A flick.
A flash of silver.
Keitaro whipped his hand up and snatched the coin from the air, hurriedly examining the coin that he was using to help answer several questions that were simple out of his league. Despite all of his studying, which currently hadn't paid off yet since he was too distracted doing stupid stuff and flying to the moon doubling as an Earth Observation System for NASA, Keitaro's mind was impossibly blank as he tried to solve the questions. Using a mess of several formulas all rolled into one general "Keitaro" formula, Keitaro had acquired a grand total of seven solutions. Thus, he was using the last coin in his pocket to help him make a decision.
Alas! The coin fell out of his hand and into a crack and stood on its side, the face depicted on the coin silently mocking Keitaro. It seemed that the coin had deliberately robbed Keitaro of an answer just for laughs. Keitaro remained undaunted, and flicked the coin again. Noting which answer the coin pointed to, Keitaro hurriedly filled in the answer just as the invigilator stopped the giant clock and ran around the room collecting the exam scripts. Keitaro groaned as he looked at the amount of problems left undone, but it was too late anyway. He handed in his paper, grabbed his stuff; including a broken pencil that refused to work when he tried to draw a diagram, and walked out into the grand expanse that was Tokyo University.
As he moved along the pathway leading out of the school towards the train station, Keitaro looked; not for the first time, at the grounds on which students chatted merrily to each other as they moved towards wherever they were headed. He admired the happy students once again, before hanging his head and entertaining thoughts of how pathetic he was to have failed delayed his education for three fucking years. He fell into a pensive silence as the world moved on without him.
Examining the ground around, Keitaro saw somebody who had possibly the worst hairdo in human history and wore glasses that resembled the bottom of select coke bottles. Keitaro briefly wondered how Naru saw without her glasses on. Perhaps Su had given her some weird ass treatment that failed when her glasses were put on. The girl in question had noticed him as well, and was currently walking at a leisurely pace towards him.
As the girl closed the distance between them, Keitaro reflected on the current situation at Hinata Inn. Currently, he was the landlord of the all girls dormitory, which was rather weird in the first place, considering the fact that he was male, not to mention straight. He doubted that the girls would accept homosexuals anyway. On a daily basis, Keitaro was kicked, punched, smashed, roasted, grilled, burnt, batted approximately every five minutes that he was in the area. The only time he escaped such treatment was when he was in school. Thinking back, he had felt that most of the incidents were either pranks by the residents or caused by their overactive imaginations; he had to admit that sometimes he just couldn't resist coping a feel or two, but he was male and straight after all.
However, in an effort to make peace, Keitaro had swallowed his pride and apologized each and every time he had a "perverted" encounter, but… he was still attacked severely whenever the girls' imaginations started up or when they were stressed and just flat out wanted to attack something convenient… him.
He had felt like leaving sometime after seeing that his diplomatic tactics were not working, but for some unknown and probably idiotic reason, Keitaro had felt obligated to stay and help each and everyone of the girls. Even though neither of them would ever admit it, except probably poor little Shinobu, all of them had their own personal demons to fight. Naru with her family problems, Motoko with her prejudice, Su with her royalty… and so on. Sigh, seeing Naru approaching, Keitaro smiled and waved over to her. Naru smiled back.
As she reached, Keitaro resigned himself to a flight sometime in the near future. So far, Keitaro had not managed to get by a single trip back home without flying off the train back to Hinata Inn, where he would most definitely by some quirk of fate fall into a fully occupied hot spring and be sent flying, probably to the kitchen, where he would startle honest little Shinobu and earn a plate of hot vegetables in his face for his efforts.
Keitaro decided to start walking as she approached, and she moved faster to keep pace with him as she drew up to his side. Both of them discussed the recently passed exam, and Naru gave an easy and genuine laugh as she listened to Keitaro's account of how he used his all powerful "Keitaro" formula and the usage of the lucky coin in determining the answer. Both of them shared laughs as Keitaro heard about how Naru had accidentally taken the paper of another candidate and started work on it before she realized what had happened. In fact, Keitaro was surprised that he was actually laughing at Naru without being sent to the moon.
As the duo continued on his way towards the train station, Keitaro concluded that today was a good day indeed. Taking out his lucky coin, Keitaro smiled at it, before asking out loud for heads if his luck was going to last. Flipping the coin, Keitaro pocketed it before either of them could see which side was up. Naru looked at him curiously, but took it all in her stride, and the both of them made their way to the train station in an amicable silence.
Well, I think this ends this chapter. No notes, no disclaimer, no nothing!