Chapter 21: Descent Into Chaos

Chapter 14: Sacrifice at the Docks

Arthur’s mind raced, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he pounded the worn pathway leading away from the deceptively cheerful gymnasium. The distant, tinny music of the leaving party faded behind him, replaced by the frantic thudding of his own heart and the lonely sigh of the wind whistling through the island’s sparse, salt-stunted trees. He had to calculate where Rentaro would take Michiru, where Nana, in her desperate pursuit, would inevitably follow. The boat docks – isolated, exposed, offering few escape routes and an abundance of shadowy hiding places – loomed large and ominous in his mind as the most logical, and therefore most horrifying, stage for the unfolding confrontation.

He sprinted towards the harbour, his unfamiliar teenage legs burning with the unaccustomed exertion, his phone clutched tightly in his hand, though he had no time for the laborious process of translation now. The air grew colder, tasting of salt and damp, decaying wood as he neared the coast.

He arrived, breathless and his chest aching, just as the scene at the end of the longest, most dilapidated pier reached its horrifying crescendo. Silhouetted against the dull, bruised pewter of the overcast evening sky, Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s spectral form – a shimmering, translucent duplicate of his arrogant human self – had Michiru Inukai cornered against the rotting railings. Razor-sharp, crystalline projectiles, like shards of malevolent ice, hovered menacingly in the air around him, glinting faintly in the dim light. Michiru was crying, her small body trembling, her face a mask of pure terror, but even so, she seemed to be trying to shield herself, a tiny, defiant figure against a monstrous, ethereal threat.

Nana Hiiragi stood between them, a fierce, protective tigress in a party dress. Her usual neat pink pigtails were askew, her clothes torn in several places, and a dark bruise was blooming on her cheekbone, but her violet eyes blazed with a desperate, almost feral fury Arthur had never witnessed in her before – not the cold, calculating fury of an assassin about to make a kill, but something raw, deeply personal, and utterly protective. She was intercepting Rentaro’s psychic attacks, her own movements preternaturally quick and agile, dodging and weaving, but she was clearly outmatched, her physical efforts largely ineffective against the intangible, relentlessly attacking projection that could still, somehow, inflict real harm upon her.

“You won’t touch her, Tsurumigawa!” Nana snarled, her voice hoarse and strained as she narrowly dodged a volley of shimmering blades that sliced through the air where she’d been a split second before. One of the shards grazed her arm, drawing a thin line of blood.

“She ruined everything!” Rentaro’s projected voice was a distorted, inhuman screech, filled with venom and thwarted rage. “She deserves to die for her meddling! And you too, Class Rep, for getting in my way!”

Just as Rentaro’s astral form lunged forward with a particularly vicious-looking ethereal spear, its crystalline point aimed directly at Michiru’s heart, Nana, with a desperate cry, shoved Michiru violently aside. The smaller girl stumbled, falling hard onto the rough wooden planks of the pier. The spectral weapon, impossibly, plunged deep into Nana’s side. Nana gasped, a choked, pain-filled, liquid sound, her eyes flying wide with shock and disbelief. She stumbled, her hand instinctively going to the phantom wound in her side, though no spectral blood flowed from the astral injury, the devastating impact on her life force, her very essence, was terrifyingly apparent. Her face began to pale with an alarming rapidity.

At that exact, critical moment, Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s shimmering projection flickered violently, like a faulty hologram. It let out a final, agonized, drawn-out shriek that seemed to tear through the very air, then dissolved into nothingness, vanishing as if it had never been. Kyouya. Kyouya Onodera had found him. He had found Rentaro’s hidden, vulnerable physical body and neutralized the threat. Arthur let out a shaky, almost sob-like breath of relief for that small, vital mercy, but his gaze was fixed, horrified, on Nana, who was collapsing slowly to her knees, her face now a ghastly, waxy white.

Michiru scrambled to Nana’s side, her face streaked with tears and grime, her voice a desperate, broken wail. “Nana-chan! Nana-chan, no! Please, no!”

Arthur finally reached them, his chest heaving, his own terror a cold, hard knot in his stomach. He saw the life visibly draining from Nana’s eyes, the way her body was becoming limp. He saw the way Michiru was looking at her – a dawning, terrible understanding mixed with a desperate, almost fanatical resolve. He knew, with a sudden, sickening certainty, what Michiru was going to do. Her healing Talent… he remembered the whispers, the theories about its ultimate, desperate application. It could, some said, even bring back the recently departed, but only at the ultimate cost: the user’s own life force.

“Michiru, no!” Arthur yelled, the words tearing from him in raw, desperate, unthinking English, forgetting the phone, forgetting the language barrier, forgetting everything but the impending, pointless tragedy unfolding before his eyes. He lunged forward, his hands outstretched, trying to pull her away from Nana’s rapidly cooling body. “Don’t do it! You’ll die! It’s not worth it!”

But Michiru was lost in her grief, her loyalty, her terrible, loving determination. She barely seemed to register his presence, his frantic, foreign words. Shaking her head, her cloud of fluffy white hair matted with tears and sea spray, she gently, almost absently, pushed his restraining hands away. “She saved me, Tanaka-kun,” she whispered, her voice trembling but resolute, her gaze fixed on Nana’s still face. “She saved my life. I have to… I have to save her. It’s the only way.”

Ignoring Arthur’s renewed, frantic pleas, Michiru pressed her small, trembling hands against Nana’s still form, over the place where the spectral spear had struck. A soft, ethereal white light began to glow around her, emanating from her palms, then engulfing both her and Nana. The light intensified, pulsing with a gentle, almost heartbreaking rhythm, bathing the grim, windswept scene in its otherworldly luminescence. Michiru’s small body began to tremble violently, her face contorting in an agony Arthur could only imagine, but her hands remained firmly fixed on Nana, a conduit for the impossible. The light flared, becoming blindingly bright for a single, eternal moment, then, with a soft, final sigh that seemed to carry all the sorrow of the world, it receded, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

Michiru Inukai crumpled to the rough wooden planks of the pier, a small, still heap, her vibrant life force utterly extinguished.

A heartbeat later, Nana Hiiragi gasped, a ragged, shuddering intake of breath, her eyes flying open. She sat up slowly, looking around in dazed, profound confusion, her hand going to her side, where only moments before a fatal wound had been. Then, her gaze fell upon Michiru’s still, lifeless form beside her. Understanding, followed by a wave of raw, uncomprehending anguish, crashed over her. A sob, harsh, broken, and utterly devoid of artifice, tore from Nana’s throat – a sound so full of genuine, unadulterated pain, so unlike anything Arthur had ever heard from her, that it momentarily stunned him into silence. This wasn't the calculated grief she’d so expertly feigned for her previous victims; this was real, shattering, soul-deep sorrow.

Arthur stepped forward, his own face a grim mask, his earlier panic replaced by a cold, weary, and profound anger. He raised his phone, his fingers deliberately, almost violently, typing out his words.

“Well, Hiiragi,” his translated voice stated, flat and devoid of any inflection, cutting through Nana’s ragged, heartbroken sobs. She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears, her violet eyes wide with a mixture of confusion, grief, and dawning horror. “It seems you finally got what you wanted. Another Talent eliminated from this island.” Nana stared at him, her mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. “You should be rejoicing, shouldn’t you?” Arthur pressed, his voice, even through the phone, laced with a cruel, cutting sarcasm. “Or,” he paused, letting the words sink in, twisting the knife, “are some Talents worth more than others, after all?”

Nana flinched as if he had physically struck her. She looked from Arthur’s cold, accusing face back to Michiru’s peaceful, lifeless body, and a look of dawning, unutterable horror began to mix with her grief.

“I’m taking her,” Arthur’s phone continued, his voice now unwavering, filled with a cold, hard resolve. “Tsuruoka and his damned Committee won’t get their hands on her for experimentation.” He saw Nana’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly at the casual, knowing mention of Tsuruoka’s name. Yes, she knew now that he knew. The game had changed. “She deserves to be treated with dignity in death, Hiiragi, not carved up like some lab specimen for your masters to study.”

He knelt beside Michiru, his own heart aching with a profound, unexpected sorrow for this gentle, brave girl he had barely known, yet had come to care for. “You killing Tachibana… the time traveler… that was your worst, most senseless act. You couldn’t even let a dying boy like Hoshino live out what little time he had left in peace.” He looked directly at Nana, who had stopped crying now, her expression a frozen mask of shock, confusion, and a dawning, terrible guilt. “There were times, Hiiragi, so many times, I was sorely tempted to stop you permanently. To end your murderous spree myself. For Michiru’s sake, for Nanao’s, for my own damn principles, I refrained.”

He paused, then added, his voice, even through the phone’s impersonal synthesizer, laced with a profound, weary sorrow, “She deserved so much better than you. Better than any of us on this cursed island.”

Without another word, Arthur gently, carefully, scooped Michiru Inukai’s small, impossibly light, lifeless body into his arms. He stood, turned his back on the stunned, grieving, and utterly shattered Nana Hiiragi, and began the slow, heavy walk back towards the distant, uncaring lights of the school buildings. He left Nana alone on the windswept pier with the accusing ghost of her actions, the devastating weight of Michiru’s sacrifice, and the first, agonizing, unwelcome taste of genuine, heartbreaking loss. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.

Chapter 25: Tsuruoka's Monsters

In the chaotic, fear-drenched aftermath of Nana Hiiragi’s public unmasking and the subsequent savage beating by her terrified peers, a semblance of grim, heavily enforced order was slowly, painfully restored on the island by the few remaining, deeply shaken teachers and a grimly determined, stone-faced Kyouya Onodera. Nana, battered, bruised, and her spirit utterly shattered, was confined to the stark, unwelcoming island infirmary under the constant, wary guard of two stern-faced school orderlies. Her future, everyone assumed, would involve mainland authorities and a lengthy prison sentence, if not worse.

Akari Hozumi, the quiet, intense catalyst for this brutal upheaval, meticulously compiled her damning findings – detailed witness statements elicited with her unnerving, truth-compelling Talent, her own chillingly precise forensic reconstructions of multiple murder scenes, and the fragmented, tearful, partial confession Nana herself had made amidst the chaos by the lake. As soon as the next heavily guarded transport to the mainland was available, Akari, clutching her meticulously organized dossier of irrefutable evidence, departed the island, her expression one of grim, unwavering satisfaction. She presented everything to a Detective Maeda at the nearest mainland police precinct, a man whose calm, reassuring professionalism and apparent dedication to justice she found commendable. She was entirely unaware, of course, that Detective Maeda’s calm professionalism was bought and paid for, his primary loyalty sworn not to the law, but to the shadowy, all-powerful Commander Tsuruoka. Maeda assured Akari Hozumi that the matter would be investigated with the utmost thoroughness and urgency, then, as soon as she had departed, he promptly contacted Tsuruoka, who listened to the report with cold, silent interest. For the moment, Tsuruoka decided, it was best to let the official police investigation stall, to become mired in bureaucratic delays. He preferred to deal with his now dangerously rogue asset, Nana Hiiragi, personally, and far more… creatively.

A few disorienting days later, Nana, still nursing her extensive physical injuries and her profoundly fractured spirit, was abruptly, unceremoniously removed from the island infirmary by a team of silent, black-clad Committee agents. She was transported, not to a mainland hospital or a secure police detention facility as she had expected, but back to the cold, sterile, and deeply foreboding confines of Commander Tsuruoka’s isolated military base.

The debriefing, when it came after hours of being left alone in a featureless, windowless interrogation room, was a masterclass in psychological torture. Tsuruoka didn’t bother with pretenses, with veiled threats or subtle manipulations this time. He flayed Nana’s psyche with cold, surgical precision, recounting in meticulous, agonizing detail the horrific circumstances of her parents' tragic deaths, subtly, cruelly twisting the known facts to imply her own childish culpability, her inherent monstrosity, her predisposition to violence. He spoke with chilling calm of her myriad failures on the island, her rapidly declining kill rate, her inexplicable and operationally disastrous sentimentality towards certain targets, her ultimate, unforgivable betrayal of the Committee’s trust by allowing herself to be so comprehensively, so humiliatingly, exposed.

“But perhaps,” Tsuruoka said at last, his voice a silken, venomous whisper that seemed to slither into the deepest recesses of her mind, “you simply lack the proper, fundamental motivation, Hiiragi. Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it is we are truly, desperately fighting against in this shadow war.” He stood, his movements precise and economical. “Come with me. It is long past time for a… refresher course. A practical lesson in the true nature of our enemy.”

Flanked by two heavily armed, impassive guards whose faces she didn’t recognize, Nana, her body aching, her mind reeling, was escorted out of the interrogation room and down a long, blindingly white, sterile passageway deep within the bowels of the facility. The air was cold, recycled, smelling faintly of strong antiseptic and something else, something metallic and vaguely unsettling. As they passed a series of heavy, unmarked steel doors, one was inexplicably, fractionally ajar. Through the narrow gap, Nana caught a fleeting, disorienting glimpse of a figure inside a dimly lit observation room – a pale-faced man with stark white hair, his features indistinct in the gloom, who seemed entirely out of place amongst the banks of complex monitoring equipment. The man’s eyes, cold and piercing, met hers for a single, unnerving, unforgettable split second, a look of unreadable, almost alien intensity, before he slowly, deliberately, closed the door, plunging the room back into darkness. “Eyes front, Hiiragi! Maintain your composure!” Tsuruoka barked sharply from ahead, his voice echoing in the sterile corridor. Nana didn’t know it, couldn’t possibly have known it, but she had just seen Jin Tachibana – or rather, Kyouya Onodera’s sister, Rin, in her male disguise, a fellow prisoner or perhaps even an unwilling operative within Tsuruoka’s monstrous machine.

They arrived at a heavy, reinforced steel door at the end of the long corridor. Tsuruoka paused, then, with a faint, almost anticipatory smile, he opened it, revealing another vast, white, sterile room. In its exact centre, illuminated by harsh, shadowless overhead lights, stood a large, heavily barred cage, constructed of thick, gleaming metal alloys. Inside, a creature of impossible, nightmarish geometry writhed and pulsed, its form shifting and coalescing in ways that defied sanity and the known laws of physics. It was an abomination, vaguely, disturbingly humanoid in its basic outline, but utterly, terrifyingly alien in its execution, a living воплощение of a madman’s darkest fever dream.

“This, Nana,” Tsuruoka said, his voice resonating with a strange, almost proprietary pride as he ushered her and the two guards into the room, the heavy door hissing shut behind them with a sound of absolute finality. “This is what we’re fighting against. This is the true face of our enemy.” “What… what is it?” Nana whispered, her voice trembling, her eyes fixed in horrified fascination on the grotesque, shifting entity in the cage. “The Enemy of Humanity,” Tsuruoka replied, his tone matter-of-fact. Just then, the monster in the cage stirred, its multi-jointed, chitinous limbs twitching, and a horrifying, guttural, stuttering voice, like stones grinding together, echoed in the stark, white room: “H…help… me… Please…” Tsuruoka’s face tightened in a brief spasm of annoyance. He gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod to one of the guards, then gestured dismissively for Nana and the other guard to follow him out. As they exited the room, Nana heard faint, high-pitched, almost childlike screeching from within, abruptly, sickeningly, cut short. The door hissed shut behind them, sealing the horror within.

Tsuruoka, his composure perfectly restored, led them to another identical steel door, further down the echoing corridor. He pushed it open without ceremony. Inside this second room, the immediate, overwhelming stench of stale blood, chemical disinfectants, and visceral decay made Nana gag and her stomach heave. Another reinforced cage stood in the centre, containing a different, though equally grotesque and pitiable, monster. But this room was far worse than the first. It was a charnel house. The corpses of several uniformed Committee guards lay strewn haphazardly across the tiled floor, their bodies mangled, their weapons discarded. And lining the walls, stacked three deep, were rows upon rows of ominous, filled black body bags.

Tsuruoka, seemingly oblivious to the carnage and the stench, strode purposefully over to one of the body bags on the nearest stack and, with a theatrical flourish, unzipped it. Nana’s breath caught in her throat, a strangled, horrified gasp. Inside, lay the lifeless, greyish-white, waxy form of Etsuko, one of the female bullies Nana had so clinically, so callously, poisoned with tainted contact lenses during her first year on the island. Her eyes were wide, staring, her expression frozen in a silent scream of terror.

“I believe you know this girl, Hiiragi?” Tsuruoka stated, his voice cold, almost conversational. Wide-eyed with a dawning, sickening horror, Nana could only nod, backing away instinctively. The remaining guard, his face impassive, grabbed her arm in an iron grip, forcing her closer to the horrifying display. “A very… creative and deniable method of elimination, this one,” Tsuruoka mused, tapping the body bag thoughtfully. “A clear victory for you at the time, Hiiragi, a demonstration of your early potential. Though your operational record has, I must say, slipped quite considerably since then.” He gestured to Etsuko’s corpse. “Now, touch the body.” Nana recoiled, trying to pull her arm free, but the guard tightened his brutal grip, his fingers digging into her flesh, forcing her reluctant hand onto Etsuko’s cold, unnervingly clammy skin. Nana snatched her hand back as if burned, a small, choked cry escaping her lips. “Still warm, isn’t she?” Tsuruoka said, a predatory, almost gleeful smile playing on his lips. “That’s because, you see, whatever arcane, unfortunate force creates a person’s Talent also keeps them… lingering, their essence tethered, even when they appear quite dead to our conventional, unenlightened eyes. And eventually…” He gestured dramatically towards the gibbering, miserable monster currently confined in the cage. “…that is what they invariably become. No matter how many times you ‘kill’ them, Hiiragi, no matter how thoroughly you believe you have extinguished their lives, they just won’t truly, permanently die. They transform.” He strode over and casually kicked another body bag, then another, some of them showing clear evidence of multiple, massive gunshot wounds, others bearing the marks of even more esoteric, violent ends. “And yet, their bodies, their core temperature, remains inexplicably, unnaturally warm. This, my dear Nana, is the true, horrifying nature of our enemy. This is what we’re truly up against. And you, Nana,” his voice hardened, “you have failed. Badly. Profoundly. Perhaps The Committee no longer has any use for you. Perhaps it’s time you were… discarded. Like your unfortunate, less effective predecessors.”

He walked calmly towards the reinforced steel door. “Perhaps a more… direct lesson is required for you to fully appreciate the stakes.” He opened the door. “Guard!” he barked. “Open the cage!” The remaining Committee guard, his face suddenly pale with stark, unconcealed terror, stammered, his voice cracking, “N-no, sir! I can’t! You know what will happen if… if that thing gets out unrestrained! It’s too dangerous!” Tsuruoka, his patience clearly, finally, at an end, his eyes glinting with cold, murderous displeasure, drew his sidearm with blinding speed and shot the disobedient guard through the head without a moment’s hesitation. The man crumpled to the floor in a heap, his eyes wide with surprise and sudden, terminal understanding. “That,” Tsuruoka said, his voice chillingly calm as he holstered his weapon, “is the inevitable price of failing The Committee, Hiiragi. A lesson you would do well to internalize.” With that, he raised his weapon again, aimed it carefully at the cage’s complex locking mechanism, and fired twice, shattering it. He then stepped swiftly out of the room, a grim, satisfied smile playing on his lips, and the heavy steel door slammed shut behind him, its locks engaging with a series of definitive, echoing thuds. Nana Hiiragi was trapped. Alone. With a monster.

The grotesque “Enemy of Humanity” in the now-open cage let out a deafening, ear-splitting screech, a sound that seemed to resonate with all the pain and madness in the universe. “THIS IS WHAT EVERYONE BECOMES!” it shrieked, its voice a horrifying, discordant chorus of countless suffering souls. “THIS IS YOUR FUTURE! OUR FUTURE!” And then, with terrifying speed and agility, it launched itself at Nana.

The fight was a desperate, brutal, almost primal struggle for survival in the bloody, gore-strewn charnel house Tsuruoka had so callously, so deliberately, created as her final, horrifying classroom. Nana, driven by a surge of pure, undiluted adrenaline and a fierce, unyielding will to live, used every ounce of her assassin’s training, her agility, her cunning, her sheer desperation. The creature was inhumanly strong, terrifyingly relentless, its attacks bizarre, unpredictable, and sickeningly violent. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of pain, fear, and brutal exertion, Nana, bleeding from numerous deep wounds, her body screaming in protest, managed to exploit a momentary weakness in the creature’s defense, using a jagged shard of metal she’d wrenched from the broken cage lock to deliver a decisive, severing blow to the monstrous entity’s primary neural cluster, or what she desperately hoped was its equivalent. It collapsed with a final, gurgling shriek, its unnatural form dissolving into a viscous, rapidly evaporating ichor.

Exhausted beyond measure, bleeding freely from numerous wounds, but astonishingly, miraculously alive, Nana frantically, desperately searched for an escape route from the horrifying, sealed room. Her eyes, wild with adrenaline and a dawning, desperate hope, fell upon a small, almost hidden maintenance hatch set high in one of the walls. With the last of her strength, she managed to reach it, pry it open, and narrowly, miraculously, bypassed a series of sophisticated security measures within the narrow, suffocating crawlspace beyond. Somehow, running on sheer, unadulterated will, she managed to flee the nightmarish facility. She emerged, hours later, into the indifferent, sprawling anonymity of the vast, uncaring city, a wounded, traumatized, and hunted fugitive, her illusions shattered, her understanding of the world, of Talents, of good and evil, irrevocably, horrifically, and permanently altered.

Back on the distant, isolated island, life – or what passed for it in the wake of Nana’s dramatic exposure and removal – continued in a state of uneasy, fearful chaos. Arthur Ainsworth watched the fallout, the fear and anger amongst the surviving students slowly, inevitably giving way to a confused, rudderless, and deeply pervasive anxiety. He was entirely unaware of Nana’s current, even more horrific ordeal at the hands of Commander Tsuruoka, entirely unaware that she was now on the run, her entire worldview, her very sanity, demolished. He only knew that Nana Hiiragi, the island’s most prolific, most dangerous, and most enigmatic killer, was gone, and the future, for himself and for everyone else trapped in this terrible, unending game, was now more uncertain, more perilous, and more terrifying than ever before.

Chapter 4: The Vote and Early Manipulations

The lunchtime encounter with Nana Hiiragi left Arthur feeling raw and exposed. Her ability to mask her true nature behind such a dazzling facade of innocent charm was profoundly unsettling. He knew, with a certainty that settled like a stone in his gut, that she had filed away every detail of his fabricated “vision,” and would be dissecting it for any hint of threat or exploitable weakness. His decision to put himself forward for class representative now felt even more reckless, but also, paradoxically, more necessary. He needed to understand how she operated in a position of influence, however minor.

The day and a half leading up to the vote was an uncomfortable lesson in social dynamics for Arthur. The other serious contender, Inori Tamaki, the sharp-eyed girl with the severe ponytail, campaigned with earnest efficiency. She spoke logically about her organizational skills, her desire for a fair and well-run class, and her commitment to representing student concerns to the teachers. She garnered a respectable amount of quiet support from the more studious and pragmatic members of the class.

Then there was Nana Hiiragi. She didn’t so much “campaign” as weave a subtle, irresistible web of charm. She seemed to be everywhere at once, a whirlwind of perfectly pitched compliments and thoughtful gestures. She learned names with astonishing speed, remembered trivial details about classmates’ hobbies – a favorite manga series here, a struggling subject there – and offered to help with homework (though Arthur, watching closely, noticed she often then subtly delegated the actual work to other admirers). When she spoke to someone, she made them feel like they were, for that moment, the most important, most interesting person in the room. Her promises for her tenure as class representative were vague but universally appealing – a more fun, more inclusive class environment, more activities, a stronger sense of unity. It was a masterful performance, and Arthur, watching her, felt a kind of horrified admiration. She was a natural politician, a born manipulator wrapped in a veneer of utterly adorable sincerity.

Arthur’s own “campaign,” by stark contrast, was a masterclass in awkwardness. He made no speeches, offered no grand promises. His efforts consisted mostly of him standing near groups of students during breaks, occasionally offering a stilted, phone-translated comment if directly addressed, or a clumsy nod if someone caught his eye. He’d initially entertained the idea of trying to rally some support, perhaps making a vague, unsettling promise about using his “Chrono-Empathic Glimpse” for the vague benefit of the class’s future, but the words felt hollow, dangerous, and far too likely to backfire. His primary reason for even putting his name forward remained largely internal: to observe Nana more closely as she vied for influence, and perhaps, in some small, almost imperceptible way, to signal to Nanao Nakajima – who seemed to shrink visibly whenever the topic of leadership arose – that not everyone who sought a position of authority was an overwhelming force of charisma. He’d hoped his own unlikely, ill-equipped candidacy might make Nanao feel slightly less isolated in his timidity.

Nana, naturally, with her acute social antennae, noticed his continued, if quiet, presence in the running. During a break between classes, as Arthur was trying to decipher a particularly complex kanji in his textbook, she approached his desk, her expression one of perfectly crafted, almost sisterly concern.

“Tanaka-kun,” she began, her voice soft and melodious, “I was just thinking… are you absolutely sure you want the burden of being class representative? It really does take up so much time, you know, with meetings and organizing things. And there’s an awful lot of… well, social effort involved.” She tilted her head, her violet eyes wide with feigned sympathy. “With your communication being through your phone, it might be terribly stressful for you. I’d hate to see you overwhelmed.”

Arthur met her gaze for a moment, seeing the glint of calculation behind the concern. He looked down at his phone, typed a brief reply. “Responsibility is… sometimes necessary, Hiiragi-san,” the synthesized voice stated, deliberately opaque. He didn’t elaborate.

Nana’s smile didn’t falter, but he saw a new flicker of something – annoyance? Reassessment? – in her eyes. “Of course, Tanaka-kun,” she said smoothly, her voice still dripping with false sweetness. “Just looking out for a fellow new student.” She gave a little wave and flitted off to charm another group.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Arthur began to notice subtle shifts in how other students interacted with him. When he tried to join a conversation, even with his phone ready, one of the participants would suddenly remember an urgent task elsewhere. He overheard snippets – or rather, his phone, with its microphone active, caught stray Japanese phrases that it dutifully translated on his screen when he reviewed the ambient audio later: “Tanaka-kun is a bit… strange, isn’t he? Always so quiet, with that machine…” or “Can we really rely on someone who needs a phone to talk for him to speak for us?” and even, more pointedly, “I heard his ‘Talent’ makes him moody and unpredictable. What if he has a bad ‘glimpse’ about a class trip or something?”

The comments were always deniable, never directly attributable to Nana, but their timing was impeccable, their effect insidious. She was isolating him, not with overt aggression, but with carefully planted seeds of doubt and discomfort, painting him as an unreliable eccentric. It was unnervingly effective. He felt a knot of unease tighten in his stomach; he’d hoped to remain a minor curiosity, but her actions suggested she was already taking him more seriously, as a potential irritant, than he liked. This wasn't just about winning a symbolic vote for her; it was about ensuring no unpredictable elements, however minor, remained within her sphere of influence. She was methodically clearing the board.

Finally, the last period of the next day arrived. Mr. Saito, with his usual slightly flustered cheerfulness, produced a small, slotted wooden box. “Alright class,” he announced, rubbing his hands together. “Time to cast your votes for your new class representative! Please write the name of your chosen candidate clearly on the slip of paper I’ll provide, fold it once, and then come up to place it in the ballot box.”

Small slips of paper were distributed. Arthur stared at his for a moment. He had no illusions about his own chances, nor, if he was honest with himself, did he particularly want the job. His candidacy had served its quiet, observational purpose. He carefully wrote ‘Inori Tamaki’ in hesitant katakana, then folded the paper. As the students filed up row by row to deposit their votes, he watched Nana. She dropped her own slip into the box with a confident, radiant smile, even offering a cheerful little wave to Mr. Saito, who beamed back.

The counting was swift and public. Mr. Saito, with the surprisingly willing assistance of Inori Tamaki herself (a sign of her own good sportsmanship, Arthur thought, or perhaps a subtle power play by Saito to demonstrate impartiality), tallied the votes on the chalkboard. The chalk clicked with a steady rhythm.

The results were, to Arthur, hardly surprising, though the decisiveness was still a little startling. Inori Tamaki: 8 votes. Kenji Tanaka: 1 vote. (Arthur felt a small, inexplicable pang. He suspected, with a strange mixture of gratitude and embarrassment, that it was a pity vote from Nanao Nakajima, or perhaps even a mistake by someone else.) Nana Hiiragi: 21 votes. (The remaining students in their class of thirty).

“And the winner, by a very significant majority, is Hiiragi Nana-san!” Mr. Saito declared, leading a vigorous round of applause. “Congratulations, Hiiragi-san!”

Nana beamed, her eyes sparkling as she stood to accept the accolade, bowing graciously to the class. “Thank you, everyone! Thank you so much! I promise I’ll do my very best to represent you all and help make this a truly fantastic and memorable year for us all!” Her voice was full of earnest sincerity.

Arthur felt a strange cocktail of emotions. There was an undeniable surge of relief; the thought of actually having to perform the duties of class representative, with his profound communication handicap and utter lack of understanding of their school’s social labyrinth, was daunting. But beneath that relief was a profound, chilling sense of unease. Nana’s victory had been a foregone conclusion from the moment she’d entered the classroom, but the subtle, almost surgically precise way she had neutralized him as even a token competitor was a stark lesson. He had wanted to understand how she operated, and he’d received a masterclass in social engineering and covert manipulation. The downside was now glaringly clear: he was definitely, irrevocably on her radar, marked as someone who didn’t quite fit, someone who had, however ineptly and briefly, stood in the path of her ambition.

“And in other exciting news,” Mr. Saito continued, his voice full of oblivious good cheer after the applause for Nana had finally died down, “please do remember that at the end of this school year, we’ll be having our traditional leaving party for those students who might be moving on to other pursuits! It’s always a wonderful highlight of the academic calendar, a chance to celebrate our achievements together!”

Arthur almost snorted aloud, a bitter, mirthless sound he barely managed to suppress. A leaving party. The irony was a palpable, acrid taste in his mouth. There would be plenty of students “leaving” this island well before the end of the year, he knew with a sickening certainty, and their departures would be anything but voluntary or celebratory. He glanced at Nanao, who was looking at the newly elected Class Representative Hiiragi with an expression of timid, almost hero-worshipping admiration. Arthur’s jaw tightened. He might have lost this meaningless vote, but the real struggle, the one for Nanao’s life and the lives of so many others in this classroom, had barely begun. He had to be smarter, more careful, and somehow find a way to use his terrible, fragmented knowledge before it was too late. And Nana Hiiragi, now armed with a modicum of official power, would be watching his every move.

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 20: Holiday Unease

As the turbulent second school year drew to its uneasy, hunger-tinged close, marked by Commandant Ide’s increasingly brutal regime within the internment camp rather than a traditional school break, the announcement of the term break and the departure of most students brought a tense, almost desperate kind of relief to those not deemed high-priority detainees. The ferries arrived, grimly efficient transports now, ready to carry the bulk of the student body back to the mainland, away from the island’s oppressive atmosphere of fear and scarcity, at least for a few precious weeks. The Committee, it seemed, was rotating its "assets."

Arthur Ainsworth, once again, found himself in the strange position of choosing to stay on the nearly deserted island. This time, however, his decision was not born of a lonely vigil over a lifeless body, but out of a complex, unspoken necessity. Michiru Inukai, though much recovered from her miraculous, near-death experience and subsequent regeneration, was still not deemed "fit for mainland reintegration" by the island's skeletal medical staff, who were themselves Committee operatives. She opted to remain, finding a quiet solace in the island’s sudden emptiness and, Arthur suspected with a complicated mix of protectiveness and trepidation, feeling a continued sense of fragile security in his and, surprisingly, Nana Hiiragi’s proximity.

Nana Hiiragi’s situation was, as always, more precarious and externally dictated. Just days before the scheduled departure of the main student body, she received a terse, undeniable summons – not a polite request, but a clear, unambiguous order delivered via a new, untampered Committee phone that had been “provided” to her. Commander Tsuruoka required her presence on the mainland. Immediately. Her face was a mask of grim resignation when she informed a worried Michiru and, by extension, a deeply suspicious Arthur. Despite her profound emotional turmoil, her shattered faith in the Committee, and the fragile, unspoken shift in her relationship with Michiru and even Arthur, she was still tethered by invisible, unbreakable chains to her handler.

Her reluctant departure left Arthur and Michiru in a strange, almost surreal state of quietude on the nearly empty island. The oppressive atmosphere of fear lifted slightly, replaced by a vast, echoing stillness. Arthur found himself falling into an unexpected role: caregiver, companion, and reluctant guardian to the gently recovering Michiru. They took slow, careful walks along the less treacherous coastal paths, Michiru’s laughter, when it occasionally, shyly surfaced, a sound as precious and rare as a blooming desert flower. He would listen, often for hours, as she spoke of her simple hopes for a peaceful future, her quiet joy in the small beauties of the island’s resilient nature – the wildflowers pushing through cracks in the concrete, the intricate patterns of lichen on the ancient stones. He, in turn, shared carefully edited, heavily censored fragments of his old life in England, tales of rainy afternoons, lukewarm tea, and the quiet, predictable rhythm of an existence that now felt like it belonged to another man, in another lifetime. A strange, almost domestic peace settled over them, a fragile bubble of normalcy in the heart of a deeply abnormal world, though the underlying tension, the knowledge of Tsuruoka’s ever-present shadow and Nana’s uncertain fate, was a constant, unspoken hum beneath the surface.

Nana’s meeting with Tsuruoka took place, not in a conventional office, but deep within the cold, sterile, and windowless confines of his isolated military base on the mainland. Standing before him in his severe, impeccably pressed uniform, his face an unreadable mask of polite inquiry, Nana found a sliver of her old defiance, a spark of the new, desperate courage born of her recent traumas. “I can’t keep doing this, Commander,” she stated, her voice surprisingly steady, though her hands were clenched tightly at her sides. “The killing… some of them… many of them… they’re not all enemies. They’re just… children. Scared children.”

Tsuruoka regarded her with an unblinking, reptilian gaze, his lips curved in a faint, almost imperceptible smile that did not reach his cold eyes. He seemed entirely unphased by her hesitant rebellion. “Your newfound sentimentality is a significant weakness, Hiiragi,” he said, his voice dangerously soft, each word a carefully polished stone dropped into a deep, dark well. “The mission parameters are clear, precise, and unchanged. Your personal feelings, your… moral discomforts… are entirely irrelevant to their successful execution. Or have you perhaps forgotten the severe consequences of… significant underperformance?” The veiled threat, unspoken but utterly potent, hung heavy in the sterile, climate-controlled air.

It was then that Tsuruoka, with a casual, almost dismissive gesture, introduced Mai. She was a young girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen, with enormous, sorrowful brown eyes that seemed to absorb all the light in the room, and an almost palpable air of profound, recent grief and bewildered vulnerability. Tsuruoka explained, with a distinct, chilling lack of compassion, that Mai’s beloved grandmother, her sole guardian, had recently passed away, leaving her a modest but, for some, tempting inheritance, and that Mai was now… tragically adrift, alone, and susceptible. He then instructed Nana, his voice regaining its usual crisp, commanding tone, to train the girl. “Make her efficient, Hiiragi. Make her focused. Like you used to be, before your… unfortunate decline in operational standards.”

Over the following emotionally fraught days, Nana found herself in the bizarre, almost surreal position of playing reluctant mentor to the silent, grieving child. It was a horrifying parody of her own indoctrination. She soon discovered, through Mai’s innocent, tearful, almost incoherent confessions during their stilted “training” sessions, that the girl was being systematically, cruelly conned out of her small inheritance by a manipulative, older girl – a former, expelled student from the island academy, Nana learned with a jolt of cold recognition – whom Mai had unfortunately encountered in her grief-stricken vulnerability. A protective instinct, fierce, unexpected, and deeply unwelcome to Nana’s Committee programming, rose within her. This young, heartbroken, traumatized girl was a victim, not a weapon to be callously sharpened and then discarded for the Committee’s bloody, inscrutable purposes.

Nana made a difficult, dangerous decision, one that was a direct act of insubordination, however carefully she planned to conceal it. She meticulously tracked down the con artist, a cynical, remorseless young woman living comfortably and extravagantly off Mai’s stolen money in a flashy city apartment. The confrontation was brief, brutal, the killing clinical, a chilling, unwelcome echo of Nana’s past lethal efficiency. But this time, Nana knew with a strange, defiant clarity, the motive was not blind obedience, not fear, but a twisted, desperate form of protection. She had eliminated a predator to save a lamb, even if it meant dirtying her own hands further.

When she next faced Tsuruoka, her face was a carefully composed mask of dutiful obedience. “Mai’s initial field training is complete, Commander,” she reported, her voice betraying none of her internal turmoil. “She… successfully neutralized the target who was financially exploiting her. Showed surprising initiative and a commendable lack of hesitation.”

Tsuruoka’s thin lips curved into that familiar, chillingly knowing smile. Whether he truly believed her, or simply chose to accept the satisfactory outcome regardless of the details, was impossible for Nana to tell. “Excellent, Hiiragi,” he said smoothly. “It seems your own… recent operational slump… hasn’t entirely dulled your invaluable training abilities. You are to return to the island school for the start of the new term. There are… new students arriving. And new directives.” Mai, he informed her with casual indifference, would be assigned her own separate “mission” shortly. Nana felt a sharp pang of guilt and fear, wondering what terrible fate awaited the young girl she had tried, in her own compromised, desperate way, to shield from the Committee’s insatiable maw.

During one particularly brutal, psychologically invasive debriefing session with Tsuruoka, where he relentlessly dissected her recent performance on the island – her failure to eliminate more designated targets, her inexplicable emotional volatility, her new, unwelcome tendency towards independent thought – Nana found herself deflecting, almost instinctively. Seeking to shift his critical, penetrating focus, or perhaps genuinely perplexed and troubled by Arthur’s continued, disruptive presence in her life, she mentioned him. “There’s a student, Commander,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “Tanaka Kenji. He has a… a very strange and unusually specific Talent for predicting future events. He’s… unpredictable. Disruptive. He seems to know things he shouldn’t, things he couldn’t possibly know.”

Tsuruoka’s usually impassive expression flickered with a spark of genuine, predatory interest. A student who could accurately predict the future? That was a variable of immense potential value, or considerable potential threat, that he hadn’t fully accounted for. He made a silent, mental note: Kenji Tanaka. This boy might indeed require further, more direct investigation. His file would be moved to a higher priority.

Back on the nearly deserted island, Arthur Ainsworth and Michiru Inukai continued their quiet, fragile existence, unaware of the dangerous ripples their actions, and Arthur’s mere existence, were creating in the wider, unseen world. Arthur found a strange, almost domestic rhythm in caring for Michiru, in their shared solitude. He read to her from the few English books he’d found in the school’s dusty, forgotten library annex, his voice a low murmur in the stillness. She, in turn, tried to teach him simple Japanese phrases, her gentle laughter at his clumsy pronunciation a rare, welcome sound. It was a temporary, precarious peace, an eye in the storm. Yet, beneath the surface calm, the knowledge of Tsuruoka, the omnipresent Committee, and Nana’s uncertain, perilous fate lingered, a constant, unspoken promise of storms yet to come. And unknown to Arthur, his name, Kenji Tanaka – or perhaps even Arthur Ainsworth – had just landed with a quiet thud on the desk of a very dangerous, very interested man.

Chapter 7: The Necromancer's Secret and a Ghastly Plan

The swift, brutal efficiency of Ryouta Habu’s demise, following so closely on the heels of Arthur’s successful, if temporary, safeguarding of Nanao Nakajima, sent a chillingly clear message: Nana Hiiragi would not be easily deterred or gracefully outmanoeuvred. If one target became too difficult or inconvenient, she would simply pivot to another, or ruthlessly eliminate any immediate threats to her mission or her cover. Arthur knew, with a sickening certainty, that simply playing defence, reacting to her moves, was a losing strategy. He had to find a way to be proactive, to disrupt Nana’s rhythm, to sow confusion, perhaps even to expose one of the other potent Talents on the island before Nana could get to them. If he could muddy the waters, create other suspects, other focal points of fear and suspicion, it might just buy him, and others, more time.

His attention, with a grim sense of reluctant necessity, turned to Yūka Somezaki.

Arthur remembered her vividly from the anime – a quiet, almost morose girl with wide, haunted eyes and an unhealthy, possessive fixation on her supposedly deceased boyfriend, Shinji. Her Talent, necromancy, was one of the island’s more disturbing secrets. She was, he knew, reanimating Shinji’s corpse nightly, engaging in a macabre, delusional charade of continued romance. The circumstances of Shinji’s actual death – a house fire that had occurred shortly before this cohort of students arrived on the island – were deeply suspicious, almost certainly a case of arson committed by a jealous, enraged Yūka herself, though she had likely long since convinced herself, and perhaps others, that it was a tragic accident.

He began to observe Yūka more closely, his scrutiny carefully veiled. Her tendency to isolate herself from the other students, the way her gaze would occasionally, furtively, drift towards the northern, less frequented and more overgrown part of the island. The almost feverish, defensive intensity with which she spoke of "Shinji" if his name ever, however rarely, came up in conversation, as if he were still alive, merely temporarily absent. It all fit the disturbing profile he remembered.

His plan was audacious, morally dubious, and frankly, gruesome. It carried a significant risk of exposure for himself, and of further traumatizing an already unstable individual. But if it worked, it might unsettle Yūka profoundly, perhaps enough to make her stop her nightly rituals, or at the very least, expose her dangerous Talent in a way that didn’t directly involve Nana identifying and eliminating her. It was a desperate gamble, an attempt to preempt Nana by creating a different kind of chaos.

One quiet afternoon, during a sparsely attended optional study period in the school library, Arthur approached Yūka Somezaki’s secluded table. She was hunched over a thick textbook, though he noted her eyes weren’t actually moving across the page. She looked up as he approached, her eyes widening with a startled, almost hunted expression.

He placed his phone on the worn wooden table between them, the now-familiar ritual initiating his stilted communication. “Somezaki-san,” his translated voice said, pitched low and serious, designed to command attention. He paused, affecting the distant, unfocused look he used when invoking his “Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” “My visions… they have been particularly troubled these past few days. I sense… a significant unrest. A dark activity, concentrated on the north side of the island.”

Yūka’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, her knuckles whitening as she gripped her textbook. The north side. That was where the burnt-out, abandoned shell of Shinji’s former dwelling stood, a place she likely considered her private, desecrated shrine.

“I believe,” Arthur continued, his translated voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that nonetheless seemed to echo in the quiet library alcove, “that the so-called ‘Enemies of Humanity’ may be planning something there. Something… unholy. Perhaps even tonight, under the cover of darkness.” He leaned forward slightly. “I intend to investigate. It could be extremely dangerous, of course. Would you… consider assisting me, Somezaki-san? Your unique perspective, your sensitivity, might prove invaluable in uncovering their plot.”

He watched her carefully, observing the subtle play of fear and suspicion across her pale features. He was banking on her profound fear of exposure, her desperate desire to protect her terrible secret, outweighing any faint curiosity or misplaced sense of civic duty. The specific mention of the north side, and the insinuation of unholy activities, was the carefully baited hook.

Yūka paled visibly, a sheen of sweat appearing on her upper lip. Her hands clenched convulsively in her lap. “I… I can’t, Tanaka-kun,” she stammered, her voice barely audible, a thin, reedy whisper that the phone dutifully translated. “I… I haven’t been feeling at all well recently. All this… terrible upset about Habu-kun’s death… I think I just need to rest this evening. Perhaps another time?” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere past his shoulder.

“A great pity, Somezaki-san,” Arthur’s phone intoned, his own expression carefully neutral. “But entirely understandable, given the circumstances. Rest well.” He picked up his phone and walked away, leaving her to her rapidly escalating agitation. He’d achieved his first objective: she would be terrified, deeply unnerved by his seemingly specific “hunch,” and almost certainly wouldn’t venture anywhere near the north side of the island that night.

That evening, under the oppressive cloak of a moonless, heavily overcast sky, Arthur slipped out of the hushed dormitory. He had discreetly “borrowed” a sturdy canvas art satchel from a mostly unused supply closet and a heavy-duty utility knife that had, for some inexplicable and fortunate reason, been left amongst a jumble of tools in the common room’s lost-and-found box. The island was eerily quiet, the usual nocturnal chorus of cicadas and the distant, rhythmic sigh of the ocean seeming only to amplify the profound silence and his own thudding heartbeat.

He navigated by the hazy memory of the island map he’d once glimpsed and the faint, almost invisible glow of his phone screen, its brightness turned down to the absolute minimum. The path to the northern, more remote part of the island was poorly maintained, overgrown and treacherous in the pitch darkness. After nearly an hour of stumbling through dense, clinging undergrowth, his shins scraped and his nerves screaming, he finally found it: the charred, skeletal remains of a small, isolated shack, its blackened timbers stark against the dark sky, just as he remembered it from a brief, unsettling panning shot in the anime. The air here was heavy, still thick with the faint, acrid, ghostly smell of old smoke and damp decay.

He found a concealed spot within a dense thicket of bushes, downwind from the ruin, and settled in to wait. His heart pounded a nervous, unsteady rhythm against his ribs. This was, he told himself for the hundredth time, certifiably insane. He, Arthur Ainsworth, a fifty-one-year-old former paper-pusher from Crawley, a man whose greatest prior adventure involved misplacing his spectacles during a rather staid Thomas Cook package holiday to the Costa del Sol, was now lurking in the haunted wilderness of a deadly island, preparing to confront a reanimated corpse. The sheer, terrifying absurdity of it all threatened to overwhelm him.

Hours crawled by with agonizing slowness. The cold night air, damp and clinging, seeped into his bones, making him shiver uncontrollably. Doubt, a insidious, gnawing worm, began to eat at his resolve. What if he was wrong? What if Yūka, spooked by his earlier veiled threats, didn’t summon Shinji tonight? What if some other creature, one of the real Enemies of Humanity, if such things truly existed beyond the manipulative government propaganda and Tsuruoka’s monstrous fabrications, found him first? He clutched the utility knife, its cold, unforgiving metal a poor and insufficient comfort against the rising tide of his fear.

Just as the first, almost imperceptible hint of bruised grey began to lighten the eastern sky, dimming the stars, he heard it – a distinct, unnatural shuffling sound, the sharp snap of a dry twig under a clumsy footfall. He peered cautiously through the dense leaves, his breath catching in his throat. A figure was lurching out of the pre-dawn darkness, moving with an unsettling, jerky, puppet-like gait. It was vaguely human-shaped, its clothes tattered and mud-stained, its skin a mottled, unhealthy, almost phosphorescent hue in the gloom. Shinji. Or rather, what Yūka Somezaki’s dark Talent had made of him.

Arthur’s breath hitched. This was it. No turning back. He gripped the utility knife, its handle slick in his sweaty palm. He’d never considered himself a brave man, not by any stretch of the imagination. He wasn’t entirely sure he was one now. But a desperate, cold, almost inhuman resolve had settled over him, born of fear and a grim, overriding necessity.

He waited, every muscle tensed, until the shambling, reanimated corpse lurched past his hiding place, then he lunged.

The struggle was a nightmarish, clumsy, terrifying wrestle in the damp earth and decaying leaves. The creature, despite its decayed state, was surprisingly strong, its dead limbs animated by an unnatural, jerky power. It clawed at him with surprising force, its decaying flesh exuding a fetid, sweetish odour of grave dirt and rot that made Arthur gag and his stomach heave. It moaned, a low, guttural, inhuman sound that seemed to vibrate in his very bones. He dropped the utility knife in the initial, frantic scuffle but managed to bring the heavy canvas bag down hard on its head, stunning it for a precious, disorienting moment. Scrambling desperately in the dirt, his fingers closed around a hefty, sharp-edged rock.

He didn’t allow himself to think, to hesitate. He just acted, driven by a primal survival instinct and the grim, horrifying necessity of his insane plan. It was a brutal, sickening, desperate business. When it was finally, blessedly over, he was shaking uncontrollably, his clothes torn, his body covered in dirt and something he desperately hoped wasn’t zombie effluvia. Shinji’s reanimated form lay still, a grotesque parody of life extinguished.

With trembling, bloodied hands, he retrieved the utility knife. The next part, he knew, would be even worse. He had to force himself, fighting back waves of nausea and a rising tide of self-loathing, to complete the terrible task he had set himself. Finally, his heart pounding a mad tattoo against his ribs, his stomach churning with revulsion, he managed to secure the zombie’s severed head in the canvas satchel. The weight of it was obscene.

As the sun began its slow, indifferent ascent, casting a sickly yellow light over the gruesome, desecrated scene, Arthur Ainsworth, or rather, the boy known as Kenji Tanaka, stumbled back towards the distant, still-sleeping school. He was physically and emotionally wrecked, a hollow shell of a man. The thought of what he had to do next, of presenting this horrifying, violating trophy to a classroom of unsuspecting teenagers, filled him with a fresh, overwhelming wave of revulsion and despair. But it was necessary. He had to try and break Yūka Somezaki’s cycle of delusion and necromancy, and perhaps, just perhaps, save her from Nana Hiiragi in the process – even if it meant becoming a figure of profound terror and moral ambiguity himself. He was walking a very dark path, and he wasn't sure he'd ever find his way back.

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 31: The Great Escape

The days bled into weeks, the weeks into months, each one a grim, monotonous repetition of the last, marked by gnawing hunger, forced labour, and the ever-present, chilling specter of Commandant Ide’s sadistic authority. By the late, bleak summer of what would have been 2029 in Arthur’s old world, over a full, soul-crushing year had passed since their incarceration in Ide’s brutal internment camp. The initial shock and raw terror had long since given way to a grim, soul-wearying, almost numb routine of survival. Food remained scarce, its quality appalling, often barely edible. Medical attention was a cruel joke, almost non-existent, with minor illnesses frequently festering into life-threatening conditions. The guards, under Ide’s increasingly tyrannical and paranoid command, ruled with a casual, almost bored cruelty, their arbitrary beatings and collective punishments a constant reminder of their absolute power. Hope, in this desolate, forgotten place, was a dangerous, almost treasonous currency, hoarded desperately by a resilient few, and all too easily, too frequently, extinguished by Ide’s iron fist.

Yet, within the oppressive, spirit-crushing confines of the sprawling, mud-caked camp, a small, fiercely determined group had begun to coalesce, a fragile ember of defiance glowing stubbornly in the overwhelming darkness. Nana Hiiragi, her spirit battered but not entirely broken by her past traumas and current imprisonment, found a new, unexpected focus for her formidable intellect and innate strategic mind. The Nana who had once meticulously, coldly planned murders now meticulously, passionately, planned freedom. Kyouya Onodera, fully recovered from his horrific ordeal in Ide’s torture block, his silent, unbreakable resilience an unspoken, almost legendary inspiration to many of the more demoralized prisoners, became her quiet, watchful, and utterly dependable partner in this dangerous, almost impossible endeavor. Michiru Inukai, her gentle, compassionate spirit a small, unwavering beacon of quiet kindness in the grim, dehumanizing surroundings, offered emotional support, tended to the minor injuries and ever-present illnesses that plagued the malnourished prisoners, and fostered a surprising network of trust and whispered communication among the disparate, frightened inmates. Arthur Ainsworth, though openly claiming his “Chrono-Empathic Glimpse” Talent was now entirely depleted, a spent force (a claim met with varying degrees of belief, though none could deny his past uncanny insights), found his sharp memories of fictional problem-solving scenarios from countless books and films, and his hard-won, cynical intuition about human nature, surprisingly useful in their clandestine, whispered discussions. And Jin Tachibana, a veritable ghost in the brutal system, would appear and disappear with unnerving, almost supernatural ease, providing crucial, often game-changing pieces of intelligence about guard rotations, structural weaknesses in the camp’s perimeter, or forewarning of impending, brutal shakedowns by Ide’s security forces.

Their plan, whispered late at night in the most secluded, shadowed corners of their overcrowded barracks, or during furtive, hurried meetings in the relative anonymity of the latrine queues, was audacious to the point of near insanity: a mass jailbreak. Not just for themselves, for their small, core group, but for as many of their fellow prisoners as they could possibly, safely include. Nana, in a profound, almost shocking shift from her former cold, Committee-programmed self, was fiercely, unyieldingly adamant about one particular, non-negotiable principle: “Minimal bloodshed on our side,” she’d insisted passionately during one of their hushed, risky planning sessions in a damp, disused storage shed, her violet eyes burning with a new, protective fire. “And we need to be as quiet, as invisible, as possible. We need time – days, if we can manage it – before the Committee on the mainland even realizes the full extent of the escape. That’s our only chance of scattering, of finding any kind of sanctuary.” Her words, her newfound focus on preserving life rather than taking it, resonated deeply with Arthur, a small, fragile sign of her painful, ongoing transformation.

The absolute, undeniable key to their improbable, desperate plan lay with a recently arrived prisoner, a nervous, unassuming, almost painfully shy young man named Kenichi Tanaka (a cruel irony of a shared name that Arthur didn’t fail to register). Kenichi was perpetually anxious, with a habit of stuttering and avoiding eye contact, but he possessed a Talent as extraordinary as it was vital to their hopes. Kenichi, whom Kyouya, with his characteristic bluntness, had quickly dubbed “Architect,” could mentally visualize and then, with intense, painstaking concentration and the slow, laborious reconfiguration of existing raw materials – even compacted soil, loose rock, and scavenged scrap metal – gradually, almost magically, manifest large, complex, non-organic objects into physical reality. The process was incredibly draining for him, physically and mentally, requiring days, sometimes weeks, of focused effort for even moderately sized creations, but he believed, with enough time, support, and a sufficient supply of rudimentary materials, he could create a vehicle. Not a conventional car or truck, nothing so complex or refined. But something large enough, something incredibly sturdy, something capable of breaching the camp’s formidable outer wall and carrying a significant number of escapees to at least temporary freedom. Their unlikely, desperate dream began to take shape in whispered conversations: a makeshift, heavily armored, Talent-powered land train, or something akin to a monstrous, multi-terrain personnel carrier, built from the very earth and refuse of their prison.

The planning phase was a masterpiece of clandestine coordination, meticulous attention to detail, and constant, nerve-shredding risk. They identified potentially sympathetic or sufficiently desperate fellow prisoners, those with useful minor Talents that might aid their escape – a girl who could temporarily muffle sounds within a small radius, an older man who possessed an uncanny ability to sense and temporarily disrupt simple electronic surveillance devices, a few quiet, physically strong individuals who were deemed trustworthy and capable of disciplined action under extreme pressure. Kyouya, with his innate toughness, his remarkable resilience, and his ability to heal from injuries that would kill ordinary men, took on the perilous role of scouting the riskiest sections of the camp’s perimeter, meticulously memorizing patrol routes, identifying guard blind spots, and assessing the structural integrity of potential breach points. Arthur often helped him analyze the gathered information, his mind, strangely sharpened by years of navigating Nana’s deceptions on the island, surprisingly adept at spotting subtle patterns, potential ambush points, and dangerous inconsistencies in the guards’ routines. His “intuition,” as he now called his residual flashes of anime-inspired insight, would sometimes offer surprisingly useful, if oddly specific, suggestions: “The searchlights on the north-east perimeter tower, Kyouya-san… there’s a rumour amongst the longer-term prisoners that the main junction box there is older, less well-maintained than the others. It might be more susceptible to… interference.”

Michiru, a quiet, unassuming force of nature, fostered a delicate network of trust and whispered communication among disparate, frightened groups of prisoners, her genuine, unwavering kindness and empathy disarming even some of the most hardened, cynical, or terrified inmates, ensuring their loyalty, their silence, and their willingness to cooperate when the time came. She also used her gentle healing touch to tend to the minor cuts, bruises, and illnesses sustained by their small team during their risky preparations, keeping their clandestine “workforce” as healthy and functional as possible under the brutal camp conditions.

Nana Hiiragi, with a focus and intensity that both impressed and slightly unnerved Arthur, orchestrated it all. Her quick, strategic mind, once dedicated to the art of assassination, was now wholly consumed with the complex, multi-layered logistics of their desperate gamble. She studied makeshift maps of the camp, painstakingly drawn from the collective memory of dozens of prisoners, cross-referencing them with Jin’s sporadically delivered but always vital intelligence updates. She assigned tasks, managed resources, developed contingency plans, and made difficult, sometimes heartbreaking, decisions with a quiet, newfound authority that surprised even herself. She was no longer Tsuruoka’s mindless, obedient puppet; she was, against all odds, becoming a leader, driven not by external orders or fear of punishment, but by a fierce, burning desire for freedom, for justice, and by a burgeoning, almost maternal sense of responsibility for the hundreds of desperate souls whose hopes now rested so heavily on her slender shoulders.

Commandant Ide, meanwhile, continued his daily reign of petty sadism and brutal terror, entirely oblivious to the silent, steadily growing conspiracy unfolding beneath his very nose, within the very walls of his supposedly impregnable prison. The harsher, more oppressive his regime became, the more desperate, the more determined, the more unified the core group of escape planners grew. The internment camp was a volatile, dangerously unstable pressure cooker, and Nana’s small, dedicated team was working tirelessly, meticulously, against the ticking clock, trying to build an escape valve before the entire system exploded into uncontrolled, suicidal violence. The hope they nurtured was fragile, almost intangible, the risks they took daily were immense, terrifying. But for the first time in over a long, brutal year, a tiny, defiant flicker of genuine, almost audacious optimism began to spread like a secret wildfire through the desolate, shadowed barracks. They had a plan. They had a leader. They had the Architect. They had a chance.

Chapter 34: Echoes of a Fictional Past

The fire in the damp cave spat a shower of angry orange sparks into the heavy, charged silence that followed Arthur Ainsworth’s almost whispered, yet cataclysmic, question. The only other sound was the distant, ceaseless roar of the hidden waterfall, a monotonous, indifferent rush of water that suddenly felt like the rushing, uncaring torrent of a reality that had just been irrevocably, terrifyingly, and perhaps even liberatingly, undone. Nana Hiiragi stared at him, her violet eyes wide, her face utterly drained of colour, the half-sketched map forgotten in her lap. Kyouya Onodera’s hand had frozen midway through sharpening his makeshift blade, his usually impassive features now a mask of stunned, almost incredulous intensity. Michiru Inukai’s gentle face was etched with profound confusion and a dawning, childlike distress, her hand instinctively going to her mouth. Even Jin Tachibana, for the first time since Arthur had known him, looked momentarily, almost imperceptibly, thrown, his enigmatic smile faltering, his pale eyes fixed on Arthur with a new, sharp, unreadable intensity.

It was Nana who finally broke the spell, her voice a strangled, disbelieving whisper. “A… a story? You’re saying… everything? The island… the killings… me… it was all just… a story you read? In a… a comic book?” The sheer, insane absurdity of it seemed to overwhelm her. The carefully constructed narrative of her life, her suffering, her crimes – all reduced to pulp fiction in another world.

Arthur nodded miserably, the weight of their collective shock almost a physical blow. “Essentially, yes, Hiiragi-san. A manga, as they call them. And then an animated television series. ‘Talentless Nana’. It was… surprisingly popular for a while, in my time. Known for its dark themes, its psychological twists.” He felt a flush of shame, of acute discomfort. How could he possibly explain the ghoulish voyeurism of it all? Their real, lived pain, packaged as entertainment. It felt obscene.

Kyouya Onodera finally moved, placing his sharpened metal shard down with slow, deliberate precision. His voice, when he spoke, was dangerously quiet, each word a carefully chipped piece of ice. “So all your ‘predictions,’ Tanaka-kun… or should I say, Ainsworth-san? Your ‘Chrono-Empathic Glimpse’… your knowledge of our Talents, our weaknesses, our… our fates… it all came from this… this fictional narrative?”

“Most of it,” Arthur admitted, his gaze dropping to the cave floor. He couldn’t meet Kyouya’s piercing stare. “My memories of it are… fragmented. Incomplete. Like trying to recall a dream years later. I remembered key events, character traits, some of the deaths. Enough to make those ‘predictions.’ Enough to try and… interfere, sometimes successfully, often not.” He thought of the sheer, unmitigated unreality of it all, more like some bizarre, avant-garde play one might see in a small, underfunded provincial theatre back in Sussex, something designed to shock and confuse, than any lived experience.

“So you knew,” Nana’s voice was stronger now, laced with a dawning, terrible anger, a profound sense of betrayal. “You knew what I was. What I would do. You knew about… about Michiru?” Her gaze flicked towards the fluffy-haired girl, who was now looking at Arthur with wide, wounded eyes.

“I knew… some of it,” Arthur said wretchedly. “I knew Michiru was… important. I knew she had a powerful healing Talent. I remembered… I remembered her dying to save you, Nana-san, in the story. That’s why I tried so desperately to stop her at the docks.” He looked at Michiru. “And later, why I hoped… her body being warm, it matched some obscure detail I half-recalled about how truly powerful healing Talents might interact with death in your world, according to the lore of that story.”

Michiru’s eyes filled with tears. “So… my life… Nana-chan’s life… it was all… written down somewhere?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

“In my world, yes,” Arthur confirmed, his own voice hoarse with a mixture of guilt and a strange, weary resignation. “A fiction. Here… here it’s your reality. Our reality now, I suppose.”

“Why didn’t you stop more of it?” Kyouya’s question was sharp, cutting as the blade he’d just been honing. “If you possessed such… supposedly comprehensive foreknowledge, why allow so many to die? Why not expose Nana from the outset?”

Arthur finally looked up, a spark of his old, tired frustration igniting in his eyes as he met Kyouya’s accusatory gaze. “Do you truly think I didn’t want to?” he retorted, his voice gaining a raw, defensive edge. “My memory of this… this ‘story’… it was never comprehensive, Kyouya-san. It was like a shattered mirror, reflecting only fragments, often distorted, often out of sequence. I frequently didn’t know the when or even the exact where each murder or critical event would take place until it was almost upon us, or sometimes, tragically, not until it was too late.”

He took a ragged breath, the faces of the dead flickering before his mind’s eye. “Take Nanao Nakajima, for instance. I knew where Nana planned to kill him – that cliff by the sea. It was a very vivid scene in the story. But I had no idea when she would make her move – which day, which hour. I had to shadow him for days, make a nuisance of myself, an utter fool, just waiting, hoping I could intervene at the right, critical moment. With Yuusuke Tachibana, the time traveler,” Arthur continued, his voice tight with the memory of that particularly cold-blooded murder, “again, I knew where – the lake. But not when. My warning to him was vague because my knowledge was vague. I couldn’t tell him ‘Nana will drown you by the old boathouse next Tuesday at 3 PM’ because I simply didn’t know that level of detail.”

He looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. “And Touichirou Hoshino, the poor boy dying of cancer… for him, I didn’t even have an accurate location. Just a hazy recollection from the story that it was possibly in a cave somewhere on the island. Which cave? When? The story never specified. I tried to find him, to warn him, but the island is large, and he was already reclusive due to his illness.” Arthur shook his head, the weight of these specific failures, these agonizing limitations, pressing down on him.

“And what if I had tried to change things too drastically from the outset?” he pressed on, his voice gaining a note of desperation. “What if I’d stood up on that first day and announced, ‘Nana Hiiragi is a government assassin, and here’s a list of everyone she’s going to kill’? Who would have believed me? They’d have locked me up as a lunatic! Or Nana herself would have eliminated me before I drew my next breath. The story I remembered was horrific, yes, but what if my blundering attempts to play God based on a half-recalled comic book from another dimension made things even worse? Created new, unforeseen tragedies? New victims I couldn’t have predicted?” He gestured helplessly. “And frankly, Kyouya-san, I was terrified. Most of the time, I am terrified. I was alone, in a foreign land I didn’t understand, in a body that wasn’t mine, surrounded by people with often terrifying superhuman abilities, one of whom was a highly trained, remorseless assassin systematically killing everyone around me. My primary concern, I’ll admit it freely, was often my own desperate survival, and simply trying to make some kind of rudimentary sense of an utterly impossible, insane situation.”

He turned to Nana, whose face was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions – anger, betrayal, confusion, but also, Arthur thought he saw, a flicker of something else, something akin to a strange, twisted validation. If her life, her actions, had been “scripted” in some other dimension, did that lessen her own culpability? Did it make Tsuruoka’s manipulation even more monstrously profound?

“And what,” Jin Tachibana finally spoke, his voice still calm, still enigmatic, though his eyes held a new, sharp alertness, “does this… ‘story’… say happens next? Now that we have escaped this camp? Now that your ‘Talent,’ your foreknowledge of our specific immediate actions, is supposedly… depleted?”

Arthur shook his head. “That’s the problem. The story I remember… it focused primarily on Nana’s time on the island during that first year. It detailed many of her… assignments. It touched upon Kyouya’s investigation, Michiru’s sacrifice and return, the conflict with Rentaro. After that, my knowledge becomes… patchy. Vague. I remember broader strokes about Tsuruoka, about the Committee, about the ‘Enemies of Humanity,’ about a growing societal fear of Talents leading to… to situations like this internment camp.” He gestured around the damp cave. “But specific events? Timelines? Who lives, who dies from this point on? I have no idea. The narrative, for me, largely ended with the first year’s major events, or became too divergent from what I was experiencing once I started interfering. From the moment Michiru first returned, from Nana’s breakdown at the cliff, things here have already been… different, diverging significantly from what I dimly recalled. My foreknowledge of your specific futures, your day-to-day choices, is gone. As I said, I’m as blind as the rest of you now.”

A new, uneasy silence descended. The implications of Arthur’s confession, the sheer, mind-bending audacity of it, were immense, earth-shattering. Their lives, their struggles, their very identities, mirrored, however imperfectly, in a work of popular fiction from another world, another time. It was a truth so outlandish, so existentially terrifying, it was almost impossible to fully grasp.

It was Michiru, her gentle voice trembling but surprisingly firm, who finally voiced the question that hung heavy and unspoken in the damp, smoky air. “So, Arthur-san… if our lives here are… were… a story in your world… does that mean we are not truly real? That our pain… our choices… that they don’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things?”

Arthur looked at her, his heart aching at her innocent, profound, and utterly heartbreaking question. “No, Michiru-san,” he said, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn’t quite name – a fierce protectiveness, a profound empathy. “No. Absolutely not. What happens here, what you feel, what you choose to do every single day… it is absolutely, terrifyingly, undeniably real. Perhaps, in many ways, it is even more real than anything I ever experienced in my own, mundane world. The story… it was just a flawed, incomplete window, a distorted mirror reflecting a sliver of your reality. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t negate your suffering, or your courage, or your capacity for love and sacrifice.”

He looked around at their stunned, searching faces, lit by the flickering, unreliable firelight. He had laid himself bare, revealed his most unbelievable, his most vulnerable, his most insane truth. He felt strangely light, as if a tremendous, crushing burden had finally been lifted from his shoulders, but also terrified of their judgment, their potential rejection, their understandable disbelief.

It was Nana, surprisingly, who broke the heavy tension. She let out a long, shuddering breath, then, a small, hysterical, almost broken laugh escaped her lips, a sound utterly devoid of mirth. “A comic book…” she whispered, shaking her head in stunned, almost numb disbelief. “All this… all this horror… all this blood… because of a damned comic book character who just happens to look like me…” She looked directly at Arthur, and for the very first time since he had met her, he saw not anger, not betrayal, not even suspicion, but a flicker of something akin to a weary, horrified, almost surreal camaraderie. “Well, Ainsworth-san,” she said, her voice raw, cracked, almost unrecognizable. “It seems your life is, if anything, even stranger, even more unbelievable, than ours.”

Kyouya Onodera nodded slowly, his gaze distant, contemplative. “Indeed. This revelation… it re-contextualizes everything. Your past actions, your warnings… your apparent foreknowledge.” He paused, his sharp eyes meeting Arthur’s. “It also suggests that if such a narrative existed, then perhaps our struggles, our very existence, have some form of… pre-ordained pattern, even if you, personally, no longer have access to its specific details. Or, perhaps, and this is the more pertinent consideration, it offers us the definitive chance to consciously, deliberately break from it. To write our own ending.”

The future, which had always been a terrifying, oppressive unknown for Arthur despite his supposed “Talent,” now felt even more vast, more unpredictable, but also, strangely, more laden with a desperate, shared, and almost defiant agency. They were no longer just characters in a half-remembered story he carried within him like a curse. They were survivors, together, facing a monstrous, common enemy, armed now with not just their varied Talents and their hard-won courage, but with the most bizarre, the most unbelievable, the most world-shattering truth imaginable. Where they went from here, what they chose to do with this impossible knowledge, was now, truly, terrifyingly, and perhaps even liberatingly, up to them.

“Most of it,” Arthur admitted, his gaze dropping to the cave floor. He couldn’t meet Kyouya’s piercing stare. “My memories of it are… fragmented. Incomplete. Like trying to recall a dream years later. I remembered key events, character traits, some of the deaths. Enough to make those ‘predictions.’ Enough to try and… interfere, sometimes successfully, often not.” He thought of the sheer, unmitigated unreality of it all, more like some bizarre, avant-garde play one might see in a small festival theatre back in Sussex, something designed to shock and confuse, than any lived experience.

“So you knew,” Nana’s voice was stronger now, laced with a dawning, terrible anger, a profound sense of betrayal. “You knew what I was. What I would do. You knew about… about Michiru?” Her gaze flicked towards the fluffy-haired girl, who was now looking at Arthur with wide, wounded eyes.

“I knew… some of it,” Arthur said wretchedly. “I knew Michiru was… important. I knew she had a powerful healing Talent. I remembered… I remembered her dying to save you, Nana-san, in the story. That’s why I tried so desperately to stop her at the docks.” He looked at Michiru. “And later, why I hoped… her body being warm, it matched some obscure detail I half-recalled about how truly powerful healing Talents might interact with death in your world, according to the lore of that story.”

Michiru’s eyes filled with tears. “So… my life… Nana-chan’s life… it was all… written down somewhere?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

“In my world, yes,” Arthur confirmed, his own voice hoarse with a mixture of guilt and a strange, weary resignation. “A fiction. Here… here it’s your reality. Our reality now, I suppose.”

“Why didn’t you stop more of it?” Kyouya’s question was sharp, cutting. “If you possessed such… comprehensive foreknowledge, why allow so many to die? Why not expose Nana from the outset?”

Arthur finally looked up, meeting Kyouya’s accusatory gaze. “Do you think I didn’t want to?” he retorted, a flash of his old, tired frustration surfacing. “My memory was imperfect, like I said. I often only remembered crucial details moments before they were due to happen, if at all. And what if I had tried to change things too drastically? The story I remembered was horrific, yes, but what if my interference, my blundering attempts to play God based on a half-recalled comic book, made things even worse? Created new, unforeseen tragedies? And frankly, Kyouya-san, I was terrified. I was alone, in a foreign land, in a body that wasn’t mine, surrounded by people with superhuman abilities, one of whom was a trained assassin systematically killing everyone around me. My primary concern, I’ll admit it, was often my own survival, and trying to make sense of an impossible situation.”

He turned to Nana, whose face was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions – anger, betrayal, confusion, but also, Arthur thought he saw, a flicker of something else, something akin to a strange, twisted validation. If her life, her actions, had been “scripted” in some other dimension, did that lessen her own culpability? Did it make Tsuruoka’s manipulation even more monstrous?

“And what,” Jin Tachibana finally spoke, his voice still calm, still enigmatic, though his eyes held a new, sharp alertness, “does this… ‘story’… say happens next? Now that we have escaped this camp? Now that your ‘Talent,’ your foreknowledge of our specific immediate actions, is supposedly… depleted?”

Arthur shook his head. “That’s the problem. The story I remember… it focused primarily on Nana’s time on the island during that first year. It detailed many of her… assignments. It touched upon Kyouya’s investigation, Michiru’s sacrifice and return, the conflict with Rentaro. After that, my knowledge becomes… patchy. Vague. I remember broader strokes about Tsuruoka, about the Committee, about the ‘Enemies of Humanity,’ about a growing societal fear of Talents leading to… to situations like this internment camp.” He gestured around the damp cave. “But specific events? Timelines? Who lives, who dies from this point on? I have no idea. The narrative, for me, largely ended with the first year’s major events, or became too divergent from what I was experiencing once I started interfering. From the moment Michiru first returned, from Nana’s breakdown at the cliff, things here have already been… different, diverging significantly from what I dimly recalled.”

He paused, then added a crucial detail, his gaze shifting, almost reluctantly, towards Nana Hiiragi, who was watching him with a disturbing, unreadable intensity. “There’s something else about this… this ‘story’ you should know. It’s… or rather, it was… ongoing. Or at least, it was still being written, still being released, just before I… before I arrived here. I never read or saw the absolute end of it, because it hadn't been created yet in my time.”

He saw a flicker of something – hope? Dread? – in Nana’s eyes. “And Nana-san,” Arthur continued, choosing his words very carefully, the Japanese feeling heavy and inadequate for what he was trying to convey, “in the version of the story I knew, your character… she begins to change. Profoundly. After certain events, after certain realizations about Tsuruoka and the Committee… she starts… she starts trying to save Talents, not eliminate them.”

Nana’s breath hitched, an almost inaudible gasp. Kyouya’s head tilted slightly, his analytical gaze sharpening further.

“In fact,” Arthur pressed on, remembering the dark, vengeful turn the fictional Nana had taken, “the Nana in the manga… she wants nothing more than to, well…” He hesitated, searching for a way to translate a rather brutal English idiom. He pictured, for a fleeting, absurd moment, the old, battered woodchipper his neighbour in Crawley, old Mr. Henderson, used with noisy relish on his garden waste every autumn. “She wants to ram Tsuruoka into a… a proverbial woodchipper.” He made a crude, forceful pushing and grinding motion with his hands, then quickly dropped them, flushing slightly at the inadequacy of the gesture. “She wants to see him utterly, completely destroyed. And she’d undoubtedly go through every last member of The Committee to do so, to make them all pay for what they did to her, to everyone.”

He looked around at their stunned faces. “As for anyone else in the story… Kyouya-san, Michiru-san, Jin-san… what their ultimate fates were according to that unfinished narrative… I genuinely don’t know. My memory focuses mostly on… on Nana’s arc, as she was the titular character.”

A new, even heavier silence descended upon the cave, thick with the implications of this latest, astonishing revelation. The idea that Nana Hiiragi, their island’s most feared and prolific killer, was “destined” in some other-worldly fiction to become a savior, a destroyer of the very system that had created her, was almost too much to comprehend.

It was Michiru, her gentle voice trembling but firm, who finally voiced the question that hung heavy and unspoken in the damp, smoky air. “So, Arthur-san… if our lives here are… were… a story in your world… does that mean we are not truly real? That our pain… our choices… that they don’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things?”

Arthur looked at her, his heart aching at her innocent, profound, and utterly heartbreaking question. “No, Michiru-san,” he said, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn’t quite name – a fierce protectiveness, a profound empathy. “No. Absolutely not. What happens here, what you feel, what you choose to do every single day… it is absolutely, terrifyingly, undeniably real. Perhaps, in many ways, it is even more real than anything I ever experienced in my own, mundane world. The story… it was just a flawed, incomplete window, a distorted mirror reflecting a sliver of your reality. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t negate your suffering, or your courage, or your capacity for love and sacrifice.”

He looked around at their stunned, searching faces, lit by the flickering, unreliable firelight. He had laid himself bare, revealed his most unbelievable, his most vulnerable, his most insane truth. He felt strangely light, as if a tremendous, crushing burden had finally been lifted from his shoulders, but also terrified of their judgment, their potential rejection, their understandable disbelief.

It was Nana, surprisingly, who broke the heavy tension. She let out a long, shuddering breath, then, a small, hysterical, almost broken laugh escaped her lips, a sound utterly devoid of mirth. “A comic book…” she whispered, shaking her head in stunned, almost numb disbelief. “All this… all this horror… all this blood… because of a damned comic book character who just happens to look like me… and who then, apparently, decides to go after Tsuruoka like a… a human woodchipper?” She looked directly at Arthur, and for the very first time since he had met her, he saw not anger, not betrayal, not even suspicion, but a flicker of something akin to a weary, horrified, almost surreal camaraderie. “Well, Ainsworth-san,” she said, her voice raw, cracked, almost unrecognizable. “It seems your life is, if anything, even stranger, even more unbelievable, than ours.”

Kyouya Onodera nodded slowly, his gaze distant, contemplative. “Indeed. This revelation… it re-contextualizes everything. Your past actions, your warnings… your apparent foreknowledge.” He paused, his sharp eyes meeting Arthur’s. “It also suggests that if such a narrative existed, then perhaps our struggles, our very existence, have some form of… pre-ordained pattern, even if you, personally, no longer have access to its specific details. Or, perhaps, and this is the more pertinent consideration,” his gaze flicked briefly towards Nana, then back to Arthur, “it offers us the definitive chance to consciously, deliberately break from it. Or, for some, to perhaps… embrace a different version of their scripted path.”

The future, which had always been a terrifying, oppressive unknown for Arthur despite his supposed “Talent,” now felt even more vast, more unpredictable, but also, strangely, more laden with a desperate, shared, and almost defiant agency. They were no longer just characters in a half-remembered story he carried within him like a curse. They were survivors, together, facing a monstrous, common enemy, armed now with not just their varied Talents and their hard-won courage, but with the most bizarre, the most unbelievable, the most world-shattering truth imaginable. Where they went from here, what they chose to do with this impossible knowledge, was now, truly, terrifyingly, and perhaps even liberatingly, up to them.