Love Hina: Keitaro the MGTOW

Chapter One

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(It is essentially necessary to read the Love Hina manga in its entirety before reading this fanfiction. I may use some Japanese terms, so a broader background in manga and anime could be helpful as well.

You should be able to make a few good guesses about the plot of this story from the title. I will keep content T-rated, but there may be foul language, crude humor, sexual situations and violence throughout.

Other than that, read, enjoy, and review. Let's begin.)

—

169 centimeters tall. Bowl-cut black hair. Glasses. A sweater worn over a collared shirt. Pasty from a lack of sunshine and skinny-fat from a lack of exercise and appetite.

"Thank God that's in the past."

Keitaro shuddered and closed the photo album. He might have put his phone away, then, but instead he opened up the camera app and held it out, as it to take a selfie.

Well. He was still 169 centimeters tall, but the similarities ended there. Now his hair was trimmed and spiked. He still wore glasses, but they were sleek, metal, futuristic. And he still wore a collared shirt, but it was warm enough that he rolled up his sleeves and left the top button undone.

The result was that his tan showed. His tan, and a general lack of jiggliness. Once upon a time, Keitaro might have responded to the question, "Do you even lift, bro?" with a confused chuckle. Now, he answered it by dropping down and doing twenty. Burpees, not pushups.

A gaggle of women—no, girls—at the front of the bus looked at him, giggled, and then waved at him in such a cutesy manner that Keitaro had to suppress nausea. He shook his head and looked back at his phone.

He was on his last bar of battery. That wouldn't be so bad, but he only had a few megabytes of data and a few minutes of speech left. Even that wouldn't be so bad, if Keitaro had a penny to his name. And after last night, well, Keitaro was flat broke.

It was worth it, though, he thought with a grin. The first beer, the second, third, fourth, and fifth, then the flaming sambuca, then the soju, and then Keitaro had treated his newfound friends to a round of sake only to have his credit card denied.

That had been… annoying somehow wasn't a strong enough word.

The bus ground to a halt, and the dim orange LED panel above the door informed Keitaro that this stop was his.

Hinata Springs, Kanagawa District. Keitaro hadn't been there in over a decade, but he recognized it the moment he stepped out of the bus. The old man stooped over but still smiling, the sort of corner store that never seemed to sell very much but had survived the recession regardless… it was all still there.

And then, at the back of the town, perched on a throne of mountains, was Hinata Inn. Keitaro might have used his phone's map application to get there, but he hadn't needed to. He simply followed his memory to get through the alleyway, then up the stairs, then right up to the doorstep of the mansion.

It was as big as he remembered it. Bigger, in fact. But the years hadn't been friendly to the building. Chipped paint and windows streaked with more than dust were the least of the issues. Half of the timbers holding up the house seemed to be weakened

Now that he thought of it… perhaps cargo pants and a ruffled shirt weren't the best thing to wear. He hadn't seen his grandmother in fifteen years, after all, and she was an old lady. She'd probably call the cops the moment she saw him, long before he could convince her that she was in fact her only grandson.

On the other hand… Keitaro felt at his backpack for a moment. Two pairs of socks, three sets of boxers… and that was about it as far as clothes went. The rest of his clothes, and the rest of his possessions for that matter, were probably still being pitched into the nearest garbage can, back at home.

Keitaro forced himself to smile. Then he knocked on the door before his smile could fail.

He waited until the weight of the bag on his back grew awkward. Then he put the other strap over his free shoulder and knocked again. But no one answered. It was two o'clock in the afternoon, and no one was answering the door.

"Hello?" Keitaro called. "Anyone home?"

He tested the sliding front door—it was unlocked—so he let himself in. Several shoes were in the mudroom area in front of him, so the building was occupied—but no one seemed to be around at the moment.

And so Keitaro made his way farther into the inn. But it was empty and silent; he only found the landlord's room out of luck, and that too was empty. Perhaps his grandmother was just a neat freak who kept everything in the closet. In any case, this was a good enough place to wait for her.

Keitaro sat down on the floor rather heavily. Now that he thought of it, this was the first time in over twenty hours that he hadn't been in transit. And what had caused it all still made him bite his lip.

So what if he failed the Tokyo U entrance exam? He'd only missed it by a few—well, a lot of points—but that was only because he was hung over. The next time the exam came around, he'd study just as hard for it, but more importantly, he wouldn't drink for a month—that is to say, a week—well, make it a day before the exam, even if the exam was held on a Saturday again.

And what the Hell was with that? Who decided to make the Tokyo U entrance exam on a Saturday?

Keitaro found himself on his feet, wandering the empty hallways of Hinata Inn. His parents hadn't been understanding at all. At first, they'd insisted that he paid his fair share of household expenses, and he hadn't had a problem with that. He'd simply budgeted his income, picked up a part time job, and that had left him plenty of money for food, rent, and utilities, even accounting for boozing a few weekends each month.

Apparently that wasn't good enough for his parents. He couldn't quite remember what they'd said to him exactly, when he'd come home that night, because he was still drunk. But the die was cast when he had started to pack his bags and they hadn't tried to stop him.

"Whatever," Keitaro said. "I'll hang out here with Grandma for a year and get into Tokyo U the next time around. I'm sure she could use another part time worker to help maintain this place… or maybe she'll just let me stay here for free."

He had just started to do the math to figure out how many rounds of sake living rent free equaled when he came across a door that led outside. Beyond it was a mist-shrouded pool that, impossible, seemed to be giving off steam.

"No way," Keitaro said. "An on-premises hot spring?"

"Hmm? Kitsune, is that you?"

A figure approached from around a nearby bend. A very naked, very female figure.

"What are you doing home so early?" she asked, squinting at Keitaro. "I thought you wouldn't get back until tonight… or tomorrow morning, at the earliest."

Keitaro considered his options. Take a photo with his phone and get away before he could be pursued, simply duck away now, or possibly… possibly…

"Change of plans," Keitaro said, in a rather cloying high-pitched voice. "I decided to just stay here instead."

"Oh," the half-blind (and apparently half-deaf) girl said. "Well, then, come on into the hot spring. It's total heaven!"

"This is too good," Keitaro thought. What he said was, "Yeah, onsen in the middle of the day can't be beat!"

He stripped, then, and entered the spring like he had a right to. In moments, the girl—a brown haired, rather busty girl, Keitaro noted—was right next to him.

"You know," she said, "I think my breasts are getting bigger." She presented herself to him with a wink, and Keitaro didn't trust himself to speak.

"I still can't compare to you, though…"

He dropped the facade when she put a hand on a rather masculine part of his anatomy.

"Say, uhm… I think you have me confused with someone else," Keitaro said.

She leaned in closer than ever, and for a wild moment, Keitaro thought she was going to kiss him. Then she shrieked loudly enough to make his ears ring.

"Help," "pervert," and "lowlife," were the only words Keitaro recognized, and they were enough to make him spring to his feet and hastily leave the hot spring.

Footsteps were approaching, a lot of them, and so Keitaro considered simply running. But even he couldn't get very far stark naked and without any of his possessions. This wasn't Rush Hour and he wasn't Jackie Chan. Or Chris Tucker.

—

They came upon him just as he was pulling up his pants. A girl in a camouflage outfit that most certainly didn't meet AR 670-1 standards, a busty silver haired girl, someone who liked to play samurai, and in the background, clutching the skirts of her elders, a girl that Keitaro could only describe as "mouse-like".

"Well," Keitaro said, zipping his fly, "hello, ladies. Fancy meeting you here." He put his backpack on and flashed them a smile.

"'Fancy meeting you here?'" the samurai wannabe said. "In a hot spring, at an all-girls dormitory? Who did you think you'd meet here?"

"An all-girls dorm? When did my grandmother convert her apartment to an all-girls dorm?" Keitaro thought. What he said was, "I dunno. Elvis, maybe? Anyway, sorry for the misunderstanding. Let's go inside, perhaps after putting on some clothes," he nodded at the brunette, "and I'll explain what's going on."

As a habit, Keitaro reached into a pocket. He came up with a cigarette and a lighter, and some seconds later was taking a long drag.

And then the cigarette went out. Keitaro saw the gleam in the air, felt the whoosh of the blade passing him, but it was hard to believe that anyone could move a sword that fast. And yet now the samurai was holding her katana ready for another striking. Judging by her stance, this one might be fatal.

"I don't think that'll be necessary," she said. "Trespassing on in all-girls dormitory, peeping on the hot springs, and—worst of all—smoking… I sentence you to die here and now. Any last words?"

The other girls gathered up behind the samurai. The mouse looked terrified, the blonde terrified, the brunette vengeful, and the military wannabe hungry—Keitaro shook his head at that—but no one spoke up.

Keitaro sighed.

"Yeah, I have some last words," he said. "Nice knife. This here is a pistol." Quicker than blinking, Keitaro drew and leveled his piece at the samurai's head.

"Reach for the sky, honky!"

"Huh? Honky?" someone said.

"Honky is a racial epithet used for white people," Keitaro said. "Made popular by a man named George Jefferson, in the 1970s. You see he and his wife had a dry cleaning business, but I can't remember the rest." He shrugged.

"Say," the camouflaged girl said. She was the only one among them who wasn't terrified. "That's a 9mm Luger, vintage WWII! Mister, you have some style! Is it good to eat?"

"Yes, thank you, I—what?" Keitaro said. "'Is it good to eat?' What do you—never mind." He shook his head and glared down the sights of the automatic at the samurai. She still wasn't backing down.

And that left only one option.

"Hold it right there," Keitaro muttered, more for style than anything else. "This party's by invitation only."

And then he pulled the trigger.

—

Motoko felt something hot and wet on her face. It was blood, her blood, and although the pain hadn't hit yet, it soon would. She was dead, or dying, and then she realized that she was still on her feet.

She rubbed her face. Clean pure water came away.

"It was… a water pistol…"

She thought about chasing him, that cackling figure already a hundred yards away. But she didn't. Perhaps it was because Naru was swearing so harshly that she had to take a shower of her own to wash the filth out of her ears. Or perhaps it was because Kitsune was doubled over from laughing, and she knew, if she took a single step, she'd start to laugh, too.