Haku and Sasa (Arc 1)

Like his father, Ichijou Raku, Haku had a difficult time making friends at school. People were wary of his blonde hair and yakuza background, so they would hastily shy away whenever he tried to start a conversation. In the end, Haku was forced to spend his middle school years with a gang of delinquents, giving him an even worse reputation and killing his chance at a normal high school life before it even started.

Fortunately, on his first day at Bonyari High School, Haku ran into Miyanagi Sasa and made friends with her. The two later discovered that they were also going to be working together at the Onodera traditional sweets store. Though Sasa was also wary about Haku at first due to his appearance, she sees his good points over time and quickly warms up to him.

However, things are still hard for Haku at school. While Sasa is able to get along well with others and fits in naturally, Haku still suffers from his bad reputation. Sasa talks to her classmates and digs more into the rumors about him in order to try and help resolve the misunderstandings. In the process, she starts to learn more about Haku's past from middle school. She finds out that something had happened between Haku and the delinquents back then, and they had separated on bad terms.

One day, while walking to the Onodera sweets store with Haku, Sasa notices a group of random strangers that seem to be following them in secret. At first, she thinks that they're just yakuza members from Haku's family, but she later discovers that they're the delinquents that Haku had hung around with back in middle school. For some reason, they had all come back together in Bonyari and were monitoring Haku in the background. Sasa begins to suspect that they're plotting some kind of revenge scheme against Haku, but decides against informing the yakuza members due to their tendency to escalate situations.

Sasa decides to protect Haku herself while also working to improve his relationship with their classmates, which results in various wild antics. But while Haku is able to make a few more friends, his reputation worsens due to the delinquents following him around and causing trouble. Sasa wonders if she should bring this up to the yakuza members after all, but she is kidnapped by the delinquents while walking home before she can make a decision.

The delinquents take Sasa to their temporary hideout and begin to interrogate her about Haku. Though Sasa is afraid, she refuses to tell them anything and shouts at them to back off and let Haku have the fun, peaceful high school life he deserves. She prepares herself for the worst as the leader of the delinquents comes up to her after her lecture.

But instead, she is given a lecture back as the delinquents tell her that she's the one that should back off.

The truth about Haku's past life with the delinquents is revealed. Like the other students at Haku's middle school, the delinquents had thought that Haku was a fearsome individual due to his reputation and yakuza connections. They had made the decision to try and become "friends" with Haku, thinking that they could easily take over the school under his leadership.

However, Haku's "leadership" involved things like helping the community or taking care of responsibilities at school. And whenever the delinquents tried doing delinquent-like things with Haku, it would somehow always backfire and end up with them doing something "good" instead. Haku's influence on the group starts to change the delinquents, turning them into more responsible and helpful individuals.

But while the delinquents start to turn their lives around, things get worse for Haku as he becomes known as the leader of the delinquents. The delinquents realize that as long as Haku is friends with them, he will never be able to have a normal student life. Knowing how loyal and self-sacrificing Haku can be, the delinquents make up an excuse to force Haku out of the group and cut all ties with him. They stayed away from Haku all the way up to graduation, thinking that this would help his reputation recover.

In the present time, the delinquents had recently gotten together again after separating to different high schools and wondered how Haku had been doing. They started watching Haku from the shadows to see how he was fitting in. Now that she knows the full story, Sasa realizes that the delinquents had been trying to help "fix" Haku's reputation, though their methods hadn't exactly been very productive. They had kidnapped Sasa so they could tell her to stop interfering with their attempts to help Haku without Haku knowing the truth. At this point, Sasa and the delinquents start to have a pointless argument about which of their methods were more effective for improving Haku's reputation.

In the middle of this argument, Haku arrives at the scene, having finally located Sasa's location. When Sasa hadn't shown up to work, he had gotten worried and gone looking for her. Some of her classmates had witnessed the kidnapping and with the help of his yakuza members, Haku had found the delinquents' temporary hideout.

Haku becomes very angry upon seeing the delinquents. Sasa tries to clear up the misunderstanding, but the delinquents cut her off, thinking that Haku being the "hero" and them being the "villain" would be the perfect way to save his reputation.

However, it turns out that the reason Haku is angry is because he never got a real explanation for why they had kicked him out of the group. He's happy to see them all again and automatically assumes that they had actually saved Sasa instead. He thanks them for saving Sasa and starts asking where the "real kidnappers" are. The delinquents are struck speechless by Haku's actions and burst into tears.

Sasa then realizes that the reason the yakuza members had never done anything this entire time against the delinquents, despite cutting ties with him in middle school and stalking him in high school, was because Haku had still considered them to be his friends. Sasa also gets teary-eyed after seeing Haku's earnest feelings, and starts crying with the delinquents at Haku, who is confused at why everyone is crying and hugging him all of a sudden.

A/N: As promised, here is the summary chapter for the rest of Haku and Sasa's planned story arc. Just from gauging the story content, I think this arc would have probably lasted about 5 chapters. I had a kind of cheesy friendship-focused story in mind because while Haku and Sasa's existence is one of controversy, I wanted to interpret that future for the Nisekoi characters in a positive way.

I mentioned this earlier, but when I had planned this arc, I had also wanted to eventually touch back on the fate of the old Nisekoi characters while also exploring possibilities for the children. I was interested in Tsugumi's child particularly because I wondered how he/she would be connected to Haku. I'm sure Tsugumi would've stayed by Chitoge's side as long as possible, so an overseas transfer student might be likely. But if Tsugumi's child had followed her footsteps in being a bodyguard, perhaps Tsugumi's child might have also lived in Bonyari? Maybe even under Paula's care? And going even further, maybe Tsugumi's child would be Haku's rival for Sasa's affections...and thus the Nisekoi future becomes a reverse harem...

In the past, I used to crave closure and a firm decision made when it came to harem series. But now I lean more towards open endings because I can keep thinking about the series even after it's complete and wonder about what could've been.