A/N: I wrote this because the manga sucks lmao. The only reason I'm even still with it is because I really love Chitoge and Raku and I want to see them together sighs. I know they're endgame yeah yeah yeah. Anyway, sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes - I wrote this in one sitting.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
"You applied to the same colleges as Kosaki-chan, right?" Chitoge asks absently, her head bent as she inspects the papers before her, her pen tapping against the table while she brushes her bangs out of her face. Raku is distracted for a short moment by the way her hand curls around her ear, tucking the hair away, before he realizes what she's asked and his face goes hot.
"Y-Yeah. B-But it w-was purely coincidence! I-I-I mean how could I know that Onodera was applying t-to the same colleges as me?!" he says unconvincingly, paging through the textbook open in front of him. Something about Chitoge seeing him flustered over Onodera makes his chest feel heavy and horrible, even if he can't make sense of why.
Chitoge raises her head and gives him a bored look. "Stop acting suspicious. She is your friend, after all, isn't she? There's nothing weird about that." She puts her pen down and rests her chin in the palm of her hand, a strangely wistful smile on her face as her expression turns smug. "At least someone will be around to put you in your place."
He should have realized what she was saying, but at the time he only understands that she's baiting him. Raku sighs loudly, his eyebrows slanting in irritation. "Oi, just what are you getting at? I'm at least tolerable at this point, aren't I?"
She stuns him when she smiles. He pretends that his heart is jumping from the pure astonishment, and for that reason alone. "Well," she admits, grinning. "Barely tolerable."
"Geez," he murmurs in response, unexpectedly caught by the way her eyelashes flutter. "And what about you? Who is going to put you in your place?"
Chitoge's smile loses some of its radiance, stiffening for a moment. His eyes move over the strange expression on her face as she leans back against her bed. Even the red ribbon in her hair seems off, tilted to one side. Raku stares, curious, wary. Her eyelashes kiss the curve of her cheek again as she takes in a breath and then she picks up her pen and ducks her head.
"Tsugumi, of course," she finally says, in a know-it-all-voice that sounds exactly like isn't it obvious, idiot. She scrawls prettily across a dotted line and suddenly, it strikes him that she's not studying for their finals, but finishing off on an application. He feels his gaze immovably locked on her, abruptly aware that he has no idea what Chitoge's plans are for college, a swell of disappointment in himself for not making it his business to know earlier.
They may have their ugly moments, but Chitoge understands him more than anyone else in his life. She always seems to pick up on the little things, whether she does it gracefully or not, whether she's irritating about it or charming. He feels the most comfortable around her, like it's okay to talk about whatever is on his mind without fear of retaliation or scorn. That gorilla woman teases him, but she's not mean about it, not anymore. Despite the number of years Shuu has on her as Raku's longest running friend, Chitoge is the one who gets it.
He's just about to ask her about the applications in front of her when she begins to gather them into a neat stack and then pulls out a textbook from her bag, turning to look at him. "Want to stay for dinner?" She opens the book and places it over the papers, flipping through the pages nonchalantly, though he's sure that her face wasn't looking quite that pink a few moments ago.
"Hmm? Is that okay?"
She shrugs and points to a line in the text. "You're only going to be my boyfriend for the next week."
His eyebrows furrow in confusion. "What's that got to do with dinner?" Her gaze grows both irritated and incredulous as her face becomes even more flushed and Raku is left feeling completely dense. Why is it he's always one step behind her when she seems to be one step ahead? He can never figure out what she's thinking at all.
"Nothing," she snaps, her words slightly frigid as she drops her ocean eyes to glare at the book. "Just stay and eat dinner."
Raku blinks away his confusion and sighs in resignation. "Fine, fine. Don't jump down my throat about it. Geez."
She sniffs. "Apparently, jumping down your throat about anything is the only way you'll see anything."
"Are you calling me an idiot?"
"That's exactly what I'm calling you. Idiot."
He stares for a moment and then rubs his eyes, trying not to let her get under his skin. Dinner wouldn't be pleasant if the atmosphere between them was tense, and the Beehive reads into every little sigh they give off, whether to analyze or romanticize it. He'd prefer to eat without Claude holding a pistol to his forehead.
Of course, he can't resist getting under her skin either. While she's terrifying when fired up, there's also something thrilling about it. "What do you want to study first, gorilla woman?"
She scoops up the book in one hand and smacks the top of his head. "How about Literature? Before I beat the few brain cells you have out of you, bean sprout."
::::
She doesn't know why she's hesitating. There is no shame in the choices she's made - it might even be healthy for her. Raku misses things - she's not an idiot, no matter how much he claims otherwise - and she's embarrassingly attuned to his every breath. Some days she wakes up thinking about the curve of his chin and the grudgingly strong slope of his shoulders or that sliver of skin between his belt buckle and the hem of his T-shirt and its all she can do not to scream in frustration.
Out of every other idiot on his planet, why him?
It's easier to ask herself that question, even when she knows the answer as plainly and clearly as she knows her own name.
Studying with her friends at least provides a major distraction from the inevitable. Even when she moved to Japan three years ago, she knew that this day would come - and in their hearts, she is sure that her group of friends know, too. Each day that passes, she finds herself closing off more, weighing her down, making her feel sick. Chitoge has never been very good at goodbyes, especially now that she's met a group of people who have come to be important to her.
Raku is the trickiest one of all. She figures she can slip and slide her way out of saying goodbye to Kosaki and Ruri, but Raku deserves to hear it from her. After all the time they've spent together, no matter how much pain he causes her, he's her best friend, and she can say that without a single doubt. She'd want to know if he was leaving for good; she'd be furious if he left without saying a word to her. She might even follow him just to smack him upside the head and kick his ass.
"How do you think you did on the last final?" Raku is asking her as she walks on the curb, her arms poised horizontally to help keep her balance. She's preoccupied by the thoughts gnawing at her, so she doesn't quite catch the question.
"Eh?" she asks, turning her gaze toward him. Her eyes linger on his casual cadence, hands in his pockets, the wind ruffling his hair. Because she isn't paying attention to her feet, she stumbles over a crack in the concrete and lets out a garbled cry of surprise as she teeters. Raku steadies her immediately, his hand resting on her waist briefly as she regains her footing and her face goes up in flames.
"Geez, watch where you're walking, would ya?" he scolds but she can't find her voice quick enough to reply with a witty remark. "I asked how your last test went."
"F-Fine," she mumbles dazedly. This is ridiculous, she thinks. One touch from him renders her incapable of speech. Just looking at him makes walking hazardous. "Hey, Raku? This is our last day, you know."
For once, she doesn't have to elaborate on what she means, and her stomach trembles at the note of finality in his voice. "Yeah."
"You ought to buy me ramen," she insists as she steps down off the curb. He doesn't move away from her, the space between their arms barely more than six inches now. "To commemorate the end of our relationship, and, of course, the best three years of your life."
He side-eyes her with a raised eyebrow to find her smirking. "You mean my escape from prison."
She sticks her tongue out and elbows him sharply in the ribs. "Humor me."
"Fine. It's not like I have anything better to do," he relents, though she's happy to observe that there isn't much of a fight in him. If she wasn't so afraid of knowing, she'd ask him how he's feeling about their fake relationship coming to an end. Obviously, it means significantly less to him than it does to her, but she still knows that he considers her a very good friend. That wouldn't have happened had they not been forced to date for the entirety of their high school careers.
Chitoge drags him to her favorite ramen shop where he buys her whatever she pleases without complaint. They wave to a couple of kids they recognize from school who make a few wisecracks about them being on a date. Raku brushes them off with the roll of his eyes and Chitoge tries her best to hide the ferocious blush on her face. Three years and she still can't contain that. She wonders if she'd still be so flustered had their relationship been the real deal.
They eat mostly in a comfortable silence in a window booth. She decides that dating Raku for real would have made things worse and for the first time, she's glad that he only considers her a friend. At least for him, the break will be cleaner, and even when she's gone, he'll have Kosaki and Shuu to rely on. She's glad to know that she's leaving him in such capable hands.
She finishes eating long before him and stares out the window, chin propped up by her palm, her stomach quivering with nerves. Her flight out of the country is in three days and she knows that she has to tell him today. What's the best way to tell your closest friend that you're leaving for a long time? What's the best way to confess that you've been in love with him for two and a half years now? She doesn't know how to approach this at all.
"You're awfully quiet," Raku observes.
"I thought you'd appreciate it for once," she replies smartly, though even she can admit that the snark in her voice is off.
"If there's something on your mind. . . .you know. . . .you can always tell me, Chitoge." He scratches at his chin, clearly averting his gaze from hers. "You have been acting kind of strange the past few days. I feel like I can't reach you all the way in there." He pokes her forehead as he turns his head to stare her down with furrowed eyebrows. "You're making me anxious."
She swallows and tucks a few loose hairs behind her ear, her face turning red. "I. . .do have something to say. I dunno how to say it."
"Just say it, idiot. Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll feel better once you say something."
Chitoge crosses her arms over her chest and leans back against the chair. "You say that like you assume what I have to say is no big deal," she mutters irritably, her heart stuttering like a jackhammer, the blood rushing in her ears.
He's quiet and she's glad that her words have struck a note of seriousness in him. Good. This is serious.
"What is it?"
She looks back out the window and allows her gaze to flicker of the people walking past. "I sent in all my college applications, you know." He doesn't say anything and she feels a little light-headed from the tension and the anticipation that hangs in the air. "My mom wants me to start on preliminary classes over the break, though, so I have to leave in a few days."
After an intense moment of silence, he says, "So where are you going?"
She's not sure how long the words sit on her tongue, refusing to leave her mouth. Could have been seconds or hours - time feels infinite and simultaneously meaningless. Chitoge is surprised by how much she's breaking her own heart when she finally manages to say it.
"I'm going back to America."
The quiet that follows suppresses her so much that she feels like she can't breathe. She drags her eyes back to look at him and feels her heart trip over itself in her chest at the expression on his face. Wide-eyed and distressed, his gaze as intense as the heat of a fire, he parts his mouth as if to say something but no sound comes out.
"I wanted to say something sooner," she tells him, startled by the nonchalance in her voice. As if she couldn't care less. "But with finals, I didn't want to distract anyone."
Raku's expression is abruptly stormy, his voice throaty and angry. "Geez, Chitoge. How long have you known you were leaving?"
She frowns. "Since the day I moved to Japan. I know I've mentioned it before; you just don't listen to me."
"I listen to everything you say! You said that stuff in passing; how was I supposed to know it wasn't just a joke?" She expected him to be upset, but not like this. How will he react when she finally spits out her feelings for him?
Her mouth turns into a scowl, forcing the bitterness onto her face. "You're an idiot. I don't have to spell everything out for you, dumbass."
His face becomes sharp, eyes hot. "You do if it means you leaving me!" He isn't even ashamed when he says it - there is nothing else on his mind but Chitoge and the way she looks in her school uniform right now. He frantically tries to imprint the image into his mind, ignoring the inconvenient panic that swells up. Losing her shouldn't make him feel like he suddenly can't breathe.
She sits there, doe-eyed and startled by his outburst, her cheeks flushed, mouth parted ever so slightly and he's never felt so unpleasantly scatterbrained in his life. He waits for her to reply to his transparent anguish and follows her every movement as she takes a deep breath, her eyes sparkling, face growing more rosy by the second.
"There is something else," she says.
His mouth goes dry. "Oh, hell."
She drops her eyes. "I-I-It's n-not a bad thing," she insists. "N-Not to me. A-And since I'm leaving, I j-just want you to know." Chitoge rises to her feet, her face perfectly red. Her mouth puckers before she sighs in surrender. "Nevermind. It's not that important, anyway. Bye, Raku."
He stands as she tries to hurry away, but he catches her wrist and she twists herself to look over her shoulder at him, her expression as heartbroken as he feels. "I'm sure it's important," he says harshly.
She attempts to yank her hand away, but his grip is like a vice. "Let me go."
Raku tries to keep his voice calm. "If I let you go now, I won't see you for another ten years."
Her voice is bitter, but he knows she's using that to protect herself. "Lucky you, right?"
"Don't say it like that." He notices the attention they're receiving from the other patrons in the restaurant, so he tucks his wallet into his back pocket and pulls her along without ever letting go of her wrist. "Let's take this conversation somewhere else."
:::
He walks her home, his hand still wrapped firmly around hers as night falls.
"You're really leaving?" he says finally.
She sighs. "What did you expect? That we would all go to the same university together? Honestly, bean sprout."
"No," he defends himself. "But America can't be reached by a days' train ride." His grip on her tightens almost painfully momentarily before his fingers loosen. She could probably easily get away now, but. . .his hand is warm. "I know. . .I'm backed up on promises," he mentions dryly, fingering his locket absently, "but can you promise me something, Chitoge?"
"Depends."
"Take me to the airport when you leave."
They stop on her front steps and her eyes glitter with unshed tears in the light of the lanterns. She hopes he doesn't notice. "I don't want to say goodbye when I leave."
"Then don't say it, idiot." It shocks both of them when he leans down and kisses her softly, his mouth so light against hers that she wonders if she's imagining things; her entire body lights up, cheeks burning. Despite the flush on his face, he pulls away slowly, lingering.
"Y-Y-You shouldn't h-have done that," she stutters breathily.
"I-I would have regretted it, if I h-hadn't." He brushes a thumb over her knuckles and she didn't know he could be this tender. "Please take me to the airport, Chitoge."
"I-If you promise m-me something, too," she replies.
"Shoot."
"D-Don't forget about me this time. Or I-I'll kick your ass."
He grins. "Don't stay away for ten years."
She returns the smile. "Give me a reason to come back."