Sweet Love

by Tr-8r810

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Nisekoi. This story is strictly for entertainment purposes and not for profit. Also Nisekoi spoilers! This story has spoilers of the ending of Nisekoi. I know the series is still coming out in manga, so not everyone has seen it yet. So here's your spoiler warning

Author's Notes: Man, this one was fun to make *sarcasm*. So for this chapter I decided to put more focus on Onodera. (Yay!) The reasons were:

1 - Give her more screen time which I'll admit, I haven't been doing the best of so far.

2 - To make a clearer picture of who Onodera is after the main series, and how that has affected her. Which meant I had to look up some of the ending of Nisekoi again. (Not yay!) Which was about as fun as putting my hand over an open fire just to remember how getting burned feels like again.

That, and other reasons was why this one took so long to come out. Another was because this one is much longer then the last two, so I hope it was worth the effort.

Special thanks to thatguywhowrote for taking the time to be a beta reader for this story.


There was an icy chill in the air as Onodera found herself within deep white fog. It was so thick she couldn't see five feet in front of her. Every noise was distant and had a haunting echo.

"Where am I? This place feels... familiar. But why?" She said, confused by her surroundings.

She then heard a familiar voice coming from behind her.

"I'm sorry, at a time like this..."

She turned around, "Hello, is someone there?"

She slowly walked in the voice's direction. As she did, the fog started getting thinner and thinner. She could start to see tall grass under her feet, it was swaying with the wind and looked as calm as the ocean waves on a peaceful day. She kept going until the fog completely let up. She then found herself standing in a large field surrounded by mountains.

"Wait... I know this place. I came here long ago. This is where I first met Chitoge, Marika, Tsugumi, Miss Yui, and-"

"Ichijou-kun." The same voice from before called out.

Onodera turned around at hearing "his" name. What she saw though, she wasn't prepared for.

There were two people talking to each other not ten feet away from her. The first person she saw was a younger version of herself. The other person was a young man namely Raku Ichijou.

Raku was a friend of Onodera's back in middle school and high school. She started having feelings of infatuation for Raku over the years, then that developed into a strong crush. She wanted to admit to him her true feelings, but Onodera was always the timid woman, so she needed to motivate herself to summon up the courage to confess. After many years, she finally found the courage to tell him.

"Ichijou-kun, you're my first love. I like you, and I always have." The other Onodera said.

Onodera knew what this was, it was a memory from her past. "This was the moment... I told Ichijou-kun my feelings for him." She said, placing her hand over her heart. This moment has been on her mind a lot as of recent.

"How long has it been, almost five years now? Funny, it doesn't feel like it's been that long..."

"But wait, what is this even? How did I get here?" She thought, looking around. "I don't remember coming here. It's almost like it's a drea-"

At the moment she realized what was going on, a bright flash of light engulfed the world around her. As it did, she heard one last thing from her past self.

"But, there's someone else in Ichijou-kun's heart, right...?"

There was nothing but silence after that...

Onodera then woke up in her apartment. She gave a small yawn as she pushed off her bed covers. Still waking up, her mind was wrapped around the dream she just had.

"Why... Why can't I get that image out of my head?" She sat up straight.

"I know it's because it's the time of the year and everything... But that's in the past now, I've moved on from it."

"I mean..." She curled her legs up to her chest. "Haven't I?"

On that day she was dreaming about, Raku had rejected her. He wasn't harsh or hurtful in any way, he just simply loved someone else. She knew it to be true, but she still had to do it, even if it was just for herself. She had to know she gave it her all. No regrets.

Even so it still hurt to think about it. Especially when it got close to the date when she told him, which was coming up pretty soon. It put her in a depressed state of mind, which affected her mood and work. Last year she finally started getting the hang of baking, something she always had problems with, but when that date started nearing her baking actually got worse than it did before.

This year to avoid that happening again, she arranged to work with an old family friend's business overseas. It seemed like a good way to get a change of scenery and to stay on top of her baking. But it didn't help her as much as she would have liked. She could still bake, but everything she made was about the same quality as they were back in her high school days.

"Four more days, Kosaki. Just four more days and all this will be behind you." She told herself.

She rose from her bed. "I should get ready, today's going to be a busy day." She thought while moving to get dressed.


On the far side of town, there was an old music store that was owned by a group of friends. It was really out of sight among all other stores around it that if one weren't looking for it, one would surely miss it. Outside, one of the workers was showing his girlfriend the store.

"So this is it?" The girl ask, looking puzzled.

"It sure is!" The man said with excitement. "Oh, and don't let its appearance fool you. It may look beat up, but it's the inside that counts."

As he led her inside, she saw that the store used every inch it had to carry as many CDs as possible. The store itself was quite old with a ranch look, being that most of the shelves were made of wood.

"Wow, this place is something else. How old was it again?" She asked.

"About 60 years old, I think. That's what they said when they sold it to us."

"But how... how did you guys fill up so much space in here? I mean there are CDs as far as the eye can see, yet it's still organized and together. It must have taken you guys forever to get this set up."

"Actually, it only took a weekend. Plus this was all Alex's work." He said.

She paused. "Alex? Who's that?"

"That's Alex." He said, pointing behind her.

She was shocked when she turned around to see a man in a dark long sleeved coat standing right behind her, holding an old radio in one hand, and leaning a stack of CDs against his chest in the other.

"Hey, Jess..." Alex said, with not much life in his voice.

"You okay man? You don't look so good." Jess asked noticing the dark circles under his friend's eyes.

"Yeah, I just didn't sleep too good last night is all." He said, rubbing his eyes on one sleeve.

"By the way, this is Rose, my girlfriend. I was just showing her around the place." Jess added.

"Nice to meet you." Said Rose.

"Same here." Alex said with a smile, but Rose was picking up a strange vibe from Alex.

"Anyway, Jess, I just got done repairing that old radio. And I went through those CDs to see if any of them still worked."

"Wait, already? Alex, I asked you about that yesterday evening, but you didn't have to rush. Plus it's only nine o'clock, how did you finish everything already?"

"I looked into it last night, it's no big deal. The radio should be as good as new, and about seven of the CDs work without any problem. But the other ones are trash, don't even bother trying to get them to work." There was distaste in his voice as he put them on the counter.

"Don't you think that's a little harsh? I mean, we could try buffing them out. They could still be useful if we can fix some of them." Jess pointed out. Alex turned his head the other way.

"Hmph. Try it if you want, but if all they're gonna do is take up space, then they're no better than garbage." He said in irritation.

Alex picked up his backpack on the way out. "That takes care of my work today. I'm going out for a while, call me if anything else comes in."

"Okay, see you around then."

After Alex left Rose turned to Jess. "Is he ok? He seems a little funny."

"Yeah, he's fine. He just... likes to keep to himself. He may seem odd, be he's really a nice guy when you get to know him." Jess said, supporting his friend.

"Well I'd better see if I can get these buffed out. Hey, you wanna see our disc buffer? It works great, this one time I had a CD that had so many scratches that it wouldn't even-"

Rose smiled as Jess continued to babble on and on about nothing.


Onodera made her way to the mall, the ground still wet from rain the day before. Her mind was still occupied on the dream she had earlier that day as she walked through the mall, but she tried not to think much about it. She had to focus on her work as it was an important day for the store, its special monthly sale so she couldn't afford to lose her concentration.

"Just think about something else, like that new decoration style you were wanting to try out, or Ruri-chan. Now that I mentioned it, I haven't talked to her in a while. I should probably check up on her and see how she's doing." She thought. "Ruri-chan... she was always there for me back in high school, for the good times and the bad. Heck, it was her idea to come out here in the first place, offering what help she could for my trip overseas."

"...I really owe her for all her help over the years, especially for trying to help me with Ichijo-"

She then jolted and shook her head. "No, no, no! You're trying not to think about that, remember?"

"I know, I was wanting to make those rose cakes for the sale today. They're really simple and not that hard to make... well, once you get the hang of it anyway. I'll focus on what I'll need to make them, so when I get there I can jump right into it."

When she looked up, she realized that she was already at the bakery. But something was wrong, there were quite a lot of people outside crowding the store. Sure the store was well liked and there was a sale, but even so the line shouldn't have been as big as it was. The crowd also seemed confused and was murmuring. She tried to make her way through the mass to get to the counter. As she did, she heard a voice call out to her.

"Hey Kosaki," A young man cried out. "Over here!" It was Taylor's younger brother who was working the counter.

"Tim, what's going on? What's with this line, why is it so long?" She asked.

"There's a problem at the back, could you help my sister out? She's probably freaking out, please hurry."

"A-alright." Onodera said, rushing inside. When she walked into the kitchen, she found Taylor angrily kicking the oven.

"Stupid piece of junk, work!" Taylor said, grinding her teeth.

"Ah! Taylor, stop!" Onodera quickly pulled her away from the poor equipment. "Please, calm down."

"Not until I turn that hunk of metal into scrap!"

"Okay well, could you at least tell me why you're trying to break our only oven?" Onodera asked, trying to get an idea on what's going on.

Even though she had only been working with Taylor for a short amount of time, Onodera could tell that she had a bit of a short temper. Taylor tried to at least keep her cool around Onodera, not wanting to add to her already increasing anxieties.

"Argh..." She then took a deep breath to gather her thoughts and sighed.

"The oven isn't heating. I don't know why, it was fine yesterday, but when I got here this morning to open the store it was dead."

Onodera was shocked "What?"

Taylor laughed. "Of all the days for it to go out on us, it had to be on our big sale, didn't it? We don't have enough leftovers to last the morning, let alone the whole day. What's my dad gonna say?" Her voice started to crack.

"Taylor..."

Just then, Tim ran in. "Hey, what am I supposed to tell all those people out there? They're getting pretty impatient."

"I... t-tell them..." Taylor tried, but couldn't find the right words.

Onodera spoke up. "We tell them the truth, that we're short on merchandise today. Then we try to sell as much as we can, even if it only lasts the morning. We can't just sit here and do nothing, and we can't let those people go home empty-handed after coming all this way this early in the morning."

Taylor and Tim were both surprised by the seriousness in her voice, something new from the timid girl they've come to know. Onodera herself didn't know what came over her, but she knew someone had to say something amidst the chaos.

"But then what? After that, we're going to be out of options." Tim pointed out.

"Well... then we..." Onodera stopped to think. "Wait, has anyone called a repairman yet?"

"Yeah, I did." Taylor answered. "But I haven't been able to get through, the line has been busy all morning. And the longer it takes to call them, the longer it will take for them to fix this. All the while, more people are showing up for stuff we don't even have."

"T-then I'll call them again." Said Onodera. "And if they're still busy, I'll call somewhere else. I'll walk to the repair company if that's what it takes to get someone to look at it. But we need to get it repaired, even if it's not before the lunch rush, we need to fix this."

"Heh, that's what I like about you Onodera. You keep a level head even in the heat of the moment." Taylor said, now focusing on what had to be done.

"She's right, we'll do all we can this morning and take on one problem at a time. Tim, we'll take care of the front."

Tim smiled "Sure thing sis."

"Onodera, I'll leave contacting the repair company to you, see if you can get someone over here as soon as possible."

"Alright."

As she was leaving, Taylor spoke up. "Hey Onodera... Sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have panicked on the job like that."

"Don't worry about it." Onodera said with a smile. "Let's just focus on what we have to do."

"Right." The blonde baker responded.

The next hour was pretty hectic for Onodera and the other shop owners. With their limited inventory they were pushing to sell as much as they could. But at the same time they were trying to make it last. Around ten-thirty things had started to settle down, but things were far from good.

"Well, looks like that was the last one. Things should quiet down for a while." Said Tim.

Taylor looked down. "Yeah... but we're almost out of everything. There's no way we'll be able to go on the rest of the day like this. Why would so many people need their sweets this early in the morning anyway?" She wondered.

"I don't know. Maybe they just wanted dessert early. Whatever, the reason isn't important, fixing the oven is."

"Yeah... I wonder how Onodera is doing, she's been at the back for a while."

"If you want you can go check up on her, I can handle the front by myself for a while." Tim told her.

"Okay, thanks." Taylor then went to the back leaving Tim to take care of the front.

"Let's hope things take a turn for the better soon." Tim thought as he pulled out his phone, looking at his messages.

While he was busy, a customer walked in.


Alex didn't really know what to expect from a bakery sale, but he didn't anticipate what he found when he got there. The store was almost completely empty, a far cry from what he saw the first time he went there.

"Wow, what happened here? Looks like a twister hit this place." Tim heard the man say.

"Ha ha, very funny. We've been busy here all morning I'll have you know." Tim said with irritation.

Alex had a hard time taking that seriously, looking at the young teen just messing around with his phone.

"Uhh... sure." Alex tried laughing it off. "So what DID happen here? You guys were having a sale right? It went well, I take it?"

"Not exactly. We had a situation at the back and well..." He paused and reached for a small basket of sweets to show him. "Unless we fix the problem, this is all we have for the rest of the day."

Alex stood there and stared at the basket. He thought, "There's no way. He's pulling my leg, right?" But he could tell he wasn't joking. He was dead serious, it was written all over his face.

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened?"

"To be frank, that's not really of your concern. It's not like you could help anyway." Tim muttered.

Alex started feeling very awkward. The situation wasn't exactly what he was expecting, being that the store was barely standing on its own feet. Plus he felt that his presence was unwanted from the irate employee. He wanted to pick something up and thank Onodera for telling him about the sale, but as things were he thought it may be best to see himself out.

As he turned to leave, they both heard a loud crash come from the kitchen.

"Oh boy, now what?" Tim said as he ran to the back.

At this Alex wondered what he should do. It would be easier for everyone if he just disappeared and hoped everything turned out okay. But... he felt like there was something wrong about doing that. The image of the young baker then came to mind.

'I wonder how Onodera was doing with all these? That couldn't have been her in that crash, could she? Could there be something I could do to help?' As his mind was racing, he knew that he couldn't just leave. He wanted to KNOW that everything was alright instead of merely hoping for it to be.

"Oh man... what am I doing?" Not thinking about it anymore, he followed Tim into the kitchen.