Disclaimer: I do not own any characters/ places from Seraph of the End. Everything belongs to its respective owners.

'F' is for Friend

Yu had wanted to believe that having two people follow him around wouldn't be as bad as he thought it would. At first it had only been Shinoa, who had been assigned to 'watch' him at the high school. Allowing Yoichi into their not-quite-a-group had been an accident, but at least Shinoa's constant jabs were able to be redirected to the more timid boy easily. Or at least that's what he had thought.

"Yu-kun, do you need any help?" Yoichi looked at him with genuine concern, asking the same question for about the fifth time. Despite being released from the recovery room after the vampire attack several days ago, Yu still had a bit of a headache, but that was more from the brown-haired boy's persistence than anything else.

"You don't want to ask him too much Yoichi or else he might get the wrong idea," Shinoa had a smirk on her face, causing annoyance to run through him. She generally only did that when she was going to say something as a joke, but half the time it creeped him out regardless.

"'Get the wrong idea?'" Yoichi repeated the words, confusion on his face. "I don't understand…"

"She's messing with you again," Yu muttered, not wanting to explain the girl's strange antics. He hadn't known her that long, but they just kept getting weirder.

Shinoa hummed for a moment, increasing her pace through the hallway so that she could get in front of him. "Are you sure about that?" she teased, glancing over her shoulder at him. "Like I told you on the rooftop…"

Yu instantly moved to try and cover her mouth, not wanting a repeat of the strange-but-true words she had uttered. Her small stature allowed her to retreat quickly though, side-stepping around him as she stood beside their newest addition to the group.

"You don't need to worry so much," her gaze became calm for a moment before she glanced at Yoichi, "I wouldn't want to spoil his innocence."

Not this again, Yu mentally wanted to smack her – or was the action actually going to be physical? – as Yoichi's face was covered by a blush. His gaze became concerned again.

"Should I even-?" the other boy started to ask, stuck between curiosity and not wanting to know. Yu shook his head, indicating that he was just going to ignore her for now. Hopefully the brown-haired boy would do the same, making the conversation practically nonexistent.

"Yu, you should really be more grateful to your friend," Shinoa continued, saying the one word that everyone had been repeating since he had gotten here. It strangely reminded him of a time in his past, one that he would have liked to forget for the time being. "After all, Yoichi is the reason that Guren allowed you to-"

Yu finally saw where she was going with the conversation. "Huh?!" the exclamation left his mouth as he caught up with what she had said, "why's that?!"

"You made a friend, so he had to hold up his end of the agreement," her expression was neutral again, causing him to turn to their brown-haired comrade.

"When did this happen?! Why don't I remember this?! I thought he had finally recognized-" the former captive began questioning at once, but Yoichi's answer made him devastated.

"I was so relieved that you were alright that you seemed to have hit your head on the way down," Yoichi's expression turned into one of embarrassment, "I'm sorry that you were hurt because of me."

"You have got to be kidding me!" Yu's devastation finally leaked through, which he thought Shinoa was after all along, but neither of the boys had been paying attention to her at the time.

The gray-purple haired girl sighed, half-closing her eyes as she muttered, "he was just as reluctant to agree to it too."

Both of them turned to look at the girl, her words lost in their conversation. She simply shrugged it off as they continued walking; Yu cursing Guren for not actually trusting him, Yoichi trying to forget the whole incident, and Shinoa remaining calm as ever (they couldn't necessarily tell what she was thinking either).

"So…" Yoichi's next words seemed hesitant, "now that we are finally frien-"

Yu cut the brown-haired boy off half way through the sentence, stopping at pointing at him. "Don't say the second 'f' word!" he shouted, feeling as though the words slipped out of habit. The younger boy's eyes widened in surprise as he shut his mouth, a look of panic on his face.

"The 'f' word?! There's two of them?!" Yoichi's next words caused the black-haired boy to utter a frustrated sigh as he turned away, "I wasn't planning on swearing! I promise!"

"Ooh, looks like you did it again," Shinoa's taunt made Yu only feel worse. Of course she would know about that, since she had read the reports… Does that mean she read the ones from earlier on, right after I left the-?

"Shut up!" he shouted, giving himself a moment to think over what the other boy had said. The realization that came to him, however, wasn't one that he had expected. Yoichi… 'innocent' Yoichi… knows curse words?

Shinoa had finally seemed to come to the same conclusion as he had, once she had stopped taunting him. "Yoichi?" she tilted her head to the side, for once giving Yu a chance to taunt her for a change.

"Wow, something you didn't actually know."

"I don't think anyone knows… except…" Shinoa was deep in thought for a moment, causing them both to look over at the brown-haired boy in question.

"Uh, Shinoa-san, Yu-kun?" said boy was still very much confused as to what they were referencing. Yu turned around, wanting to leave but figuring that his 'observer' wouldn't allow him. He was right when she started to explain.

"Yu has a… serious medical problem with calling certain words by their first letter-"

"It's not a serious medical problem!" he shouted, but she ignored him, easily continuing the explanation.

"He has two words that he refers to the most: both having the same beginning letter of 'f'. One is 'family' while the other is-"

"Friend." Yoichi finished, his eyes widening with sympathy. Yu wasn't even sure why the younger boy would give him sympathy, unless Shinoa had informed him about his past…

Yu stood still, half-creeped out and half in awe as Yoichi walked up to him and grasped his hands, tears overflowing from the boy's eyes – until it was ruined by what he said next.

"I'm so sorry about your serious medical condition," Yoichi stated sincerely with a bow, causing a vein to most-obviously appear on Yu's forehead. Shinoa grabbed the brown-haired boy's hand and pulled him forward before Yu could do anything drastic.

"I said it wasn't a medical condition!" he shouted as he ran to catch up, knowing that Shinoa wouldn't let this one go… ever.

Hmm… now this one was a bit harder to write since I don't have much of a grasp on Shinoa and Yoichi's attitudes, so I hope I did them some justice. I had to look up a few things about them on the internet, which was where the whole "protecting Yoichi's innocence" thing came from (the manga, I believe). As stated in the summary, this is the 'semi-sequel' to "F is for Family" hence the whole 'two f words' :) Sorry if anything is a bit off but I hope you enjoyed this!

-AnimeWolfGirl9