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Chapter 12: Jin, the Cat, and a Phone's Secret

While Arthur Ainsworth was consumed with the grim, unending task of tracking Nana Hiiragi’s deadly progress and grappling with his own mounting failures and compromised morality, other, more subtle currents of intrigue were moving beneath the deceptively placid surface of island life, entirely unnoticed by him. He was so focused on the immediate, known threats derived from his fragmented memories of the anime, so mired in his reactive, desperate attempts to save individual lives, that he remained largely oblivious to the complex machinations of the enigmatic and aloof student, Jin Tachibana – or rather, the skilled operative who currently wore that name and identity like a carefully tailored disguise.

One sun-drenched afternoon, a small commotion near an old, ivy-choked, and long-disused well on the periphery of the school grounds drew a modest crowd of curious students. A cat, a scrawny, dusty white stray with unusually intelligent, wary eyes, had somehow managed to fall into the deep, stone-lined shaft and was now mewling pitifully from the darkness below, its cries echoing faintly. Several students were peering down, their faces a mixture of concern and helplessness, debating various impractical methods of rescue, but no one seemed particularly willing to risk the uncertain descent into the gloom.

Then, Nana Hiiragi arrived, drawn by the small gathering. Pushing gently but firmly through the onlookers, her expression one of perfectly pitched concern, she assessed the situation with a swift, practical gaze. “Oh, the poor little thing!” she exclaimed, her voice filled with what sounded, even to Arthur who watched from a distance, like genuine sympathy. Dismissing suggestions of complicated rope systems or waiting for a teacher to fetch a ladder, Nana, with a surprising, almost cat-like agility herself, hitched up her school skirt slightly, found a secure handhold on the crumbling stonework, and began to shimmy partway down the moss-slicked well wall. She stretched to her utmost limit, her small hand reaching into the darkness, and after a moment of tense silence, she emerged, slightly dusty and with a triumphant smile, cradling the frightened, trembling white animal.

She petted it gently, murmuring soft, soothing words in Japanese, before a grateful teacher, who had just arrived on the scene, quickly procured a small cardboard box and a saucer of milk. For a moment, watching Nana’s tender, almost maternal care for the creature, Arthur felt a familiar flicker of profound confusion. It was such a jarring, stark contrast to her ruthless efficiency as a cold-blooded assassin. Was it possible, he found himself wondering yet again, for such profound, calculated cruelty and moments of seemingly genuine compassion to coexist so easily within one individual? Or was this, too, merely another carefully calibrated performance, designed to enhance her image as a kind, caring, and approachable class representative? The cat, after a few tentative laps of milk and a long, unblinking stare at Nana, suddenly bolted from the box and darted off into the dense undergrowth, vanishing as silently as a ghost. Arthur filed the incident away as another perplexing, unexplainable facet of Nana Hiiragi’s terrifyingly complex character. He didn’t know, of course, that the rescued white cat was, in fact, Jin Tachibana, who had perhaps engineered the entire incident for reasons of his own.

A few days later, a different, more personal kind of confusion began to beset Nana Hiiragi. Michiru Inukai, her devoted, fluffy-haired admirer, began acting… strangely. Uncharacteristically so. During a conversation where Nana was attempting her usual subtle probing for information about other students’ Talents, cloaked in friendly concern, "Michiru" responded not with her usual naive eagerness to please, but with an uncharacteristic, almost unnerving sharpness. Her questions were surprisingly insightful, her observations on the social dynamics of the class and the potential weaknesses of certain Talents were almost Kyouya-Onodera-like in their astute, detached analysis. Nana found herself, for the first time in her interactions with Michiru, on the back foot, her usual manipulative conversational tactics strangely ineffective against this suddenly perceptive, almost cynical version of her normally guileless friend. This "Michiru" even questioned Nana’s "mind-reading" Talent with a directness that was startling, forcing Nana to feign a sudden, debilitating headache and claim her powers were unfortunately weak and unreliable that particular day. Nana was baffled, even slightly paranoid; it was as if Michiru had undergone a complete and inexplicable personality transplant overnight. In reality, Jin, using a sophisticated illusion or subtle mental suggestion Talent that allowed him to temporarily overlay his mannerisms and lines of questioning onto the unsuspecting girl (or perhaps even fully impersonating her, if his abilities were that advanced), was actively testing Nana, gauging her reactions, her intelligence, and the limits of her own deceptions from behind the disarming guise of her most ardent, trusting follower.

The culmination of Jin’s quiet, meticulous investigation into Nana Hiiragi and her operational methods came during one of "Michiru’s" now-regular visits to Nana’s dorm room. The real Michiru, trusting and eager for Nana’s company as always, had prattled on about her day, then, feeling a little warm, had decided to take a quick, refreshing bath in Nana’s small ensuite bathroom, leaving "Michiru" (Jin, in his current disguised observation mode) alone in Nana’s modest living area. This was precisely the opportunity Jin had been patiently waiting for, an unguarded moment he had subtly engineered.

While the sound of running water and Michiru’s off-key humming echoed faintly from the bathroom, Jin, moving with a silent, practiced efficiency that utterly belied the clumsy, endearing persona of Michiru Inukai, located Nana’s ever-present, Committee-issued mobile phone. It lay innocently on her nightstand. Jin had long suspected something was profoundly amiss with Nana's seemingly direct line of communication to her handlers. Her ability to receive detailed orders and transmit reports from an island supposedly under a strict communication blackout had always struck him as a significant operational flaw, or a carefully constructed deception.

With deft, nimble fingers, Jin navigated the phone’s simple operating system, easily bypassing Nana's rudimentary passcode – a four-digit sequence embarrassingly easy to guess for someone with his observational skills. Jin didn’t attempt to make an outgoing call or send a message, knowing such an action would likely be logged, traced, or might even trigger some hidden security protocol. Instead, he focused his attention on the incoming call logs, the message archives, and the phone’s underlying software architecture, running a series of silent, non-invasive diagnostic checks that would be entirely invisible to a casual user like Nana.

The discovery was both illuminating and deeply chilling: the phone was a sophisticated sham, a cleverly designed closed-loop system. It could send signals, or at least give the convincing appearance of doing so, transmitting Nana’s reports into a dead-end receiver. But it couldn’t receive genuine, unscripted incoming communications from any external, human source. All the "replies" from her supposed handler, "Commander Tsuruoka," the new directives, the words of encouragement or admonishment – they were all generated by an incredibly advanced, adaptive AI program housed within the phone itself. This AI responded to Nana’s reports and queries with pre-programmed, contextually relevant, and psychologically manipulative scripts, creating a flawless illusion of direct, two-way communication. Nana Hiiragi believed she had a vital, secure line to her superiors; in reality, she was conversing with a highly sophisticated algorithm, her detailed reports vanishing into the digital ether, her orders conjured by a machine designed to keep her compliant, motivated, and murderously on task.

Jin carefully replaced the phone exactly where it had been, a grim, cold understanding settling within him. Nana wasn’t just a killer; she was a profoundly isolated puppet, more thoroughly manipulated and controlled by the Committee than even she could possibly imagine. This information was extraordinarily valuable, another critical piece in the complex, horrifying puzzle of the island, its true purpose, and the shadowy, ruthless organization that pulled all their strings.

When the real Michiru Inukai emerged from her bath a few minutes later, refreshed, changed into her pajamas, and cheerfully oblivious, Jin (still maintaining his flawless Michiru disguise) was sitting exactly where she’d left him, perhaps idly flipping through one of Nana’s textbooks, offering a perfectly innocent, sweet smile.

Arthur Ainsworth, meanwhile, remained entirely unaware of these hidden manoeuvres, these subtle games of espionage and counter-espionage playing out in the shadows around him. He was still grappling with the aftermath of the time traveler’s death, his mind consumed with trying to anticipate Nana’s next victim, his world largely confined to the deadly, predictable script he half-remembered from a world away. The island, he was slowly beginning to realize, held far more secrets and far more dangerous players than he currently knew, and the true game was infinitely more complex than a simple, desperate confrontation between a reluctant transmigrator and a pink-haired teenage assassin. Other, older schemes were in motion, and Jin Tachibana, the silent enigma, was quietly, patiently pulling strings from the deep, unnoticed shadows.

Chapter 11: The Time Traveler's End

The brutal, efficient murders of the two bullies, Etsuko and Marika, served as a chilling punctuation mark in the ongoing, silent reign of terror orchestrated by Nana Hiiragi. While those killings might have been, in part, opportunistic or driven by a cold, strategic desire to protect her new “project,” Michiru Inukai, Arthur knew that Nana was also methodically working her way through the list of Talents provided by her shadowy handler, Tsuruoka. She was identifying and neutralizing those individuals whose abilities were deemed a significant future threat to the Committee’s unseen agenda.

One such individual, whose very existence posed a direct and intolerable risk to Nana’s operational secrecy, was Yuusuke Tachibana. Tachibana was a boisterous, somewhat arrogant, and often loudmouthed boy whose Talent was one of the most potentially disruptive on the island: he could, with a visible shimmer and a slight dizzying effect on nearby observers, travel through time. His ability wasn’t precise or grand; he couldn’t leap years into the past or future. Rather, he experienced short, often uncontrolled, and disorienting bursts into the very near past, usually just a few seconds or, at most, a couple of minutes. He’d often use it in a showy, almost juvenile way – replaying a dropped catch in a ball game to make a spectacular save, or “predicting” the next card to be turned over in a casual game by having already seen it a moment before. But Nana, with her assassin’s mindset, would undoubtedly see the immense danger in such an ability. Someone who could potentially witness her committing a murder, or preparing a trap, and then rewind time, however briefly, to expose her or warn her victim, was an unacceptable variable.

Arthur watched with a growing sense of dread as Nana subtly began to engage Tachibana in conversation over several days. Her questions were always light, posed with an air of innocent, almost girlish curiosity, expertly probing the nature, range, and limitations of his unique Talent. Tachibana, clearly flattered by the attention from the pretty and popular class representative, boasted openly and carelessly about his abilities, demonstrating them with small, unnecessary temporal skips, entirely oblivious to the predatory intelligence gathering happening behind Nana’s bright, encouraging smile and wide violet eyes.

Knowing Tachibana’s grim fate from the anime – a lonely, silent death by drowning in the island’s picturesque, deceptively tranquil lake – Arthur felt a particular, gnawing urgency. Tachibana, for all his casual arrogance and showboating, wasn’t malicious. His Talent, while potentially problematic for a clandestine operative like Nana, hadn’t been used to harm anyone. He was simply a boy with an extraordinary, poorly understood gift, who was about to pay the ultimate price for it.

Arthur sought out Tachibana during a relatively quiet free period, finding him by the lake’s edge, cheerfully and rather inexpertly skipping flat stones across its placid, sun-dappled surface. The water was a deep, inviting blue, its stillness belying the cold darkness that lay beneath.

“Tachibana-san,” Arthur began, his phone held ready, the synthesized Japanese voice emerging into the peaceful lakeside air. He gestured vaguely towards the shimmering water. “A word of caution, if I may. From one wielder of a… perception-altering Talent to another.” He paused, trying to imbue his next words with a suitable gravity. “My own Talent… it sometimes shows me ripples, disturbances in the flow of things, especially around those with powerful or unusual abilities. Your ability, Tachibana-san… it creates such significant ripples. Be wary of still waters today. Very wary indeed. Still waters can be… deceptive.” He tried to inject a note of ominous foreboding into the translated warning, hoping to pierce through Tachibana’s characteristic self-assurance.

Tachibana laughed, a loud, confident, dismissive sound that sent a flock of small birds scattering from the nearby trees. “Ripples? Disturbances? Still waters? Don’t you worry your strange little head about me, Tanaka-kun,” he said, with an arrogant grin, not even bothering to look away from his stone-skipping. “If I see any hint of trouble, I’ll just pop back a few minutes and avoid it altogether! That’s the great thing about my Talent, isn’t it? I’m practically untouchable.” He selected another flat stone and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it skittering across the lake’s surface, supremely self-assured and clearly unconcerned by Arthur’s cryptic, unsolicited pronouncement.

Arthur sighed internally, a wave of helpless frustration washing over him. He’d tried. He’d delivered the warning as clearly and as ominously as he could without revealing his true knowledge. But Tachibana’s overconfidence in his own ability was an impenetrable shield against any form of caution.

A day later, Yuusuke Tachibana was officially reported missing by a “concerned” Mr. Saito after he failed to appear for morning classes.

Nana Hiiragi, naturally, was at the forefront of the students feigning distress and organizing impromptu search parties that, Arthur noted with a grim certainty, conspicuously and deliberately avoided any thorough search of the lake area or its immediate surroundings. He knew, with a chilling clarity, what had happened. Nana would have lured Tachibana to the lake, perhaps under the pretext of wanting to see his fascinating Talent in action in a “safe, open space where no one would be accidentally affected by his temporal shifts.” Then, at a moment when he was vulnerable, perhaps mid-skip, disoriented, or simply distracted by her deceptive charm, she would have incapacitated him – a swift blow to the head, perhaps, or a poisoned needle if she wanted to be certain – and then, with cold, brutal efficiency, drowned him in the cold, unforgiving waters of the lake. A silent, lonely end, leaving no immediate trace, no struggling victim to rewind time and raise an alarm.

The true, macabre horror of her plan, however, came a little later that same day. Arthur observed Nana in a quiet, intense conversation with Sorano Aijima, a timid, easily intimidated girl whose Talent was cryokinesis – the ability to freeze water and lower temperatures significantly in her immediate vicinity. He didn’t need to hear their hushed words, or see the fear in Sorano’s eyes as Nana spoke with that terrifyingly sweet smile, to understand the purpose of their interaction. Nana was coercing her, using a mixture of charm, subtle threats, and the authority of her position as class representative.

That evening, a sudden, unseasonable, and highly localized cold snap seemed to settle over the lake. By the next morning, a significant portion of its surface was frozen solid, a glittering, unnaturally smooth sheet of ice under the pale, indifferent winter sun.

Some of the more adventurous and less thoughtful students, thrilled by the unexpected novelty, somehow managed to procure a motley collection of old ice skates – where from, on this isolated island, Arthur couldn’t begin to imagine. Soon, they were gliding, laughing, and performing clumsy pirouettes across the frozen expanse, their cheerful shouts echoing across the water, entirely oblivious to the horrifying fact that they were dancing on Yuusuke Tachibana’s watery, icy grave. Nana Hiiragi watched them from the lake’s edge, a small, almost imperceptible, chillingly satisfied smile playing on her lips. The evidence of her crime was now sealed away, perfectly preserved, at least until the spring thaw, by which time she would likely be long gone, or other events would have overtaken this one.

Arthur felt a particular, visceral coldness towards this murder. Hoshino, at least, had been dying anyway, his life already tragically curtailed. The bullies had been actively cruel, inviting retribution in their own small way. Habu had been a blackmailer, practically signing his own death warrant with his foolish arrogance. But Tachibana… Tachibana had been guilty of nothing more than possessing a powerful, potentially disruptive Talent and a naive, boyish trust in a pretty, pink-haired girl. Nana hadn’t even allowed him the dignity of a swift, forgotten end, instead encasing him in an icy tomb, his final resting place a spectacle for the unknowing, a grotesque parody of winter fun.

He stood by the edge of the frozen lake, the cheerful, carefree shouts of the skaters grating on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. His phone felt heavy and useless in his pocket. What good were his warnings, his fragmented knowledge, if they were so easily dismissed, so effortlessly circumvented by arrogance or naivety? He was failing, again and again, in his self-appointed, impossible mission. Each death was another heavy stone added to the crushing weight on his conscience, another name on a list he was powerless to shorten. The vibrant, living world of the island, with its sunlit paths and whispering bamboo groves, felt increasingly like a meticulously crafted, beautiful stage for Nana Hiiragi’s deadly, unending performances, and he, one of the few who knew the horrifying script, could only watch in mute, impotent despair as the body count continued to rise.

Chapter 10: The Bullies and a Calculated Message

Life on the island continued its grim, unsettling rhythm, a macabre dance between Nana Hiiragi’s relentless, unseen hunt and Arthur Ainsworth’s increasingly desperate, often futile, attempts to anticipate her moves and shield potential victims. After the murder of Touichirou Hoshino and her spectacular failure to eliminate the immortal Kyouya Onodera, Nana seemed to withdraw slightly, her usual bubbly energy muted by a layer of something colder, more watchful. Arthur knew this wasn't a reprieve, but a recalculation. She would be feeling the pressure from Tsuruoka, needing to demonstrate continued success. He feared she might target someone less formidable, an easier mark to reassert her deadly prowess.

His attention, and a growing sense of protective unease, was increasingly drawn to Michiru Inukai. A small, unassuming girl with a cloud of startlingly white, incredibly fluffy hair that seemed to possess a life of its own, Michiru exuded an aura of gentle, almost painfully earnest innocence. She was kind to a fault, quick to offer help or a shy smile, often to her own detriment in the harsh social ecosystem of the isolated academy. And it was this inherent vulnerability, this lack of guile, that soon made her an unfortunate target – not for Nana, not yet, but for a pair of mean-spirited, bored female students who had clearly identified Michiru as an easy mark for their petty cruelties.

Arthur first witnessed their bullying during a lunch break in the bustling, noisy canteen. The two girls, Etsuko and Marika, whose names he’d reluctantly learned through ambient classroom chatter, had cornered Michiru near the tray return. They were taunting her in rapid, spiteful Japanese that Arthur’s phone, tucked away, couldn’t catch, but their sneering expressions and aggressive postures were universally translatable. They mocked her fluffy hair, calling it “lamb’s wool” and “dandelion fluff,” tugging at it playfully, yet painfully. They belittled her shyness, her quiet voice, her general lack of assertiveness. Then, with a deliberately clumsy shove, Etsuko knocked Michiru’s carefully stacked lunch tray from her hands, sending her bowl of soup and chopsticks clattering and splashing across the floor. Their laughter was sharp, malicious, drawing a few uncomfortable glances from nearby students who quickly looked away, unwilling to get involved. Michiru, her face flaming red, close to tears, just stood there, trembling, absorbing the humiliation, stammering apologies for her own “clumsiness.”

Before Arthur could even formulate a stilted, phone-translated intervention – what would he even say? How could he interfere without drawing dangerous attention to himself? – a clear, bright voice cut through the air, sharp as a shard of ice despite its sweet tone. “Is there a problem here, ladies?”

It was Nana Hiiragi. She walked towards the tense little group, her expression one of polite, innocent concern, though Arthur, now highly attuned to her micro-expressions, detected a steely, almost predatory glint in her violet eyes.

“This is none of your business, Class Rep,” Etsuko sneered, though she looked significantly less confident now, her bravado faltering under Nana’s direct, unwavering gaze. Marika, her cohort, merely shuffled her feet and avoided eye contact.

“Oh, but I think it is my business,” Nana said, her smile unwavering, yet somehow conveying an icy displeasure. “It’s never pleasant to see someone upsetting a classmate, especially one as sweet as Inukai-san.” She gestured towards the mess on the floor. “Now, why don’t you two apologize properly to Inukai-san for your rudeness and help her clean this up? Then, perhaps, we can all just forget this unfortunate little incident ever happened.” Her tone was light, almost playful, but the underlying current of command was unmistakable.

Etsuko and Marika, clearly unwilling to pick a direct fight with the popular, deceptively formidable class representative, and perhaps sensing the dangerous undercurrent beneath her smile, mumbled a reluctant, insincere apology. They made a token, clumsy effort to pick up the debris before slinking away, casting venomous glares back at a bewildered Michiru.

Nana then turned to Michiru, her face instantly softening into an expression of pure, heartfelt sympathy. She gently took Michiru’s trembling hand. “Are you alright, Inukai-san? Please don’t listen to them. Their words are meaningless. And for what it’s worth,” she added, her smile becoming genuinely warm as she gently touched a strand of Michiru’s cloud-like hair, “I think your hair is absolutely lovely. Like freshly fallen snow.”

Michiru, overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, could only stammer her thanks, her eyes shining with unshed tears. From that moment on, her devotion to Nana Hiiragi became absolute, almost worshipful. She trailed after Nana like a devoted, fluffy white puppy, her loyalty unwavering and unquestioning, seeing in the pink-haired girl a savior and a true friend.

Arthur watched this entire exchange with a complicated, sinking feeling in his stomach. Nana’s intervention had been smooth, effective, and undeniably helpful to Michiru in that moment. But he also knew, with a weary certainty, that Nana rarely, if ever, did anything without a calculated motive. She was likely cultivating Michiru as an unwitting pawn, a source of information, a loyal admirer whose devotion could be exploited for an alibi, or perhaps even as a human shield if necessary. The almost tender way Nana had mentioned Michiru’s “lovely” white, fluffy hair sent a particular, ominous chill down Arthur’s spine – a grim, unwelcome echo of the fabricated future he’d described to Nana during their first unsettling lunchtime encounter. A woman approaches… white, fluffy hair… He wondered, with a jolt of unease, if Nana herself felt any resonance, or if his bizarre words had been buried too deep under layers of her own deceptions and the Committee’s indoctrination.

The bullies, however, had made a fatal, if unknowing, mistake. They had drawn Nana Hiiragi’s direct attention, and not in a favorable way. They had threatened and humiliated someone Nana had, for whatever strategic or nascent emotional reason, decided to take under her wing.

A few days later, the first bully, Etsuko, was found dead in her dorm room by her horrified roommate. The official cause of death, after a cursory examination by the island’s doctor, was listed as a sudden, violent, and inexplicable allergic reaction. Arthur, however, felt a cold knot of certainty in his gut. He remembered a chilling detail from the anime – a virtually untraceable method of assassination involving a contact lens coated with a fast-acting, synthesized poison. Nana was nothing if not meticulous, her methods designed to leave minimal evidence.

The second bully, Marika, met her end a week later, under even more elaborate and horrifying circumstances. Her body, alongside that of another girl Arthur didn’t recognize – likely an unfortunate acquaintance who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time – was discovered on a secluded, windswept stretch of beach on the island’s western shore. Both had apparently succumbed to a fast-acting, potent poison, consistent with the effects of Nana’s signature tainted needles. The discovery of two more deaths, so soon after Etsuko’s, rocked the already traumatized student body, sending fresh waves of fear and paranoia through the dormitories.

But Nana, Arthur knew, would have already woven her alibi with her usual chilling foresight. As Kyouya Onodera, his expression grimmer than usual, began his inevitable, meticulous investigation, it soon came to light that the unknown girl, just moments before her estimated time of death, had apparently sent a seemingly innocuous text message to Marika’s phone. The message, something trivial about meeting up on the beach, was found on Marika’s phone, which lay beside her lifeless hand. The timestamp on the message suggested Marika had died first, and the other girl had texted her, unaware of her friend’s demise, before also succumbing to whatever unknown toxin had claimed them.

Arthur, however, knew Nana’s almost supernatural cunning. He recalled the gruesome, ingenious trick from the source material: Nana would have killed them both, likely Marika first, then the other girl. Then, using the second dead girl’s phone, she would have angled it precisely on the sand so that the bright, unimpeded sunlight, refracted through a deliberately cracked portion of the phone’s screen, would overheat a specific point on the touch-sensitive display, simulating a finger press and sending the pre-typed message. It was a diabolical, if ghoulishly clever, way to manufacture a timeline that seemingly exonerated her from any involvement.

He listened with a growing sense of revulsion as the teachers discussed the “tragic accident,” the “unforeseen environmental toxicity” perhaps from some poisonous marine life they’d touched or something they’d unknowingly ingested on the desolate beach. He watched Kyouya Onodera frown at the cracked phone screen presented as evidence, a thoughtful, deeply suspicious expression on his face. Kyouya was no fool; he would sense the artificiality, the staged nature of it all, even if he couldn’t yet prove it.

For Arthur, these latest, brutal deaths were another stark, chilling reminder of Nana’s unwavering ruthlessness and her terrifying adaptability. He was managing, by the skin of his teeth, to protect Nanao Nakajima, for now, but he was just one increasingly weary, emotionally frayed man with severely limited resources and a fragile, dangerous secret. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, couldn’t save everyone on Nana’s list. Each murder Nana committed was another gruesome piece of data for him, another chilling insight into her methods and her mindset, but it was also another young life extinguished, another soul lost, another failure weighing heavily on his already overburdened conscience. He felt like a grim accountant, silently cataloguing the dead in a secret war he had no hope of winning, only, perhaps, surviving for a little longer. And with each successful, unpunished kill, Nana’s confidence, her sense of untouchability, and the omnipresent danger she posed to everyone on the island, only seemed to grow.

Chapter 9: Immortality and a Doomed Boy

Arthur’s grotesque and shocking presentation with Shinji’s severed head had undeniably sent profound shockwaves through the student body and the teaching staff. It had also, in its own horrific way, achieved one of his desperate objectives: Yūka Somezaki was broken, her necromantic Talent voluntarily renounced, and thus, she was no longer an immediate, practicing threat that Nana Hiiragi might feel compelled to eliminate. However, Arthur knew this act of desperate intervention wouldn’t stop Nana for long. She was a force of nature, a meticulously programmed killer, and she would simply recalibrate and move on to other names on her unseen list.

And so she did. Perhaps driven by a need to understand or neutralize one of the most overtly powerful Talents on the island, or maybe even by a flicker of genuine curiosity that occasionally surfaced beneath her assassin’s programming, Nana Hiiragi found herself accepting an unexpected invitation. Kyouya Onodera, the aloof, white-haired boy who had bluntly declared his immortality upon arrival, had invited her to his small, somewhat dilapidated house on the outskirts of the main school grounds. It was an unusual gesture from the solitary Kyouya, and Nana, ever watchful for an opportunity to assess a potential threat or gather intelligence, had agreed.

Arthur only learned of this visit later, through the island’s surprisingly efficient student rumour mill – whispers of Nana being seen heading towards Kyouya’s secluded cottage – and by his own grim piecing together of the explosive events that followed.

During Nana’s visit to Kyouya’s surprisingly cluttered and book-filled house, as she’d excused herself to use his small, old-fashioned bathroom, she was reportedly struck by an almost overwhelming olfactory assault – the cloying, combined scent of various strong, masculine toiletries: harsh antiseptic soaps, pine-scented shampoos, a bracingly powerful aftershave, all mingling in the small, poorly ventilated space. When she casually commented on the rather potent aroma, remarking that he must have a fondness for particularly fragrant products, Kyouya had merely looked blank, a slight frown of confusion on his face. He claimed, with apparent sincerity, that he didn’t smell anything particularly strong or out of the ordinary.

It was then, Arthur deduced, that Nana, with her razor-sharp observational skills and intuitive understanding of human tells, realized Kyouya Onodera suffered from anosmia – the partial or complete inability to smell. A critical weakness, hidden in plain sight.

This discovery, Arthur knew, would have immediately sparked a deadly, opportunistic idea in Nana’s cold, calculating mind. Kyouya’s older, somewhat neglected house, unlike the more modern dormitories, still utilized bottled gas for its heating and cooking appliances. Anosmia meant he wouldn’t detect a gas leak until it was far too late. It was a perfect, almost untraceable method of elimination for an otherwise unkillable target.

A day or two after Nana’s seemingly innocuous visit, a powerful, ground-shaking explosion ripped through the northern, more secluded part of the island, sending a roiling plume of black smoke billowing into the clear afternoon sky. Panic, a now familiar companion to the students, flared anew. Teachers, their faces pale with alarm, rushed towards the site of the blast. Arthur’s heart sank with a sickening thud; he knew immediately where it had occurred, what it signified. He could almost picture Nana, arriving at the scene with a carefully orchestrated display of shock and concern, perhaps even feigning an attempt to "rescue" Kyouya, all the while expecting to find his scattered, incinerated remains among the smouldering wreckage.

Instead, she would have witnessed the utterly impossible: Kyouya Onodera, emerging like a phantom from the smoking, demolished ruin of his home, his clothes scorched, his skin blackened, yet already regenerating before her very eyes. Cuts would have been sealing, burns fading to new pink skin, his white hair dishevelled but his body remaking itself with an unnerving, silent speed.

Later, Kyouya, with his characteristic, infuriating stoicism, would have calmly confirmed to a stunned, undoubtedly seething Nana that yes, he was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Her meticulously planned assassination, exploiting a cleverly deduced hidden weakness, had failed spectacularly against a Talent that trumped even her lethal precision. For Nana, it must have been a deeply frustrating, almost insulting setback, another name she couldn’t cross off her list. For Arthur, hearing the fragmented, awed accounts of the explosion and Kyouya’s miraculous survival, it was another grim confirmation of the established script, a small island of terrible predictability in the chaotic, churning sea of his new reality. Kyouya Onodera was a problem Nana couldn’t easily solve.

While Nana was grappling with the Kyouya problem and the aftershocks of Arthur’s classroom stunt, another, quieter tragedy was inexorably unfolding, one that Arthur felt with a particular, poignant helplessness: the fading life of Touichirou Hoshino. Arthur remembered Hoshino vividly from the anime – a frail, gentle-faced boy with a shy smile and a Talent for cryokinesis, who was, by his own quiet admission to a few trusted classmates, slowly, inexorably dying of an aggressive, untreatable form of cancer. His time was short, regardless of Nana Hiiragi’s murderous intervention.

Arthur felt a particular, unexpected pang of sympathy for Hoshino. He knew the boy didn’t have long, and the thought of Nana callously cutting that already tragically short life even shorter, purely to meet some unseen, monstrous quota, filled him with a quiet, impotent rage. It struck too close to home, perhaps – the specter of mortality, the unfairness of a life curtailed. He’d tried, in his awkward, phone-assisted way, to find Hoshino during breaks in the days following the Yūka incident, hoping to offer some small, stilted comfort, perhaps even a vague, reassuring “prediction” of a peaceful passing to ease the boy’s final days. But Hoshino, increasingly weak, was often secluded in his room, resting, or had simply wandered off to find a quiet spot to be alone with his thoughts and his pain. He was proving difficult to find.

And then, Arthur was too late.

News, carefully managed and somberly delivered, filtered through the school via a visibly grieving Mr. Saito: Hoshino Touichirou had been found dead. The official story, corroborated by a “traumatized” but “brave” Nana Hiiragi, was that Hoshino, in a bout of melancholic restlessness, had wandered off from the main school grounds, seeking solitude in one of the island’s many natural caves. Nana, ever the caring class representative, had noticed his absence and, filled with concern, had gone looking for him. She’d found him deep within a dark, damp cave, just as they were suddenly, inexplicably attacked by shadowy, indistinct figures – the ubiquitous “Enemies of Humanity.” Hoshino, in a final, heroic act of self-sacrifice, had apparently tried to protect Nana with his ice Talent, but had been fatally stabbed in the struggle. Nana herself, she tearfully recounted, had sustained a “defensive wound” to her forearm – a shallow, suspiciously neat cut – while “bravely” fighting off the attackers before fleeing to report the terrible tragedy.

It was a neat, almost plausible story, playing perfectly into the prevailing atmosphere of fear and paranoia that the school authorities seemed keen to cultivate. But Arthur knew the sickening truth. Nana had found Hoshino alone in that cave, likely in his final, pain-wracked hours, and had murdered him with her poisoned pen-knife, a quick, “merciful” elimination to tick another name off Tsuruoka’s list. The self-inflicted wound was merely a theatrical prop, a cynical flourish to solidify her alibi and paint herself as both a heroine and a fellow victim.

Kyouya Onodera, who had also been present among the group of students and teachers to whom Nana recounted her harrowing tale, had listened with his usual unnerving, impassive expression. But Arthur, watching from the periphery of the shocked gathering, saw the almost imperceptible narrowing of Kyouya’s eyes, the way his gaze lingered for a fraction too long on Nana’s artfully bandaged “wound.” Kyouya was suspicious. He didn’t buy Nana’s overly dramatic, conveniently vague story, not entirely. The pieces weren’t fitting together neatly enough for his sharply analytical mind.

For Arthur, Hoshino’s death, and the fabricated narrative surrounding it, was another heavy, suffocating blow. He hadn’t even been able to offer a single kind word, a moment of shared humanity. He was a man who supposedly held disruptive glimpses of the future, yet he was constantly, frustratingly outmanoeuvred by the brutal, unfolding present. He retreated to the relative anonymity of his dorm room that evening, the phone idle in his hand, the English words of frustration, grief, and self-recrimination dammed up inside him, untranslatable by any app, comprehensible only to the silent, judgmental ghosts of his own conscience. He was an unwilling passenger on a ship of fools, sailing straight into a maelstrom, able to see the waves crashing ahead but with his hands bound, unable to steer clear of the jagged, waiting rocks. The weight of his terrible knowledge, and his profound, repeated inability to act effectively on all fronts, was becoming a leaden cloak, threatening to drag him down into the depths of despair.

Chapter 8: A Head in the Classroom

Arthur managed to slip back into the hushed, pre-dawn stillness of the dormitory just as the faintest hint of grey was outlining the window frames. He looked like something dredged from a nightmare – his clothes were torn, caked with mud, and stained with darker, more ominous patches he refused to identify. His face was smudged with dirt, his hair matted with sweat and grime, and a wild, haunted, almost feral look burned in his eyes. He moved with the stiff, jerky movements of someone pushed far beyond their physical and emotional limits.

He quickly, furtively, bundled the obscene canvas satchel, with its horrifying, weighty contents, into the dark recesses at the bottom of his rickety wardrobe, beneath a pile of seldom-used spare blankets. Then, he made his way to the communal showers. He scrubbed himself raw under the steaming water, trying to wash away the physical filth and the clinging, fetid odour of the night’s gruesome ordeal, but the mental contamination, the profound sense of self-loathing and violation, felt indelible. His hands, when he eventually managed to stop their violent trembling, still felt slick with an imaginary residue.

He skipped breakfast, the mere thought of food threatening to bring up the meagre contents of his stomach. He spent the early part of the morning in a dissociated daze, sitting rigidly on the edge of his bed, the image of Shinji’s lifeless, accusing eyes and the horrifying, sickening thud of rock against decaying bone replaying in an endless, torturous loop in his mind. He had to do this. He had to see this terrible, self-appointed task through. There was no turning back now. The die was cast.

The opportunity he’d been dreading, yet grimly anticipating, came during a long, unstructured free period before lunch. Most of the students were in the classroom, the usual low hum of chatter, the rustle of textbook pages, and the occasional burst of laughter filling the air with a deceptive sense of normalcy. Mr. Saito was at his desk at the front, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, diligently grading papers. Yūka Somezaki was present, huddled at her usual isolated desk near the back, looking even more pale and drawn than usual. She kept darting nervous, frightened glances towards Arthur, her hands twisting restlessly in her lap. She clearly hadn’t slept well after his ominous “warning” the previous day.

Arthur took a deep, steadying breath, the air feeling thick and heavy in his lungs. He retrieved the heavy canvas satchel from his room, its grim weight a palpable reminder of his night’s work. He walked to the front of the classroom, the satchel held carefully in front of him. The low hum of chatter gradually died down as students noticed him, their expressions shifting from indifference to curiosity, then to a dawning unease. He looked tired, dishevelled, and profoundly grim – a stark, unsettling contrast to his usual awkward, almost invisible demeanour. He placed his phone on a nearby empty desk, its screen lighting up.

“Yesterday,” his translated voice began, the synthesized Japanese tones cutting cleanly through the sudden, expectant silence, “I mentioned my growing concerns about the activities of the ‘Enemies of Humanity’ and their potential operations on the north side of this island. Last night, I took it upon myself to investigate those concerns further.”

He paused, letting the tension build, his gaze sweeping slowly across the room, taking in the rows of young, now apprehensive faces. He looked particularly tired, his eyes bloodshot, his posture radiating a bone-deep weariness that was entirely genuine.

“The encounter was… more harrowing than I could have possibly imagined,” he continued, his voice via the phone carefully measured, almost flat, which only served to heighten the underlying menace. “They are more dangerous, more depraved, than any of us can truly comprehend. It seems they may have found a new, terrifying weapon… or perhaps, a new, unholy method for creating their soldiers.” He let his gaze linger for a charged moment on Yūka Somezaki, whose eyes were now wide with a dawning, visceral horror. She looked like a trapped animal. “They may be… reanimating the dead. Or perhaps… the dead are their new weapon.”

A collective, sharp intake of breath, a series of stifled gasps, went through the classroom. Horrified whispers erupted, quickly shushed by the sheer gravity of his pronouncement. Mr. Saito looked up sharply from his papers, his expression morphing from mild irritation at the interruption to genuine alarm.

Arthur slowly began to walk down the central aisle between the rows of desks, the canvas satchel held carefully, almost reverently, in front of him. Students leaned away instinctively as he passed, a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity on their faces. He could feel Nana Hiiragi’s sharp, intensely analytical gaze on him, a silent, probing question in her eyes. Kyouya Onodera’s stare was equally intense, unblinking, his usual impassivity overlaid with a flicker of something that might have been cold, scientific interest. Arthur stopped when he reached Yūka Somezaki’s desk.

Her face was chalk-white, devoid of all colour, her breath coming in shallow, rapid, audible gasps. She looked like she was about to bolt, her eyes darting wildly between Arthur, the ominous bag, and the distant, unreachable sanctuary of the classroom door.

“I brought back… evidence,” Arthur’s phone announced into the suddenly tomb-like, suffocating silence of the room. With a deliberate, almost ceremonial movement, he lifted the heavy, cloth-covered satchel and placed it directly onto the polished surface of Yūka’s desk. The top of the bag was loosely tied with a drawstring, but a horrifyingly familiar, vaguely spherical shape, still partially obscured by the stained canvas, was sickeningly evident. A hint of dark, matted hair. The pale, obscene curve of a decaying forehead. The unmistakable, ghastly outline of a human head.

Yūka Somezaki stared at the bag, her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the dreadful shape within. A strangled, gurgling whimper escaped her lips. Her body began to tremble violently. Then, she let out a raw, piercing, animalistic scream that seemed to tear through the very fabric of the room, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror and shattered sanity. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped sideways, fainting dead away, her chair crashing to the floor with a deafening clatter.

The classroom exploded into utter chaos. Students shrieked, some scrambling back from their desks in blind panic, knocking over more chairs, their faces contorted in horror and disbelief. Mr. Saito rushed forward, his own face a mask of horrified disbelief and dawning anger. “Tanaka-kun! What is the meaning of this outrage? What have you done?!” he babbled, his voice cracking.

Kyouya Onodera was on his feet, not joining the general panic, but moving with a grim, purposeful stride towards Yūka’s desk, his eyes narrowed, fixed on the dreadful bag and its horrifying contents. Nana Hiiragi, however, remained seated, a preternatural calm amidst the pandemonium. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her pen, her gaze flitting with sharp, analytical intensity between the bag, the unconscious Yūka, and Arthur himself. A chillingly thoughtful, almost appraising expression settled on her face. Arthur had just thrown a live, decapitated grenade into her carefully managed hunting ground, and she was trying to understand the trajectory, the motive, the potential fallout.

The immediate aftermath was a blur of hysterical shouting, terrified crying, and Mr. Saito’s increasingly desperate, high-pitched attempts to restore some semblance of order. The dreadful bag and its horrifying contents were quickly, and with much trepidation, removed by a shaken, pale-faced Mr. Saito himself, who then had Yūka carried off to the school infirmary by two equally terrified older students. Arthur found himself being sternly interrogated by a visibly furious Mr. Saito and another grim-faced teacher in the corridor, his phone struggling to keep up with the barrage of angry questions and accusations. He stuck rigidly to his story: he had found the reanimated corpse, a clear and undeniable sign of the ‘Enemies of Humanity’ at work on their very doorstep. He was merely presenting irrefutable proof of a dangerous new threat. He was met with profound disbelief, horrified condemnation for his barbaric methods, and stern warnings about vigilante actions, but no one could deny the sheer, visceral horror of what he had unveiled. The image of that bag, that shape, would be seared into their minds for a long time.

Later that day, after the initial chaos had subsided into a sort of stunned, fearful quiet, Nana Hiiragi, driven by a potent mixture of cold suspicion, intellectual curiosity, and the pressing need to understand this new, unpredictable variable that Arthur Tanaka represented, visited Yūka in her dormitory room. Yūka had been discharged from the infirmary but was clearly in a state of profound psychological distress, sedated but still babbling incoherently about Shinji, about monsters with decaying faces, about heads in bags.

Nana, seeing an opportunity to probe Yūka’s shattered psyche and perhaps confirm her own suspicions about the girl’s true Talent, began her subtle, psychological torment. "The dead are restless, aren’t they, Somezaki-san," Nana might have said, her voice a soft, sympathetic, almost hypnotic coo, as she sat beside Yūka’s bed. "They whisper things to me sometimes, you know? Especially around those who are… close to them. They say… they say Shinji is lonely. They say you should join him. They even whisper… that you should kill me before I tell everyone your dark secrets."

This, Arthur surmised from his anime knowledge, was the point at which Nana would have feigned terror at her own “revelations,” fleeing dramatically into the nearby woods, deliberately goading a terrified and now highly suggestible Yūka into sending her reanimated servitors (likely lesser zombies she’d created from small animals or perhaps even older, forgotten human remains from the island’s lightless past) after her. Nana would have then easily evaded them, using the orchestrated chase to confirm Yūka’s necromantic Talent beyond any doubt. She would have then confronted the distraught Yūka, expecting to force a full confession about the arson that had killed the real Shinji, before delivering her own fatal, poisoned strike.

But things didn’t go exactly as Nana might have planned, or as Arthur had recalled from the source material. Arthur’s brutal, shockingly public display with Shinji’s severed head had already done irreparable damage to Yūka’s carefully constructed delusions. The foundation of her morbid obsession had been shattered. When Nana confronted her, after the feigned flight and the easily evaded pursuit of a few pathetic, shambling creatures, Yūka was already broken, a hollow shell of her former self. She confessed to the fire, yes, her words tumbling out in a torrent of guilt, self-loathing, and raw terror, but her confession was interspersed with horrified babbling about Shinji’s true, decaying face, the unimaginable horror in that canvas bag, the monstrousness of it all. She wasn't just confessing a crime; she was reliving a profound, sanity-shattering trauma.

Nana, poised to strike, her poisoned needle glinting faintly in the dim light of the dorm room, hesitated. Yūka was a wreck, utterly defeated, her spirit seemingly crushed beyond repair. There was no fight left in her, no defiance, only a raw, pathetic, abject misery. Killing her now felt… empty. Almost unsporting. This wasn’t the calculated elimination of a dangerous, hidden threat; it was like putting down a wounded, whimpering, already dying animal. Perhaps Tsuruoka wouldn’t even count this as a proper, satisfying kill, not with the target already so mentally and emotionally destroyed by another student’s grotesque actions. Nana, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, reasons that felt uncomfortably like a nascent, unwelcome flicker of pity or perhaps even a dawning, unsettling doubt about her own mission, slowly lowered her hand. She left Yūka Somezaki to her madness, a broken toy she no longer had any interest in.

Later that night, alone in her room, tormented by the fractured images of Arthur’s terrible evidence and Nana’s insidious whispers, Yūka Somezaki, in a final, desperate act of denial or a desperate plea for reassurance, tried one last time to summon Shinji. But the image Arthur had so brutally seared into her mind – the decaying, unrecognizable horror in that bag, the vacant eyes, the lolling jaw – had irrevocably tainted her Talent, her connection to her morbid fantasy. When Shinji’s ghostly form flickered into existence before her, it was no longer the romanticised, beloved boyfriend of her carefully nurtured delusions. It was a leering, putrescent corpse, its eyes vacant pits of horror, its flesh sloughing from its bones, its silent scream an echo of her own shattered sanity. She saw, for the first, horrifyingly clear time, what she had truly been embracing, what she had truly become.

The disgust, the self-loathing, the sheer, unadulterated terror, were overwhelming. With a choked, animalistic sob, Yūka screamed at the horrifying apparition, revoking the necromantic energies with a violence that shook her to her core, letting Shinji’s ghastly form dissolve into nothingness for the final, absolute time. She collapsed onto the cold floor, weeping, her body wracked with convulsions, and vowed, with every fibre of her broken being, never again to touch the cursed, defiling power of necromancy.

Arthur, unaware of the specific details of Nana’s subsequent interaction with Yūka, only knew that Yūka Somezaki remained alive, albeit a profoundly changed, withdrawn, and terrified shell of her former self. He had, through a horrifying, morally grey, and deeply traumatizing act, indirectly saved a life from Nana Hiiragi’s list. The cost to his own psyche, however, was mounting with every passing day. He was no hero; he was just a desperate, frightened man playing an increasingly deadly game with pieces of his own sanity, in a world that seemed determined to strip him of every last shred of his former self. And he knew, with a chilling certainty, that his actions had not gone unnoticed by the island's true predator.

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.

Chapter 6: The Camera Fiend

With her meticulous initial plans for Nanao Nakajima temporarily, infuriatingly, thwarted by Arthur’s unsettlingly accurate (or so it seemed to Nanao, at least) premonitions, Nana Hiiragi was a coiled spring of suppressed frustration. Arthur knew her handler, the enigmatic and ruthless Tsuruoka, wouldn’t tolerate delays or failures indefinitely. The invisible pressure on her to perform, to meet her quotas, would be immense. This, Arthur suspected, made her even more dangerous, more volatile, more likely to lash out with cold precision if another complication, another unforeseen variable, arose.

That complication promptly presented itself in the unctuous form of Ryouta Habu. Habu was a lanky, sallow-skinned boy with greasy hair and a perpetually smug expression, rarely seen without a bulky, professional-looking camera slung around his neck. Arthur had already clocked him as a minor creep from his hazy anime memories – the sort of boy who used his proclaimed Talent, the ability to photograph events moments before they happened, for leering, voyeuristic purposes rather than anything noble. His photographs often focused on unflattering angles of female students, or "accidental" upskirt shots, all passed off with a knowing smirk as the unpredictable nature of his future-capturing lens.

The evening after Arthur’s third successful, if nerve-wracking, intervention to keep Nanao safe from Nana’s clutches, the students were gathered in the noisy, brightly lit canteen for their evening meal. Arthur, as had become his habit, was seated alone, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible while keeping a wary eye on Nana. He saw Habu, a predatory glint in his eyes, saunter over to Nana’s table, where she was picking at her food with a distinct lack of her usual cheerful appetite. He was clearly agitated about something.

Habu leaned in conspiratorially, a greasy lock of hair falling into his eyes, and with a theatrical flourish, showed Nana a photograph on his camera’s small digital display. Even from across the crowded, echoing room, Arthur could see Nana’s posture stiffen, her perpetually bright smile dimming for a dangerous fraction of a second before being quickly reasserted, albeit with a noticeable strain. He couldn’t hear the hushed, intense exchange over the din of the canteen, but he could guess its ugly nature. Later, through snippets of terrified, whispered gossip from students who had been seated closer, and by piecing together the grim fragments of his own foreknowledge, he confirmed the sordid details.

“Interesting shot, isn’t it, Hiiragi-san?” Habu had apparently leered, his voice a low, suggestive drawl. The photograph on his camera clearly showed Nana looking intently over the cliff edge where Nanao had nearly been lured just days before. It was a damning image, especially in light of Arthur’s public “prediction.” “I was up there myself, you see, testing out a new telephoto lens. A bit suspicious, you standing there all alone, Hiiragi-san, looking down like that, especially after our peculiar Tanaka-kun had that little ‘vision’ about Nakajima-kun taking a tumble. I think you were going to kill him. I think you were planning to push him.”

Nana, ever the consummate actress, had feigned wide-eyed, innocent confusion, her hand flying to her mouth in a gesture of shock. “Kill him? Nakajima-kun? Why on earth would I ever contemplate doing something so utterly horrible, Habu-kun?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Hiiragi,” Habu had sneered, his confidence bolstered by her apparent dismay. “I know what I saw. Or rather, what I think you were about to do. It’s a very compelling photograph, don’t you think? The kind of thing that might make people ask… awkward questions.” He paused, letting his threat hang in the air. “Now, if you don’t want this rather incriminating picture, and my… very strong suspicions… shared with, say, Mr. Saito, or perhaps that nosy Onodera Kyouya, or even the entire class, then perhaps you could pay me a little visit tonight? My room. Number 207. We can discuss how to make this… misunderstanding… go away. Maybe you could start by giving a hardworking, stressed photographer a nice, long, relaxing back massage?” His leer intensified.

The sheer, idiotic audacity of it was breathtaking. Blackmailing a highly trained, deeply ruthless government assassin. Habu was either incredibly stupid, dangerously overconfident in the protection his Talent supposedly afforded him, or, most likely, a lethal combination of both. Arthur felt a familiar wave of helpless dread wash over him. He knew, with a sickening certainty, where this was heading. He couldn’t warn Habu; the boy was far too arrogant and would either dismiss him as the “weird Tanaka kid” or, worse, report his ‘meddling’ to Nana herself, further complicating Arthur’s already precarious position and possibly accelerating Habu’s demise. All he could do was watch, a silent, horrified spectator, as the grim pantomime unfolded.

Nana, trapped and seething internally but maintaining an outward composure of reluctant agreement, had acquiesced with a tight, saccharine smile. “Of course, Habu-kun. I’d be happy to come to your room and clear up this… unfortunate little misunderstanding. A massage sounds… lovely.”

Later that night, the inevitable occurred. Nana, her face a mask of calm but her eyes glinting with cold fury, visited Habu’s cluttered, untidy room. Arthur, lying awake in his own dorm, his ears straining for any unusual sounds, could only imagine the scene. He knew from the source material that Nana, while giving Habu a perfunctory, unwanted back massage, would be seriously contemplating snapping his neck then and there. She would refrain, however, her cold logic overriding her immediate anger. She needed more information about his Talent’s specifics – its range, its limitations, how far into the future it could truly see. Knowledge was power, and Nana always sought to maximize her power before striking.

Instead, as her fingers worked his tense shoulders, she would deliberately, with surgical precision, press a sensitive pressure point, just hard enough to cause a searing, unexpected jolt of pain. Habu, arrogant and foolish, would yelp, then snap, “You stupid girl! Watch what you’re doing! Be careful!” Nana, Arthur pictured, would then offer a profuse, deeply insincere apology, her eyes wide with feigned innocence, claiming it was a complete accident, that her hands had simply slipped. This calculated incident would not only test his reaction but also fuel her resolve to eliminate him swiftly and efficiently once she had the information she needed.

The next day, Nana approached Kyouya Onodera in the library, her face a carefully constructed mask of terror and distress. She clutched a photograph in her trembling hand – one Arthur knew she had expertly faked in the intervening hours. It depicted Nana herself, seemingly unconscious, tied up with rough-looking ropes, in a grimy, unfamiliar room, a faint bruise artfully applied to her cheek. “Onodera-kun!” she’d cried, her voice breaking with convincing panic. “I… I found this! Slipped under my door! I think… I think it’s my future! Someone is trying to kill me! Could it have been Habu-kun? He was acting so strangely towards me last night!”

It was a brilliant, if diabolical, move, Arthur acknowledged grimly. She was establishing a preemptive alibi with the school’s most persistent, logical investigator, painting herself as a potential victim, and simultaneously casting suspicion on Habu. Kyouya, though perpetually suspicious and likely sensing the theatricality of her performance, would have little choice but to take her claim seriously and investigate.

The actual murder happened later that same evening, or perhaps in the early, silent hours of the morning. Nana, having deduced the limitations of Habu’s precognitive camera – likely that it couldn’t photograph events too far into the future, or in areas he hadn’t physically scouted and focused on, or perhaps that it only showed potential futures he was actively trying to capture – would have cornered him in his room. Arthur didn’t know the exact method beyond strangulation, but he imagined it was quick, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient, Nana’s smaller stature no impediment to her lethal training.

The discovery of Ryouta Habu’s lifeless body the following morning, his camera lying broken beside him, sent a fresh wave of genuine panic and fear rippling through the already unsettled student population. Mr. Saito was visibly distraught, his attempts to calm the students increasingly futile. The other teachers were tight-lipped, their expressions grim. Nana, of course, played the part of the shocked and grieving classmate to absolute perfection, even “confiding” in a few tearful girls that Habu had been acting strangely and aggressively towards her, subtly planting the idea that he might have been a dangerous individual who had brought his grim fate upon himself.

Kyouya Onodera was, as expected, intensely, almost ferociously, investigating, his impassive face a mask for a keen, analytical intellect piecing together timelines and inconsistencies. He questioned Nana again, who recounted her faked photo and her “fear” of Habu, her performance flawless.

Arthur watched it all from the periphery, a knot of cold fury, frustration, and a growing, weary despair tightening in his chest. Another death. Another victim he couldn’t save without revealing his impossible knowledge and immediately making himself Nana’s next, and undoubtedly final, target. He hadn’t even liked Habu; the boy had been an unpleasant, sleazy individual. But did he deserve to be murdered, his life snuffed out so callously? The question was a bitter, unanswerable torment.

The weight of his foreknowledge, his terrible prescience, was becoming a crushing, unbearable burden. Each death he failed to prevent, each life Nana extinguished, chipped away at his already fragile psyche. He was an unwilling observer of a horror show he’d already seen the grisly highlights of, powerless to stop the actors from hitting their gruesome, predetermined marks. His phone translator, his only means of coherent expression, felt less like a lifeline and more like a cursed tool for documenting a tragedy in a language he was only beginning to comprehend on a visceral, soul-deep level. Nanao was safe, for now, but at what cost? And who, Arthur wondered with a chilling certainty, would be next on Nana Hiiragi’s ever-growing list?

Chapter 5: Saving Nanao

The next few days following Nana Hiiragi’s election as class representative were a torment of heightened, anxious vigilance for Arthur. He knew, with the chilling certainty of his fragmented foreknowledge, that Nanao Nakajima was destined to be her first victim on the island. The image from the anime – Nanao’s trusting face, the sudden, brutal push, the desperate scramble at the cliff edge, the cut rope – it played on a horrifying loop in Arthur’s mind, a constant, unwelcome guest. Every time he saw Nana interacting with Nanao, her expression one of cloying sweetness and deep, manufactured sympathy, a cold dread twisted in his gut. She was a spider, spinning a beautiful, deadly web around the unsuspecting fly.

Arthur made it his unwelcome mission to be Nanao’s inconvenient, awkward shadow. During breaks between classes, he’d find reasons – however flimsy – to be near Nanao, offering stilted, phone-translated observations about the surprisingly aggressive seagulls, or a particularly convoluted problem in their mathematics textbook. Nanao, a painfully shy boy by nature, with a habit of staring at his own feet whenever spoken to, seemed mostly bewildered by the sudden, persistent attention from the quiet, foreign-seeming Tanaka-kun. He was too polite, too timid, to actually rebuff him, but his nervous fidgeting and mumbled, monosyllabic replies made their interactions an exercise in social agony for both of them. Arthur, however, persisted, driven by a desperate urgency.

He knew the cliff incident was typically instigated by Nana preying on Nanao's profound feelings of worthlessness, his crippling lack of self-esteem. She would suggest they go somewhere quiet to talk, somewhere with a "beautiful view" where he could "clear his head." Arthur began to pay obsessive attention to the class schedule, noting the free periods, the lunch breaks, and the well-trodden routes students took to various scenic spots on the island – spots he’d mentally cross-referenced with the hazy, half-remembered visuals from his nephew's anime. The cliffs on the northern side of the island, with their dramatic drop to the churning sea, became a focal point of his dread.

It was a bright, deceptively cheerful Tuesday afternoon, during a longer-than-usual lunch break due to a cancelled afternoon class. Arthur, forcing down a dry bread roll in the noisy canteen, saw Nana approach Nanao’s solitary table. Her smile was particularly dazzling, her body language a study in practiced empathy. He couldn’t hear their conversation from across the crowded room, but Nanao’s slumped shoulders, the way he picked at his food without eating, and Nana’s earnest, head-tilted posture as she leaned in, speaking softly to him, were damningly eloquent. Then, with a gentle, encouraging hand on Nanao’s arm, Nana gestured vaguely in the direction of the northern cliffs. This was it. His stomach plummeted.

His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trapped in his chest. He had to intercept, but not too obviously. He couldn’t let Nana know he knew her intentions. That would be signing his own death warrant. He had to make it look like an accident, a product of his inconvenient, erratic "Talent."

He waited a minute, a torturous, agonizing sixty seconds, letting them get a head start, then followed, his own tray abandoned. He forced himself to walk at a casual pace, though every instinct screamed at him to run. He took a slightly different, less direct path, one that wound through a small, overgrown copse of whispering bamboo, a route he knew would converge with theirs just before the steeper, more treacherous incline leading to the cliff edge viewing area. The air in the bamboo grove was cool and damp, the rustling leaves sounding like hushed, conspiratorial whispers.

As he rounded a sharp bend, momentarily obscured by a particularly thick clump of bamboo, he saw them. Nana was a few steps ahead, her pink pigtails bouncing, beckoning Nanao forward with a bright, encouraging smile. Nanao was shuffling along behind her, his head bowed, his gaze fixed on the scuffed toes of his shoes, the picture of dejection. Arthur quickened his pace, his timing now critical.

Just as Nana was saying something about the “beautiful, clear view from the top” offering “such a wonderfully fresh perspective on things,” Arthur “accidentally” stumbled out of the bamboo path, his foot catching on an imaginary root. He lurched forward, bumping lightly but decisively into Nanao, who let out a small, startled yelp and stumbled himself.

“Ah, gomen nasai! My apologies! So clumsy of me!” Arthur exclaimed, his voice a little too loud, a little too forced. He quickly typed into his phone, his fingers surprisingly steady despite the adrenaline coursing through him, and held it up so that Nanao – and, crucially, Nana, who had turned at the commotion – could see the screen. “Nanao-san! Tanaka-kun, isn’t it? What a complete coincidence meeting you both here.”

Nana turned fully, her bright smile tightening almost imperceptibly at the edges. Her violet eyes, usually wide with feigned innocence, held a flicker of sharp annoyance. “Tanaka-kun. We were just going up to admire the view. Nakajima-kun was feeling a little down.”

“The view…” Arthur echoed, then he made a deliberate show of his eyes going distant, a slight frown creasing his brow, his head tilting as if listening to something only he could hear – his well-rehearsed charade of his “Talent” kicking in. He reached out, as if instinctively, his fingers brushing lightly against Nanao’s arm. Nanao flinched at the unexpected contact.

“Nanao-san,” Arthur said, his phone translating his low, urgent English words into equally grave Japanese, ensuring Nana, standing just a few feet away, could hear every syllable. “My Talent… it just showed me a flash. A very disturbing one. You… you were falling. From up there.” He gestured vaguely with his free hand towards the cliff edge, hidden from their current vantage point but looming in their immediate future. “Right here. On this path. Today. Please, I implore you, be incredibly careful if you go any further. Perhaps… perhaps it would be better not to go at all today.”

Nanao stared at him, his already pale face draining of all remaining colour. He looked from Arthur’s feigned distress to the path ahead, then back to Arthur, his eyes wide with a dawning, superstitious terror. Nana’s expression was a careful mask of polite concern, but Arthur could see the sharp calculation in her eyes, the way her smile didn’t quite reach them. His “prediction” was specific enough to be deeply alarming to Nanao, yet vague enough to be a lucky, albeit unsettling, coincidence from Nana’s perspective. To dismiss it out of hand, especially after his previous “accurate” forecast of her and Kyouya’s arrival, might look callous, even suspicious, particularly if something did then happen to Nanao. It complicated her plan beautifully.

“Oh my goodness,” Nana said, her voice dripping with a perfectly calibrated mixture of false sympathy and gentle skepticism. “That sounds… simply terrible, Tanaka-kun. Are you quite sure? Sometimes these strong feelings, these… glimpses… can be a little misleading, can’t they?” She was trying to downplay it, to regain control of Nanao, to coax him forward.

“It felt… horribly real, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur insisted gravely via his phone, meeting Nana’s gaze for a brief, challenging moment before turning back to Nanao with an expression of profound, urgent concern. “Perhaps another day would be better for admiring the view, Nanao-san? When the… the premonitions are less active? When the air feels less… fraught?”

Nanao, thoroughly spooked by the vivid image of himself falling from a great height, nodded vehemently, clutching at the excuse like a drowning man grasping a lifeline. “Yes! Yes, you’re right, Tanaka-kun! I… I suddenly remembered I left my history textbook in the classroom. A very important textbook. I should go back and get it. Right now.” He practically bolted, muttering apologies and thanks, scrambling back down the path the way they had come.

Nana was left standing on the path with Arthur, the silence between them thick with unspoken accusations and frustrated intent. Her smile was strained, a mere caricature of its usual brilliance. “Well, Tanaka-kun,” she said, her voice dangerously sweet. “You certainly possess a… most dramatic and timely Talent.”

“It is often more a curse than a blessing, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur’s phone replied, his translated tone suitably sombre and world-weary. He then made his own hasty excuses about needing to find a quieter spot to “clear his head” after such a disturbing “vision,” and retreated in the direction Nanao had fled, leaving Nana standing alone amidst the rustling bamboo, her meticulously planned murder for the day thoroughly, infuriatingly derailed.

He didn’t relax, however, not for a second. Nana was nothing if not persistent. For the rest of that afternoon, and indeed for the next couple of anxious days, Arthur made himself Nanao’s unofficial, relentlessly awkward bodyguard. He sat near him (or as near as Nanao’s discomfort would allow) at lunch, walked with him (or rather, a few paces behind him) between classes, manufacturing reasons to engage him in stilted, phone-mediated conversations about everything and nothing – the difficulty of certain kanji, the surprisingly palatable nature of the canteen’s curry, the migratory patterns of local birds (a topic Arthur knew absolutely nothing about but improvised wildly on). He learned, in brief, mumbled snippets from Nanao, that the boy was passionate about old, obscure strategy video games and surprisingly knowledgeable about the island’s limited local flora.

It was exhausting, maintaining this facade of casual proximity while his nerves were stretched taut as piano wire. Nana watched them, her expression unreadable but her presence a constant, simmering pressure. She made a few more subtle attempts to get Nanao alone, suggesting a visit to the library’s “quiet, secluded annex” for study, or a peaceful walk by the “tranquil, reflective pond” on the far side of the school grounds. But each time, Arthur, with a seemingly coincidental appearance and another vague, unsettling “glimpse” related to the proposed location (“I sense… a sudden, inexplicable chill… a feeling of being trapped, of deep water, near that pond, Nanao-san. Perhaps it is best avoided today?”), managed to thwart her with a maddening, if clumsy, consistency.

His repeated interventions were clearly making Nana increasingly wary of him. She couldn’t act overtly against him without potentially exposing her own malevolent intentions, especially since his “predictions,” however outlandish, kept proving… disturbingly prescient in their negativity, at least in Nanao’s increasingly rattled and grateful mind.

Nanao, for his part, was beginning to see Arthur not just as the “strange, quiet Tanaka-kun” but as some kind of eccentric, slightly frightening, but ultimately benevolent guardian angel. After the third “warning” that seemed to avert some unseen disaster, he’d looked at Arthur with an expression of genuine, almost teary-eyed gratitude.

“Tanaka-kun,” he’d said, his voice barely a whisper, as he nervously offered Arthur a small, slightly bruised apple he’d saved from lunch. “Thank you. I… I don’t know what I would do without your… your warnings. You’ve… you’ve really helped me. More than you know.”

Arthur had simply nodded, accepting the apple with a mumbled thanks of his own (via phone, of course), a complicated mixture of profound relief and gnawing guilt churning within him. He’d saved Nanao, for now. He’d bought him precious time. But in doing so, he had also firmly painted an even larger, brighter target on his own back as far as Nana Hiiragi was concerned. She wouldn’t give up on her mission to eliminate Nanao, and she certainly wouldn’t forget the inconvenient, unpredictable new student with the troublesome, embarrassing, and infuriatingly timed glimpses into the future. The game had just become significantly more dangerous. And Arthur knew, with a certainty that made his blood run cold, that Nana was already recalculating, already planning her next move.

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.

Chapter 3: Nana's Arrival and a Glimpse of the Future

The intervening three days passed in a blur of anxious anticipation for Arthur. He went through the motions of school life, his phone his constant companion, his mind a whirl of half-remembered anime plots and desperate, improbable strategies. He tried to engage Nanao Nakajima in brief, awkward conversations, hoping to build some semblance of trust, some foundation for the warning he knew he’d have to deliver. Nanao, in turn, seemed mostly bewildered by the persistent, if stilted, attention from the strange new student.

Then, on the third day, during morning homeroom, Mr. Saito clapped his hands together with an air of forced cheerfulness that did little to dispel the underlying tension Arthur constantly felt. “Class, I have a happy announcement! Our two remaining new students have arrived safely on the island and will be joining us today. Please, let’s give a warm welcome first to Hiiragi Nana-san!”

The classroom door slid open with a soft rattle, and she walked in. Nana Hiiragi. It was as if a switch had been flipped, illuminating the room with a manufactured, almost painfully bright effervescence. Her vibrant pink hair, tied into energetic twin tails that seemed to defy gravity, bounced with every step. Her smile was wide, dazzling, a perfectly crafted confection of innocence and warmth. Her eyes, large and a startling shade of violet, sparkled with what appeared to be genuine excitement. She was, Arthur had to concede with a sickening lurch in his stomach, utterly disarming. A beautifully packaged viper.

“Hello everyone!” Nana chirped, her voice as sweet and bubbly as her appearance. She executed a perfect, graceful bow. “I’m Nana Hiiragi! I’m so, so excited to be here and to make lots and lots of new friends! Please take good care of me!”

A wave of welcoming murmurs, tinged with admiration, swept through the classroom. Even from his seat near the back, Arthur could feel the pull of her charisma, the almost magnetic quality of her feigned openness. He gripped his phone tightly under his desk, his knuckles white. This was her. The killer.

“And,” Mr. Saito continued, beaming as if he’d personally orchestrated this delightful addition to their class, “we also have Onodera Kyouya-kun joining us today.”

The second arrival was Nana’s diametric opposite, a study in stark contrasts. Kyouya Onodera entered not with a bounce, but with a quiet, almost sullen deliberation. His shock of white hair was striking against the dark uniform, his features sharp, his expression impassive, almost bored. His pale eyes, however, were anything but vacant; they swept the room with a quick, coolly analytical scrutiny that seemed to miss nothing, lingering for a fraction of a second longer on Arthur before moving on. Instead of a bow, he offered a curt, almost imperceptible nod. “Kyouya Onodera,” he stated, his voice flat and devoid of inflection. “My Talent is immortality. Try not to make my life too inconvenient for me.”

His blunt, almost arrogant pronouncement, so different from Nana’s saccharine greeting, sent another ripple of whispers through the class – this time, a mixture of surprise and perhaps a little intimidation. Arthur watched him intently. Kyouya, the relentless investigator, the logical counterpoint to Nana’s emotional manipulations. A potential ally, perhaps, if Arthur could ever figure out how to breach that wall of icy indifference, and if Kyouya didn’t decide Arthur himself was too much of an inconvenient anomaly.

The new arrivals were seated – Nana, naturally, secured a spot near the front, perfectly positioned to engage with the teacher and her classmates. Kyouya, with an air of someone deliberately seeking solitude, chose an empty desk near the back, not far from Arthur, a silent, brooding presence.

Lessons resumed, a drone of unfamiliar Japanese Arthur mostly tuned out, his attention almost entirely consumed by Nana. He watched her feigned attentiveness in class, the way she subtly charmed those around her during the brief breaks between periods, her eyes occasionally, thoughtfully, flicking towards him – the “other” new student, the one with the strange, vaguely unsettling Talent. He knew she’d be assessing him, filing him away, classifying him. Threat, tool, or irrelevant? Her survival, her mission, would depend on such categorizations.

The inevitable confrontation, or rather, Nana’s carefully orchestrated initial probe, came at lunchtime. The canteen was a cacophony of clattering trays and boisterous chatter. Arthur had found a relatively quiet corner, nursing a bowl of ramen that tasted like salty dishwater to his unaccustomed palate, his mind racing. He saw her approaching, weaving through the crowded tables with a practiced ease, a bright, innocent smile fixed on her face, a tray laden with a surprisingly modest meal in her hands.

“Tanaka-kun, isn’t it?” Nana said, her voice perfectly pitched to sound friendly, open, and just a little bit shy. She gestured with her chopsticks to the empty seat opposite him. “Do you mind if I join you? It’s all a bit overwhelming, being new and not knowing anyone.” Her eyes sparkled with that manufactured sincerity.

Arthur swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm noodles that suddenly felt like a knot of lead in his stomach. He knew this wasn’t a casual encounter. This was an assessment. He managed a stiff nod and a quiet, “どうぞ (Douzo - Please),” through his phone, which he already had open on the table beside his bowl, a habit he’d quickly adopted.

“Thank you so much!” She settled down, her movements fluid and graceful. For a few moments, she ate with a delicate, almost bird-like appetite, then looked up, her head tilted in an expression of artless curiosity. “So, Tanaka-kun, some of the others were saying you have a very… unique Talent. Something about seeing the future?”

Here it was. The opening gambit. He’d known it was coming, but the directness of it still set his nerves on edge. He took a slow, deliberate breath, feigning a slight weariness, hoping to project an image of someone burdened by an inconvenient gift rather than a terrified imposter. “Sometimes,” he replied, his phone translating his carefully chosen English word. “It’s not particularly reliable.”

“Oh, but it sounds absolutely fascinating!” Nana pressed, her violet eyes wide with perfectly feigned intrigue. “I’m so curious about everyone’s abilities. I was wondering… if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you… could you perhaps… try it with me? I’d be so incredibly interested to know what you might see!”

Arthur stalled, pretending to consider her request, his mind racing. This was a test, a dangerous one. She wanted to gauge his abilities, see if his “Talent” could be a threat to her, perhaps even subtly intimidate him if his “vision” was negative or too accurate. His fabricated Talent was his only shield and, potentially, his most dangerous weapon. He had to play this perfectly. He needed to give her something that was specific enough to be memorable and unsettling, vague enough to be unverifiable, and perhaps, just perhaps, something that might subtly nudge her in a direction that could be useful to him, or at least disruptive to her. The directives from the original prompt about Nana’s potential bisexuality and Michiru’s significance came to mind. This was his chance to plant a very strange, very specific seed.

“It can be… rather unpleasant,” he warned, his translated voice deliberately flat and devoid of enthusiasm. “And the things I see are often… intensely personal.”

“Oh, I don’t mind a bit!” Nana insisted, leaning forward slightly, her smile unwavering, a picture of brave curiosity. “I’m very resilient!”

Resilient enough to handle a fabricated, deeply uncomfortable future? We’ll see, Arthur thought grimly. He sighed internally. There was no avoiding this. “Very well, Hiiragi-san.” He put down his chopsticks, the cheap wood suddenly feeling slick in his sweaty palm. “As I mentioned in class, physical contact is usually required.”

Nana immediately extended her hand across the small table, palm up. Her skin was smooth, her fingers slender and well-manicured. The hand of a practiced, efficient killer. Arthur hesitated for a fraction of a second, the thought of touching her sending a wave of revulsion through him, then, steeling himself, he placed his own slightly trembling hand lightly on hers. Her skin was cool. He closed his eyes, feigning deep concentration, focusing on the fabricated narrative he’d mentally constructed – a blend of seemingly benign domesticity with a sudden, unsettling twist designed to unnerve her and, perhaps, to subtly foreshadow Michiru’s eventual importance.

He began to speak, his voice low, dictating the words into his phone in English, letting the device translate phrase by phrase into Japanese. “I see… a considerable time from now. Perhaps… forty years.” He paused, as if struggling to bring a hazy image into focus. “There’s a house… a comfortable, sunlit home. A garden outside, flowers blooming. Inside… there is a photograph on a mantelpiece.” He let the silence stretch for a beat. “It’s you… older, of course. Lines around your eyes, but you’re smiling. Beside you, a man… your husband, I presume. And two young girls… your daughters. They look happy.” He offered this initial, idyllic scene as bait, something universally desired.

He felt a slight, almost imperceptible relaxation in Nana’s hand under his. Her smile, he guessed without looking, would have softened a fraction, a flicker of something almost wistful in her eyes.

Then, he introduced the shift. “But then… the scene changes. You are leaving that house. The older you. Your husband… he waves you off from the doorway. There’s a profound sadness in his eyes, a resignation.” He frowned, as if puzzled by the vision. “You get into a black, official-looking car… a government vehicle, I think.” He continued, building the new scenario. “You are driven to a large, imposing building. All stone and marble, very grand. The kanji on the entrance plaque… I cannot read them from this distance, too ornate.”

He let the silence hang again, then injected a note of confusion. “You are in a spacious, well-lit room. Marble floors, high ceilings, echoing slightly. You’re looking at some notes, official-looking documents spread on a large desk. You seem… preoccupied. Then… a woman approaches you.” He paused dramatically. “She has… white, very fluffy hair.” He made sure his translated voice carried a note of slight surprise, as if this detail were unexpected. “She speaks to you. You look up, you smile at her. A different kind of smile than the one in the photograph. And then… you lean in and… you kiss her. Passionately. On the lips.”

He opened his eyes abruptly, pulling his hand back from hers as if he’d received an electric shock. He looked away, deliberately breaking eye contact, feigning acute discomfort and embarrassment. “I had to stop,” he mumbled, his voice, via the phone, sounding strained and slightly breathless. “It was becoming… extremely embarrassing. Far too intimate. I apologize.”

Nana was staring at him, her cheeks flushed a delicate, undeniable pink. The wide, innocent smile was gone, replaced by a look of stunned surprise that quickly morphed into something more complex, more calculating, as her mind raced to process the bizarre, explicit details. She recovered with astonishing speed, forcing a slightly shaky, overly bright laugh. “My goodness, Tanaka-kun!” she exclaimed, fanning her face with her hand in a gesture of flustered amusement. “What a… truly vivid imagination… or rather, Talent! A husband, daughters… and then… well!” She giggled again, a little too loudly. “Quite the scandalous future you’ve painted for me! How… interesting!”

Her mind, Arthur knew, would be a whirlwind. Was this real? A bizarre trick? Was he trying to mock her, to unsettle her? The detail about the white, fluffy-haired woman… it was meaningless to her now, an irrelevant, almost comical detail in a strange prediction. But Arthur had planted the seed. Michiru Inukai, with her cloud of soft, white hair, wasn’t yet a significant figure in Nana’s world, but she would be. And perhaps, just perhaps, this deeply personal, strangely specific “prediction” might resurface in Nana’s mind when their paths eventually, tragically, intertwined. It was a long shot, a desperate gamble based on fragmented knowledge and a wild hope.

“As I said, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur reiterated through his phone, keeping his gaze determinedly downcast, playing the part of the embarrassed seer. “Unpleasant glimpses. Unreliable. Often intensely personal. I am sorry if it caused you any discomfort.”

“Not at all, Tanaka-kun! Not at all!” Nana trilled, her composure almost fully restored, though her eyes, when they rested on him, now held a new, sharp, speculative watchfulness. “It was… certainly memorable.” She picked at her food for another moment, then pushed her tray back with a decisive movement and stood. “Well, I really should go and try to mingle a bit more, make some more friends! It was truly lovely chatting with you!”

With another bright, slightly forced smile, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the lunchtime throng. Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, his hand still tingling faintly from the brief contact with hers. Round one, he thought, his stomach still churning, had been a qualified, terrifying success. He’d given her a story so outlandish yet specific that she wouldn’t easily dismiss it. He’d subtly hinted at a future that played on universal desires while injecting a disorienting, personal element designed to lodge itself in her subconscious. And he’d survived the first direct probe from the island’s apex predator.

He looked down at his own hand, the one that had touched Nana’s. It felt cold, contaminated. He had survived. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that Nana Hiiragi was far from finished with Kenji Tanaka and his inconvenient, embarrassing glimpses into the future.

Chapter 2: The Lie and the Lifeline

The insistent, jarring clang of a bell dragged Arthur from a fitful, shallow sleep. He lay for a moment on the unfamiliar, unyielding mattress, the cheap fabric of the thin blanket rough against his cheek. The dormitory room was small, spartan, and already filled with the grey, pre-dawn light filtering through a single curtained window. His roommate, a lanky boy whose name Suzuki he’d managed to glean through a torturous, phone-assisted exchange the previous evening, was already up and rustling about, his movements brisk and efficient. Arthur felt a familiar ache in his back – this teenage body, while undoubtedly more resilient than his 51-year-old original, was not accustomed to sleeping on what felt like a thinly disguised board.

His phone. The thought jolted him fully awake. He reached for it on the small, battered nightstand. 98%. He’d managed to keep it plugged into the common room charger for most of the night, a small victory in a sea of overwhelming disorientation. It was his shield, his voice, his only tenuous connection to understanding in this utterly alien landscape.

Breakfast in the canteen was a cacophony of unfamiliar sounds, smells, and social rituals. The clatter of chopsticks against ceramic bowls, the rapid-fire Japanese chatter, the aroma of miso soup, grilled fish, and pickled vegetables – it was a sensory assault. Arthur, acutely aware of his own clumsy foreignness, navigated the serving line with a series of awkward bows, nods, and pointing gestures, managing to acquire a tray of food he wasn’t entirely sure how to eat. He found a relatively isolated table and ate mechanically, his gaze sweeping the room, a new, terrible kind of people-watching. Were any of these bright-eyed, chattering teenagers future corpses? Future killers? The rice stuck in his throat. He kept his phone hidden, reserving its precious battery for interactions more critical than ordering natto, which he’d mistakenly selected and was now eyeing with deep suspicion.

The first class of the day was in a classroom that could have been pulled from any number of nostalgic school dramas – worn wooden desks scarred with generations of graffiti, a large, dusty chalkboard, and tall windows that looked out onto a dense, almost suffocatingly lush greenery. The air smelled of chalk dust, old wood, and the faint, lingering scent of floor polish. The teacher, a man named Mr. Saito according to the timetable Arthur had painstakingly deciphered, was balding, with a kindly, slightly harassed smile and a suit that had seen better decades. He beamed at the assembled students, then his eyes, magnified by thick-lensed glasses, found Arthur, the conspicuous late arrival.

“Ah, class, good morning!” Mr. Saito began, his voice surprisingly warm and resonant. He beckoned Arthur towards the front. “We have a late arrival joining our happy group today. This is Tanaka Kenji-kun. Please, let’s all make him feel welcome.”

A smattering of polite, if somewhat curious, applause rippled through the room. Arthur walked to the front, each step feeling like a mile, the thirty pairs of young eyes boring into him. He felt like an imposter in a badly rehearsed school play, acutely aware of the ill-fitting uniform and the sheer absurdity of his presence. He managed a stiff, jerky bow, an approximation of what he’d seen others do.

“Tanaka-kun,” Mr. Saito continued, his smile unwavering, “perhaps you could introduce yourself to your new classmates? And, of course, this being an academy for the Talented, we’d all be very interested to hear about your special gift.”

This was it. The moment he’d been dreading since the horrifying realization of where he was had crashed down upon him. His stomach churned. He fumbled for his phone, the smooth plastic cool against his clammy palm. The slight delay as he typed, the almost imperceptible whir as the translation app processed his English words, felt like an eternity.

“Good morning,” he began, his voice, when it finally emerged from the phone’s small speaker, sounding unnervingly calm and even, a stark contrast to the frantic, terrified monologue screaming inside his own head. “My name is Tanaka Kenji. It is… an adjustment being here. I hope to learn much.” He kept it brief, hoping against hope they might just move on.

No such luck. A girl in the front row, her dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, her eyes sharp and inquisitive, asked the inevitable question, her Japanese clear and direct. “And your Talent, Tanaka-kun? What can you do?”

Arthur took a ragged, internal breath. He’d spent most of the night staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of the dorm room, his mind racing through a dozen half-baked lies, discarding each one as too outlandish or too easily disproved. He needed something plausible within the insane logic of this world, something difficult to verify, something that sounded vaguely impressive but was, in practical terms, utterly useless in a fight or for any kind of nefarious purpose. He typed furiously, his English words a desperate scramble on the small screen.

“My Talent,” the phone announced after a moment, its synthesized voice echoing slightly in the quiet classroom. He paused for dramatic effect he didn't feel, then continued his input. Right, a suitably grand name. Something that sounds… profound. “I call it… Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” He let that hang in the air, allowing the unfamiliar syllables to settle over the room. He could feel the weight of their expectant silence.

He continued dictating to his phone, carefully constructing the parameters of his fabricated ability. “If I make physical contact with someone…” Physical contact, yes, that’s a good limitation. Makes it less likely they’ll just demand a demonstration on a whim, and it gives me an out if I need one. “…I sometimes… see a brief, vivid moment from their future.” Vague. Good. Keep it vague. “Usually this moment is from twenty to fifty years ahead.” Far enough that no one here will ever be able to verify it. “It tends to be a moment of… significant emotional resonance for that person.” More vagueness. Could be joy, could be sorrow. Unpredictable.

Then came the crucial caveats, the built-in flaws. It can’t be reliable. It can’t be useful for fighting or predicting enemy movements. It must be a burden. “It’s… not always clear what I’m seeing,” the phone translated his carefully typed English. “The glimpses are often fragmented, deeply personal, and sometimes… quite unsettling.” That should deter casual requests. No one wants an unsettling glimpse into their private future. “And I have no control over what I see, or indeed, if I see anything at all when I make contact.” Perfect. Utterly unreliable, therefore, from their perspective, mostly useless. He finished with a touch of feigned weariness, allowing his shoulders to slump slightly, hoping he looked suitably burdened by this incredible, yet terribly inconvenient, “gift.” “It can be quite… draining, emotionally and physically.”

A low murmur rippled through the class. He couldn’t decipher the individual Japanese words, but the collective tone suggested a mixture of awe, curiosity, and perhaps a little trepidation. It sounded suitably esoteric, suitably… Talented. He’d bought himself a sliver of credibility, or at least, a plausible, if rather outlandish, explanation for his presence in this extraordinary institution.

Mr. Saito nodded thoughtfully, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “A most fascinating and unique ability, Tanaka-kun. A window into distant futures… remarkable.” He seemed to accept it without question.

Arthur decided to press his advantage, however slight. He needed to confirm his timeline, to know how long he had before Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera arrived. This was risky; it might draw undue attention. But not knowing was worse. “Sensei,” he addressed Mr. Saito, his phone dutifully translating, “to help… orient my Talent to this new… temporal-spatial location, sometimes it helps to focus on specific upcoming arrivals. It can stabilize the… glimpses, you see. Could you perhaps tell me if students by the names of Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera are expected to arrive in the coming days?” It was utter nonsense, a pseudo-scientific justification he’d concocted on the spot, but he delivered it with as much conviction as he could feign.

Mr. Saito blinked, then consulted a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Ah, yes, indeed!” he exclaimed, looking mildly impressed. “Hiiragi Nana-san and Onodera Kyouya-kun are both due to join our class in… let me see… approximately three days. Excellent foresight, Tanaka-kun! Perhaps your Talent is already beginning to acclimatize!”

Arthur managed a small, noncommittal nod, trying to keep the wave of mingled relief and dread from showing on his face. Three days. He was in the right place, the right horrifying time. The confirmation was a cold comfort, but a vital one. Nana was coming. The clock was ticking, louder now.

The rest of the school day passed in a blur of hyper-vigilance and linguistic confusion. He recognized a few faces from his fragmented memories of the anime – their youthful, innocent appearances a disturbing contrast to the bloody fates he knew awaited some of them. There was the lanky boy with the ever-present camera, Habu, already making some of the girls uncomfortable with his leering gaze. And there, sitting alone by the window, his shoulders hunched, radiating an aura of profound anxiety and loneliness, was Nanao Nakajima. Nana’s first intended victim. Arthur’s stomach clenched with a sickening lurch. He looked so small, so vulnerable.

Later that afternoon, during the final homeroom period, Mr. Saito cleared his throat, recapturing the students’ attention. “Now, onto another important matter for our class. As you know, we need to elect a class representative. This individual will act as a liaison with the teaching staff, help organize class activities, and generally be a voice for all of you. It’s a position of some responsibility.” He smiled. “We’ll hold the vote at the end of the school day tomorrow. Please give some thought to who you might like to nominate, or indeed, if you’d like to nominate yourselves.”

Immediately, a girl in the front row, Inori Tamaki, the one with the severe ponytail and sharp eyes, raised her hand with an air of quiet confidence. “Sensei, I would like to put my name forward for consideration.” Other, less confident murmurs of interest followed.

Arthur watched Nanao Nakajima, who seemed to shrink further into his seat at the mere mention of a leadership role, his face paling. He remembered Nana’s cruel manipulation from the anime, the way she would prey on Nanao’s shyness and insecurity. An idea, impulsive and probably foolhardy, sparked in Arthur’s mind. If he could somehow insert himself into this process, even in a minor way…

He raised a hesitant hand, the unfamiliar gesture feeling alien. All eyes in the classroom turned to him again, the strange new student who spoke through a machine. He fumbled for his phone, his heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his ribs. “I… Tanaka Kenji…” the phone translated his typed words, “I would also… like to be considered for the role of class representative.”

A ripple of surprise went through the room. Mr. Saito, however, beamed with encouragement. “Excellent, Tanaka-kun! Active participation in class life is always to be commended!”

Arthur didn’t particularly want the role. He knew he was a terrible candidate – his communication was severely hampered, his understanding of their school customs was non-existent, and he radiated an aura of awkward outsiderness. But it was a way to be seen, to perhaps disrupt the expected dynamics, to gauge reactions. And maybe, just maybe, it was a way to signal to Nanao, however obliquely, that not everyone was an overwhelming force of charisma or intimidation. Perhaps it was a desperate, subconscious desire to plant a flag, however small, signifying his intention to do something, anything, in this terrifying new world, rather than just be a passive victim of its unfolding horrors.

For the remainder of the day, he tried to melt into the background, to be a ghost observing the ecosystem of the classroom. Every interaction he witnessed, every snippet of conversation his phone managed to catch and translate, was another piece of a deadly, intricate puzzle he was only just beginning to comprehend. He was an unwilling anthropologist in a viper’s nest, his field notebook replaced by a faltering smartphone and a growing, bone-deep sense of dread. His mission, he realized with a clarity that was both terrifying and strangely galvanizing, was twofold: somehow, he had to survive. And somehow, against all odds, against all reason, he had to try and prevent the coming slaughter. The latter felt like trying to hold back a tsunami with a teacup. But he had to try. He owed it to… someone. Perhaps to the frightened, bewildered boy whose body he now inhabited. Or perhaps, more selfishly, to the terrified, fifty-one-year-old Englishman, Arthur Ainsworth, who was screaming silently inside.

Chapter 1: The Unwanted Journey

The absolute, unequivocal last sensation Arthur Ainsworth, fifty-one years, three months, and a dreary Tuesday into a life he often felt was on loan from a particularly uninspired mail-order catalogue, registered with any degree of certainty was the gritty, slightly abrasive texture of overly toasted wholemeal bread lodging uncomfortably between his teeth. The sharp, familiar, and frankly unwelcome tang of too-bitter, cheap chunky marmalade still coated his tongue. He’d been staring blankly out of his perpetually damp Crawley kitchen window, past the condensation fogging the lower pane, at the aggressively, almost offensively cheerful fuschia in Mrs. Henderson’s meticulously manicured, gnome-infested garden. He was contemplating, with a familiar sense of existential dread, the yawning, featureless abyss of another interminable Tuesday morning meeting about synergistic resource allocation and departmental overheads, when the very fabric of his mundane reality had simply… dissolved.

Not in a gentle, cinematic fade to black, but with a violent, nauseating, wrenching compression, as if he were being forcibly, painfully squeezed through the eye of a cosmic needle that was far too small for his middle-aged, slightly paunchy frame. A silent scream, a pure rictus of terror and disbelief, tore from lungs that, a horrifying microsecond later, felt alarmingly… undersized, tight, and distressingly inefficient.

He blinked. Once. Twice. His vision swam, a nauseating, disorienting blur like looking through a disturbed goldfish bowl that had been filled with murky water. The comforting, slightly musty, entirely familiar aroma of his own small kitchen – old tea towels needing a boil wash, the faint, lingering ghost of last night’s overcooked shepherd’s pie, the metallic tang of the ancient gas hob – was gone, brutally, inexplicably supplanted. Now, his nostrils flared against an aggressive, unwelcome olfactory assault: the sharp, briny sting of sea air, the unmistakable, oily reek of diesel fumes, and beneath it all, a cloying, faintly sweetish, almost chemical perfume he couldn’t quite identify – cheap cherry blossom air freshener, perhaps? It made his stomach roil with a sudden, violent wave of nausea.

He wasn’t standing, a half-eaten piece of toast clutched in his rapidly cooling hand. He was seated, or rather, vibrating, perched precariously on a ridiculously hard, unforgivingly cold plastic bench that thrummed with the powerful, rhythmic, almost hypnotic beat of a massive engine. The vibration resonated through his slight, unfamiliar frame, up his spine, and into his teeth, making them ache. His entire field of vision still swam, a nauseating blur that slowly, reluctantly, resolved into... a boat? No, this was larger, more substantial. A ferry, judging by its considerable size and the churning, slate-grey-green water visible through a salt-streaked, grimy window.

His hands. He stared down at his hands, which were resting, almost formally, on knees that felt strangely knobbly, pointed, and alarmingly close to his face. They were small, slender, the skin unnervingly smooth and pale, entirely unblemished. Gone were the familiar, comforting liver spots, the intricate network of fine wrinkles he’d painstakingly earned over fifty-one years of worry and indifferent skincare. Gone, most shockingly, was the faded, silvery-white scar on his left thumb, a cherished, almost nostalgic memento from a foolish, boyish attempt to whittle a stick with his father’s intimidatingly sharp penknife when he was barely ten. These were the hands of a boy, a complete stranger. A wave of pure, unadulterated vertigo, cold and terrifying, washed over him, making the already unsteady deck beneath his feet seem to tilt and sway even more alarmingly.

Panic, sharp, icy, and visceral as a shard of glass plunged into his chest, clawed its way up his throat, a silent, suffocating, desperate scream. He looked down further, a strangled, wheezing gasp escaping lips that felt thin, unfamiliar, and strangely unresponsive to his mental commands. A pristine, almost unnaturally dark-blue school uniform – a tailored blazer with an unfamiliar, elaborate embroidered crest on the breast pocket, a stark white, slightly stiff shirt, a neatly, tightly knotted tie that felt like a miniature noose around his suddenly slender neck, and sharply creased, unfamiliar trousers – encased a frame so lean, so light, it felt like inhabiting a fragile, empty birdcage. His comfortable, tea-stained cardigan, his worn, beloved corduroys, his trusty, down-at-heel slippers – all relegated to a life, a world, a self, that felt galaxies, lifetimes, away.

This isn't happening, the thought was a frantic, desperate, looping denial against the overwhelming, irrefutable sensory evidence. This is a stroke. A brain aneurysm. A complete psychotic breakdown. A ridiculously vivid, cheese-induced dream brought on by that questionable Stilton I had before bed. But the insistent, bone-jarring thrum of the powerful engine beneath him, the penetrating chill of the damp sea air seeping through the thin, unfamiliar fabric of the school uniform, the too-tight, starched collar chafing uncomfortably against his strangely youthful skin – it was all terrifyingly, undeniably, horribly concrete.

He was on a ferry. A modern, somewhat utilitarian vessel, judging by the functional, uncomfortable plastic seating and the smeary, salt-streaked windows that offered a bleak, uninviting view of the turbulent, grey-green water churning past under a bruised, weeping, overcast sky. In the middle distance, wreathed in a swirling, clinging mist that seemed to swallow the light, an island rose steeply, almost menacingly, from the restless sea, its slopes a dense, unbroken, unwelcoming carpet of dark green. It reminded him, vaguely, unsettlingly, of some of the starker, more dramatic parts of the south coast back home, but… wrong. Utterly, fundamentally wrong. The light was wrong, the air felt wrong, the very angle of the sun, when it briefly, weakly, pierced the oppressive cloud cover, seemed alien. What a dreadful, dreadful May this was turning out to be, he thought with a sudden, bizarrely specific pang of dislocated misery, before shaking his head to dispel the irrelevant, nonsensical thought.

Around him, other teenagers – actual, living, breathing teenagers, their faces a sea of youthful energy and incomprehensible expressions – chattered and laughed and scrolled through their phones, their voices a bewildering, overwhelming cacophony in a language that flowed around him like fast-moving water, every sibilant hiss, every sharp vowel, every lilting intonation entirely, utterly alien and incomprehensible. They all wore the same dark blue uniform, a depressing ocean of conformity. They were all, he noted with a fresh, sinking wave of despair, Japanese.

“Excuse me,” he tried, the English words feeling thick, clumsy, unnaturally foreign, and obscenely loud in this new, higher-pitched, unfamiliar voice. A few heads turned, their expressions ranging from mild curiosity to outright, disdainful indifference. Blank, uncomprehending eyes stared back at him for a moment before dismissively turning away. One girl, her hair an impossible, almost aggressive shade of bubblegum pink tied into ridiculously perky pigtails, giggled openly into her hand, then whispered something clearly amusing to her smirking friend, who also giggled. The isolation was immediate, profound, absolute. He was a foreigner in a land he didn’t recognize, in a body that wasn’t his own, speaking a language no one here apparently understood. He was, he realized with a sudden, sickening lurch of his stomach, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

His heart, this new, unfamiliar heart, hammered a frantic, panicked rhythm against ribs that felt alarmingly close to the surface of his skin. He patted the pockets of the unfamiliar school blazer, a desperate, fumbling, almost spastic search for something, anything, familiar, an anchor in this maelstrom of unreality. His worn leather wallet, with its comforting, familiar collection of well-thumbed loyalty cards, a few emergency pound coins, and that faded, creased photograph of his late, beloved spaniel, Buster? Gone. His house keys, his car keys, the comforting jingle they usually made in his pocket? Vanished. But then, his fingers, these new, slender, unnervingly smooth fingers, brushed against a familiar, solid rectangular outline in the blazer’s inside pocket.

His mobile phone. An older, slightly battered, but entirely reliable smartphone. His lifeline. With trembling, uncoordinated hands, he pulled it out, its familiar weight a small, almost insignificant comfort in this ocean of terrifying unfamiliarity. The screen flickered to life, displaying its usual, incongruously cheerful background of a slightly out-of-focus bluebell wood he’d photographed on a long-forgotten bank holiday walk. 27% battery. A fresh, sharp spike of pure, undiluted panic lanced through him, colder and more terrifying than the sea wind. Twenty-seven percent. How long would that last? Hours? Minutes? It was his only link to potential understanding, his only tool for navigating this waking nightmare.

He fumbled with the touchscreen, his larger, older man’s muscle memory struggling, fighting against the delicate, precise coordination required by these smaller, younger, entirely unfamiliar teenage hands. He found the voice translation app – a half-forgotten relic from a disastrous, sunburnt package holiday to Majorca with his ex-wife nearly a decade ago, an app he’d kept on his phone for reasons he couldn’t now fathom but was, in this moment, profoundly, desperately grateful for. He jabbed clumsily at the English-to-Japanese setting, his finger slipping twice on the smooth glass.

Clutching the phone like a drowning man grasping a flimsy piece of driftwood, he turned to a boy slumped apathetically beside him on the hard plastic bench. The boy was entirely, almost aggressively, engrossed in a sleek, brightly coloured handheld gaming device that emitted a series of tinny, irritatingly cheerful bleeps and bloops. “Excuse me,” Arthur said again, his voice shaking slightly as he spoke clearly and slowly into the phone’s microphone. The device chirped once, a small, tinny, almost hopeful sound, then emitted a short, polite, perfectly synthesized Japanese phrase.

The boy jumped as if he’d been poked with a sharp stick, startled, his game momentarily forgotten. He looked up, his eyes wide with surprise, then narrowed with suspicion as he took in Arthur’s clearly foreign, distressed appearance. He pointed a questioning finger at himself, then at Arthur. “Watashi? Anata?” (Me? You?)

Arthur nodded vigorously, a ridiculous, almost hysterical wave of relief washing over him at this tiny, fragile, almost insignificant flicker of basic human comprehension. He spoke urgently into the phone again, the question feeling utterly absurd, almost laughably inadequate, even as he voiced it. “Where are we going? Please, can you tell me where this ferry is going?”

The phone chirped. The boy listened, his expression still wary, then replied in a rapid, almost unintelligible stream of Japanese, gesturing vaguely with his free hand towards the misty, forbidding island looming ever closer on the grey horizon. The phone dutifully, if somewhat tinnily, translated back: “To the island. We are all going to the island. For the special school.”

“School?” Arthur croaked, the word catching in his throat like a fishbone. He repeated it into the phone, needing confirmation, needing something, anything, to make sense.

“Yes. The academy. For those with Talents.”

Talents? A sliver of icy, unwelcome unease, sharp as a shard of freshly broken glass, pierced through the thick fog of Arthur’s confusion and terror. The word echoed with a dark, half-forgotten, deeply unpleasant familiarity. The island. The special school. For the Talented. His mind, sluggish with shock, began to churn, to sift through old, discarded memories, searching for a connection, a terrifying, almost unthinkable recognition beginning to dawn.

The ferry docked with a gentle, almost anticlimactic bump against a solid, seaweed-stained concrete pier. The previously chattering students began to gather their bags, a river of dark blue uniforms flowing with a surprising, almost disciplined orderliness towards the disembarkation ramp. Arthur, feeling like a man walking to his own execution, followed them woodenly, his legs like leaden stilts, his mind a maelstrom of fear and dawning, horrifying comprehension. The island air, when he finally stepped onto solid, unmoving ground, was humid, heavy, carrying the cloying scent of pine needles, damp earth, and something else, something faintly metallic, like old blood. A few stern-faced adults, presumably teachers, their expressions uniformly unwelcoming, were directing the arriving students with curt, impatient gestures towards a narrow, winding path leading steeply upwards, into the island’s dense, shadowy, and deeply foreboding interior.

He walked as if in a trance, the phone clutched in his hand like a talisman against the encroaching darkness. This new, young body, this ‘Kenji Tanaka’ as his hastily discovered student ID card (found in another pocket of the unfamiliar blazer) proclaimed him to be, was a reluctant, terrified automaton, and he, Arthur Ainsworth, was its bewildered, unwilling, and increasingly horrified pilot.

Evening found him in a small, stark, sparsely furnished dormitory room, shared with another silent, sullen boy – his roommate, Suzuki, who had grunted a minimal, almost resentful greeting earlier before burying himself completely in a brightly coloured manga volume, effectively vanishing from Arthur’s immediate reality. The overwhelming, unrelenting newness of it all – the constant, bewildering barrage of the unfamiliar Japanese language assaulting his ears, the strange, unappetizing food he’d barely been able to touch at dinner (a slimy, unidentifiable fish and a bowl of disturbingly grey rice), the constant, terrifying, almost schizophrenic disconnect between his fifty-one-year-old mind and this unfamiliar, unwieldy teenage body – was crushing, suffocating.

He sat heavily on the edge of the narrow, unyielding bed, the phone’s battery indicator now a glaring, accusatory, terrifying red 15%. He needed to charge it. Urgently. Desperately. It was his only link to comprehension, his only tool for navigating this bewildering, hostile new reality. But the power sockets in the dorm room wall were a different, unfamiliar shape, and he hadn’t seen his own trusty charger since… well, since his own familiar, comforting kitchen in Crawley, a lifetime, an eternity, ago.

He had to think. He forced his panicked, reeling mind to focus. Talented. Island academy for the Talented. Snippets of disjointed conversation, hazy, half-recalled images from a garishly coloured, excessively violent animation his teenage nephew had been briefly, inexplicably obsessed with some years ago, flickered like faulty neon signs at the frayed edges of his memory. A pretty, innocent-looking girl with bright pink hair and an unnervingly sweet, almost predatory smile. A sullen, white-haired boy with an obsession with immortality and a penchant for asking inconvenient questions. Gruesome, inventive deaths, casually, almost gleefully, inflicted. Dark secrets. Government conspiracies.

Talentless Nana.

The name, the title, hit him with the force of a physical blow, knocking the last vestiges of air from his already constricted lungs. No. It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t. That was fiction, a dark, twisted, nihilistic little piece of entertainment his sister had tutted disapprovingly about. He wasn’t in an anime. Such things didn’t happen. They couldn’t happen.

But the evidence, the terrible, mounting, undeniable evidence, was all around him. The isolated island, miles from any recognizable mainland. The special school, exclusively for "Talented" youth. The subtle, pervasive undercurrent of something… predatory, something dangerous, he’d sensed beneath the thin, fragile veneer of enforced institutional normalcy.

If this was true, if this waking nightmare was indeed his new reality, then he was in unimaginable, immediate, and quite possibly terminal danger. Everyone here was. And he, Arthur Ainsworth, a mild-mannered, unremarkable, fifty-one-year-old former accounts clerk from the peaceful, predictable suburbs of Crawley, was trapped, helpless and horrified, in the unfamiliar, ill-fitting body of a Japanese schoolboy named Kenji Tanaka, days, perhaps mere hours, from the inevitable arrival of a ruthless, highly trained, government-sanctioned teenage assassin.

The phone’s screen flickered ominously, then dimmed. 10%.

The raw, animalistic panic gave way, momentarily, to a desperate, pragmatic, almost cold urgency. He had to find a charger. A compatible one. And a socket that would accept it. Now. Without the phone, without his translator, without his only tenuous link to the world around him, he was deaf, dumb, defenceless, and almost certainly, irrecoverably, dead.

He scrambled to his feet, his earlier exhaustion forgotten, replaced by a surge of pure, undiluted adrenaline. He left his silent, manga-absorbed roommate without a word and ventured cautiously out into the dimly lit, echoing corridor. The dorm was quieting down for the night, most of the other students presumably already in their rooms. He found a common room at the end of the corridor, its lights still on, though it was deserted. It smelled faintly of stale noodles and cheap cleaning fluid. A few students were chatting quietly within, others were hunched over textbooks, already studying. His eyes, wild and desperate, scanned the walls, searching. There. A grimy, overloaded power strip, with a couple of tantalizingly vacant sockets. And discarded carelessly on a low, battered coffee table, amidst a scattering of empty snack wrappers, discarded manga volumes, and students’ textbooks, was a tangled, spaghetti-like mess of assorted charging cables. One of them, a generic-looking black one, looked promising, its micro-USB connector seemingly, blessedly, similar to his own phone’s charging port.

His heart pounding in his throat like a trapped bird, he darted forward and snatched it up. It was a cheap, no-name brand, but the connector looked right. He hurried back to the precious, vacant sockets in the power strip, his hands shaking so badly he could barely insert the plug. He then, with a silent, fervent prayer to any deity, any force, any cosmic entity that might conceivably be listening in this godforsaken corner of reality, connected the other end of the cable to his phone.

The charging icon appeared on the screen. 10%. Then, after an agonizing, heart-stopping pause, 11%.

A tiny, almost hysterical, choked laugh escaped him, a sound perilously close to a sob. One problem, at least, one immediate, life-threatening crisis, was temporarily, blessedly, solved. But as he slumped weakly against the cool, indifferent wall, watching the battery percentage slowly, painstakingly, begin to climb, the larger, more terrifying, more inescapable reality of his utterly impossible situation settled upon him with a crushing, suffocating, and unyielding weight. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, on Murder Island. And the deadly, bloody games, he knew with a certainty that chilled him to the very marrow of his new, young bones, were about to begin.

Grendel Jinx in Talentless Nana: A Tale of Talents and Deceptions (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/story/393719322-grendel-jinx-in-talentless-nana-a-tale-of-talents?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_myworks&wp_uname=MrTAToad 

The last thing Grendel Jinx remembered was a frying pan swinging toward her face in a Chichester warehouse, courtesy of some goon from a rival secret organization. Then, a flash of green light, a sensation like being sucked through a straw, and now-this. She blinked against the sterile white ceiling of what looked like a hospital room, the faint hum of fluorescent lights buzzing in her ears. Her head throbbed, but her limbs were intact, and her trademark leather jacket was neatly folded on a chair nearby. Not bad for a girl who'd just been yeeted across dimensions.

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).

.

The Council Of The Unseen Versus SPECTRE

‘Full-blown meltdown’ at Pentagon after Hegseth’s second Signal chat revealed

Existence of group chat including Hegseth, his wife and others prompt calls for defense secretary to step down

the Guardian

‘Full-blown meltdown’ at Pentagon after Hegseth’s second Signal chat revealed

Existence of group chat including Hegseth, his wife and others prompt calls for defense secretary to step downUS politics live – latest upda

Nana is an evil little bitch

Nana is an evil little bitch

US to import millions of eggs from Turkey and South Korea to ease prices

Making South Korea Great Again!

Despite President Trump's campaign promise to reduce prices, the cost of eggs has surged more than 65% over the past year, and it is projected to rise by 41% in 2025.

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).

.

Would be even better if Nana is killed by someone she trusted. Would be nicely ironic

Nana is an evil little bitch

Would be even better if Nana is killed by someone she trusted. Would be nicely ironic