Chapter 19: Scarcity And Control
Chapter 19: Scarcity and Control
Arthur awoke slowly, his head throbbing with a dull, persistent ache, to find himself not on the cold, windswept cliff edge where he had collapsed, but tucked into the surprisingly comfortable confines of his own narrow dormitory bed. For a disorienting, heart-stopping moment, he thought the previous day’s extraordinary, impossible events – Michiru’s miraculous return from apparent death, Nana’s shattering emotional breakdown – had been nothing more than a vivid, desperate hallucination, a final, merciful product of his unravelling, exhausted mind. Then, a soft, hesitant voice, fragile as new spring leaves but blessedly, undeniably real, spoke his island name.
“Tanaka-kun? Are you… are you awake now?”
He turned his head, his stiff muscles protesting with every small movement. Michiru Inukai sat in a rickety wooden chair that had been pulled up beside his bed, a chipped teacup containing water held carefully in her small, still frail hands. She was terribly pale and gaunt, an ethereal, almost translucent waif-like figure, but her gentle, unmistakable eyes, though shadowed with a profound fatigue, were clear, lucid, and undeniably, wonderfully alive. A shy, almost hesitant, yet incredibly precious smile touched her lips when she saw him looking at her. The sight of her, truly, tangibly alive and present in the mundane, familiar reality of his small dorm room, sent a jolt of profound, overwhelming relief through him, so potent it brought an unexpected, embarrassing sting to his eyes.
“Michiru…” he rasped, his own voice hoarse, cracked, and unfamiliar even to his own ears. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position.
“Easy now, Tanaka-kun,” she said, her voice still weak but infused with a gentle, soothing warmth as she helped him prop himself awkwardly against the thin, lumpy pillows. “You were… very, very exhausted. Nana-chan and I… we managed to bring you back here after you fainted. Nana-chan was very worried about you, you know.”
Nana. The memory of her raw, uncharacteristic breakdown at the cliff, her tearful, fragmented, almost incoherent confession, her utter, soul-deep devastation at seeing Michiru alive, returned to him with a fresh jolt. He looked past Michiru’s concerned, gentle face and saw Nana Hiiragi herself standing awkwardly, uncertainly, in the doorway of his room. Her usually vibrant pink hair was slightly dishevelled, her bright school uniform rumpled and bearing faint traces of mud from the cliff path. Her usual effervescent, almost manic cheerfulness was entirely, strikingly absent, replaced by a hesitant, almost timid, and deeply uncertain expression. Her violet eyes, usually sparkling with mischief or cold, hard calculation, were red-rimmed, swollen, and shadowed with a new, unfamiliar vulnerability. The dynamic between the three of them, Arthur realized with a growing sense of profound unease and weary, almost resigned acceptance, was now irrevocably, seismically altered, suspended in a strange, fragile, and deeply, profoundly uncomfortable new reality.
The official explanation for Michiru Inukai’s miraculous return from the “dead” was, when it came, as predictably flimsy and insultingly inadequate as Arthur had expected. A few days after the incident at the cliff, once Michiru was deemed strong enough to leave the infirmary (where she had been kept under observation, much to Nana’s now fiercely protective, almost possessive anxiety), a visibly flustered and deeply uncomfortable Mr. Saito made a brief, stammering announcement during morning homeroom. He explained, his voice cracking several times, that there had been a “most regrettable and unfortunate series of diagnostic errors” by a “very junior, inexperienced mainland doctor” who had initially, and incorrectly, pronounced Michiru-san deceased following her sudden, severe illness at the end of the previous term. Further, more thorough examinations by the island’s own “more experienced medical staff,” he’d continued, his gaze skittering nervously around the room, had revealed that Michiru-san had merely been in a “profoundly deep, coma-like state” from which, through the miracle of modern medical science and her own youthful resilience, she had now, thankfully, fully recovered. “A simple, yet almost tragic, misdiagnosis, class,” was the best, most pathetic explanation the homeroom teacher could apparently come up with, his face slick with nervous sweat.
Michiru being alive again, having been officially declared dead and her passing mourned (however briefly and superficially by most), certainly surprised a few of the more observant pupils in the class. There were some whispered exclamations, a few wide-eyed, incredulous stares directed at the pale but smiling Michiru. Arthur watched their reactions with a kind of detached, weary cynicism. Back in England, back in his old life, such an event – a person returning from the dead after weeks, months even! – would have been a nine-day wonder, a media sensation, a cause for profound existential debate. Here, on this island where the bizarre was rapidly becoming the mundane, where death was a casual acquaintance and survival a daily struggle… well. Not that the surprise, the mild titillation, lasted very long. Within half an hour, Arthur noted with a grimace, talk among the students had soon moved on to more immediately “interesting” and pressing topics, like who had managed to hoard an extra bread roll from breakfast, or the latest outrageous rumour about Commandant Ide’s new, even more draconian camp rules back on the mainland (as news of the internment camps had, by now, become common, if terrifying, knowledge). This strange, unending, almost timeless May, which had now bled into a sweltering, oppressive early summer on the island, felt so utterly disconnected from any concept of season, or normalcy, or rational human behavior he had ever known; it was just an endless, surreal expanse of dread, punctuated by moments of sheer, stark insanity.
Over the next few days, as Arthur slowly regained his own physical strength and Michiru continued her own gradual, delicate, yet steady recovery – a process that seemed to draw on some deep, internal, almost inexhaustible wellspring of her miraculous healing Talent – an unsettling new tension, a different, more insidious kind of menace, began to grip the island. The already dwindling food supplies in the school canteen started to diminish with an alarming, noticeable rapidity, just as Arthur had grimly “predicted” to Kyouya Onodera weeks before. At first, it was subtle, almost deniable: the portions became slightly, almost imperceptibly smaller, the more popular, palatable dishes ran out much quicker, the once-generous fruit bowls looked suspiciously less bountiful. Then, the choices became starkly, undeniably more limited, the quality of what little was available noticeably, appallingly poorer. The usual comforting, if unexciting, variety of snacks and drinks in the small, usually well-stocked school store vanished almost overnight, replaced by sparsely, almost grudgingly stocked shelves displaying dusty, unappetizing, and often near-expired items.
The teachers, led by a visibly stressed, increasingly harassed, and clearly out-of-his-depth Mr. Saito, offered a series of vague, unconvincing, and often wildly contradictory explanations: unforeseen, severe logistical problems with the regular mainland supply ships; unexpected, unseasonable, and particularly violent storms delaying crucial deliveries; sudden, inexplicable, and entirely unforeseeable issues with their long-standing mainland procurement contracts. Their excuses sounded hollow, almost insultingly flimsy, even to the most naive or least suspicious students. A low, anxious hum of discontent, of fear, began to spread like a contagion through the dormitories. Whispers of hunger, of being forgotten and abandoned by the outside world, of the island’s carefully maintained, picturesque isolation becoming a terrifying, inescapable, and potentially lethal trap, grew louder, more insistent, more desperate with each passing, increasingly meagre, unsatisfying mealtime.
Arthur watched it all with a grim, weary sense of vindication, the bitter taste of unwelcome prescience like ash in his mouth. He saw Kyouya Onodera observing the rapidly deteriorating situation with a keen, coldly analytical, almost predatory gaze, their earlier, urgent conversation in the dusty library clearly at the forefront of his sharp, calculating mind. Kyouya began to spend more of his free time away from the main school buildings, his movements quiet, purposeful, almost furtive, as if he were methodically scouting for alternative, hidden resources or making discreet, necessary preparations for a coming siege that Arthur wasn’t yet privy to. He would occasionally catch Kyouya’s eye across the increasingly tense, half-empty canteen, a silent, almost imperceptible nod passing between them – a grim, unspoken acknowledgment of Arthur’s unwelcome, terrifying prescience.
Nana Hiiragi, too, seemed to view the unfolding, manufactured crisis through new, deeply troubled, and profoundly disillusioned eyes. Her emotional implosion at the cliff edge, her raw, unfiltered confrontation with her own buried guilt and manipulated past, had irrevocably cracked her carefully constructed facade of cheerful, unquestioning obedience. While she hadn’t confessed the full, horrifying extent of her past actions as Tsuruoka’s assassin to either Arthur or Michiru, her interactions with Michiru, in particular, were now tinged with a fierce, almost desperate, suffocating protectiveness and a profound, soul-deep, sorrowful guilt. When the teachers stammered their increasingly unconvincing, almost pathetic excuses for the rapidly dwindling food supplies, Arthur saw Nana listening with a deep, thoughtful frown, a dangerous flicker of bitter doubt and dawning, angry understanding in her expressive violet eyes. Perhaps, he thought with a sliver of grim hope, she was finally, truly beginning to see the callous, manipulative, bloodstained strings of the Committee she had served so blindly, so devotedly, for so tragically long. Perhaps she was beginning to question the supposed benevolence, the absolute authority, of the monstrous Commander Tsuruoka.
“This is precisely what I told you would happen, Onodera,” Arthur said quietly to Kyouya one evening, his limited Japanese surprisingly steady, his voice low and urgent, as they stood observing a near-riot that had broken out with shocking suddenness in the canteen over the last few pathetic, fought-over servings of stale, mould-flecked bread. Several desperate, starving students were shouting, pushing, their faces pinched and pale with hunger and a growing, frightening, animalistic desperation. “The Committee. They’re tightening the screws, deliberately, methodically, applying unbearable pressure.”
Kyouya Onodera nodded, his chiselled expression grim, his pale eyes as hard and cold as flint. “Your foresight, Tanaka,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, “continues to be distressingly, if predictably, and I must admit, increasingly useful, accurate. They create desperation, they foster internal division, then they will undoubtedly offer just enough insufficient relief to maintain a semblance of control, all while callously, dispassionately observing how we react – who breaks under the pressure, who fights for scraps, who leads, who crumbles. It is a classic, if particularly cruel and inhumane, method of psychological assessment and brutal social control.”
And indeed, just as Kyouya had so cynically predicted, just as tensions in the camp reached a fever pitch, when open, violent fights were beginning to break out with alarming regularity over hoarded scraps of often inedible food and genuine, gnawing, debilitating fear had taken firm, unshakeable root in the hearts of even the most optimistic or naive students, a supply ship was finally, dramatically, sighted on the distant horizon. A wave of ragged, desperate, almost hysterical cheers went up from the starving students. But it was, as Kyouya had so accurately predicted Arthur would have foreseen, far, far too little, and far, far too late to fully alleviate the worsening, deliberately manufactured problem. The shipment that was eventually, grudgingly unloaded onto the pier was significantly smaller than usual, the quality of the provisions noticeably, insultingly poorer – mostly low-grade dried goods, suspiciously discoloured preserved vegetables, and very little in the way of fresh produce, protein, or medical supplies. It was just enough to prevent outright, widespread starvation, just enough to quell the immediate, simmering panic and prevent a full-scale, violent breakdown of order. But it was not nearly enough to restore any sense of security, or to dispel the growing, chilling, terrifying realization among the more astute students that their very survival was fragile, tenuous, entirely dependent on the cruel, capricious whims of unseen, uncaring, and utterly malevolent forces who could withdraw their meager lifeline at will.
The Committee’s manipulative, bloodstained hand was subtle, almost invisible to the untrained eye, but to Arthur, and now to Kyouya and perhaps even Nana, it was undeniably, chillingly apparent. They were master puppeteers, coolly, dispassionately orchestrating events from afar, content to let hunger, fear, and profound desperation do their brutal, dehumanizing work, systematically weeding out the weak, identifying potential threats or future assets, all under the carefully constructed, plausible guise of unfortunate, unavoidable, and entirely unforeseen logistical circumstances.
Michiru Inukai, though still physically weak from her own miraculous, near-fatal ordeal, instinctively, selflessly shared her meagre, often insufficient portions with those students she felt were more in need, particularly the younger, more frightened ones, her innate, unwavering kindness a small, flickering, precious candle of compassion in the rapidly encroaching darkness of their desperate, deteriorating situation. Nana Hiiragi, her own internal, unspoken torment a constant, silent, brooding companion, often, almost furtively, supplemented Michiru’s share with her own, a quiet, almost unconscious act of profound, desperate atonement, her gaze when she looked at Michiru a complex, almost painful mixture of overwhelming guilt, profound awe, and a fierce, new-found, almost suffocating protectiveness.
Arthur Ainsworth, watching them both, felt a strange, almost imperceptible, yet undeniable shift in the island’s oppressive, death-haunted atmosphere. Nana’s murderous, Committee-ordained crusade, for the moment at least, seemed to be on hold, overshadowed, perhaps even temporarily derailed, by this new, more widespread, and insidious threat of starvation, and by the profound, ongoing emotional upheaval of Michiru Inukai’s impossible, miraculous return. But he knew, with a weary, bone-deep certainty, that the Committee’s cruel, inhuman game was far from over. This was merely a new, more subtle, perhaps even more sadistic phase, a different kind of insidious pressure designed to test them all, to break them down, to see what, if anything, of value emerged from the unforgiving, brutal crucible of manufactured desperation. And Arthur suspected, with a cold, sickening dread that settled deep in the marrow of his bones, that the tests, the trials, the suffering, were only just beginning, and were destined to get harder, more brutal, and far more unforgiving.
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Chapter 26: Reunion in the Rain
The chaotic, premature end of the third school year on the island had seen Arthur, along with the other bewildered and traumatized student survivors, unceremoniously dumped back onto the mainland like so much unwanted refuse. For him, it meant a grim, dispiriting return to the life he had briefly, miserably known before his forced return to the academy: the anonymity of the teeming city, the gnawing ache of poverty, and the soul-crushing, repetitive labour of a sprawling construction site on the urban fringe. The bitter irony wasn’t lost on him; he was now walking the same path of grueling menial toil, enduring the same casual cruelties from foremen and co-workers, that Kyouya Onodera had apparently walked before his own arrival on that cursed island. He endured the harsh, unforgiving conditions, the meagre, often insufficient pay that barely covered the rent for a shared, squalid room in a decaying lodging house, and the constant, wearying taunts from his fellow labourers who mocked his still-halting Japanese and his foreigner’s awkwardness. Each day was a fresh testament to his unwanted, unwelcome survival. His phone, his former lifeline to communication and understanding, had been confiscated during the island evacuation, leaving him to navigate this complex, indifferent world with only his painfully limited vocabulary and a profound, isolating sense of linguistic inadequacy.
Months bled into one another, a dreary, monotonous procession of exhausting physical labour and long, lonely nights spent staring at the cracked ceiling of his cramped room. He heard nothing of Nana, nothing of Michiru, nothing of Kyouya. The island, and the unspeakable horrors it held, began to feel like a distant, terrible fever dream, its sharp edges softened by time and the sheer, grinding drudgery of his current existence.
One particularly bleak, miserable evening in late autumn, as a cold, persistent, sleety rain lashed the city, relentlessly turning the streets into slick, reflecting rivers of neon and grime, Arthur trudged wearily away from the cacophonous, muddy construction site. His body ached with a bone-deep exhaustion, his spirit felt numb, hollowed out. He took a shortcut through a narrow, dimly lit, garbage-strewn alleyway, more to escape the biting, rain-laden wind than to save any appreciable time. And there, huddled in a recessed, darkened doorway, trying desperately to find some meagre shelter from the relentless downpour, was a figure he recognized instantly, despite her ragged, filthy clothes and the haunted, almost feral terror in her eyes. Nana Hiiragi.
She looked up with a start as he approached, her eyes – those once bright, violet, calculating eyes – widening in shocked, terrified recognition. She was thinner, almost skeletal, her once vibrant pink hair now lank, faded, and plastered to her skull by the rain, her face smudged with dirt and etched with a weariness that went far beyond mere physical exhaustion. She looked like a cornered, wounded animal, a desperate fugitive who had finally run out of places to hide. On top of a nearby overflowing, reeking rubbish bin, a scrawny, spectral white cat sat preternaturally still, its intelligent, luminous eyes fixed on them both, seemingly entirely unfazed by the driving rain or the charged atmosphere in the narrow alley.
“Tanaka-kun?” Nana whispered, her voice hoarse, cracked, barely audible above the drumming of the rain, disbelief warring with a flicker of raw, desperate fear, and perhaps, Arthur thought with a jolt, a tiny, almost imperceptible spark of desperate, unwelcome hope. She looked utterly broken. She began to stammer, incoherent words of regret, of apology for… for everything, her body trembling violently.
Arthur, his own weariness a heavy, sodden cloak upon his shoulders, cut her off, his voice flat, the English words falling like chips of ice in the damp, cold air. “Save it, Hiiragi. Just… save it.” He saw the last vestiges of fight, of defiance, go out of her. She sagged against the grimy, graffiti-covered wall, the rain plastering her thin clothes to her shivering frame.
“Tsuruoka,” he began, speaking slowly, deliberately, still in English, knowing she had some comprehension, and needing the precision of his own tongue for what he had to say. “Commander Tsuruoka… he killed your parents, Nana. Not you. He did.” He saw her flinch as if he had physically struck her, her eyes widening in stunned, uncomprehending horror. “He hired two Talented criminals to do the job, individuals with existing convictions, easily manipulated, easily controlled. They were likely… disposed of… after they’d served their purpose. Silenced. Standard Committee operating procedure.” Nana stared at him, her mouth agape, rain dripping from her chin, her breath catching in her throat. “Your parents,” Arthur continued, his voice relentless, a grim, emotionless recital of terrible truths. “They supported Talents. They were actively opposed to Tsuruoka’s ideology, his methods, his growing power within the Committee. He decided not only to eliminate them as a threat but, as the ultimate, monstrous act of revenge against their memory, to take their only daughter and twist her, mold her, into the very thing they fought against. It was so much easier to shape you, to control you, if you could be blamed for their horrific murders, wasn’t it? If you truly believed yourself a monster from the very start.” He saw the dawning, unutterable horror in her eyes as pieces of her shattered, manipulated past began to align with his brutal words. “You running to that police station, a terrified child clutching your own father’s severed head… the accusations, the recriminations you faced there… that was all part of Tsuruoka’s meticulous, diabolical plan. The reason you were shunted from one uncaring, abusive foster family to another. It was all designed to break you, to isolate you, to make you utterly pliable, to make you his perfect, unquestioning weapon.”
He paused, letting the crushing weight of his words sink into her already fractured psyche. “You could have asked more questions, Hiiragi,” he said, his voice softening almost imperceptibly, a hint of weary sorrow creeping in. “You could have done more research. Yes, many Talents are bad, dangerous, destructive. But it was never your place to be their judge, their jury, and their executioner.” He looked her directly in the eye, his gaze unwavering, trying to convey the full import of his next statement. “And Talents, Hiiragi,” he added, his voice dropping to a low, pointed near-whisper, “they don’t have a monopoly on doing bad things.” The implication that he knew she, Nana Hiiragi, the Committee’s most feared assassin of Talents, was herself entirely Talentless, hung heavy, unspoken but deafening, between them in the cold, rain-swept alley. “Now, perhaps, after everything, you finally understand the full, terrible extent of my ‘Talent.’ My ‘predictions.’ And believe me, Hiiragi, things are going to get much, much worse. For all of us.”
Nana, looking utterly numb, her face a mask of dawning, unbearable truth and profound, world-shattering despair, finally spoke, her voice a mere breath, almost lost in the relentless drumming of the rain. “I’ve seen them… Tanaka-kun. I’ve seen… the Enemies of Humanity.”
Arthur, who had almost turned to leave, to walk away from her and the vortex of pain and violence she represented, froze in his tracks. Her words, so quiet, so full of a new, specific terror, stopped him cold. He knew, with a sudden, sickening lurch, where this was heading, to the most bizarre, the most terrifying, the most inexplicable aspect of this twisted, nightmarish world. He turned back slowly to face her, the rain dripping from his hair, from the collar of his thin jacket. He struggled for a moment with his limited Japanese, then resorted to blunt English again. “Tsuruoka. He’s shown you, hasn’t he?” he asked, his voice grim. “Two of them, I’d wager. Two of those… monsters. And he told you that Talents don’t truly die when you kill them? That they just… change? That they turn into those things?” Nana, her eyes wide and haunted, brimming with a fresh, unspeakable horror, nodded slowly, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on her cheek.
“He was telling you the truth, Nana,” Arthur said, his voice heavy with a weariness that seemed to age him decades in that moment. “Up to a point, at least. My own… additional information… it may not be entirely precise, you understand. It’s… fragmented. But from what I’ve managed to piece together, from what I remember… when a person with a Talent reaches a certain point in their life – late teens, their twenties, sometimes as late as their forties, it varies – their Talent can undergo a kind of… profound, often terrifying metamorphosis. Think of it as… as puberty, but with new, often unstable, uncontrollable superpowers. A secondary, more monstrous blossoming.” He saw the flicker of horrified understanding in her eyes. “Unfortunately, from what I know, it’s not long after that stage, that secondary manifestation, that they can… they can transform. Become those creatures Tsuruoka so proudly, so callously, displayed for you. The process, I believe, can also happen, perhaps even accelerate, if a Talent appears to be dead to our eyes, like Etsuko, the girl he showed you in that body bag. Their essence, their Talent, it just… festers, corrupts, transforms.”
He saw the recognition of Etsuko’s name, the confirmation of her own terrible experience in Tsuruoka’s charnel house, reflected in Nana’s horrified gaze. “I don’t know what the Committee’s ultimate, endgame plan is, Nana,” Arthur admitted, running a hand through his wet hair. “I truly don’t. But I strongly suspect Tsuruoka will use – or perhaps already is using – these so-called ‘Enemies of Humanity’ as a potent, terrifying tool. Maybe, just maybe, it’s to keep the current Japanese government in power, by presenting these monsters as a constant, existential threat that only he, and the Committee, can manage, can protect them from. Or, and this seems far more likely given his megalomania, once he’s successfully eliminated all other Talents he deems problematic or uncontrollable, he’ll use these monsters, these transformed Talents, to try and take over the world himself.”
He looked at Nana, her face a canvas of shock, dawning comprehension, and utter, soul-crushing despair. “He played you, Nana,” he said, his voice softer now, almost gentle. “From the very beginning. He played us all.” With that, Arthur Ainsworth turned and began to walk away, his shoulders slumped, leaving Nana Hiiragi alone in the cold, dark, rain-lashed alley to absorb the full, crushing weight of his devastating revelations. As he reached the grimy, graffiti-scarred end of the alley, he glanced back, a brief, almost involuntary movement. Nana was slowly, unsteadily, pushing herself to her feet, a small, broken figure in the vast, uncaring city. The scrawny white cat, which had been watching their entire exchange with an unnerving, almost sentient stillness from its perch on the overflowing rubbish bin, hopped down with a silent, graceful leap and, with an almost imperceptible flick of its tail, began to follow Nana as she stumbled out of the alley and disappeared into the rainy, indifferent labyrinth of the darkened city streets. He knew, somehow, with a certainty that settled like a stone in his own weary heart, that their paths, his and Nana’s, were still destined to cross again. The island’s dark, insidious tendrils reached far, even into the deepest, most anonymous shadows of the sprawling mainland.
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Chapter 17: The Truth About Jin
The uneasy, unspoken truce that had formed between Arthur and Kyouya Onodera settled into the grim, unfolding routine of the second school year. Kyouya, armed with Arthur’s dire warnings about manufactured food shortages and impending internal conflict, became even more watchful, his movements more deliberate, his observations more acute. Arthur, for his part, continued his solitary, heartbreaking watch over Michiru Inukai’s still, unnervingly preserved form in her sealed-off dormitory room, a silent, daily ritual that did little to soothe his frayed nerves but provided a strange, painful focal point for his grief and his stubborn, almost defiant hope.
The long, isolated weeks of the inter-term break, however, had afforded him ample, unwelcome time for reflection, for sifting through the chaotic, fragmented memories of the anime that served as his cursed, unreliable roadmap through this deadly reality. He’d replayed scenes in his mind, pieced together snatches of dialogue, connected half-forgotten character arcs. One name, one enigmatic face, had begun to trouble him more insistently during those lonely vigils: Jin Tachibana. The aloof, strikingly white-haired student who had arrived later in the previous year, the one whose presence often felt… dissonant, out of sync with the other students, his pronouncements occasionally too insightful, his detachment too profound. There was a piece of the intricate, horrifying puzzle missing, a vital connection he hadn’t quite made.
Then, late one night, as he sat by Michiru’s bedside, the silence of the deserted school pressing in on him, it had clicked. A chilling cascade of forgotten details from the anime resurfaced from the depths of his recall – a complex, tragic backstory involving Jin, another student, a past conflict, and a hidden identity. It was a deeply personal revelation, one that directly, devastatingly, concerned Kyouya Onodera.
For weeks into the new term, Arthur wrestled with the knowledge, the weight of it a heavy burden. Should he tell Kyouya? Such a truth could shatter him, derail his relentless quest for his missing sister, Rin. Or, perhaps, it could provide him with a new, terrible focus. Their wary understanding was still fragile; this could destroy it, or solidify it in ways Arthur couldn’t predict. But as the food supplies visibly dwindled, as Arthur’s grim forecast began to manifest with chilling accuracy, and as Kyouya’s quiet respect for Arthur’s unwelcome prescience grew, Arthur decided he couldn’t withhold it any longer. Kyouya deserved to know, whatever the cost.
He sought out Kyouya a few weeks into the new term, finding him, as he often did, in a quiet, secluded corner of the school library, surrounded by stacks of arcane-looking texts. The initial whispers of dwindling food supplies in the canteen, just as Arthur had “predicted” to him, were now becoming anxious murmurs throughout the student body, adding a new, sharp layer of tension to the already oppressive school atmosphere.
“Onodera,” Arthur began, his phone held ready, his expression grim. He didn’t bother with pleasantries; their interactions were rarely burdened by them. “There’s something else. Something more… personal. It concerns… your sister, Rin.”
Kyouya looked up from the ancient, leather-bound volume he was studying, his pale eyes instantly sharpening, losing their distant, scholarly focus. His sister. Rin was his driving motivation, the unwavering, singular reason he endured the horrors of this island, the burning core of his relentless search for answers. Any mention of her, however oblique, was guaranteed to command his absolute, undivided attention.
“What about her?” Kyouya’s voice was low, dangerously controlled, but with an unmistakable undercurrent of coiled intensity. He placed his book down carefully, his full attention now fixed on Arthur.
Arthur took a deep, steadying breath. This was it. There was no easy way to deliver such news. “Your sister, Rin…” he began, his phone translating his carefully chosen, hesitant English words into precise, unpitying Japanese. “I believe she is here, Onodera. On this island. But not… not as you would expect her to be.” He paused, letting the synthesized words hang in the heavy silence of the library alcove. “She’s here, I believe, as Jin Tachibana.”
Kyouya’s stoic, almost carved expression finally, catastrophically, broke. A flicker of utter disbelief, then a dawning, rapidly escalating wave of horrified understanding, washed across his usually impassive features. He said nothing, his lips parting slightly as if to speak, then closing again. His knuckles were bone-white where he gripped the edge of the heavy wooden table.
Arthur pressed on, his own heart aching with a reluctant sympathy for the pain he was inflicting, laying out the grim theory his fragmented, cursed knowledge had pieced together. “The real Jin Tachibana… I believe he was a student here some years ago. There was a… a significant conflict on this island. A civil war, of sorts, between factions of students, quite possibly triggered by the kind of manufactured food shortages I warned you about. A previous iteration of the Committee’s cruel experiments in social pressure.” He watched Kyouya absorb this, his face pale as death, his eyes wide and haunted. “During that conflict, I believe the real Jin Tachibana was severely injured, perhaps critically, while trying to protect your sister, Rin. He might be hospitalized somewhere on the mainland now, brain-damaged beyond recovery… or he could be dead. My… glimpses… are unclear on his precise fate.”
He saw Kyouya swallow hard, his gaze dropping to the scarred surface of the table, his mind clearly reeling from the brutal implications of Arthur’s words. “Rin… your sister…” Arthur continued, his phone’s voice softening almost imperceptibly, though the words themselves remained sharp as glass. “She was deeply troubled, wasn’t she? You’ve mentioned her struggles. Prone to depression, perhaps even suicidal ideations? Burdened by a profound sense of guilt, especially if Jin, this other boy, was so grievously hurt, or even died, protecting her.” Arthur’s phone conveyed the gentle but firm assertion. “After that incident, perhaps needing an identity to shield herself, a way to survive in the aftermath of whatever horrors she witnessed, or perhaps even found and manipulated by the Committee who saw a broken, malleable asset… she took on Jin Tachibana’s name, his persona. The Jin Tachibana we see now, the one who walks these halls… I believe that is your sister, Rin, hiding in plain sight, perhaps even from herself.”
The silence in the library alcove was thick, suffocating, broken only by the distant, careless rustle of someone turning pages in another section. Kyouya stared at the table, his shoulders slumped, as if the weight of Arthur’s revelation was a physical burden pressing him down. His quest, his entire reason for being on this island, had just been twisted into a horrifying, unrecognizable shape.
“Why?” Kyouya finally managed to choke out, his voice barely a whisper, raw with a pain and confusion that cut Arthur to the core. “Why would she do that? Why not… why not come to me, if she was here?”
“Fear, perhaps,” Arthur’s phone translated softly. “Profound, overwhelming guilt. A belief that she was a burden, as you’ve sometimes feared she felt. Or, and this is just as likely, Onodera, manipulation. The Committee… Tsuruoka… they are masters of it. Perhaps they found her in her despair, offered her a deal, a way to disappear into a new identity, leveraging her trauma, her vulnerability. They are not above such monstrous tactics.” He paused, then added the most chilling possibility. “Rin might even have been… one of their assets for a time, before Nana Hiiragi. A predecessor, broken by her experiences, then repurposed by Tsuruoka. It would fit their pattern.”
Kyouya Onodera slowly raised his head. The raw pain was still evident in his eyes, but beneath it, a new, colder, almost terrifying resolve was beginning to solidify. The news was clearly devastating, a seismic shock to the foundations of his world, but it also seemed to galvanize him, to forge his grief and confusion into a sharper, more focused weapon. If Rin was here, if she was truly Jin Tachibana, then his quest had a new, terrible, and immediate focus. The island’s secrets, he now understood, were not just abstract horrors; they were deeply, terrifyingly personal.
“This ‘Talent’ of yours, Tanaka,” Kyouya said at last, his voice regaining some of its usual hard, steady cadence, though an undercurrent of profound turmoil still resonated within it. “It reveals… exceptionally inconvenient, and often painful, truths.”
“It often feels more like an inescapable curse, Onodera,” Arthur’s phone replied, the weariness in his own English tone undoubtedly lost in translation. “But this is what I have seen. This is what I believe, with a fair degree of certainty, to be the truth of the matter.”
Kyouya nodded slowly, his gaze distant, already processing, analyzing, re-evaluating everything he thought he knew. “If Rin is Jin…” he murmured, almost to himself. “…then everything changes.” He stood up abruptly, the ancient book he had been reading forgotten on the table. “Thank you, Tanaka,” he said, his voice surprisingly formal. “You have given me… a great deal to consider. And to act upon.”
He turned and walked away, his strides long and purposeful, leaving Arthur alone in the quiet, shadowed alcove. Arthur watched him go, a sense of grim satisfaction mingling with a profound unease. He had armed Kyouya Onodera with a terrible, transformative truth. Whether it would ultimately help him, or lead him to further despair, Arthur couldn’t say. But Kyouya now possessed a crucial, agonizingly personal piece of the island’s dark puzzle. And their strange, unspoken, almost unwilling alliance, built upon a shared foundation of unwelcome knowledge and the ever-present shadow of the island’s darkness, had undeniably, irrevocably, deepened. The game, Arthur knew, was evolving once more, and the stakes, already impossibly high, were rising for everyone involved.
Nana Hiiragi
Of course the hate for her is well deserved.
First off, blaming "brainwashing" lets her off the hook far too easily. Patty Hearst tried the same trick in the 1970's and it didn't exactly work out well for her. Ironically, Patty spent more time in prisoner for her bank robberies than Nana does for her 10+ murders, which in itself is unfair - Nana gets away with far too much because she's a girl, instead of in spite of it.
Yes, she would be hated just as much if Nana was male (probably more so).
It should be noted that all Nana's murders were premeditated, on her own cognisance and with malice. Just because she was told to do so, doesn't mean she had to.
In addition to that, just because she may not have wanted to do kill anyone, she was certainly happy to do so (smiling when thinking about killing Mirichu as well as the "won't be shy in killing you" part). Nana is a person who would rather murder someone than think of any sort of alternative (as is the case later on).
Futher more, stating that she's a "child soldier" carries no weight - she's killing civilians, which if she was a soldier makes her actions even more odious.
The fact that people try to exonerate Nana because she was "mind controlled" doesn't hold much water considering she was fully aware of what she was doing; didn't need to; didn't bother querying anything and was fully cognisant during her pre-meditated murders; and she quite happily carried another one out, with no doubt more to come.
In addition, there is no reason why she couldn't have asked questions or even did her own reason about Talents and so forth.
I wasn't surprised that the anime didn't get a second season (if it wasn't just for boosting manga sales) because Nana is so unrelatable, unrelatable and pretty much evil personified. Even later on, she's totally dislikable, obnoxious character.
Considering she's supposed to be intelligent, you would have thought, at the very least, queries the morality, if not the legality and ethics of killing schoolchildren (let alone those she killed before she arrived at the island). She's fully aware of what she's doing, so it's all on her own head. She certainly deserves to be punished far longer than three years (that ends up around 3 months for every kid).
I wouldn't be surprised if Nana Hiiragi does enjoy killing people - she is always smiling happily when thinking about killing her victims.
Whilst she may say that she doesn't want to kill any more, later on - it certainly doesn't stop her (no doubt it would be the first thing she thinks of to solve problems, instead of anything else).
Hopefully, she won't have a happy ending (preferably meet a nasty end - with her own poison needs would be nicely ironic). Whilst she may have "changed" for dubious reasons she will have to end up killing people again at some point. Even though she's changed, she's still an insufferable, nasty little bitch. I've got very little sympathy for her, especially as she was sadistic killing everyone.
And yes, killing Nano led to more people suffering - all because of Nana (no idea why Nano should forgive her - obviously he forgot how Nana taunted him before he fell, although I do hear he did beat the crap out of her as well).
Hopefully she will pay some sort of price for her actions.
Whist Nanao killed more people than Nana, it should be noted that Nana was the cause. It was nice of him really to leave Nana alone, considering she had no compulsion about killing Nanao - he certainly would have had a good reason to seek revenge on her.
In addition, for those who subscribe to those who view Nana as a child soldier (which is dubious to say the least), there is still precedent for requesting reparations and the same for prosecuting child soldiers too (DOMINIC ONGWEN).
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Chapter 2: The Lie and the Lifeline
The insistent, jarring clang of a bell dragged Arthur from a fitful, shallow sleep. He lay for a moment on the unfamiliar, unyielding mattress, the cheap fabric of the thin blanket rough against his cheek. The dormitory room was small, spartan, and already filled with the grey, pre-dawn light filtering through a single curtained window. His roommate, a lanky boy whose name Suzuki he’d managed to glean through a torturous, phone-assisted exchange the previous evening, was already up and rustling about, his movements brisk and efficient. Arthur felt a familiar ache in his back – this teenage body, while undoubtedly more resilient than his 51-year-old original, was not accustomed to sleeping on what felt like a thinly disguised board.
His phone. The thought jolted him fully awake. He reached for it on the small, battered nightstand. 98%. He’d managed to keep it plugged into the common room charger for most of the night, a small victory in a sea of overwhelming disorientation. It was his shield, his voice, his only tenuous connection to understanding in this utterly alien landscape.
Breakfast in the canteen was a cacophony of unfamiliar sounds, smells, and social rituals. The clatter of chopsticks against ceramic bowls, the rapid-fire Japanese chatter, the aroma of miso soup, grilled fish, and pickled vegetables – it was a sensory assault. Arthur, acutely aware of his own clumsy foreignness, navigated the serving line with a series of awkward bows, nods, and pointing gestures, managing to acquire a tray of food he wasn’t entirely sure how to eat. He found a relatively isolated table and ate mechanically, his gaze sweeping the room, a new, terrible kind of people-watching. Were any of these bright-eyed, chattering teenagers future corpses? Future killers? The rice stuck in his throat. He kept his phone hidden, reserving its precious battery for interactions more critical than ordering natto, which he’d mistakenly selected and was now eyeing with deep suspicion.
The first class of the day was in a classroom that could have been pulled from any number of nostalgic school dramas – worn wooden desks scarred with generations of graffiti, a large, dusty chalkboard, and tall windows that looked out onto a dense, almost suffocatingly lush greenery. The air smelled of chalk dust, old wood, and the faint, lingering scent of floor polish. The teacher, a man named Mr. Saito according to the timetable Arthur had painstakingly deciphered, was balding, with a kindly, slightly harassed smile and a suit that had seen better decades. He beamed at the assembled students, then his eyes, magnified by thick-lensed glasses, found Arthur, the conspicuous late arrival.
“Ah, class, good morning!” Mr. Saito began, his voice surprisingly warm and resonant. He beckoned Arthur towards the front. “We have a late arrival joining our happy group today. This is Tanaka Kenji-kun. Please, let’s all make him feel welcome.”
A smattering of polite, if somewhat curious, applause rippled through the room. Arthur walked to the front, each step feeling like a mile, the thirty pairs of young eyes boring into him. He felt like an imposter in a badly rehearsed school play, acutely aware of the ill-fitting uniform and the sheer absurdity of his presence. He managed a stiff, jerky bow, an approximation of what he’d seen others do.
“Tanaka-kun,” Mr. Saito continued, his smile unwavering, “perhaps you could introduce yourself to your new classmates? And, of course, this being an academy for the Talented, we’d all be very interested to hear about your special gift.”
This was it. The moment he’d been dreading since the horrifying realization of where he was had crashed down upon him. His stomach churned. He fumbled for his phone, the smooth plastic cool against his clammy palm. The slight delay as he typed, the almost imperceptible whir as the translation app processed his English words, felt like an eternity.
“Good morning,” he began, his voice, when it finally emerged from the phone’s small speaker, sounding unnervingly calm and even, a stark contrast to the frantic, terrified monologue screaming inside his own head. “My name is Tanaka Kenji. It is… an adjustment being here. I hope to learn much.” He kept it brief, hoping against hope they might just move on.
No such luck. A girl in the front row, her dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, her eyes sharp and inquisitive, asked the inevitable question, her Japanese clear and direct. “And your Talent, Tanaka-kun? What can you do?”
Arthur took a ragged, internal breath. He’d spent most of the night staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of the dorm room, his mind racing through a dozen half-baked lies, discarding each one as too outlandish or too easily disproved. He needed something plausible within the insane logic of this world, something difficult to verify, something that sounded vaguely impressive but was, in practical terms, utterly useless in a fight or for any kind of nefarious purpose. He typed furiously, his English words a desperate scramble on the small screen.
“My Talent,” the phone announced after a moment, its synthesized voice echoing slightly in the quiet classroom. He paused for dramatic effect he didn't feel, then continued his input. Right, a suitably grand name. Something that sounds… profound. “I call it… Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” He let that hang in the air, allowing the unfamiliar syllables to settle over the room. He could feel the weight of their expectant silence.
He continued dictating to his phone, carefully constructing the parameters of his fabricated ability. “If I make physical contact with someone…” Physical contact, yes, that’s a good limitation. Makes it less likely they’ll just demand a demonstration on a whim, and it gives me an out if I need one. “…I sometimes… see a brief, vivid moment from their future.” Vague. Good. Keep it vague. “Usually this moment is from twenty to fifty years ahead.” Far enough that no one here will ever be able to verify it. “It tends to be a moment of… significant emotional resonance for that person.” More vagueness. Could be joy, could be sorrow. Unpredictable.
Then came the crucial caveats, the built-in flaws. It can’t be reliable. It can’t be useful for fighting or predicting enemy movements. It must be a burden. “It’s… not always clear what I’m seeing,” the phone translated his carefully typed English. “The glimpses are often fragmented, deeply personal, and sometimes… quite unsettling.” That should deter casual requests. No one wants an unsettling glimpse into their private future. “And I have no control over what I see, or indeed, if I see anything at all when I make contact.” Perfect. Utterly unreliable, therefore, from their perspective, mostly useless. He finished with a touch of feigned weariness, allowing his shoulders to slump slightly, hoping he looked suitably burdened by this incredible, yet terribly inconvenient, “gift.” “It can be quite… draining, emotionally and physically.”
A low murmur rippled through the class. He couldn’t decipher the individual Japanese words, but the collective tone suggested a mixture of awe, curiosity, and perhaps a little trepidation. It sounded suitably esoteric, suitably… Talented. He’d bought himself a sliver of credibility, or at least, a plausible, if rather outlandish, explanation for his presence in this extraordinary institution.
Mr. Saito nodded thoughtfully, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “A most fascinating and unique ability, Tanaka-kun. A window into distant futures… remarkable.” He seemed to accept it without question.
Arthur decided to press his advantage, however slight. He needed to confirm his timeline, to know how long he had before Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera arrived. This was risky; it might draw undue attention. But not knowing was worse. “Sensei,” he addressed Mr. Saito, his phone dutifully translating, “to help… orient my Talent to this new… temporal-spatial location, sometimes it helps to focus on specific upcoming arrivals. It can stabilize the… glimpses, you see. Could you perhaps tell me if students by the names of Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera are expected to arrive in the coming days?” It was utter nonsense, a pseudo-scientific justification he’d concocted on the spot, but he delivered it with as much conviction as he could feign.
Mr. Saito blinked, then consulted a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Ah, yes, indeed!” he exclaimed, looking mildly impressed. “Hiiragi Nana-san and Onodera Kyouya-kun are both due to join our class in… let me see… approximately three days. Excellent foresight, Tanaka-kun! Perhaps your Talent is already beginning to acclimatize!”
Arthur managed a small, noncommittal nod, trying to keep the wave of mingled relief and dread from showing on his face. Three days. He was in the right place, the right horrifying time. The confirmation was a cold comfort, but a vital one. Nana was coming. The clock was ticking, louder now.
The rest of the school day passed in a blur of hyper-vigilance and linguistic confusion. He recognized a few faces from his fragmented memories of the anime – their youthful, innocent appearances a disturbing contrast to the bloody fates he knew awaited some of them. There was the lanky boy with the ever-present camera, Habu, already making some of the girls uncomfortable with his leering gaze. And there, sitting alone by the window, his shoulders hunched, radiating an aura of profound anxiety and loneliness, was Nanao Nakajima. Nana’s first intended victim. Arthur’s stomach clenched with a sickening lurch. He looked so small, so vulnerable.
Later that afternoon, during the final homeroom period, Mr. Saito cleared his throat, recapturing the students’ attention. “Now, onto another important matter for our class. As you know, we need to elect a class representative. This individual will act as a liaison with the teaching staff, help organize class activities, and generally be a voice for all of you. It’s a position of some responsibility.” He smiled. “We’ll hold the vote at the end of the school day tomorrow. Please give some thought to who you might like to nominate, or indeed, if you’d like to nominate yourselves.”
Immediately, a girl in the front row, Inori Tamaki, the one with the severe ponytail and sharp eyes, raised her hand with an air of quiet confidence. “Sensei, I would like to put my name forward for consideration.” Other, less confident murmurs of interest followed.
Arthur watched Nanao Nakajima, who seemed to shrink further into his seat at the mere mention of a leadership role, his face paling. He remembered Nana’s cruel manipulation from the anime, the way she would prey on Nanao’s shyness and insecurity. An idea, impulsive and probably foolhardy, sparked in Arthur’s mind. If he could somehow insert himself into this process, even in a minor way…
He raised a hesitant hand, the unfamiliar gesture feeling alien. All eyes in the classroom turned to him again, the strange new student who spoke through a machine. He fumbled for his phone, his heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his ribs. “I… Tanaka Kenji…” the phone translated his typed words, “I would also… like to be considered for the role of class representative.”
A ripple of surprise went through the room. Mr. Saito, however, beamed with encouragement. “Excellent, Tanaka-kun! Active participation in class life is always to be commended!”
Arthur didn’t particularly want the role. He knew he was a terrible candidate – his communication was severely hampered, his understanding of their school customs was non-existent, and he radiated an aura of awkward outsiderness. But it was a way to be seen, to perhaps disrupt the expected dynamics, to gauge reactions. And maybe, just maybe, it was a way to signal to Nanao, however obliquely, that not everyone was an overwhelming force of charisma or intimidation. Perhaps it was a desperate, subconscious desire to plant a flag, however small, signifying his intention to do something, anything, in this terrifying new world, rather than just be a passive victim of its unfolding horrors.
For the remainder of the day, he tried to melt into the background, to be a ghost observing the ecosystem of the classroom. Every interaction he witnessed, every snippet of conversation his phone managed to catch and translate, was another piece of a deadly, intricate puzzle he was only just beginning to comprehend. He was an unwilling anthropologist in a viper’s nest, his field notebook replaced by a faltering smartphone and a growing, bone-deep sense of dread. His mission, he realized with a clarity that was both terrifying and strangely galvanizing, was twofold: somehow, he had to survive. And somehow, against all odds, against all reason, he had to try and prevent the coming slaughter. The latter felt like trying to hold back a tsunami with a teacup. But he had to try. He owed it to… someone. Perhaps to the frightened, bewildered boy whose body he now inhabited. Or perhaps, more selfishly, to the terrified, fifty-one-year-old Englishman, Arthur Ainsworth, who was screaming silently inside.
Chapter 5: Saving Nanao
The next few days following Nana Hiiragi’s election as class representative were a torment of heightened, anxious vigilance for Arthur. He knew, with the chilling certainty of his fragmented foreknowledge, that Nanao Nakajima was destined to be her first victim on the island. The image from the anime – Nanao’s trusting face, the sudden, brutal push, the desperate scramble at the cliff edge, the cut rope – it played on a horrifying loop in Arthur’s mind, a constant, unwelcome guest. Every time he saw Nana interacting with Nanao, her expression one of cloying sweetness and deep, manufactured sympathy, a cold dread twisted in his gut. She was a spider, spinning a beautiful, deadly web around the unsuspecting fly.
Arthur made it his unwelcome mission to be Nanao’s inconvenient, awkward shadow. During breaks between classes, he’d find reasons – however flimsy – to be near Nanao, offering stilted, phone-translated observations about the surprisingly aggressive seagulls, or a particularly convoluted problem in their mathematics textbook. Nanao, a painfully shy boy by nature, with a habit of staring at his own feet whenever spoken to, seemed mostly bewildered by the sudden, persistent attention from the quiet, foreign-seeming Tanaka-kun. He was too polite, too timid, to actually rebuff him, but his nervous fidgeting and mumbled, monosyllabic replies made their interactions an exercise in social agony for both of them. Arthur, however, persisted, driven by a desperate urgency.
He knew the cliff incident was typically instigated by Nana preying on Nanao's profound feelings of worthlessness, his crippling lack of self-esteem. She would suggest they go somewhere quiet to talk, somewhere with a "beautiful view" where he could "clear his head." Arthur began to pay obsessive attention to the class schedule, noting the free periods, the lunch breaks, and the well-trodden routes students took to various scenic spots on the island – spots he’d mentally cross-referenced with the hazy, half-remembered visuals from his nephew's anime. The cliffs on the northern side of the island, with their dramatic drop to the churning sea, became a focal point of his dread.
It was a bright, deceptively cheerful Tuesday afternoon, during a longer-than-usual lunch break due to a cancelled afternoon class. Arthur, forcing down a dry bread roll in the noisy canteen, saw Nana approach Nanao’s solitary table. Her smile was particularly dazzling, her body language a study in practiced empathy. He couldn’t hear their conversation from across the crowded room, but Nanao’s slumped shoulders, the way he picked at his food without eating, and Nana’s earnest, head-tilted posture as she leaned in, speaking softly to him, were damningly eloquent. Then, with a gentle, encouraging hand on Nanao’s arm, Nana gestured vaguely in the direction of the northern cliffs. This was it. His stomach plummeted.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trapped in his chest. He had to intercept, but not too obviously. He couldn’t let Nana know he knew her intentions. That would be signing his own death warrant. He had to make it look like an accident, a product of his inconvenient, erratic "Talent."
He waited a minute, a torturous, agonizing sixty seconds, letting them get a head start, then followed, his own tray abandoned. He forced himself to walk at a casual pace, though every instinct screamed at him to run. He took a slightly different, less direct path, one that wound through a small, overgrown copse of whispering bamboo, a route he knew would converge with theirs just before the steeper, more treacherous incline leading to the cliff edge viewing area. The air in the bamboo grove was cool and damp, the rustling leaves sounding like hushed, conspiratorial whispers.
As he rounded a sharp bend, momentarily obscured by a particularly thick clump of bamboo, he saw them. Nana was a few steps ahead, her pink pigtails bouncing, beckoning Nanao forward with a bright, encouraging smile. Nanao was shuffling along behind her, his head bowed, his gaze fixed on the scuffed toes of his shoes, the picture of dejection. Arthur quickened his pace, his timing now critical.
Just as Nana was saying something about the “beautiful, clear view from the top” offering “such a wonderfully fresh perspective on things,” Arthur “accidentally” stumbled out of the bamboo path, his foot catching on an imaginary root. He lurched forward, bumping lightly but decisively into Nanao, who let out a small, startled yelp and stumbled himself.
“Ah, gomen nasai! My apologies! So clumsy of me!” Arthur exclaimed, his voice a little too loud, a little too forced. He quickly typed into his phone, his fingers surprisingly steady despite the adrenaline coursing through him, and held it up so that Nanao – and, crucially, Nana, who had turned at the commotion – could see the screen. “Nanao-san! Tanaka-kun, isn’t it? What a complete coincidence meeting you both here.”
Nana turned fully, her bright smile tightening almost imperceptibly at the edges. Her violet eyes, usually wide with feigned innocence, held a flicker of sharp annoyance. “Tanaka-kun. We were just going up to admire the view. Nakajima-kun was feeling a little down.”
“The view…” Arthur echoed, then he made a deliberate show of his eyes going distant, a slight frown creasing his brow, his head tilting as if listening to something only he could hear – his well-rehearsed charade of his “Talent” kicking in. He reached out, as if instinctively, his fingers brushing lightly against Nanao’s arm. Nanao flinched at the unexpected contact.
“Nanao-san,” Arthur said, his phone translating his low, urgent English words into equally grave Japanese, ensuring Nana, standing just a few feet away, could hear every syllable. “My Talent… it just showed me a flash. A very disturbing one. You… you were falling. From up there.” He gestured vaguely with his free hand towards the cliff edge, hidden from their current vantage point but looming in their immediate future. “Right here. On this path. Today. Please, I implore you, be incredibly careful if you go any further. Perhaps… perhaps it would be better not to go at all today.”
Nanao stared at him, his already pale face draining of all remaining colour. He looked from Arthur’s feigned distress to the path ahead, then back to Arthur, his eyes wide with a dawning, superstitious terror. Nana’s expression was a careful mask of polite concern, but Arthur could see the sharp calculation in her eyes, the way her smile didn’t quite reach them. His “prediction” was specific enough to be deeply alarming to Nanao, yet vague enough to be a lucky, albeit unsettling, coincidence from Nana’s perspective. To dismiss it out of hand, especially after his previous “accurate” forecast of her and Kyouya’s arrival, might look callous, even suspicious, particularly if something did then happen to Nanao. It complicated her plan beautifully.
“Oh my goodness,” Nana said, her voice dripping with a perfectly calibrated mixture of false sympathy and gentle skepticism. “That sounds… simply terrible, Tanaka-kun. Are you quite sure? Sometimes these strong feelings, these… glimpses… can be a little misleading, can’t they?” She was trying to downplay it, to regain control of Nanao, to coax him forward.
“It felt… horribly real, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur insisted gravely via his phone, meeting Nana’s gaze for a brief, challenging moment before turning back to Nanao with an expression of profound, urgent concern. “Perhaps another day would be better for admiring the view, Nanao-san? When the… the premonitions are less active? When the air feels less… fraught?”
Nanao, thoroughly spooked by the vivid image of himself falling from a great height, nodded vehemently, clutching at the excuse like a drowning man grasping a lifeline. “Yes! Yes, you’re right, Tanaka-kun! I… I suddenly remembered I left my history textbook in the classroom. A very important textbook. I should go back and get it. Right now.” He practically bolted, muttering apologies and thanks, scrambling back down the path the way they had come.
Nana was left standing on the path with Arthur, the silence between them thick with unspoken accusations and frustrated intent. Her smile was strained, a mere caricature of its usual brilliance. “Well, Tanaka-kun,” she said, her voice dangerously sweet. “You certainly possess a… most dramatic and timely Talent.”
“It is often more a curse than a blessing, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur’s phone replied, his translated tone suitably sombre and world-weary. He then made his own hasty excuses about needing to find a quieter spot to “clear his head” after such a disturbing “vision,” and retreated in the direction Nanao had fled, leaving Nana standing alone amidst the rustling bamboo, her meticulously planned murder for the day thoroughly, infuriatingly derailed.
He didn’t relax, however, not for a second. Nana was nothing if not persistent. For the rest of that afternoon, and indeed for the next couple of anxious days, Arthur made himself Nanao’s unofficial, relentlessly awkward bodyguard. He sat near him (or as near as Nanao’s discomfort would allow) at lunch, walked with him (or rather, a few paces behind him) between classes, manufacturing reasons to engage him in stilted, phone-mediated conversations about everything and nothing – the difficulty of certain kanji, the surprisingly palatable nature of the canteen’s curry, the migratory patterns of local birds (a topic Arthur knew absolutely nothing about but improvised wildly on). He learned, in brief, mumbled snippets from Nanao, that the boy was passionate about old, obscure strategy video games and surprisingly knowledgeable about the island’s limited local flora.
It was exhausting, maintaining this facade of casual proximity while his nerves were stretched taut as piano wire. Nana watched them, her expression unreadable but her presence a constant, simmering pressure. She made a few more subtle attempts to get Nanao alone, suggesting a visit to the library’s “quiet, secluded annex” for study, or a peaceful walk by the “tranquil, reflective pond” on the far side of the school grounds. But each time, Arthur, with a seemingly coincidental appearance and another vague, unsettling “glimpse” related to the proposed location (“I sense… a sudden, inexplicable chill… a feeling of being trapped, of deep water, near that pond, Nanao-san. Perhaps it is best avoided today?”), managed to thwart her with a maddening, if clumsy, consistency.
His repeated interventions were clearly making Nana increasingly wary of him. She couldn’t act overtly against him without potentially exposing her own malevolent intentions, especially since his “predictions,” however outlandish, kept proving… disturbingly prescient in their negativity, at least in Nanao’s increasingly rattled and grateful mind.
Nanao, for his part, was beginning to see Arthur not just as the “strange, quiet Tanaka-kun” but as some kind of eccentric, slightly frightening, but ultimately benevolent guardian angel. After the third “warning” that seemed to avert some unseen disaster, he’d looked at Arthur with an expression of genuine, almost teary-eyed gratitude.
“Tanaka-kun,” he’d said, his voice barely a whisper, as he nervously offered Arthur a small, slightly bruised apple he’d saved from lunch. “Thank you. I… I don’t know what I would do without your… your warnings. You’ve… you’ve really helped me. More than you know.”
Arthur had simply nodded, accepting the apple with a mumbled thanks of his own (via phone, of course), a complicated mixture of profound relief and gnawing guilt churning within him. He’d saved Nanao, for now. He’d bought him precious time. But in doing so, he had also firmly painted an even larger, brighter target on his own back as far as Nana Hiiragi was concerned. She wouldn’t give up on her mission to eliminate Nanao, and she certainly wouldn’t forget the inconvenient, unpredictable new student with the troublesome, embarrassing, and infuriatingly timed glimpses into the future. The game had just become significantly more dangerous. And Arthur knew, with a certainty that made his blood run cold, that Nana was already recalculating, already planning her next move.
Thank you @sku-te and everyone who got me to 5 reblogs!
Hej
