Chapter 3:

The Hinata Inn sat on a large plot of land in the foothills of Hinata City surrounded by several old but sturdy structures. The buildings were connected through a series of paths and walkways built into the land with care in order to preserve the local flora and fauna that dotted the grounds. Underneath were tunnels that linked the basements of various buildings to each other, and also allowed pipes and a boiler system to take advantage of the natural hot springs. It was a simple yet sound design which was extremely functional and required only a few people for upkeep.

It also provided many hiding places for anyone who didn't want to be found.

One such person was Kaolla Su, who had taken to sneaking into a certain manager's room and studying the repairs ledger. Through careful analysis, she determined where Keitaro would most likely be performing repairs…which then told her where she could go to avoid him. It was a sound strategy, if the Hinata Inn only had one manager.

Currently, the Molmolian princess was sitting on a small stone bench next to a large pond. The plants formed a convenient barrier, providing adequate privacy for her to be alone with her thoughts. Her quiet contemplation was interrupted by the member of the hotel management staff she did not account for.

"Why don't you just go talk to him…" Kanako said purposely to interrupt the young princess's musings.

"Aaaah! Ohmigod Kanako, don't do THAT!" shrieked Su. She had not expected anyone to be at this section of the grounds.

Kanako just gave her an impatient stare, showing absolutely no remorse. "Don't you think you've carried this on long enough?"

"It's just…I can't…" the princess of Molmol started, and then sighed. "I dunno what to tell him," she finally said, softly.

"Can you at least tell me what happened?" the Goth girl said as she walked over to the troubled girl. "I tried to ask my brother but that only made him more depressed."

"Don't you mean, 'step-brother'?" challenged Su.

"So why don't you tell me what all this is about?" Kanako replied, ignoring her question.

"It's none of your business! Besides, I don't see why you even care," the dark skinned girl responded as she turned away. She looked down at the device she had been tinkering with for the past few days. It's state of disrepair showing just how much of her scientific drive was drained by the events that transpired.

"It's my business because I don't like my brother being distracted like this. He has enough things to take care of…"

"Like you?" interrupted Su. The two girls stared for a moment.

"Why do you keep bringing that up? Are you jealous?" asked Kanako.

"It's not right that you're with Keitaro. He should be with Naru!" Su spat back.

"Keitaro should be with someone who doesn't hurt him! He's been through enough pain!" the step-sister exclaimed loudly. The dark skinned girl's wince was not lost on Kanako.

"What happened, Su?" The Goth girl asked again. The princess just sighed and stared at the device on the ground, unable to look Kanako in the eye.

The young scientist thought for a moment and said, "I upgraded my trans-ion molecular composition scanner to use different wavelengths to take advantage of particle bounce resonation patterns in order to see if Keitaro's mass spectrum vector would change when subjected to a lateral phasing of…"

"Non-scientific terms, Su…" interrupted Kanako.

"Umm…I, uh…I zapped him with one of my gadgets, and he got angry with me" the princess replied dejectedly.

"Angry? At you?" The Goth girl asked, skeptically. Su just nodded, still looking at the ground.

"I don't believe my dear brother is capable of feeling anger toward any of you. His affection for all you girls has never wavered, despite your repeated attempts to cause him grievous harm." Kanako said darkly.

"I think this time he was really angry, though..." Su continued, "…when I overdid the resonation wave, I think it zapped his brain and somehow it let his real feelings show…"

"Real feelings?" The Goth girl asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, I think…he's hated us all along. He was so angry and he said…so many things…I felt so bad…I didn't know…" said a teary eyed Su. The younger Urashima regarded her for a moment.

"As resilient as my dear brother is, he crumbles when it comes to hiding his emotions. He wears his feelings on his sleeve every day for everyone to see." Kanako said seriously.

"But what he said was true, though…" Su continued in between sniffles "…I checked back on my notes and realized that every single one of my scanners actually DID hurt him…I didn't know how much until he described how it felt…" Her tears were flowing freely now.

Despite the anger Kanako felt, she could not discount the obvious remorse being displayed by Su. It was an unfamiliar expression from the princess, as her childish exuberance seemed to be intractable. Still, she wasn't going to let the gaijin off lightly either.

"Then maybe you should stop hurting him." The Goth girl said simply.

"Don't you think I'm doing that already?" Su cried.

"No, NOW you're hurting him by disappearing. Your absence is nagging at him. This business is unfinished. And you two need to resolve this before moving forward."

"But I don't know what to say to him!"

"I suggest you start with 'I'm sorry', and then go from there…"

"It's not that easy!"

"Yes it is, just go up to him and apologize."

"But what if he hates me…" cried Su.

"He can't hate you. It's not in his blood. His heart is bigger than this Inn. You mean a lot to him, so don't hurt him more by staying away."

"But what about the things he said?"

"Just because he's immortal doesn't mean he isn't human." The Goth girl stated, ignoring the obvious irony of her own statement.

"So he could really be angry and you wouldn't know it!" Su challenged once again.

Kanako shook her head in frustration. "This is pointless. We're just going in circles. I've already told you that Keitaro isn't capable of being angry at you. His concern for your disappearance is proof that he isn't. You are a genius, should know better than this. If it didn't affect Keitaro so much, I wouldn't have even bothered to find you."

"Why do you care, anyway? He's yours now. You should be happy that you're the only person he didn't say awful things about…"

This gave Kanako pause and made her smile inside, but she continued. "I care because my brother's happiness is MY happiness. I learned that to receive love from a man with a heart as big as his I needed to think of his needs over my own. Since we began to have an understanding, I realized that my brother would give me the world without a thought. He gave me more than I could ever expect, much less deserve. It would be shameful for me to be selfish now."

Su frowned and turned away, wiping the tears. Regarding the young girl for a brief moment, she continued.

"And despite what you think about how familiar we are with each other, Keitaro and I are not…together."

This caught Su by surprise. "You're not?" she asked incredulously. Kanako nodded, finding a comfortable place to sit, then continued.

"No, we are not, at least not in any official capacity. Even though we are not related by blood, the law still sees us as siblings. So no formal union could ever happen." Kanako paused to let that sink in and then continued. "But that is beside the point; all I wished for was to run this Inn with Keitaro. It was a childhood dream that was laced with thoughts of a marriage and a deep long lasting relationship. But I grew up, and learned about the world, and realized that getting what I wanted meant destroying the man I loved. So little by little, I slowly let go of all the 'happily-ever-after' delusions I had and focused on helping my brother run the inn…and hoped for the best."

The Goth girl thought for a moment, and then continued. "Then after the inn was renovated, I noticed how harshly my brother was being treated by all of you girls. I was unhappy about it, and I'm sure you remember all the steps I took to correct it."

"Yeah, you tried to get us all kicked out." Su responded unkindly.

"And I was unsuccessful, because my brother wouldn't allow it. At first I wondered if he was crazy, and we argued constantly about it. Despite his invulnerability, I just couldn't stand seeing him hurt. I confronted him with this many times to no avail. Then later I began to notice a strange trend."

"Trend?"

"Yes, the instances where I saw Keitaro being pummeled into the atmosphere or getting blown up decreased." Kanako said.

"It did? I don't think it ever really stopped…got worse a few times, actually…" Su pondered.

"Correct. There was absolutely no change. However, Keitaro diverted me with hotel management tasks and errands so that the number of incidents I actually SAW went down. They still happened, but to me it looked like it got fewer since I was not actually around. That's when I began to understand my brother better."

"Understand what?" The princess asked.

Kanako took a breath and continued. "He didn't want anyone to change for his benefit. He just wanted everyone to be happy. So he put himself in harm's way because he seriously thought this would give us all that we wanted. If he ever stopped Naru or Motoko from lashing at him, they'd probably hurt someone else and get taken away by the police. This is their home, so he couldn't allow that. Likewise, he never wanted to get Mitsune in trouble with the law either, so he just made sure to allocate sufficient funds for her to 'steal' and cut corners in maintenance to account for her tardy rent payments. And most of all, he saw you as a budding genius with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He never wanted you to stop charging ahead with your experiments, even if it caused him great pain. So he figured out how to set himself up to be ambushed whenever he overheard you talking to Sarah about a new gadget."

Once again, said genius was staring at the floor in shame.

"So I decided to give him something that none of you girls did: Peace of mind." Kanako said.

"What do you mean by that?" Su said sourly.

"I mean, that I made sure I was the one person in this inn he could be comfortable with and never had to worry about. Someone he could be close to, yet not have to do anything for." Kanako replied.

"Hmpf….he still does things for you," the princess countered.

"Yes, but the difference is that he doesn't go out of his way to make me happy, he does them because it pleases him. Whereas all the things he does for you girls are to make YOU happy."

The princess frowned. "I don't get it."

"Once I stopped trying to get him to kick you girls out, it made our conversations a lot easier since he didn't have to avoid talking about you girls anymore. I also made sure not to get mad anytime he mentioned any of you, this allowed him to relax and actually express how he felt. When we meet in the evening to discuss hotel management issues, we only spend a small portion of the time with the real work. The rest is just some quiet time for him to be comfortable and talk about whatever he wants. In the end, this probably convinced him to hire me as co-manager of the inn permanently."

"That's not all though, is it?" said a smirking Su.

"No, of course not. The relaxed atmosphere also brought him and I back to a time when we were both little siblings who just hung around each other. No expectations, just enjoying each other's company. Keitaro began to appreciate it greatly, especially after a rough day of dealing with the antics that plague the life of a MALE manager in an ALL GIRL dorm. I wasn't someone he had to worry about."

"Or so he thought…" the princess accused, knowing the Goth girl's attraction to her brother quite well.

"No, he didn't need to worry. I really did give up on my dreams of marrying him. I knew what trouble he would be in if I pursued it. And knowing Keitaro, he'd probably do something really silly to meet me somewhere in the middle. Now, with how casual we were with each other, I got to be with Keitaro as the co-manager of the inn…and at the same time I got closer to him than any of you girls ever could."

"But you still wanted him, though."

"Of course I did. He's a kind, handsome, and honest man. Who wouldn't fall for him? But I never hid it from him. To get him to open up to me, I opened up to him. So when the topic of my feelings came up, I laid it out on the table for him. Then I told him in no uncertain terms that I've accepted what my relationship with him could be, and that he should not try to make it up for me in any way. I had finally gotten him to relax and be the brother I remembered and loved. I wasn't about to lose that because of my odd emotional and physical needs."

"Odd?" Su retorted with a slight impish grin. The girl was finally calming down.

Kanako gave Su a smirk and replied, "He's still my brother. And I told him that despite that, part of me will always want to sit on his lap and snog him senseless or sneak into his futon at night. But I told him that NONE of that will ever happen because I love him too much, and that having him back forever is more important to me than one night with him.

"Wow. All right. But I don't understand how that led to how you two are now."

"I proved to Keitaro that I could hold my feelings in check. It wasn't difficult, as I had done it all my life. And this time around, I had even more incentive since it was now allowing me to have my dream. He doubted it all at first, but the more time we spent together, the more we regained the comfortable feeling we had when we played together as little siblings. We began to tease each like we did when we were young. None of it was ever hurtful. Mostly it was just jokes about my unsisterly feelings for him and how nervous it used to make him feel. Eventually, he got so relaxed that he began to flirt."

"Keitaro? Flirting? Really?" Su gasped in disbelief.

Kanako nodded. "It started with a little innuendo here and there with purpose of making the other person blush. As I had a lifetime of discipline training behind me thanks to Granny Hina, I always managed to stay ahead of him. It started when he asked me if I was enjoying my position as a co-manager. I just responded saying that 'there were OTHER positions I would have enjoyed more.' He laughed, and quipped that he was glad since he enjoyed 'having me under him.' Another time, he was saying how glad he was that I took over the accounting work since he hated it so much. So I just said I didn't mind since I would gladly 'do anything he ordered me to, no matter what position he put me in'. Even though he was blushing, he still managed to say that he'll make sure to 'take full advantage of me in the future'.

"Oh my god, he said THAT?" Su gasped, amazed that Keitaro could be so…forward.

"Yes, he did. As I said, he's a different person when he's relaxed and comfortable. From then on, we've just been extremely casual with each other. And I feel fortunate that despite not being in a formal relationship with Keitaro, I get the most contact with him…both physical and emotional." Kanako said finally.

"But didn't you say that you wouldn't hug or kiss him?" Su challenged again, albeit this time less viciously.

"I did. And this time, it's true. We may have a lot of physical contact now. But this time, I'm not the one kissing or hugging him, he's the one actually kissing and hugging me. There is a difference."

"But you're still doing it! It still counts!"

"Not really. This time, I'm not forcing myself or my feelings at him. I told him that no matter what happened nothing was going to change my feelings for him, and that I would be happy with whatever affection he wished to give me. So we were mostly platonic at first, then he got comfortable enough to hug, and then eventually kissing. Once he adjusted to our renewed closeness, he allowed me to take a few liberties with him…but I never abused them. Nowadays, he pretty much initiates almost all of our physical contact. And he does it because he enjoys it, not because it would make me happy.

The princess was silent for a moment, then asked cautiously, "So what if he wants…more?"

"That is up to him. Like I said, the entire point of our relationship is that Keitaro is in control of it. Just like I told him the other day, our relationship is based on trust. He trusts me not to pound him for touching me, I trust him not to touch me where I don't want him to."

"You actually have a place you don't want him to touch?" The dark skinned girl pushed.

Kanako gave her a level gaze, "What are you really trying to ask, Su?"

"If he wanted you to have sex with him, would you?"

"Given how open I have been with my feelings toward my brother, and how relaxed we are with each other now. What do you think?"

"You didn't answer the question!"

"Because I'm pretty sure you already know. Besides, I'm also trying to figure out what you are really asking."

"Fine! I want to know what you and Keitaro do in the Annex late at night!" The Molmolian demanded.

Startled, Kanako stared at the young girl for a moment. "I don't see why it is any business if yours, Su." The Goth girl answered.

"Hey! I told you what happened between me and Keitaro. Why don't you wanna be fair about it?" The dark skinned girl complained.

"Perhaps I'll tell you, after you settle things with my brother." Kanako eventually said with a smirk.

"I'll tell Naru and Motoko…" threatened Su.

"Tell them what? That I love my brother and would do anything for him? Do you honestly think that would change anything? They already despise my brother, and they've spent a significant amount of effort damaging his character. My brother is practically a sex offender in the eyes of the public despite not having ever been convicted or brought to jail."

"This will prove it!"

"No, it will confirm that Keitaro and I spend time together in the annex. A building that has been the property of the Urashima family for many generations and only family and their retainers are allowed in. It is also a historical building; as such any damage to the structure would greatly incense head of the family, Granny Hina. So if you really want to open this can of worms, go ahead and do so. But just remember, your conscience is already bothering you for your acts against my brother. Do you think this gets you any closer to redemption?"