A/N: One-shot with a twist- my favorite kind. -^__^- And here's one that actually might NOT have been done, too.

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"Forgive Love"

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His expression is not happy today, because no one is looking. That is not to say he is displeased, only that he is tired of being so bend-over-backwards nice. In small doses, it is tolerable- but in this world, it seems he can be nothing but polite, else be shunned or made suspect.

He likes Kagome. Oh, he likes her a LOT. But that's not what he was trying to do when he began this courtship. He wanted to get her and grab her and make her sorry for what she'd done. So he put on an act and played the role of sweet and concerned friend so he could get her, hurt her for her past life's crimes, for the way she'd forsaken them in favor of her home.

But then he found out that it hadn't been a past life. This girl was the same girl he had known, despite the impossibility of that.

He should tell her the truth, he knows. She never really did anything bad- it's not her fault she had to leave; his home was never hers. He sees that more clearly now, with hindsight and shame at the trick he's played this time, saying that he liked her and bothering her so often when she was so clearly uninterested.

Ironic, that he now loves her.

But really, he always did.

"Hi, Hojou-kun!" she calls from across the street, waving to him briefly as she runs home from school.

"Hello, Higurashi-san!" he shouts after her, cursing his own treacherous smile even as he returns the wave.

But a kitsune always smiles.

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* ende *

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. : i'll never tell . . . : .