Disclaimer: Nisekoi belongs to Naoshi Komi. Nothing is mine.

Author's Note: Hey! It's been such a long time, but graduating from college was very tough the last semester, and also I didn't have the inspiration to keep writing, but I'm back. Now, due to the manga's recent events, I will be uploading one-shots about the events, that are slight retellings of the events or my take on the future chapters. This is the first one of three, so expect more this week, hopefully before the raws of next chapter are out.

As always, I'm very grateful for those who have read, reviewed, and put in their favorites this fanfiction. You guys rock!

See you next time!

I'll Never Be Her

Summary: Chitoge's feelings after finding out she's not the promised girl.

Warning: Spoilers for chapter 222 to chapter 224.

"All alone I watch you watch her…

She is the only thing you ever see

How is it you'll never notice

That you are slowly killing me?"

GNash "I Hate U, I Love U"

It's gone. Her last chance has disappeared, flown away by the wind. Chitoge realizes that, in reality, she had deluded herself, only for the hope her heart still held. She had never truly had a chance, at all. She had clung to some imaginary hope. Chitoge should have just given up, because there are some things not even the past can change. But she hadn't listened, and she had gone to that place from that time, only to discover nothing she did would matter. Because, from the moment they all first met all those years ago, to this point in time, her fate had already been sealed. Raku loves Kosaki-chan, and that has always been the truth. Since they were children, they have always been drawn to each other. It's almost like destiny, isn't?

I'm just a fake… I'm nothing but a fake… his fake girlfriend, his fake promised girl.

Destiny is such a funny and fickle thing. To make them meet again as teenagers, for the same events to unravel over again. For her to overhear one more time about their mutual feelings. It wasn't fair to her. But life's not fair, is it? So she runs, because that's all Chitoge is good for. Running away instead of facing the facts, running away so she won't face them, running away from her friends, her pain, and that love that has almost destroyed her.

She thinks that she should have realized this earlier. If Chitoge weren't so oblivious all the time, she would have realized their feelings from the moment she met them both. But she hadn't. In hindsight, it was obvious. Kosaki is, after all, the perfect representation of everything Raku admires in girls: kind, cute, feminine, and soft-spoken. Why wouldn't he like her? They are perfect for each other. The prince and his princess. Chitoge had no place in this fairytale. If she had known Raku liked someone else from the beginning, she wouldn't have fallen in love with him. But that, perhaps, is wistful thinking. Maybe her fate has always been to love him but never to have him. A cruel destiny, if you ask her. As if she, and Marika and Yui-san had all been cursed with unrequited love.

So she keeps running, escaping her fate. Or so she would have done if the most unexpected person hadn't intervened, Marika, her self-proclaimed rival.

"Ye gotta go back, righ' now!" The sickly girl exclaims, startling Chitoge, as she puts her hands on Chitoge's shoulders.

She doesn't understand anything anymore. Marika is right, she's weak-willed, not like her friend at all, who fought with all she had even when she knew she hadn't had a chance. She wishes she had that kind of strength, and wouldn't have run away pathetically. But what she doesn't get is why Marika is being so insisting on her going back. Surely Raku would be better off without her. With their fake relationship gone, he'd be able to freely pursue Kosaki-chan, and he'd be freed of her. He doesn't think anything about her, and why would he, if he has always had eyes for one girl only?

"Ah geez, I'd really been thinkin' that it migh' be something like this, but this's just ridiculous! How stupid d'ye have t'be fer this to happen!" The other girl keeps ranting, and Chitoge starts getting a little worried.

"Marika? What's wrong?!"

"Go back! Ye gotta go back and see Raku-sama! Ye don't understand a single thing 'bout Raku-sama… not a single thing!" Chitoge can see it clearly now, the desperation behind Marika's eyes, and a pain that is similar to her own. "You…Kirisaki-san! Ye're jus' about t'be able t'change something that I, no matter how much I tried, wasn't able t'change… Finally! But ye're sayin' ye're gonna give because'a something this stupid! Don't be ridiculous!"

What's going on? Chitoge thinks as she watches her friend. "What are you talking about?"

"Argh, why do I have to spell it out like this?! You really piss me off!" Marika's voice starts trembling, as well as all her body. Chitoge can feel the trembles from her hands on her shoulders. "Are ye really okay with this? With it endin' like this, without tryin' anything? Ye've liked him all this time, right? Ye know that ye'll regret it fer sure if ye don't tell him, don't you?"

Marika's right. She's not happy about it, but she's not willing to confess just to get rejected just yet. She believes her heart won't be able to take it if she hears it directly from Raku's mouth. But, yet again, her rival and friend, is able to move her heart.

"I told him! So many times…" Marika says, her voice breaking, and tears pooling in her eyes. "I knew what the answer'd be. But I put it into words…said it out loud! I told him m'self!" Everything she said was true. Chitoge knew that Marika was the only one who had tried her utmost, and she still had failed.

"Have ye been honest with Raku-sama even once?! Was that all yer feelings fer Raku-sama add up to?! At least at the very end ye gotta be honest with yourself!" Her words strike a chord on Chitoge's heart. "If ye truly like him, then don't pretend as if it has never happened!"

For a moment she's breathless. She doesn't want to pretend it has never happened…everything about liking him. All their memories together play out inside her mind like a movie, and she can feel it, burning inside her, like a fire that cannot be extinguished, her love for him, radiating and undying. That gives her all the resolve she needs.

"I'm sorry. Thank you." She hugs Marika, thanking her for giving her the strength she had lacked until then. She makes a mental note to talk with Marika once the whole ordeal is over. And with that, she sets off.

She runs and runs with all her might, wanting to reach that place just in time to meet Raku there. She can't pretend she never felt something for him, can't pretend that she's glad she met him, and liked him. Because, so what if Raku has only ever had eyes for Kosaki-chan? So what if her feelings are unrequited? What she feels in her heart, all that pain, is real and it is hers.

Chitoge looks at her screensaver, at the picture they took at the photo booth. Her heart does not waver. She loves Raku, and there have been times that she has hated him and the feelings she has for him, but that doesn't matter anymore. She will never be Kosaki. She will never be the perfect housewife, or kind, or feminine. She is a storm, a raging fire that can never be stopped. She is not Kosaki, and she will never be, but that doesn't mean these feelings are real.

Chitoge will confess, and she will bear the rejection as best as she can. She's not Kosaki, that's her mantra. But she's Chitoge, and Chitoge never gives up.

A/N: I used Tsurezure Scans's translations.

Reviews

Guest: Well, it didn't exactly go as I wrote in the manga, but I wasn't that far off. Thanks for the review!