“I’ve carried the weight of taking a life for as long as I can remember”.

The camera drifts through shadows into a silent room, where a single candle flickers on a wooden table. Its glow sharpens the outline of a Colt .45-11, polished and deliberate in the stillness.

As the light sways, a shadow of a man emerges—fedora hat, black leather coat wrapped tightly around him. The camera moves closer, revealing his face: one side illuminated, the other swallowed by darkness, as if the room itself hides him.

Still, alert, he waits—expecting something. The camera lingers on his profile, the interplay of light and shadow carving his features like a figure from the night.

“I never had a choice. It was a path I had to take to survive. Once, I was innocent—then a fugitive—until I stopped being prey and became the predator. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night or with a flash of a familiar scent, I wonder: what if I could change just one thing? Would I still be this hideous? Could the darkness ever let me see light? And could the blood I’ve spilled ever be anything but my curse?”

“But this is where you and I are so similar, Wolf Fang Ayame.”

Red smiles with half of his face.

“We are both murderers, killers of men. Entities that are trained with the art of survival, and the complexity of taking a life. We are both creations of unfortunate circumstances, of small turns we took in junctions we couldn’t really avoid. But this is also where we couldn’t be more different. Where we are not alike.”

Red turns a bit towards the camera, revealing more of his face from the shadow.

“My path wasn’t crossed by death. I never had to die to become what I am. Quite the contrary-I had to survive. I had to overcome the greater forces I encountered, instead of falling to my knees and accepting my fate. Unlike you, Hanna, I was never a victim. I’ve learned simple truths: A man who survives, who fights, who defends himself despite every circumstance, does so with the weight of his actions, knowing the consequences of each choice. His survival is not blind, nor is it without reason. The wolf, however, survives without thought. It does not ask whether its actions are right or wrong. It does not pause to consider the lives it ruins. I’ve learned that survival for a man is a complex act, bound by rules, by society, and by reason. But for the wolf, it is nothing more than an unconscious drive, a brutal, unthinking cycle of life and death where every victim is a mere casualty of nature’s cruel law”.

Red pauses, his voice deepening with finality.

“When we meet in the ring, you will understand that survival isn’t an instinct—it’s a decision. And you, Hanna, never chose to survive.”

Red smiles.

“You chose to die”.