Author's Note: After years of not writing any fanfiction, here's a treat for those Paradise Kiss fans. Animeverse, set during the last episode before and after the epilogue.

Disclaimers applied.

UNCONVENTIONAL

They were two proud individuals. And their relationship was nothing but to see who can make the other swallow his or her pride just to obtain any form of affection from the other.

He was the one always asking if it was alright to kiss her. While she was the one who was reduced to tears just because she was embarrassed to ask him to make love to her the first time.

When he left for Paris to pursue further studies and start his career there, she thought that it was over between them. That was until he called her a year after inviting her to Paris to become the model of his new set of clothes for the shop he was starting.

She answered that she was busy and that she didn't have to go along with his whims, but when the plane ticket from him arrived two days later, she cancelled all her appointments and packed her bags. Two weeks and lots of passionate sex later, she returned to Japan to continue her modelling job. He continued designing clothes.

Their relationship, should there be a need to describe it, was at best, unconventional. They didn't keep in touch. They could go for weeks (and sometimes, months) without calling each other.

He would, however, always send her a package during her birthday, Christmas and White Day. And it would always be a new set of clothes that always seem to fit her no matter how much weight she gained or lost during those past few months.

And when loneliness began to eat either one of them, she would always find herself booking a ticket to Paris, or finding him at her doorstep. And they would then stay locked up in his or her apartment for a week or so, phones turned off and neither answering the door should there be someone who decided to drop by to visit.

Then, both of them would resume their life, he in Paris and she in Japan. Because he was a rising designer in Paris, there had been a lot of news about him being involved with lots of women (and men), while she dated her fair share of men, as well. However, neither of them committed to anyone nor been involved in any serious relationship, so that when the time comes that they need to lose themselves to each other once again, there would be less complication.

It had always been a contest on who was busier to spend time to call or visit, or who was weaker or lonelier or needier of the other.

It had been in their ninth year of their so-called relationship, when for a period of six-months, she never heard any word from him. As unusual as their relationship was, he was not someone who can go on for six months without being with her, much more not contacting her.

She was getting fed up, too much, in fact, that she decided not to call him, too, and besides, there had been a circulating rumour that he was dating a French model for three months now, irritating her to no end because first, his relationship with other women (or men) never lasted for more than two months, and second, he never dated a model before, except for her.

Four months later, she accepted the marriage proposal of a young businessman, who, due to excessive infatuation, willingly offered to give her the necessary finances for her to be able to start her own modelling agency.

She received the call two months after, making it ten months of not having any form of communication with each other.

"It's me," he said.

"Hey," she greeted softly. God, she missed him.

"Listen here, Yukari," he said, his tone irritated, "if you want to get married that badly, you should have told me. I would marry you, you know."

How he managed to know about that, she didn't know, but she wouldn't start losing the game now, especially when she was close to winning, "Please, George, like I want to marry you."

A brief pause, before she heard him take a deep breath. "I was thinking of proposing to you after the show in America next month. You can't seriously be thinking of going there as part of your honeymoon with another man!"

"We live continents apart. Marriage is simply impossible for us," she said flatly.

"Don't marry that man, Yukari," he said in that warning tone of his, that one tone that never failed to make her think that she was being unreasonable and stupid.

And the only tone that can ignite her temper so fast, she asked before thinking, "Why the hell not?"

"You don't love him," was his brief reply.

Two months later, she married him and moved to his apartment in Paris. He gave her the modelling contract for his shop, and provided her an excellent recommendation, which enabled her to start her modelling career there.

He would often tease her that, in the end, he was still the one who had to decide what to do with their life together, and all she did was go along with it. She would often reply that he was wrong, for she was the one who chose him over her ex-fiancé businessman.

Having no pride left when it came to her, especially when he went down on his knees one week after that fateful call, pleading to her to please marry him, he would often ask her why she chose him, to salvage some of his ego.

She would smile mischievously at him, knowing full well what he wanted to hear, "I like your clothes more than his businesses."

He would smirk in return, and tackle her to bed.

She liked his clothes, that was the closest thing to a confession of love he would get from her. Because even after years of marriage, she never, not even once, told him she loved him.

The same, though, can be said to him. However, one cannot deny that there was something more between them.

Her feelings for him was so obvious from the glint of pride in her eyes whenever she model his designs. And for those hopeless romantic, they said that he had always courted her, trying to win her favors and affections through the new designs of clothes he make, always trying to outdo the last one he made.

When she got pregnant after two years of marriage, he started a new line of clothes for pregnant women, naming it Caroline. If only to keep her from modelling.

Just to keep her happy.

Indeed, their love was unconventional. But then, nobody cared either way, right?

owari

"Just give me one more chance to make it right..." Maroon 5 (Won't Go Home Without You)

Author's note: I hated making alternative endings because it was like deluding myself from the truth. However, who says that the ending of the series cannot be continued to make them end up together? grins Reviews and criticisms are welcome.