of the way. Haruka did not encourage Keitaro to take up her bad habits, but he caught on to some things no matter how much she tried to stop him. Keitaro peeked through and pointed at the couple upstairs.
"Haruka, if happily ever after doesn't happen in real life, what do you call that?" Keitaro pointed at the couple she had place upstairs. Shielding little Keitaro's eyes, Haruka watched as the couple wasted no time finishing what they started. Haruka had misjudged the guy physically and his girlfriend seemed to have recovered her strength quite quickly. As things started to reach a high point, a bright light enveloped the two and sent Haruka tumbling to the floor. When she looked up from the broken floorboard, the couple had vanished without a trace. Keitaro sprung up and looked around. "Hey, where did they go?"
Haruka did not know. Haruka needed a distraction to keep Keitaro from realizing she did known the answer to his question. "Oh, yes, the story," Haruka remembered collecting the book off the ground and seeing a renewed hope in her nephew's eyes. "After slaying the dragon, the knight and the princess returned to their kingdom and lived happily ever after. The End."
Haruka tried to remembered what the couple looked like, but like her nephew, she had a horrible time remembering faces. 'Oh, yeah, perhaps, I'll see them again someday.'
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