>Nod
>"Right."
>Head that way
>Despite the need for haste you feel, your steps, as well as those of your two companions, are measured as you walk down the hallway. You don't know how sharp Keine's hearing is in her current form, but if it's nearly as keen as Rin's, she'll hear you coming anyway. But perhaps she won't be as alarmed if she detects a measured pace, rather than a hasty or hectic one.
>The is something rather eerie about the school as you pad your way towards the stairs. You've been here when the place has been nearly empty, of course, on more than one occasion, but somehow, the silence of the school right now seems to press down on you. All you can hear is the sound of the quiet footsteps of yourself and the others.
>Evidently the silence weighs on Lily even more than you, and she continuously glances around, fidgeting, almost. As you reach the staircase, with Kaguya again taking the lead position, Lily asks her, rather quietly, "So what IS Keine-sensei, a werewolf?"
>"Her cursed half is a hakutaku." Kaguya informs her.
>"A what?"
>You've heard the term yourself, in your studies of ancient history. The hakutaku was a supernatural creature, described as something like a cross between a lion and a bull. A hakutaku was said to have been the adviser to one of the ancient emperors of Yamato, as it was a creature of great intellect and wisdom. History reports that it was this creature, along with the emperor Koutetsu the Bridge-Builder, who took the first steps in bringing the human and non-human populations of Yamato together.
>Encounters with the hakutaku have been vanishingly rare throughout recorded history, but each one has been a beneficent encounter. From what you know, lycanthropy in any form is transferred from one person to another during an attack of some sort. If the hakutaku is as history reports, a were-hakutaku should be an impossibility.
