Love Hina Fan Fiction ❯ Motoko's Secret ❯ Chapter 2

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter 2


Keitaro took the stairs two and three at a time. His mind was filled with scenes of Motoko sitting on the floor, her shirt open, a knife in her belly, as she wrote death poems on the wall in her own blood.

“Motoko! Don’t do it!”, he shouted as he mounted the stairs, rounded the corner, and burst into her room.

Inside he was confronted with a scene that half matched what he had feared. Motoko was sitting on the floor. And her shirt WAS open. But instead of opening her belly, she was taking the wrappings off of her breasts!

“Ack! I’m sorry!”

“URASHIMA!”

Keitaro ran for his life.

“Secret technique -- rock splitting sword!”

He rounded the corner just in time. A blast came out the door after him, trailing along the floor, until it crashed into the wall on the opposite side of the hall.

“Oh man, I’m going to have to fix that . . .”

“Did you see!?”, Motoko demanded.

“The only thing I saw was my life flashing in front of my eyes!”, Keitaro pleaded. “Honest!”

For a moment, everything was deathly quiet. With Motoko, “deathly” was usually a good way to describe things.

“Wow”, Keitaro thought to himself, “She only made one attempt to kill me. Usually she wouldn’t stop until she’d sent me flying at least a hundred feet -- she really MUST be taking this hard --”

“You’re still there, Urashima.”

“Gulp!”

“What do you want?”

“Look”, Keitaro said, carefully venturing inside. Motoko was still sitting on the floor. Her kimono was tightly shut. “We all heard what happened, and we’re really sorry . . .”

“I do not need your sympathy”, Motoko said, without looking at him.

“Wow”, Keitaro thought to himself, “She’s really being stubborn about this -- Oh wow!”, he said, catching sight of a large silver cup sitting in the corner, with a wooden sword resting against it. “Is this your trophy from the competition? It’s huge!”

“Hmph!”, Motoko said. “A samurai cares not for such things.”

“Samurai or not, you’ve been training for that contest for months. There has to be something we can do -- we’ll petition the judges -- or file a protest--”

“The decisions of the ruling board are final”, Motoko said. “There’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do about it. Now if you’ll excuse me, Urashima, it’s been a very long day.”

And she pushed him out the door.




“So how’d it go?”

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Keitaro as he came down the stairs.

“It didn’t”, he said, and then went out on the front porch. Naru frowned, and went after him.
“What do you mean?”, she asked. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened”, he said, putting his hands on the rail. “She just wouldn’t listen to me. She said the decision was final.”

Naru put her hands on the rail too, as she stood beside him.

“It isn’t like her to give up so easily”, he went on. “That’s not like Motoko at all . . .”

“We have to help her”, she said.

Keitaro sighed.

“I wish we could. But I don’t know what I could possibly do.”

“Keitaro”, Naru said softly -- so softly that at first it startled him, “This isn’t like you and I trying to get into Tokyo U. If we fail a test, sure, its disappointing, but we can always try again next year -- heck, what’s one more year to a veteran ronin like you?”

“Gee, thanks!”

Naru winked and stuck her tongue out at him.

“But for Motoko, this is different. Her senior year competition will only happen ONCE -- “

Keitaro turned to look at her.

“I missed out on so many things because of my studying”, Naru went on. “Things that I’ll never get the chance to do again. I don’t want that to happen to one of our friends. I don’t want any one of them to miss out on anything. That’s why we have to find a way to help her.”

“You’re right, Naru!” Keitaro clenched his fist in determination. “Motoko’s our friend! We can’t let her down!”

“That’s the spirit!”, Naru said, smiling. “For a dork, you’re not so bad”, and then she added, under her breath, “when you get so determined, its actually kinda’ cute . . .”

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

“Don’t leave me hanging like that!”

“I told you it was nothing”, she said, punching him with only half the usual force. “Now get going!”

“Yes ma’am!”




“Naru’s right! We can’t let our friend down!”, Keitaro said to himself as he ran up the stairs. “Motoko, listen, I need to talk to --”

But Motoko’s room was empty.

“Eh? She’s not here? Where could she have gotten off to? Hmm, let’s see -- if I were Motoko, where would I be? Ah ha! She’s probably on the roof taking her afternoon practice!”

But the only person on the roof was Shinobu, who was busy hanging laundry.

“Shinobu, have you seen Motoko?”

“No sempai, I haven’t seen her since the tournament.”

Next he tried the kitchen.

“Maybe she’s trying to make herself feel better by gorging on comfort food”, he thought.

But the only person in the kitchen was Kaolla.

“Suu, have you seen Motoko?”

“Nope, but if you’re looking for her, this is the place to be. If you wait long enough, I’m sure she’ll get hungry”, Suu said cheerfully, applying her own logic (if one can call it that) to the situation. “In the mean time, you should try some of this banana flavored ice cream!”


“No thanks, Suu. I’ve got to find Motoko.”

He met Kitsune in the hall. Not so much “met” as “ran into.”

“Why Keitaro, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you did that on purpose, just to have an excuse to brush up against me”, she teased. “Not that I could blame you for wanting to get close to a beautiful young thing like me --” she kept on teasing him, leaning in close, which for a moment made Keitaro forget the nature of his errand.

“Kitsune -- have you seen Motoko?”

“Darn!”

“What?”

“Nevermind. Nope, haven’t seen her all afternoon. Aren’t you supposed to be looking for her?” she asked, leaning in close to him again. This time she bent low enough as to be sure to give him a good view down her shirt.

“Um, I am looking for her!”

“Darn again!”

“What?”

“Nothing -- I think she . . .”, Kitsune tried to add, but Keitaro was already hurrying away. “Hmm”, she thought to herself, “He may be kind of a goof, but he sure is nice, and once he gets an idea in his head, he won’t let anything distract him from his mission.”

Haruka was sitting in the living room. She didn’t even wait for Keitaro to speak.

“She isn’t in here either”, she said, without so much as looking up from her newspaper.

Keitaro sighed in frustration. Just then, a turtle flew by. Which would have been unusual anywhere else, but this was Hinata House, which is not like anywhere else.


“Do you know where she went, Tama-chan?”
“Myuh?”, Tama seemed to ask.

Seeing Tama suddenly jogged Keitaro’s memory.

“Oh no! The last time Motoko suffered an embarrassing defeat, she tried to leave the Hinata House!”

Keitaro rushed out onto the steps in front of the main house, but no one was there. The only thing that greeted him was the rush of a few fallen leaves, stirring in the wind.

“Oh no! She must have run away! Tama, this is terrible!”

“Myuh!” Tama agreed.

Keitaro sighed, as he made his way back into the house.

“Well this is just great. Motoko’s gone -- everyone’s counting on ME to cheer her up, and I’m probably the reason she ran away in the first place,” he said, as he made his way out to the bath house. “Tama, there’s only one thing to do when you’re feeling down at times like this”, he said, getting undressed and wrapping himself in a towel as he prepared to go out to the hot spring. “You’ve just got to try and soak it all away!”

“Myuh!”, Tama agreed heartily.

“I guess we should call her family -- Tsuruko is probably going to KILL me”, he sighed, as he walked out of the changing room, and towards the water.

There was a splash.

Suddenly, Keitaro remembered that there was still ONE place he had forgotten to look . . .