"It appears that maybe Yamato is one of the ancestors. Or at least that's what I'm thinking right now," Yuukai stated his theory. "It might explain why he had some motivation to betray us," he then explained an interesting property of the ancient souls. Even when they are bound by the curse to come back and possess a body in the modern world, they still have free will. Thus, they can do whatever they want, to overtake the bodies they're in, or to follow the flow of fate.

"I have a strong feeling that Yamato wanted to be free from the flow of fate. So he betrayed us, essentially gaining knowledge and skills to survive for himself. Whether he will join the darkness or not, I'm not sure," Yuukai added. This left my team and I thinking, if Yamato was one of the ancestors, then why didn't he notice earlier? What is his ultimate goal?

But Yuukai warned us to not be too bothered with Yamato because he is being hunted down by Karito anyway. We can count on him. He said that we must prepare for the next mission at all times.

A few days after that, in the middle of a training session, I spotted Rin sitting alone on the edge of the yard, under a large tree. She looked sad while looking at a piece of paper, I believed that she was looking at a photograph, maybe of her family.

I felt sympathetic to her, but when we're making eye contact, she ran away. But I wasn't deterred, I followed her through the training fields. "Wait!" I yelled to her, but she didn't stop running.

I followed her to the woods, and as the forest was one of the places of the warriors trained in, I know this area and its markings. "Stop following me!" Rin yelled back to me as she avoided a branch that nearly hit her head.

After following her, turning left and right between the tall pine trees, I lost her. She was faster than me. "Rin! I just want to talk!!" I called her as loud as I could, but there was only silence. I believed she had outran me.

But--

*SMACK*

Rin hit my head with a stick and knocked me down. I can even still imagine the pain until now. With an annoyed expression, Rin walks in with her stick and pierce it into the ground near her. "I said not to follow me, or do you want to die that much?"

"I... just want to ask you something..." I tried to stand, while holding my forehead. "You're the only one on the team whose background I haven't known yet," I tried to persuade her.

Rin looked at me with the same feeling as before, "And why do you care to know?" she asked. At that point, she seems like holding her tears in. I wasn't directly asking her, just looking at her expression, I could see that she didn't want to hear any words from me. But I talked to her anyway.

"I just want to know about you, Rin. Maybe we couldn't get along very well, but... I just want to know about you,"

"And why is that?"

"Because I consider my team members as family," I answered. Rin's eyes widened. I saw her clenching her free fist and grasping stronger to her stick of wood. "I thought it would be nice to know each other--"

"Stop. Stop that," Rin cut my sentence. Her stare turned blank. "You don't have the right to talk about family... you don't know anything you talking about,"

I was frozen, unable to reply to her.

"How can you just calmly claim your teammates as a family? When you're the one destroying other's real family? Do you know what you've done? By simply existing?" she was referring to the Ookami curse.

Rin stuck the stick even deeper in the ground, and her eyes were tearing up. "You destroy the very definition of family itself!! I lost everyone because of you! That's why we hate you... THAT'S WHY I HATE YOU!!"

Rin burst her rage and emotion as tears dropped from her eyes. They appeared to be glowing for a second. Then she ran past me while sobbing, and threw her stick away.

I felt numb.