The Nooj love triangle suffers from a whole lot of misunderstanding. I've seen quite a few crazy assertions, and I think a rebuttal is in order, along with a close examination of the facts.

I'm not going to go on about Leblanc's side of things; that's way too obvious. But I will touch on Paine's side, because that gets treated too lightly sometimes, or is just ignored. The game shows us that, similar to Leblanc, Paine had a crush on Nooj two years ago. And if we watch Nooj's behavior towards her we see that he eventually returned her feelings. Three Crimson Spheres show this.

Sphere 2: Paine knows more about Nooj than Gippal and Baralai do. She gives the reason for his suicide attempt and tries to reach out to him. She uses a very gentle tone of voice when she speaks to him, as if she were speaking to a lover (Tidus and Yuna did this in FFX, and Lenne does it with Shuyin in this game). We see that she cares about him beyond the friendly extent that the other two show. But Nooj, being a true loner at the time, just brushes her off.

Sphere 4: Things start to change here. Before everyone rushes for the Den of Woe, Nooj's face flashes across the sphere recording. He must have spoken to Paine. Inside the Den, Baralai and Gippal go off, leaving Nooj and Paine together. Nooj shoots a possessed soldier nearing Paine, then gives her a look. He's watching over her.

Sphere 8: It's as obvious as it gets here. Nooj sees Paine and expresses happiness and relief that she's okay. She teases him by saying, "I kept you from dying." He flirts back with, "You can owe me one." Baralai and Gippal ask why Paine followed them, but Nooj never does. When the guys agree to split up, Nooj tells Paine to stop recording, then affectionately ruffles her hair. His tone of voice is similar to the way she spoke to him in Sphere 2.

So there was indeed a Nooj/Paine fling two years prior to X-2. And naturally it pops up in the game. We all know the scene in Chapter 2 outside the Den of Woe when Nooj hits on Paine ("Perhaps this is fate" — in the Japanese version this line shows more conviction: "This must be fate"). Even if you picked New Yevon, Nooj still acts oddly, like he was upset that Paine didn't side with him. And Rikku and Yuna start probing after both scenes and come to the same conclusion:

Not so subtle, that. There are a few other things, too. Paine defends Nooj in the New Yevon scene, stopping Rikku from charging over to him. At such an early stage, it makes one wonder why she would do that. She defends him again in Ch. 3, in the Bevelle Underground, after revealing that he shot her. She quickly adds, "It was an accident. At least that's how I see it." And in Ch. 4, Paine identifies with Lenne, X-2's purely romantic character. She figures out Lenne's last words to Shuyin and explains them: "The man she loved, he struggled to save her. He fought till his very last breath for her. I think that Lenne's final words might have been happy ones: 'I love you.'" Paine knew what it was like to love and lose.

For anyone who can't separate Paine's feelings for Nooj from the way she feels about Baralai and Gippal, listen to what she says in Ch. 5 after clearing the Den of Woe. She and Yuna talk about rescuing Nooj from Shuyin. Paine is excited. But then Rikku reminds them that it's Baralai who needs saving. Paine mutters an embarrassed "oh," then says, "I guess it's Baralai we're saving, then." Her inflection indicates that she's disappointed about this. In that same chapter, after beating the Machine Faction's ultimate weapon for good, there's a scene in which Paine reveals that Gippal taught her the Al Bhed language. Rikku gets mad and calls him a player. Paine says, "It wasn't like that." She's quick to clarify that her relationship with Gippal is platonic. She never once does that about Nooj.

When Gippal notices Paine for the first time, neither of her friends comment on what he says to her, and Paine plays it cool. Baralai never acknowledges Paine until right before they fight, and when it's over no one says anything about that. In fact, Baralai and Paine have hardly any interaction in FFX-2.

So now we know another thing: Paine still has feelings for Nooj, though they're complicated by the shooting.

Now we go on to the determining factor for the triangle. Nooj shows concern and tenderness to only one character, and you can guess who that is. He was quite intent on jogging Paine's memories of their past together. He leaves her a total of three spheres dealing with their Crimson Squad days, the last one being Paine's Sphere, which he kept for two years. That's a big hint there. And what is the sphere about but a dream of Paine's, and her nomination of Nooj as captain of that dream! She approached him shyly, like a schoolgirl with a crush. Her affection for him was undeniable. And again, Nooj kept that memory for two years. Apparently it meant a lot to him.

Nooj is also very protective of Paine, something Baralai and Gippal are not. In Ch. 3, in the Bevelle Underground, Paine reveals her presence to stop Baralai from shooting Nooj. Nooj shouts at her, "Paine! Get out of here!"

Before the final battles, Nooj turns and waves to Paine, saying "see you later" in the same suggestive tone of voice he used in front of the Den of Woe. The camera zooms in on Paine, who nods understandingly. When YRP catch up to him later, Paine is leading her friends into battle. Nooj gives her a word of encouragement.

And that's still not all there is. Nooj has an unusual line after Yuna reveals her plan to stop Shuyin. He calls love "the ultimate illusion." Logically, that kind of skepticism comes only from someone who had it before and lost it. It echoes Shuyin's negativity and hatred. Only one chapter earlier, Paine had spoken for Lenne, the hopeful character.

When Vegnagun starts up, all the characters present are shown scene by scene in three groups: Yuna and Rikku (from FFX); Gippal, Leblanc, and her goons (the silly characters); and Paine and Nooj, standing side by side.

Nooj and Paine have an undeniable romantic connection in FFX-2. And as is appropriate for two characters like them, it never loses its mysterious air. Do they get back together in the end? Not that we can see, and that makes sense, given what happened to break them apart. A reconciliation will take time. But it will happen, because the feelings they had two years ago are still there. It's sort of like Locke and Celes from FFVI. We know they get together too, even though nothing overtly romantic occurs on the airship. The hints point us in that direction.

I can already hear the question: What about Leblanc? Well, that side is simple. Nooj never shows any kind of concern for her. They have only one scene together in the entire game, and all he can talk about is Vegnagun. Why did he get Leblanc to fetch a sphere for him? That's up for fans to decide. But Nooj never returns to Leblanc for anything else, never checks up on her, and never mentions her until Gippal brings her up near the end of Ch. 4. So the association was not personal — or more specifically, not romantic.

As for Gippal's question, Nooj's response is just a tepid, indifferent "well she." In the Japanese version it's worse. He starts to say "aitsu ha," a way of expressing disgust and contempt. Leblanc doesn't pick up on that and gets mad when the sphere shuts off, when it actually spared her from hearing the blunt truth. That scene is supposed to be funny. It is not interpretative.

The sphere Nooj left Leblanc is nothing special, just a message telling her to go away. He lied about returning, because he planned to kill himself to destroy Shuyin. When Leblanc shows up anyway, Nooj announces her arrival with surprise and disgust. (In the Japanese version, he refers to both her and her goons, saying something alike to "You all!") Leblanc again ignores this and says something typically silly. An exasperated Nooj and YRP shake their heads. Still refusing to take the hint, Leblanc chases after Nooj during the Vegnagun battles, but receives no attention from him.

And that's all there is for Nooj and Leblanc.

I'd like to point out something here. Some FFX-2 fans don't seem to understand the type of character Leblanc is. She's not a tragic romantic figure, she's COMEDY RELIEF. She has no depth, character development, or back story. She's there to make us laugh, with her namecalling and silly schemes and childlike infatuation with Nooj. Nooj never tells Leblanc to her face that she annoys him, because that would kill the gag. In a similar situation, Yuna never tells Brother that she doesn't want him. It's supposed to be funny, seeing a character so utterly in denial.

There's another thing I'll mention, and that's the persistent "yuri subtext" rumor with YRP. FFX-2 is the first Final Fantasy game with an all-female team, and for some people that's all it takes. But the fact is, there's no evidence for that anywhere in the game. The hot springs scene is optional fanservice and silliness (girls in bikinis, a frisky Rikku, Brother screaming "code pink" — and Paine wanted Rikku to back off, incidentally). In the FFX-2 Ultimanias, the girls' relationship is defined as a "sisterly friendship bond." In interviews with the game's makers and voice actors, the girls are always referred to as friends. Arguing about the definition of words like "friend" and "interaction" makes a person look ridiculous. Accept the game as it is, or don't call yourself a fan of it.

(And on a related note, if one wants to whine about subtext, one ought to take another look at Leblanc's love of lesbian massages. That ought to raise a few flags.)

It's worth mentioning Last Mission, the follow-up included in FFX-2 International. It takes place three months after X-2. The girls play catchup with each other, but Paine of course is not as forthcoming as her friends. What she's doing and where she's living are a mystery. This we do know, however: After the end of X-2, Paine left the Gullwings. She then traveled by herself "for a long time." She is asked about Nooj, Baralai, and Gippal in an early scene. She hasn't seen Gippal in a while, and all she says about Baralai is that he's having trouble dissolving New Yevon. About Nooj, she says he broke up the Youth League, but she doesn't say where he's at or what he's doing now. She also speaks of him from a personal angle: "Nooj said, 'Spira splintered the moment Sin was destroyed, because people like us allowed it to happen,'" and Nooj "thinks Baralai is being used by the old people just because he promised to stand by them." At one point she giggles when she says his name (the line "Nuji wa" — "Nooj said").

Near the end of the game, Paine opens up about what happened after the shooting. Yuna asks her afterwards, "Have you talked to Nooj about it?" Paine replies, "That's water under the bridge now."

As for Leblanc, she's on Mount Gagazet badgering Kimahri about moving there.

The Nooj/Paine romance gets treatment outside of the games. In the FFX-2 Ultimania Omega, the seiyuu for Paine and the guys are asked a question: Which man from Paine's past is her sweetheart? Things start out in jest, until Megumi Toyoguchi concludes that, from playing the game, she feels that it's Nooj. The other seiyuu agree with her. Kanna Nobutoshi (Nooj) brings up the scene in the Den of Woe, "when Nooj skipped over Yuna and Rikku and gave the sphere to Paine. I think that shows significance, especially when he said 'This must be fate.'"

In the DVD included in Paine's Vocal Collection, Nooj appears in "FFX-2 Special Movie: Paine Version."

Where Nooj's heart lies in X-2 is a rather clear-cut thing. The best way to see that is to play the game with a level head. Many people who try to argue against Nooj/Paine have started the game after reading about it and developing preferences for certain characters and pairings. It's one thing to have a preference, but it's another to rant and rave about that preference being canon. Canon is not when fans speak for the game, but when the game speaks for itself.