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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.

Chapter 17: The Truth About Jin

The uneasy, unspoken truce that had formed between Arthur and Kyouya Onodera settled into the grim, unfolding routine of the second school year. Kyouya, armed with Arthur’s dire warnings about manufactured food shortages and impending internal conflict, became even more watchful, his movements more deliberate, his observations more acute. Arthur, for his part, continued his solitary, heartbreaking watch over Michiru Inukai’s still, unnervingly preserved form in her sealed-off dormitory room, a silent, daily ritual that did little to soothe his frayed nerves but provided a strange, painful focal point for his grief and his stubborn, almost defiant hope.

The long, isolated weeks of the inter-term break, however, had afforded him ample, unwelcome time for reflection, for sifting through the chaotic, fragmented memories of the anime that served as his cursed, unreliable roadmap through this deadly reality. He’d replayed scenes in his mind, pieced together snatches of dialogue, connected half-forgotten character arcs. One name, one enigmatic face, had begun to trouble him more insistently during those lonely vigils: Jin Tachibana. The aloof, strikingly white-haired student who had arrived later in the previous year, the one whose presence often felt… dissonant, out of sync with the other students, his pronouncements occasionally too insightful, his detachment too profound. There was a piece of the intricate, horrifying puzzle missing, a vital connection he hadn’t quite made.

Then, late one night, as he sat by Michiru’s bedside, the silence of the deserted school pressing in on him, it had clicked. A chilling cascade of forgotten details from the anime resurfaced from the depths of his recall – a complex, tragic backstory involving Jin, another student, a past conflict, and a hidden identity. It was a deeply personal revelation, one that directly, devastatingly, concerned Kyouya Onodera.

For weeks into the new term, Arthur wrestled with the knowledge, the weight of it a heavy burden. Should he tell Kyouya? Such a truth could shatter him, derail his relentless quest for his missing sister, Rin. Or, perhaps, it could provide him with a new, terrible focus. Their wary understanding was still fragile; this could destroy it, or solidify it in ways Arthur couldn’t predict. But as the food supplies visibly dwindled, as Arthur’s grim forecast began to manifest with chilling accuracy, and as Kyouya’s quiet respect for Arthur’s unwelcome prescience grew, Arthur decided he couldn’t withhold it any longer. Kyouya deserved to know, whatever the cost.

He sought out Kyouya a few weeks into the new term, finding him, as he often did, in a quiet, secluded corner of the school library, surrounded by stacks of arcane-looking texts. The initial whispers of dwindling food supplies in the canteen, just as Arthur had “predicted” to him, were now becoming anxious murmurs throughout the student body, adding a new, sharp layer of tension to the already oppressive school atmosphere.

“Onodera,” Arthur began, his phone held ready, his expression grim. He didn’t bother with pleasantries; their interactions were rarely burdened by them. “There’s something else. Something more… personal. It concerns… your sister, Rin.”

Kyouya looked up from the ancient, leather-bound volume he was studying, his pale eyes instantly sharpening, losing their distant, scholarly focus. His sister. Rin was his driving motivation, the unwavering, singular reason he endured the horrors of this island, the burning core of his relentless search for answers. Any mention of her, however oblique, was guaranteed to command his absolute, undivided attention.

“What about her?” Kyouya’s voice was low, dangerously controlled, but with an unmistakable undercurrent of coiled intensity. He placed his book down carefully, his full attention now fixed on Arthur.

Arthur took a deep, steadying breath. This was it. There was no easy way to deliver such news. “Your sister, Rin…” he began, his phone translating his carefully chosen, hesitant English words into precise, unpitying Japanese. “I believe she is here, Onodera. On this island. But not… not as you would expect her to be.” He paused, letting the synthesized words hang in the heavy silence of the library alcove. “She’s here, I believe, as Jin Tachibana.”

Kyouya’s stoic, almost carved expression finally, catastrophically, broke. A flicker of utter disbelief, then a dawning, rapidly escalating wave of horrified understanding, washed across his usually impassive features. He said nothing, his lips parting slightly as if to speak, then closing again. His knuckles were bone-white where he gripped the edge of the heavy wooden table.

Arthur pressed on, his own heart aching with a reluctant sympathy for the pain he was inflicting, laying out the grim theory his fragmented, cursed knowledge had pieced together. “The real Jin Tachibana… I believe he was a student here some years ago. There was a… a significant conflict on this island. A civil war, of sorts, between factions of students, quite possibly triggered by the kind of manufactured food shortages I warned you about. A previous iteration of the Committee’s cruel experiments in social pressure.” He watched Kyouya absorb this, his face pale as death, his eyes wide and haunted. “During that conflict, I believe the real Jin Tachibana was severely injured, perhaps critically, while trying to protect your sister, Rin. He might be hospitalized somewhere on the mainland now, brain-damaged beyond recovery… or he could be dead. My… glimpses… are unclear on his precise fate.”

He saw Kyouya swallow hard, his gaze dropping to the scarred surface of the table, his mind clearly reeling from the brutal implications of Arthur’s words. “Rin… your sister…” Arthur continued, his phone’s voice softening almost imperceptibly, though the words themselves remained sharp as glass. “She was deeply troubled, wasn’t she? You’ve mentioned her struggles. Prone to depression, perhaps even suicidal ideations? Burdened by a profound sense of guilt, especially if Jin, this other boy, was so grievously hurt, or even died, protecting her.” Arthur’s phone conveyed the gentle but firm assertion. “After that incident, perhaps needing an identity to shield herself, a way to survive in the aftermath of whatever horrors she witnessed, or perhaps even found and manipulated by the Committee who saw a broken, malleable asset… she took on Jin Tachibana’s name, his persona. The Jin Tachibana we see now, the one who walks these halls… I believe that is your sister, Rin, hiding in plain sight, perhaps even from herself.”

The silence in the library alcove was thick, suffocating, broken only by the distant, careless rustle of someone turning pages in another section. Kyouya stared at the table, his shoulders slumped, as if the weight of Arthur’s revelation was a physical burden pressing him down. His quest, his entire reason for being on this island, had just been twisted into a horrifying, unrecognizable shape.

“Why?” Kyouya finally managed to choke out, his voice barely a whisper, raw with a pain and confusion that cut Arthur to the core. “Why would she do that? Why not… why not come to me, if she was here?”

“Fear, perhaps,” Arthur’s phone translated softly. “Profound, overwhelming guilt. A belief that she was a burden, as you’ve sometimes feared she felt. Or, and this is just as likely, Onodera, manipulation. The Committee… Tsuruoka… they are masters of it. Perhaps they found her in her despair, offered her a deal, a way to disappear into a new identity, leveraging her trauma, her vulnerability. They are not above such monstrous tactics.” He paused, then added the most chilling possibility. “Rin might even have been… one of their assets for a time, before Nana Hiiragi. A predecessor, broken by her experiences, then repurposed by Tsuruoka. It would fit their pattern.”

Kyouya Onodera slowly raised his head. The raw pain was still evident in his eyes, but beneath it, a new, colder, almost terrifying resolve was beginning to solidify. The news was clearly devastating, a seismic shock to the foundations of his world, but it also seemed to galvanize him, to forge his grief and confusion into a sharper, more focused weapon. If Rin was here, if she was truly Jin Tachibana, then his quest had a new, terrible, and immediate focus. The island’s secrets, he now understood, were not just abstract horrors; they were deeply, terrifyingly personal.

“This ‘Talent’ of yours, Tanaka,” Kyouya said at last, his voice regaining some of its usual hard, steady cadence, though an undercurrent of profound turmoil still resonated within it. “It reveals… exceptionally inconvenient, and often painful, truths.”

“It often feels more like an inescapable curse, Onodera,” Arthur’s phone replied, the weariness in his own English tone undoubtedly lost in translation. “But this is what I have seen. This is what I believe, with a fair degree of certainty, to be the truth of the matter.”

Kyouya nodded slowly, his gaze distant, already processing, analyzing, re-evaluating everything he thought he knew. “If Rin is Jin…” he murmured, almost to himself. “…then everything changes.” He stood up abruptly, the ancient book he had been reading forgotten on the table. “Thank you, Tanaka,” he said, his voice surprisingly formal. “You have given me… a great deal to consider. And to act upon.”

He turned and walked away, his strides long and purposeful, leaving Arthur alone in the quiet, shadowed alcove. Arthur watched him go, a sense of grim satisfaction mingling with a profound unease. He had armed Kyouya Onodera with a terrible, transformative truth. Whether it would ultimately help him, or lead him to further despair, Arthur couldn’t say. But Kyouya now possessed a crucial, agonizingly personal piece of the island’s dark puzzle. And their strange, unspoken, almost unwilling alliance, built upon a shared foundation of unwelcome knowledge and the ever-present shadow of the island’s darkness, had undeniably, irrevocably, deepened. The game, Arthur knew, was evolving once more, and the stakes, already impossibly high, were rising for everyone involved.

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 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 30: The Roundup

A tense, nerve-wracking month crawled by, bleeding from the anxious heart of May into the oppressive, humid heat of mid-June in what would have been, in Arthur’s old life, the summer of 2028. Arthur Ainsworth, Nana Hiiragi, and the ever-enigmatic Jin Tachibana had found a precarious, fleeting anonymity in the sprawling, indifferent depths of Tokyo, moving frequently between a series of increasingly dilapidated, anonymous safe houses procured by Jin’s surprising and unnervingly effective network of unseen contacts. Their life on the run was a grim tapestry woven from constant fear, whispered conversations, shared, meagre rations, and the ever-present shadow of Tsuruoka’s inevitable pursuit.

The atmosphere in the country, meanwhile, had grown uglier, more poisonous by the day. Anti-Talent hysteria, deliberately fanned by sensationalist media outlets controlled by or sympathetic to the Committee, and further inflamed by a series of carefully orchestrated, highly publicized incidents attributed to rogue, "dangerous" Talents, had reached a terrifying, fever pitch. The government, citing an escalating threat to national security and public order, had passed sweeping new emergency legislation, granting sweeping, almost unchecked powers to newly formed special security units. The internment camps Jin had warned of were no longer a whispered rumour, a shadowy future threat, but a stark, brutal, and rapidly expanding reality. Posters appeared overnight on city walls: stern, ominous warnings about the "Talent Menace," urging citizens to report any suspicious individuals or unusual abilities to the authorities. Radio talk shows and television news programs were filled with inflammatory rhetoric, expert panels discussing the "inherent instability" of Talented individuals, and thinly veiled calls for their segregation and control "for the good of society."

Arthur and Nana had settled into an uneasy, almost claustrophobic cohabitation in their current hideout – the back rooms of a small, long-shuttered and forgotten noodle bar in a decaying industrial district, its windows boarded up, its air thick with the smell of dust, disuse, and their own shared anxiety. Their conversations were often strained, punctuated by long, uncomfortable silences filled with the ghosts of their past and the looming dread of their future. They were trying, hesitantly, awkwardly, to forge some kind of functional working relationship, sharing fragmented, painful memories from the island, attempting to understand the true extent of Tsuruoka’s monstrous manipulations. Arthur still found it incredibly, almost impossibly difficult to reconcile the subdued, haunted, and seemingly genuinely remorseful Nana Hiiragi before him – the young woman who now flinched at loud noises and wept silently in her sleep – with the cold, efficient, ruthless teenage assassin he had first encountered on that cursed island. Nana, in turn, visibly struggled with the sheer weight of Arthur’s quiet, unspoken knowledge of her past, his occasional, inadvertent English pronouncements a constant, unwelcome reminder of the depth of his insight, his very presence a mirror reflecting her own suffocating self-loathing.

They were in the middle of one such tense, circular discussion, Nana hesitantly recounting a half-remembered detail about Tsuruoka’s early indoctrination methods, Arthur listening with a grim, weary patience, when the boarded-up back door of the noodle bar suddenly splintered inwards with a deafening crash.

Before either of them could fully react, before Arthur could even scramble to his feet, the small, dark room was swarming with black-clad, heavily armed Committee agents, their faces hidden behind impersonal, menacing gas masks, their movements swift, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient. Arthur and Nana barely had time to register the assault before they were viciously subdued, their desperate, futile struggles silenced by harsh, barked commands, the painful pressure of stun batons, and the brutal, practiced efficiency of highly trained government operatives. There was no escape. The roundup, Jin’s dire prophecy, had begun in deadly earnest.

Arthur next found himself blinking dazedly against the harsh, unforgiving glare of fluorescent lights in a vast, echoing, and terrifyingly crowded processing centre, the air thick with the metallic tang of fear, unwashed bodies, and institutional disinfectant. He was fingerprinted with rough, indifferent hands, photographed like a common criminal, forcibly stripped of his ragged civilian clothes, and issued a drab, numbered, ill-fitting prison uniform. He caught a fleeting, horrifying glimpse of Nana, her face pale as death but her expression one of grim, almost stony resignation, being herded into a separate line by two armed guards. Then she was gone, swallowed by the chaotic, terrified throng.

The internment camp itself, when he finally arrived after a long, jolting journey in an overcrowded, windowless transport vehicle, was a monument to despair. It was a desolate, sprawling, hastily constructed complex of prefabricated barracks and grim concrete bunkers, surrounded by multiple layers of high, electrified fences, stark, skeletal watchtowers manned by heavily armed guards, and an almost palpable aura of hopelessness. It was a place built to crush spirits, to extinguish hope, to reduce human beings to mere numbers.

Within days of his arrival, amidst the hushed, fearful whispers and the constant, grinding misery of camp life, Arthur heard the news he had both dreaded and somehow expected. Kyouya Onodera was here, captured in a separate, equally brutal raid in another city. More astonishingly, and a small, sharp, painful joy for Arthur, he learned that Michiru Inukai had also been swept up in the Committee’s merciless nationwide purge, her quiet, unassuming life on the mainland, where she had been living with distant relatives, violently, inexplicably interrupted. They were all here, it seemed, the key surviving pieces of the island’s cursed, tragic legacy, brought together once more by Tsuruoka’s machinations, confined in this new, even more horrifying circle of hell.

The camp was under the iron-fisted command of a man named Ide – Commandant Ide, as he insisted on being addressed. Ide was a tall, imposing figure with cold, fanatical eyes, a neatly trimmed grey moustache, and an unshakeable, almost religious belief in the inherent danger and genetic inferiority of Talented individuals. He would often address the new arrivals during their initial processing, his voice amplified by loudspeakers, spewing forth a venomous stream of anti-Talent rhetoric, justifying their imprisonment as a necessary measure to protect the "purity and safety of normal society."

Commandant Ide, Arthur soon learned through the camp’s terrified grapevine, took a particular, sadistic, and almost scientific interest in Kyouya Onodera. Reports of Kyouya’s extraordinary immortality had, it seemed, reached him, and Ide appeared determined to personally test its limits, to find a way to break the unbreakable boy, perhaps even to discover the secret of his regenerative abilities for the Committee’s nefarious purposes. Kyouya was dragged from the already harsh conditions of the general prison population and subjected to weeks of relentless, systematic, and increasingly brutal torture in a special, isolated detention block known only as “Ward Seven.” The methods employed there were whispered to be horrific, designed to inflict maximum, unendurable pain and complete psychological disintegration. Yet, Kyouya endured, his body, though repeatedly broken, always regenerating, his spirit, though undoubtedly battered and traumatized, somehow remaining defiantly, stubbornly, unyieldingly intact.

News of Kyouya’s unimaginable ordeal, though heavily suppressed by the camp authorities, inevitably filtered through the camp’s hushed, fearful rumour mill, adding another deep layer of visceral terror and utter despair to the prisoners’ already wretched existence. Arthur felt a particular, agonizing helplessness; Kyouya, for all his aloofness, his cold detachment, had become a stoic, if distant, and surprisingly reliable ally.

Then, one dark, moonless night, during a period of unusually intense camp-wide lockdown, a small, heavily guarded unit within the infamous Ward Seven was unexpectedly, almost silently, breached. Not by an external force, not by a prisoner uprising, but seemingly from within the camp’s own impenetrable administrative structure. Jin Tachibana, who had, with his usual uncanny, almost supernatural skill, somehow managed to either evade capture during the initial roundups or had deliberately allowed himself to be interned, quickly infiltrating the camp’s complex bureaucracy using his high-level, if now presumably compromised, Committee contacts, orchestrated a daring, almost suicidal rescue. He, with the help of a few carefully chosen, strategically placed individuals within the camp staff whom he had either bribed, blackmailed, or perhaps even genuinely persuaded to his cause, neutralized the guards around Kyouya’s solitary confinement cell, his movements precise, silent, and lethally efficient. He managed to extract Kyouya from the bloodstained, nightmarish torture block.

Kyouya Onodera, emaciated, his body a canvas of fresh, horrific wounds that were already, almost visibly, beginning to heal, his white hair matted with sweat and dried blood, but his eyes still burning with an unquenchable, defiant light, was brought under the cover of darkness to the crowded, squalid barracks section of the camp where Arthur, Nana, and Michiru were housed. His sudden, almost miraculous arrival was a profound shock, but also a tiny, desperately needed spark of something akin to hope in the suffocating darkness. Jin Tachibana had proven his extraordinary capabilities, his enigmatic reach, once more, his influence extending even into the black, beating heart of the Committee’s most brutal prison system.

“Commandant Ide is a fool,” Jin commented quietly to Arthur later, after ensuring Kyouya was safely hidden amongst a small, fiercely loyal group of prisoners who had sworn to protect him. “He believes that pain is the ultimate master, the only true language of control. He doesn’t understand resilience. He doesn’t understand that some spirits, like some bodies, simply refuse to break.”

The unexpected reunion of their core group – Arthur, Nana, Michiru, and now Kyouya – was deeply, profoundly bittersweet, overshadowed by the grim, unyielding reality of their indefinite imprisonment. Nana, her face a mask of complex, conflicting emotions, tended to Kyouya’s initial, horrific wounds with a quiet, almost reverent efficiency, her movements surprisingly gentle. Michiru, her eyes wide with sympathy and a quiet, horrified understanding, offered what little comfort she could, her gentle presence a small solace in the overwhelming brutality of their situation. Arthur watched them, these familiar, battered faces a stark, painful reminder of all they had lost, all they had endured, and all they still stood to lose. The internment camp was Tsuruoka’s new, even more unforgiving crucible, designed to break them, to categorize them, to ultimately, inevitably, eliminate them. But with Kyouya’s miraculous rescue, a fragile, almost invisible seed of defiance, of resistance, had been unexpectedly, improbably, planted. The only question that remained was whether it could possibly survive, let alone hope to flourish, in such barren, toxic, and relentlessly hostile soil.

Nana Hiiragi

Of course the hate for her is well deserved.

First off, blaming "brainwashing" lets her off the hook far too easily. Patty Hearst tried the same trick in the 1970's and it didn't exactly work out well for her. Ironically, Patty spent more time in prisoner for her bank robberies than Nana does for her 10+ murders, which in itself is unfair - Nana gets away with far too much because she's a girl, instead of in spite of it.

Yes, she would be hated just as much if Nana was male (probably more so).

It should be noted that all Nana's murders were premeditated, on her own cognisance and with malice. Just because she was told to do so, doesn't mean she had to.

In addition to that, just because she may not have wanted to do kill anyone, she was certainly happy to do so (smiling when thinking about killing Mirichu as well as the "won't be shy in killing you" part). Nana is a person who would rather murder someone than think of any sort of alternative (as is the case later on).

Futher more, stating that she's a "child soldier" carries no weight - she's killing civilians, which if she was a soldier makes her actions even more odious.

The fact that people try to exonerate Nana because she was "mind controlled" doesn't hold much water considering she was fully aware of what she was doing; didn't need to; didn't bother querying anything and was fully cognisant during her pre-meditated murders; and she quite happily carried another one out, with no doubt more to come.

In addition, there is no reason why she couldn't have asked questions or even did her own reason about Talents and so forth.

I wasn't surprised that the anime didn't get a second season (if it wasn't just for boosting manga sales) because Nana is so unrelatable, unrelatable and pretty much evil personified. Even later on, she's totally dislikable, obnoxious character.

Considering she's supposed to be intelligent, you would have thought, at the very least, queries the morality, if not the legality and ethics of killing schoolchildren (let alone those she killed before she arrived at the island). She's fully aware of what she's doing, so it's all on her own head. She certainly deserves to be punished far longer than three years (that ends up around 3 months for every kid).

I wouldn't be surprised if Nana Hiiragi does enjoy killing people - she is always smiling happily when thinking about killing her victims.

Whilst she may say that she doesn't want to kill any more, later on - it certainly doesn't stop her (no doubt it would be the first thing she thinks of to solve problems, instead of anything else).

Hopefully, she won't have a happy ending (preferably meet a nasty end - with her own poison needs would be nicely ironic). Whilst she may have "changed" for dubious reasons she will have to end up killing people again at some point. Even though she's changed, she's still an insufferable, nasty little bitch. I've got very little sympathy for her, especially as she was sadistic killing everyone.

And yes, killing Nano led to more people suffering - all because of Nana (no idea why Nano should forgive her - obviously he forgot how Nana taunted him before he fell, although I do hear he did beat the crap out of her as well).

Hopefully she will pay some sort of price for her actions.

Whist Nanao killed more people than Nana, it should be noted that Nana was the cause. It was nice of him really to leave Nana alone, considering she had no compulsion about killing Nanao - he certainly would have had a good reason to seek revenge on her.

In addition, for those who subscribe to those who view Nana as a child soldier (which is dubious to say the least), there is still precedent for requesting reparations and the same for prosecuting child soldiers too (DOMINIC ONGWEN).

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