As the night darkens and gets colder, Karito fights Ishigaki and Yamato at once. While he could manipulate Natsuki a long time ago, he could not do the same for her one descendant. With six sharp blades sticking out of his back, Karito fully controlled these extra arms as well as the metals around him.

"Let me ask you... why exactly do you want to help Kyuuto so much? He's not your brother, he's not even your friend. You only know him since the curse-- you're like that girl, something is just luring you to help him... what is that?" Karito referred to Kanata who recently showed her affection towards Kyuuto.

Ishigaki paused as he himself did not know the answer, but then Karito remembered something. "Ah, I get it... of course... you are an Akayama after all. You are bound to protect Ookami with whatever you have... maybe Kanata is also an Akayama?" his tone changed to more unhinged like monologuing to himself.

"I'm not bound to do anything..."Ishigaki convinced Karito and himself, but in his heart, he was not expecting Karito to say what he said.

"Oh really? Maybe you're just uninformed... the night is still long, so I'll give you some history lesson," Karito then explained to Ishigaki and Yamato about the bond between the Akayama and Ookami, long before the curse started.

----

It all started with the second ruler of the Ookami kingdom. As the Akayama held the title of having the most dangerous fighters in the entire country, they were characterized by their high spirits and dedication, but showed weakness when provoked emotionally. They were brutal and violent, but not as efficient and calculated as the Ookami were.

The queen wanted protection for the royal family, she did not want to sacrifice other Ookami clan members, and she deemed her closest knights to be unreliable. So after aggressive persuasions and threats, the Akayama agreed. The queen tapped into a mysterious power, and manipulated the fate of the Akayama clan in her current time, and further down the line.

They were bound by souls, so that in every Ookami generation, there will always be Akayama clan members from the same generation to protect them. They do not need to know each other since childhood, or contracted in any way, the binding will eventually bring them together. And whatever the Akayama did to avoid this interlocked fate, they will only get closer to it.

----

"Basically, you guys are just Ookami's servants even since conception," Karito ended his explanation. Ishigaki's eyes widened, and he got reminded of what Akira said to Natsuki when they fought on the island. If that is the case then he does not have any control on what life brings to him. Inside of him, Natsuki was also shocked, she had never heard of such a thing.

Then Karito asked, "Did you ever have a family member that died without a clear cause? Perhaps they sacrificed their lives to protect an Ookami," he made a shrug gesture.

Ishigaki's heart skipped a beat. The thought of his deceased father entered his mind in a flash. It happened when he was still in elementary school, Ishigaki's father went to work, but never came back. He was a courier, and every morning he would go to his office, and would be already home by the evening. His name was Ren.

Before his death, Ren did not show any peculiarity in his behavior. He was very gentle and spent a lot of time with his son, often telling how much he loved him. Just like a good father figure should be.

----

One day, when Ren was in the middle of a delivery, he saw a mother with a small child, roughly the same age as his own son, strolling outside of a department store. He did not know who this family were, and decided to follow them for a while after he parked his motorbike, following a hunch.

As the pair entered an alley, they were suddenly ambushed by what seemed to be multiple gang members. The mother fell down after defending his son from a swing of a baseball bat, her arms were even bruised. Ren then tossed his sling bag, and sprinted into the alley.

"Get your hands off of him!!" Ren warned one of the teens who grabbed the little child by his hand, while unsheathing a pocket knife from his jeans pocket. Then chaos ensued, as Ren tried as he might to ward off the gang members from them, "Run!!" he shouted, as he blocked three gang members at once.

He then felt a sudden pain in his stomach, one of them stabbed him with a more powerful dagger. Blood trickled down his shirt, but he did not give up. In turn, he seemingly switched into a berserk mode, and started to slice all of them in quick succession. Even his knife glowed dim red at some point, with its blade emanating extreme heat. After sustaining major bleeding from Ren's knife as well as terrible burns, all of his enemies fell down while one of them managed to escape.

Ren looked at his stab wound, then turned his head to the pair he just rescued. They had bright blue eyes and shining black hair, they were both Ookamis.

Kyuuto and his mother to be exact.