Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4317207-20130313085814/@comment-1904799-20130413201148

Lonalex00 wrote: They're blood related cousins, or rather, they are second cousins. Masaki confirmed in the latest chapter that her and Ryuken are cousins. The first genuine hint to this was during the Fullbring arc when Tsukishima inserted himself as a distant cousin of the Kurosakis who they last met 10 years ago during the funeral of a certain grandfather Rin, incidentally Souken Ishida died around that time. More to the point, Rin can be a nickname. I think the reason Masaki told her friends that she was Ryuken's cousin was because she wasn't comfortable/allowed to say that they were betrothed. To avoid people getting suspicious about Masaki taking up residence with the Ishidas due to Masaki and Ryuken's arranged marriage, I suspect the family generated the idea that Masaki and Ryuken are cousins, and it's therefore normal for them to stay at one another's houses for some lengths of time. Presumably they aren't really blood relatives.