I don't own Love Hina. Ken does. I'm just along for the ride!
Love Hina – Before His-story
Fanfic
Chapter One –Prologue, Early 1988:
Four years have passed since Keitaro, Naru, and Mutsumi met and played as children at the old Hinata Inn.
Keitaro Urashima still misses his friends from his young childhood, with the exception of his cousin/aunt Haruka, of course, whom he still sees regularly. Keitaro is now just over nine years old, and is in elementary school, struggling through the fourth grade. Although he still visits occasionally in the summers, Keitaro vacations less than before at Hinata-sou. He misses Nana-chan, the little girl he made his promise to, and Mumu-chan, his other dear friend who moved away, but already his forgetfulness has caused him to no longer remember their names, and only in his dreams does he glimpse their faces. He sometimes dreams of Mumu-chan kissing his cheek, and confuses her with his promise girl.
Keitaro spent the summer after Naru left, when he was six years old, with his grandmother and his former cousin, now his aunt Haruka, at the Shinmei School of Swordsmanship in Kyoto. Unlike Haruka, he was unable to become comfortable with learning to fight, but he did have a knack for the more defensive styles of focusing his family's abilities. Keitaro, through simple self-preservation, has an instinctive knack for channeling his ki in a virtually undetectable manner, especially undetectable to himself, to heal him of injuries.
Not wishing to push him, Hina insisted Keitaro only be allowed to participate in the more offensive/attack styles if he was willing. This caused a breach between Hina and her son, Keishi, who desired Keitaro to become proficient in the Urashima Family style, as all the males had. Hina, as the eldest of the family, decided that Keitaro would be allowed to find his own path, with no overbearing influence from his family.
Keitaro was also, to the embarrassment of one or two in the Aoyama clan and the humorous delight of several of the Urashima's, the only non-family member that then two-and-a-half year old Motoko would allow to pick her up, smiling and patting his cheeks whenever he held her, or tapping his head with her little plastic sword. (Shades of things to come, perhaps?)
Naru Narusegawa, now just over seven years old, has recovered from her childhood illness and lives with her widowed mother. She is in the second grade in a small school in Tokyo, and is the terror of the little boys in her class. They've learned early on that to tease Nannie-britches is to court certain doom, in the form of a powerful kick to their shins.
Naru has developed the belief that her father 'went away' because he no longer loved her. She is starting to understand (wrongly) that if a man gets close to her, he'll leave her, and the thought of going through that again hurts too much. So, she pushes away any attempts by boys to get close to her, to the point where she no longer even has to try, as her reputation does the work for her.
It is in part because of this that it will still be several years before Naru's mother re-marries, since almost every guy she introduces to Naru is rejected by her daughter.
Mutsumi Otohime? She returned to Okinawa with the rest of her family two years later. Like Keitaro, she is also in the fourth grade, having been held back one year due to family forgetfulness to register her when she turned six, and just celebrated her tenth birthday. Things are easier for her in school than it is for Keitaro, if you discount the anemia and fainting spells she inherited from her mother.
Although she has memories of staying at Hinata while her mother worked there, Mutsumi's family, through forgetfulness rather than anything else, do not have much contact with their Urashima relatives in Japan. Mutsumi soon forgets specifics about her time with Keitaro and Naru, although she also remembers his promise to get into Tokyo University with little Naru.
The summer after Mutsumi's last visit to Hinata, as Keitaro was visiting the Shinmei School of Swordsmanship in Kyoto, Naru visited Hinata once more (as a child). Mutsumi got the three and-a-half year old girl to renew her promise to Keitaro get into Tokyo University, so that Naru would not forget.
And the others?
Mitsune Konno is ten years old, attending the same elementary school as Naru, but three grades ahead of her as a fifth grade student. Naru looks up to Kitsune, still known to most at this time as Mitsune, as the older sister she never had. Over time, the sisterly feelings they share morph into them becoming the best of friends. Mitsune has already developed an independent streak a mile wide, much to the chagrin of her parents, and has already started to earn the nickname 'the Fox' from her classmates, more from her antics than her looks, being only a third grader. The rest of it will develop (cough-cough) later.
Motoko Aoyama is five and a half years old. Her mother, having just completed grieving over the loss of her husband two years earlier, struggles to manage the Shinmei School of Swordsmanship and her two fast-growing daughters. Their mother keeps secret the fact that her late husband discovered early on that it is in Motoko that the true gift of the family's power resides. Fearing to lose such a strong youngster, Aoyama-san inadvertently puts too much pressure on the young Motoko to be her best.
Although Motoko adores her sister, and desires to be a great swordswoman, the seeds of adolescent rebellion are being planted as she watches her sister become (in her eyes at least) distracted by her 'male' companion. Motoko thinks her sister is turning her back on everything she has tried to instill in the young girl, but buries her resentment deep, blaming everything she believes her sixteen year old sister does is because of the influence of 'that man'.
Kaolla Su is just over three years old, and already shows remarkable aptitude with machinery. Proof in that she can disassemble almost every mechanical device in the family palace.
Unfortunately, her attention span doesn't cover putting things back together.
As she has just discovered her first computer, her parents, the King and Queen of Mol Mol, have serious discussions about what her future path should be. Her older relatives, Lamba and Amalla, being above average in intelligence but not the technical wiz that Kaolla appears to be, are not pressured to take a direction with their young lives as yet. Kaolla, loving her life and everyone around her, doesn't feel the pressures of being a member of the Molmolian Royal Family yet, but as she grows older, her desire for freedom and fun will conflict with her family's desire for her to take on her role as Princess of Mol Mol.
Shinobu Maehara is two and a half years old, and is the pride and joy of her parents, the owners of a small family restaurant in Hinata City. They have taken to spending their vacation time up at the old Hinata Inn, for the convenience of being close by. And because Hina Urashima, upon first meeting them, expressed genuine affection for their little daughter, and promised to take care of her anytime she wants to come up and play at the inn, they allow Shinobu to visit the elder Urashima quite often. That will end when she accidentally falls of the roof of the inn. While not injured, it traumatizes her mother to the point where she forbids Shinobu to ever go back up to the inn, later justifying her desire by claiming that the residents are 'not the kind of girls you should be around.'.
Nearly five-year old Kanako Nakai, recently orphaned, is now Kanako Urashima, having been adopted last November by Keishi and Yohko Urashima, Keitaro's parents. Withdrawn and lonely since the death of her mother and father, the only person Kanako opens up to is her adopted brother. Not having been an emotional child even before the loss of her parents, Kanako rarely smiles or laughs, and when she does, it is almost exclusively for her new brother.
Mei Kobayashi (Narusegawa) is a gleam in her mother's eye. That is, she hasn't been born yet. Oh, her mother is pregnant, she just hasn't started to show yet.
Sarah McDougal, well, let's just say she hasn't entered into any story as of yet…….For those who understand, her parents haven't done 'this or that' yet.
Haruka Urashima lost her parents nearly seven years ago, and was adopted by her grandmother, Hina Urashima, so gaining her birth-mother's family name. She is nearly fourteen, and is in her last year of middle school. She is friends with Seta Noriyasu, a sixteen year old freshman in Hinata High School. At her grandmother's request, Haruka spent several summers at the Shinmei School of Swordsmanship, honing her Urashima-style fighting skills by studying some of the Shinmei Techniques.
Seta Noriyasu, now sixteen, goes by his mother's maiden name Noriyasu. His family cast him out and disowned him at the age of eleven when he refused to agree to take over the family 'business', desiring in his heart to find a different path in life rather than the one set before him. Only his mother and a distant relative knows that rather than committing ritual suicide to atone for his (perceived) transgressions, as everyone else believes he did, he secretly fled Kyoto with her assistance to find a new life in Hinata City, helped by that particular distant relation to their clan (that left for personal reasons nearly sixty years before, a person who was shunned and has been forgotten by his clan for decades). He still thinks often of his mother and of his two sisters. His friends kid him for being held back his first year in high school because of his poor grades, and Haruka is very defensive of him.
Tsuruko Aoyama, seven years older than Motoko, is finishing her first year of junior high school. She has already shown remarkable ability with the sword and her control over her ki is the most impressive in generations, but is doing so poorly in school she has secretly decided to drop out and devote herself to her training. She is secretly (so she thinks) seeing a young non-martial artist high school student, and is considering his request to date.
Now some more obscure background. (Like the rest wasn't?)
Hina Urashima (Granny Hina), was born into the Urashima clan in 1920. Hina's mother, Shina Aoyama, was a niece of the current leader of the school, and her father, Keiske, was the elder of the Urashima clan and holder of the family lands in Hinata City. Although Hina's abilities were noted as extraordinary, her dwarfism biased the council against letting her ascend to any standing in the Shinmei School. During her studies at the Shinmei School of Swordsmanship, she fell in love with a young disciple of the school, a nineteen year-old fourth cousin named Kano Urashima, when she was sixteen.
While still un-married, Hina began a love affair with Kano in 1936. The Shinmei council, using that as an excuse, decided they had had enough of her, and ordered her to leave the school forever. In a fit of rage over their callous treatment of her, her lover Kano challenged the leader of the council to a duel of honor, and was seriously wounded. Hina heaped scorn on the Aoyama's, despite the fact her mother was of that clan.
Unable to continue his training because of his injuries, Kano and Hina left Kyoto the same year and settled in her family's inn, the Hinata Lodge. His health sorely affected from his previous injuries and the fighting he had been through on the mainland, Kano found himself bed-ridden, cared for by Hina, after the war in 1945. Hina's mother, grieving over the death of her husband, as well as almost all the other male relatives in the war, retired from running the Urashima clan and the Hinata-sou Lodge. Her last act before departing was to preside over the marriage of Hina and Kano.
As the oldest surviving child of Keiske Urashima at the age of twenty-five, Hina therefore gained the title of Elder, full ownership of Hinata-sou, all its grounds, and the fortune that her uncle, who had worked for many overseas corporations, had amassed. Several younger female cousins were asked and willingly assisted her in the day-to-day operations of Hinata-sou.
In early 1951, weakened in body from the wounds he had suffered in his duel with the master of the Shinmei School 15 years earlier and from the war, Kano's dying words to Hina were "Hina, my one true love. Please do not be bitter. I would not have lived any other life than the one by your side, brief though our time has been. I have had many years to thinks about what has happened in the past. Promise me that you will not forever estrange yourself from your mother's family. The Aoyamas are a proud clan, and can be stubborn to a fault. A trait I fear we Urashimas share with them. Find it in your heart to bring the families together again someday, and heal the break between you all."
Kano had, through the strength of his love for Hina, survived long enough to witness the birth of his two children, Yohko and Keishi in 1951. After the death of her beloved, Hina devoted herself to her two children and running the Hinata Lodge, with her two children starting to help around the inn when they were ten years old.
Yohko Urashima kept herself busy, taking on more responsibilities, including running the Hinata Tea House on her own, and did not find time for love until meeting Higuro Santo in 1970 when she was nineteen years-old. They had only one child, Haruka, four years later in 1974, but both Yohko and Higuro died in an automobile accident when the girl was seven years old.
Distraught over the loss of her daughter, and rather than allowing Haruka to be taken in by her uncle Keishi, Hina adopted her as her own daughter that same year and brought her to live at the Hinata Lodge.
Keishi Urashima, Yoko's fraternal twin brother, not desiring to be stuck running a hotel his entire life, had studied baking at a prestigious culinary school, and eventually started working in a small confectionery shoppe in Tokyo in 1975 when he was twenty-four years old. Marrying Yoko Kanagawa four years later, they had one child, Keitaro, in 1979. Keitaro resembles his great-grandfather Keiske Urashima in many ways, physically and emotionally, including his poor ability to learn anything quickly and a somewhat less than perfect memory.
Keishi buys out the owner of the shoppe in 1982 and becomes his own boss.
In 1983, five years before this story begins, Hina hears rumors of a quarrel in the Aoyama family. Secretly contacting the current head of that clan, Hina makes a tentative offer to assist her, which is willingly and gratefully accepted. Finding she has much in common with her counterpart, Hina decides that perhaps it was time to start healing the rift between their two families. She makes another offer to the head of the Shinmei School to welcome any others of her clan to Hinata if they ever need a place to stay away from Kyoto.
At the start of this story, only one older cousin, fifty-seven year old Rukiyo Urashima Takisawa, and Haruka remain at Hinata Lodge to assist Hina. As it is, the three women are more than enough to manage the inn, seeing how less and less people vacation in Hinata City, preferring the more modern attractions that have popped-up in other prefectures in Japan.
[AN] If this works out right, this will be my longest story. If anyone wants to add or suggest an item, as long as it leads up to the canon of the Manga, just drop me a PM. No guarantees I'll accept the idea, but I will consider them.
If it doesn't work out, well, I already have two more chapters nearing completion. I can speed the story lines up and bury this pig.
Kitsune: "Took that lazy bugger Slippy long enough to get some more stories out! Ah've been hankering for another try at Keitaro. You like my new outfit? (twirls) What do ya'll think, Keitaro-san?"
Keitaro: "Gack!" Blood spurts from his nose as he flops backwards over the typewriter, causing the author to fnjvkldsva jas afojare9jv94 v 8#!
Kitsune looks at Keitaro, then at Slippy's glare. Shaking her finger (no, not that finger) at him, she reminds the author that "Su still has that mecha-Slippy, and she ain't afraid to use it on ya'll. So watch what ya'll say, okay sweetie?" She leans over and blows a kiss, her 'babies' threatening the buttons on her blouse.
Author: "Gack!" Blood spurts from his nose as he flops out the window, pancaking onto the driveway below.
Kitsune: "Heh heh. Ah still got it!"