Sku-te - Down With Nana Hiiragi

Chapter 34: Echoes of a Fictional Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nana is an evil little bitch

Chapter 27: The Cat's Counsel

The relentless, cold rain continued its merciless assault on the sprawling, indifferent city as Nana Hiiragi, her thin clothes plastered to her shivering frame, stumbled numbly through the labyrinthine backstreets. Arthur Ainsworth’s devastating words echoed and re-echoed in the shattered ruins of her mind, each revelation a fresh, agonizing hammer blow against the crumbling, indoctrinated edifice of her former life. Tsuruoka, her parents, the true, horrifying nature of the “Enemies of Humanity,” her own unwitting, monstrous role as a Talentless executioner in a grand, grotesque, and terrifying deception – it was too much to absorb, too much for any sane mind to bear. She was a ghost in her own stolen life, her hands, her very soul, stained with the indelible blood of those she had been so cruelly, so thoroughly, manipulated into killing. The city lights – reds, greens, whites – blurred into meaningless, swirling patterns through her tear-filled eyes, the cacophony of urban sounds a distant, irrelevant roar.

She eventually, through some dazed, unconscious homing instinct, reached her current, miserable hideout – a small, squalid, single-room apartment tucked away in a decaying, rat-infested tenement building, its grime, its anonymity, its pervasive air of neglect and despair her only shield against the world that now hunted her. As she fumbled with the rusty, ill-fitting key in the lock, a silent flash of white darted past her legs from the shadows of the crumbling stoop. The scrawny white cat from the alley, the one that had watched her and Arthur with such unnerving, almost sentient stillness, slipped silently into the room just before she could close the rickety, ill-fitting door. It padded softly across the grimy linoleum floor and settled itself on the room’s only chair, a broken-backed wooden reject, regarding her with those same intelligent, unblinking, luminous green eyes.

Soaked to the bone, shivering uncontrollably more from profound shock and existential horror than from the penetrating cold, Nana sank onto the threadbare, stained mattress that served as her bed. She stared blankly at her hands – these hands. Murderous hands. Hands that had, with such chilling efficiency, such blind obedience, snuffed out so many young lives, so many bright futures, all predicated on a foundation of monstrous, unforgivable lies. The weight of it all, the sheer, crushing, suffocating enormity of her unwitting, unforgivable crimes, pressed down on her, stealing her breath, extinguishing the last, faint embers of her will to live.

In a daze, her movements slow, almost mechanical, she rose from the mattress and walked with an unsteady gait into the tiny, grimy kitchenette alcove. Her vacant eyes fell upon a long, thin, serrated kitchen knife lying on the chipped, rust-stained draining board, its blade glinting faintly in the dim, flickering light from the single bare bulb hanging precariously from the ceiling. It seemed to beckon to her, a silent, gleaming promise of a swift, definitive, and perhaps even merciful end to her unbearable pain, her suffocating guilt, her wretched, pointless, and now utterly exposed existence. This, she thought with a strange, cold clarity, was the only atonement left to her. The only way out. She picked up the knife, its cold, surprisingly heavy metal a stark, unwelcome contrast to the feverish, chaotic turmoil raging within her. Turning the unforgiving steel blade towards her own throat, she closed her eyes, a single, silent tear escaping to trace a path through the grime on her cheek, ready, almost eager, to embrace the oblivion she so richly deserved.

Just as the cold, sharp edge of the blade kissed the delicate skin of her neck, a white blur, impossibly fast, launched itself from the shadows of the broken chair. The cat, with a surprisingly powerful, perfectly aimed leap, slammed into her outstretched arm, its small body a furry projectile of unexpected force. The knife, knocked from her nerveless grasp, clattered loudly, skittering across the grimy linoleum floor to come to rest beneath the leaking sink.

Nana gasped, her eyes flying open, her body jolting with a fresh wave of shock, this time not of horror, but of sheer, uncomprehending surprise. She stared at the white cat, which now sat a few feet away, calmly, almost nonchalantly, licking its paw, as if knocking a deadly weapon from a suicidal girl’s trembling hand was the most natural, most everyday occurrence in the world.

Then, before her disbelieving, traumatized eyes, the cat, the ordinary-looking stray from the alley, began to shimmer and change. Its form elongated, solidified, its white fur receding, its feline features melting and reforming, coalescing with an almost liquid grace into the figure of a young man with stark white hair, pale, intelligent features, and an unnervingly calm, enigmatic smile. Jin Tachibana.

Nana’s mind, already reeling from Arthur’s revelations, struggled to process this new, impossible reality. This… this was the man she had glimpsed, so briefly, so unsettlingly, in that sterile observation room at Tsuruoka’s monstrous facility, the one whose brief, intense, almost accusatory stare had inexplicably, uncomfortably, stuck in her memory. “You…” she whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible. “You were there. At Tsuruoka’s base. In that… that room. I saw you.” Jin’s faint, enigmatic smile widened almost imperceptibly. “Yes, Hiiragi Nana-san,” he said, his voice calm, melodious, entirely at odds with the squalor of the room and the suicidal despair he had just interrupted. “You are quite correct. Your observational skills remain… commendably sharp, even under duress.” A new wave of bewildered confusion, mixed with a desperate, clawing need for answers, for any kind of sense in this senseless, collapsing world, washed over her. “But… why?” she stammered, her gaze darting between him and the discarded knife. “If you’re… if you have a Talent… why would you be there? Why would you work for an organization that wants to eradicate us all?”

Jin regarded her for a long, silent moment, his pale eyes unreadable, his calm composure utterly unnerving. Then, with a graceful, almost dismissive gesture, he indicated the tiny, dilapidated bathroom cubicle in the corner of the room. “You’re soaked through to the bone, Hiiragi-san,” he observed, his tone surprisingly gentle. “You’ll catch your death of cold, or something far worse, if you remain in those wet clothes any longer. Why don’t you avail yourself of a hot shower, if such a thing is possible in this charming establishment? Find something dry to wear. Then, perhaps, we can talk. Some questions, I find, are best answered on a full stomach, and with a clearer head, don’t you think?”

An hour later, scrubbed clean, dressed in a set of surprisingly clean, if ill-fitting, clothes Jin had inexplicably produced from a small satchel he carried, Nana found herself seated opposite him in a discreet private booth in a surprisingly expensive, almost opulent restaurant, the kind of place she hadn’t imagined she’d ever set foot in again. The warm, ambient lighting, the soft, unobtrusive classical music, the starched white linen, the delicious, exquisitely prepared food Jin ordered for them both without consulting her – it was a deliberate, disorienting, almost aggressive contrast to the squalor of her hideout and the black, churning turmoil in her soul. Jin, she was beginning to understand, was a master of subtle psychological manipulation himself, though his methods seemed geared towards creating a temporary illusion of comfort and security, perhaps to disarm her, to make her more receptive to what he had to say, or simply to demonstrate a level of capability and resourcefulness that was both vaguely reassuring and deeply, profoundly unsettling.

As they ate, Jin began to speak, his voice calm, measured, almost hypnotic. He told her about Kyouya Onodera, a name she knew, a presence she had felt on the island. And then, he spoke of Kyouya’s younger sister, Rin. “Rin,” Jin explained, his gaze steady, unwavering, “was a profoundly gifted, yet deeply troubled young woman. She suffered from a severe, almost crippling depression, always felt like she was an unbearable burden to her beloved older brother, Kyouya, whom she adored with a fierce, protective loyalty.”

Nana listened, her own food forgotten, captivated, wondering with a growing sense of dread and anticipation where this unexpected, intimate narrative was leading. “Rin,” Jin continued, his voice dropping slightly, drawing her further into his confidence, “eventually reached a point where she believed she could no longer bear the weight of her own perceived inadequacy. She left Kyouya, hoping, in her own tragic way, to spare him further pain, further worry.” He paused, allowing the sadness of it to settle. “Unfortunately, Hiiragi-san, in her vulnerability, in her despair, Rin ended up falling into the insidious, waiting clutches of the Committee. She was… one of your direct predecessors, Nana. One of the talented, broken young women Commander Tsuruoka identified, indoctrinated, and meticulously trained to be an efficient, unquestioning assassin. She saw the horrors of his program firsthand, the endless lies, the soul-destroying manipulation, the casual cruelty.” He paused again, his pale eyes searching hers, letting the full, terrible implication of his words sink in. He didn’t explicitly state that he was Rin, that he had endured those horrors himself. But he implied a deep, intimate, almost unbearable knowledge. “I learned everything I now know about the Committee, about Tsuruoka’s monstrous ‘Enemies of Humanity’ project, about his methods, his ultimate goals, from Rin. What she endured… what they did to her… it motivated me. Profoundly. I decided then that I would infiltrate the Committee, that I would gather information, that I would understand the true, horrifying extent of their despicable plans, and perhaps, just perhaps, find a way to dismantle their entire bloodsoaked operation from within.”

By the end of the surprisingly elaborate meal, Nana felt a fragile, hesitant sense of something akin to hope begin to flicker within the desolate wasteland of her soul. Jin’s story, his apparent deep-seated opposition to the Committee, his calm confidence, offered an unexpected, almost unbelievable lifeline. She wasn’t entirely alone in this. There were others who knew, others who fought. She returned to her dingy, cold apartment later that night feeling slightly less burdened, her mind, though still reeling, already beginning to formulate a new, desperate, reckless plan – a plan to confront Tsuruoka directly, to wring the full, unvarnished truth from him herself, armed with the terrible, empowering knowledge that Arthur Ainsworth, and now this enigmatic Jin Tachibana, had given her.

Jin escorted her to her grimy doorstep, then, with another of his inscrutable, faint smiles and a quiet promise to be in touch, he simply melted away into the dark, rain-swept city night, leaving Nana with a fragile, newfound resolve, but also a lingering, disquieting sense of unease. She felt as though she had merely traded one form of potential manipulation for another, possibly more subtle, more complex kind. But for now, any ally, any weapon, in the desperate, coming fight against Tsuruoka and the Committee was a welcome, if deeply wary, development.

Unfortunately for Nana Hiiragi, her desperate desire for immediate confrontation, her burning need to act on this new, terrible clarity, would be her swift undoing. She didn’t realize, couldn’t possibly have known, how closely Commander Tsuruoka was already watching her every move, how quickly his invisible, inescapable net was already closing tightly around her. Her time as a fugitive was rapidly running out.

Do hope Nana Hiiragi gets her comeuppance

Chapter 32: A New Beginning, An Old Fight

The night chosen for their desperate gamble, their improbable escape, arrived cloaked in a maelstrom of furious, driving wind and torrential, sheeting rain. It was a late autumn storm, one of the worst in recent memory, that lashed the internment camp with a savage, almost sentient fury – perfect, chaotic cover for the desperate endeavour that was about to unfold. For weeks, Kenichi Tanaka, their quiet, nervous “Architect,” had been painstakingly, almost obsessively, working in the damp, freezing, and carefully concealed confines of a long-disused, partially collapsed storage shed at the far, neglected perimeter of the camp. Shielded by the sound-dampening Talent of a timid girl named Hana and by the watchful, rotating guard duty of Kyouya and a few other trusted inmates, Kenichi had been slowly, agonizingly coaxing their improbable, monstrous escape vehicle into existence from scavenged scrap metal, compacted earth, shattered concrete, and sheer, unyielding force of will.

It was a hideous, utilitarian creation, a testament to desperate ingenuity rather than engineering aesthetics – less a train or a conventional vehicle and more a heavily armored, multi-terrain articulated transport, its hull a patchwork of rusted plating and reinforced rubble. Arthur had privately, grimly, dubbed it the “Land Leviathan.” Its motive power was a complex, jury-rigged, and highly unstable system cobbled together by Kyouya and a handful of other resourceful Talents, relying on a dangerous combination of kinetic energy conversion, makeshift steam power, and Kenichi’s own ability to subtly manipulate its structural integrity for movement.

On Nana Hiiragi’s quiet, tense signal, relayed through a chain of trusted whispers just as the storm reached its terrifying zenith, the meticulously planned operation snapped into motion. Hana, her face pale with concentration and fear, extended her sound-dampening field to its absolute limit, creating a precious cone of relative silence around Kenichi’s makeshift workshop as the final, noisy, and dangerously volatile connections were made to the Leviathan’s power core. Another student, an older boy named Ren whose Talent allowed him to cause localized, temporary electronic interference, focused his abilities on the camp’s main perimeter fence sensors and the central guardhouse communication lines, hoping to buy them precious, crucial minutes of confusion and disarray at precisely the right moment.

Kyouya Onodera, leading a small, handpicked, and utterly determined team of their strongest and most disciplined allies, moved like avenging shadows through the howling wind and driving rain, their movements swift, silent, and deadly. They neutralized the few terrified, rain-lashed guards patrolling the designated breach point near Kenichi’s workshop with swift, brutal, non-lethal efficiency, adhering strictly to Nana’s unwavering directive for minimal violence against their captors, if at all possible. They used chokeholds, pressure points, and improvised restraints, leaving the guards bound and unconscious, but alive.

The rumbling, groaning emergence of the Land Leviathan from the collapsing remnants of the workshop was a moment of terrifying, breathtaking, almost suicidal audacity. Its massive, misshapen form, slick with rain and mud, seemed to absorb the dim, flickering emergency lights of the camp, a creature born of desperation and shadow. Nana, a small, rain-soaked figure of calm amidst the controlled, adrenaline-fueled chaos, her voice sharp and clear above the howl of the storm, directed the first wave of chosen prisoners – the old, the sick, the youngest children, along with those whose specific Talents would be most useful in the immediate aftermath – towards the vehicle’s hastily constructed, reinforced loading ramp. Arthur found himself, alongside a surprisingly resolute Michiru Inukai, helping to guide a small, terrified group of wide-eyed children, their faces pale with fear, towards the relative, if claustrophobic, safety of the Leviathan’s dark, cavernous, metallic hull.

Then came the breach. With a deafening, tortured groan of protesting, tortured metal and crumbling ferroconcrete, the Land Leviathan, with a stoic, grim-faced Kyouya wrestling with its crude, unresponsive controls, ploughed with terrifying, unstoppable force through the first electrified perimeter fence, then the second, and finally, with a cataclysmic roar, through the main camp wall itself. Alarms, shrill and panicked, finally began blaring belatedly across the entire compound, their desperate cries almost lost in the fury of the storm. Guards, confused and disoriented, emerged from their shelters, firing wildly, their bullets pinging harmlessly off the Leviathan’s thick, improvised armor or whining away into the storm-tossed darkness. The monstrous vehicle, shuddering and groaning under the strain, surged forward, a juggernaut of desperate hope, into the dark, unforgiving, and unknown wilderness beyond the camp’s rapidly receding, oppressive lights.

Not everyone made it. In the ensuing chaos of the breach, amidst the shouting of guards and the panicked scramble of prisoners, some were caught by Ide’s enraged security forces, their desperate bid for freedom ending in brutal recapture. Others, overcome by fear or confusion, hesitated too long and were left behind. But a significant number – well over a hundred desperate souls – rumbled away into the stormy, concealing night, leaving Commandant Ide to survey the smoking, gaping hole in his perimeter wall and the utter wreckage of his authority in a transport of impotent, murderous fury.

They travelled for what felt like an eternity, the Land Leviathan crashing and lurching through the dense, trackless forest, pushing its makeshift, Talent-powered engine to its absolute limits. Kyouya, his face a mask of grim concentration, wrestled with the controls, navigating by instinct and the occasional, shouted direction from Jin Tachibana, who seemed to possess an uncanny, almost preternatural knowledge of the surrounding, uncharted terrain. Finally, just as the first, watery, grey light of a stormy dawn began to filter through the dense canopy, the monstrous vehicle, with a final, shuddering, metallic sigh, ground to a halt deep within a remote, mist-shrouded mountain valley, its power core finally, irrevocably, depleted.

Exhausted, mud-caked, soaked to the bone, but undeniably, miraculously free, the escapees stumbled out into the cold, damp air, their faces a mixture of stunned disbelief, dawning elation, and a profound, soul-deep weariness. They had done it. Against all odds, against all reason, they were out.

In the difficult, uncertain days that followed, a fledgling, fragile resistance began to take shape in their secluded, temporary mountain hideout – a series of interconnected, damp caves hidden behind a waterfall that Jin had, with his usual uncanny foresight, led them to. Nana Hiiragi, Kyouya Onodera, Arthur Ainsworth, Michiru Inukai, and Jin Tachibana (who, as always, appeared and disappeared with unsettling, mysterious ease, often returning with vital supplies of scavenged food, medicine, or crucial intelligence about Committee movements in the region) formed the de facto core of its hesitant, informal leadership. There were disagreements, naturally; tensions born of fear, exhaustion, and conflicting personalities. The constant, gnawing fear of discovery, of Tsuruoka’s inevitable, relentless pursuit, was a shadow that hung over them all. But there was also, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, a shared, defiant purpose.

For Nana, that purpose had now crystallized into an unwavering, all-consuming obsession: find the absolute, unvarnished truth about her parents’ murders, expose Commander Tsuruoka for the monster he was, and then, with every fibre of her being, dedicate herself to dismantling the Committee’s entire rotten, bloodsoaked infrastructure. For Kyouya, it was simpler, yet no less profound: protect his rediscovered sister, Rin (Jin), and ensure that no one else ever had to endure the horrors he had witnessed, the pain he had suffered. For Michiru, it was a quiet, unwavering commitment to healing, to offering comfort, to nurturing the fragile sparks of hope in the hearts of her fellow survivors.

It was during one of their first, tentative strategy sessions, huddled around a smoky, sputtering fire in the largest of the damp caves, the sound of the nearby waterfall a constant, rushing counterpoint to their hushed voices, that Arthur Ainsworth decided it was time to unburden himself of his longest-held, most significant secret. He looked at the tired, determined faces around him – Nana, her expression now one of fierce, almost righteous resolve rather than haunted guilt; Kyouya, his stoic presence a silent, unshakeable bedrock for them all; Michiru, her gentle strength an unexpected, vital anchor in their storm-tossed existence; Jin, his enigmatic smile hinting at depths of knowledge and purpose still unknown.

“There’s something… something important you all need to understand about me,” Arthur began, his voice quiet but firm, his Japanese, learned through years of painful necessity and now constant, unavoidable immersion, surprisingly steady, though still carrying the unmistakable, softened consonants of his native English. He no longer had his phone, his crutch, his electronic voice; these words, this truth, had to be his own. “My Talent… the ‘Chrono-Empathic Glimpse,’ as I once called it… it was always a finite thing. A limited resource. Like a well that, through overuse, eventually, inevitably, runs dry.” He paused, meeting their expectant, curious eyes, one by one. “That well… it is dry now. Completely. I’ve seen too far, too often, peered too deeply into futures that were not mine to see. I can no longer glimpse what is to come. I am, for all intents and purposes, truly Talentless now.”

A profound silence fell over the small, firelit group, broken only by the crackle of the flames and the distant roar of the waterfall. Nana looked at him, a flicker of complex, unreadable understanding in her violet eyes – perhaps a memory of his earlier, pointed comment in that rainy alleyway about Talents not having a monopoly on wrongdoing. “From here on,” Arthur continued, a new, unfamiliar, almost liberating resolve hardening his own expression, “I have no special foresight, no prophetic warnings, to offer any of you. What I have left is simply what you all possess: whatever intuition remains, the sum of the experiences we’ve endured, the lessons we’ve learned, and whatever stubborn, foolish determination we can collectively muster. We’re all… flying blind in that respect now, I suppose.”

He looked down at his hands, these unfamiliar teenage hands of Kenji Tanaka, hands that had, in the course of his bizarre, unwilling journey, performed acts, witnessed horrors, that Arthur Ainsworth, the mundane accounts clerk from Crawley, could never have begun to imagine. He wondered, as he often did in these quiet, reflective moments, about his old life, his old world, the one he had been so violently, so inexplicably, torn from. Could he ever truly return? And even if it were somehow, miraculously possible, after everything he had seen, everything he had done, everything he had become… would he even want to? The question, vast and unanswerable, hung heavy and unspoken in the damp, cave air.

Nana was the first to break the silence, her voice surprisingly gentle. “Your ‘glimpses’ may be gone, Arthur-san,” she said, using his first name with a newfound, hesitant, almost shy respect, the Japanese honorific a quiet acknowledgment. “But your insight, your unique understanding of Tsuruoka, your… your perspective… that is still valuable. More valuable now, perhaps, than ever before. We all still have a role to play in what’s to come.”

Kyouya Onodera, his gaze fixed on the dancing flames, nodded once in silent, stoic agreement. “We fight with what we have,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble. “And with who we are.”

They began to strategize then, their voices gaining a new strength, a new conviction, in the flickering, uncertain firelight. They were a small, battered, and profoundly unlikely band of survivors, pitted against a powerful, ruthless, and deeply entrenched enemy. The fight ahead was uncertain, perilous, the odds overwhelmingly stacked against them. But as they spoke, as they planned, as they began to forge a new, shared path forward into that terrifying, unknown future, Arthur Ainsworth felt a strange, unfamiliar, almost forgotten sensation begin to stir within him. It wasn’t foresight. It wasn’t prescience. It was something far simpler, far more fundamental, and perhaps, in the end, far more powerful. It was hope.

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 39: A Desperate Covenant

The dying embers of the fire in the cave cast long, flickering shadows, mirroring the uncertain, shifting thoughts of the fugitives huddled around its meager warmth. Arthur Ainsworth had laid bare his desperate, almost suicidal proposal, and now, the heavy silence was thick with unspoken fears, unvoiced objections, and the stark, terrifying absence of any readily apparent, less perilous alternatives. He had asked if anyone had better ideas, and the silence itself was a grim, eloquent answer.

Nana Hiiragi was the first to speak again, her voice low, almost rough with a new, unfamiliar emotion that Arthur couldn’t quite decipher – was it reluctant admiration for his sheer audacity, or a chilling premonition of shared doom? “If… if Jin-san truly believes he can create a convincing enough identity for you, Arthur-san… if there is even a ghost of a chance that you could get inside that… that place…” She paused, her gaze flicking towards Michiru, then back to Arthur, a fierce, protective light glinting in her violet eyes. “Then the information you could gather, the… the seeds of doubt you might be able to sow amongst those new students… it would be invaluable. More valuable, perhaps, than anything we could achieve by simply… running and hiding.” Her own past as Tsuruoka’s tool, her intimate knowledge of the Committee’s indoctrination methods, gave her a unique perspective on the potential impact of Arthur’s proposed counter-narrative. She knew how potent, how insidious, the right words, planted in the right minds at the right time, could be.

Kyouya Onodera, who had been staring intently into the flames, his face a mask of cold, hard calculation, finally nodded, a single, sharp, decisive movement. “The risks, as I have stated, remain astronomically high,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “However, the potential strategic gains, should you succeed in establishing a foothold and disseminating even a fraction of the truth about Tsuruoka and The Committee, are… significant.” He looked directly at Arthur. “If Jin-san can provide the necessary logistical support – a credible identity, a viable insertion method – then this plan, for all its inherent lunacy, warrants further, serious consideration. We are currently… outmaneuvered, out-resourced, and largely reactive. This, at least, offers a proactive, if extraordinarily high-stakes, gambit.”

Michiru, her gentle face still pale with worry, looked from Kyouya to Nana, then finally to Arthur. She twisted her small hands in her lap. “I… I am still so very frightened for you, Arthur-san,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. “But… if Nana-chan and Kyouya-san believe this is… this is a path we must consider… and if you are truly determined…” She took a small, shaky breath. “Then… then I will support you in any way I can. I will pray for your safety.” Her quiet courage, her unwavering loyalty, was a small, steadying anchor in the midst of their swirling fears.

All eyes now turned to Jin Tachibana. He had listened to their deliberations with his usual unnerving, almost preternatural calm, his faint, enigmatic smile never quite leaving his lips. He tilted his head slightly, his pale eyes glinting in the firelight. “To create a new identity for Arthur Ainsworth, an identity as a qualified, unremarkable, and entirely Talentless foreign educator seeking employment in the Japanese school system,” he began, his voice as smooth and cool as polished jade, “will require… considerable finesse, access to certain restricted databases, and the cooperation of individuals with highly specialized, and often highly illegal, skill sets.” He paused. “It will also require a significant investment of time, and what few remaining financial resources I can… redirect.”

He looked at Arthur. “The alteration of your physical appearance will also be paramount. Subtlety will be key. Nothing too drastic, initially, but enough to ensure that the Kenji Tanaka who once walked the halls of that academy is no longer recognizable. We will also need to craft a comprehensive, verifiable, yet entirely fictitious personal and professional history for your new persona. Every detail must be perfect.” He made it sound almost mundane, like planning a particularly complex holiday itinerary. The sheer, almost casual audacity of it all made Arthur’s head spin. Becoming a convincing Japanese schoolteacher, complete with a fabricated past and forged credentials… it was a far cry from his predictable, meticulously ordered accounting routines back in his old life. The most acting he, Arthur Ainsworth, had ever done was feigning polite interest during Mrs. Henderson’s lengthy, unsolicited discourses on the blight affecting her prize-winning roses back in Crawley. Or perhaps when trying to look suitably enthusiastic about the tombola stall at the annual village fete, somewhere on a soggy summer green in the heart of Sussex… This level of sustained, high-stakes deception felt like preparing for a leading role in a West End stage production, with a significantly more lethal form of audience heckling if he flubbed his lines.

“As for gaining entry to that specific academy,” Jin continued, his gaze unwavering, “that will be the most… challenging aspect. Kyouya-san is correct. They do not advertise vacancies in the usual manner. However…” A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. “…organizations, even ones as tightly controlled as Tsuruoka’s, are still comprised of individuals. Individuals have routines. Individuals make mistakes. And sometimes, unexpected… vacancies… can arise, or be discreetly engineered, if one knows where and how to apply the appropriate leverage.” The chilling implication in his soft-spoken words was not lost on anyone in the cave.

He stood then, a graceful, almost fluid movement. “I will make the necessary initial inquiries,” he stated, his tone conveying a quiet, unshakeable confidence that was both reassuring and deeply unsettling. “I will assess the feasibility of creating this new identity for you, Ainsworth-san. I will explore potential avenues for your… insertion. This will take time. I will need to travel, to access resources not available to us here.” He looked at Nana and Kyouya. “In my absence, your group’s security, your continued evasion of Committee patrols, will be paramount. Maintain vigilance. Conserve your resources.”

He then turned back to Arthur. “And you, Ainsworth-san. While I am… engaged… you must begin your own preparations. Improve your spoken Japanese beyond its current, shall we say, charmingly rudimentary level. Learn everything you can about current Japanese educational curricula, about the expected comportment of a teacher in such an institution. You must become this new person, inhabit this role so completely that even you begin to believe the lie. Your life will depend on it.”

With a final, enigmatic nod to the assembled group, Jin Tachibana turned and, with the silent grace of a phantom, slipped out of the cave and into the pre-dawn gloom, vanishing as if he were merely a figment of their collective, desperate imagination.

With a final, enigmatic nod to the assembled group, Jin Tachibana turned and, with the silent grace of a phantom, slipped out of the cave and into the pre-dawn gloom, vanishing as if he were merely a figment of their collective, desperate imagination.

A new kind of silence descended upon the remaining occupants of the cave – Arthur, Nana, Kyouya, and Michiru. It was no longer the silence of stunned disbelief or fearful hesitation, but the heavy, contemplative silence of individuals who had just made a pact, a desperate covenant, with an uncertain and terrifyingly dangerous future. The fire had burned down to glowing embers, casting their faces in a dim, ruddy light. The decision, however tentative, however fraught with peril, had been made. They were going to try. Arthur Ainsworth was going back to the island, if Jin could pave the way.

Arthur looked at their faces, etched with weariness, fear, but also a new, fragile determination. He, an unqualified former accounts clerk from Crawley, was about to embark on a mission that would make most seasoned spies blanch. The idea of needing to become an expert on an alternate Japan's entire socio-political history, on top of faking teaching credentials and a new identity, was daunting. His mother, he thought with a fleeting, absurd internal pang, would have a fit if she knew. Still, it certainly beat another dreary Tuesday afternoon trying to make sense of overly complicated departmental spreadsheets back in... well, back where things, however mundane, at least made a modicum of conventional sense.

He cleared his throat, breaking the quiet. “Thank you, everyone,” he said, his voice heartfelt, his gaze encompassing Nana’s newfound, wary resolve, Kyouya’s stoic acceptance, and Michiru’s anxious but supportive expression. “For… for being willing to even consider this. I know it’s… a lot to ask.”

He pushed himself to his feet, a sudden, restless energy coursing through him despite his exhaustion. “There’s much to do, and Jin-san is right, I need to prepare. Not just the language, not just pretending to be a teacher.” He looked around the cave, at the crude drawings Nana had been making on a piece of salvaged slate. “I also need to learn about the history of this world as well as well. Properly. Beyond the fragments I remember from that… that story. If I’m to be convincing, if I’m to understand the context of what I’ll be walking into.”

A small, determined smile touched his lips. He clapped his hands together once, a decisive sound in the stillness. “Well,” he declared, a spark of his old, almost forgotten pragmatic energy returning. “No time like the present!”

The long, dangerous road ahead was shrouded in uncertainty, but for the first time in a very long time, Arthur Ainsworth felt not just the crushing weight of a terrible, unwanted fate, but the faintest, most fragile stirring of active, defiant purpose.

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

Chapter 33: The Unravelling of Reality

The crackling fire in the damp cave cast long, dancing shadows on the weary faces of the assembled escapees. Nana Hiiragi, her expression a mixture of fierce determination and a newfound, fragile openness, was sketching a rough map of the local terrain based on Jin’s latest reconnaissance. Kyouya Onodera, his usual stoicism a comforting presence, was methodically sharpening a scavenged piece of metal into a makeshift blade. Michiru Inukai, her gentle aura a small beacon of warmth in the grim surroundings, was quietly tending to a minor cut on the arm of one of the younger children they had managed to rescue from the camp. Jin himself sat a little apart, observing them all with that unnervingly calm, almost prescient gaze of his. They were a battered, disparate group, united by shared trauma and a desperate, uncertain hope.

Arthur Ainsworth watched them for a long moment, the weight of his secrets, his impossible knowledge, pressing down on him with an almost physical force. He had told them his “Talent” was depleted, a necessary first step. But now, after the shared ordeal of the escape, after witnessing their courage, their resilience, their willingness to trust each other in the face of overwhelming odds, he felt a profound, almost aching need for true openness, for complete, unvarnished honesty, whatever the consequences. This fragile alliance, this nascent resistance, could not be built on a foundation of lies, not his lies, at any rate. He took a deep, shuddering breath, the smoky air filling his lungs.

“Everyone,” he began, his voice a little louder than he intended, drawing their attention. He spoke in Japanese, his accent still noticeable, his grammar sometimes clumsy, but his fluency born of years of desperate necessity and now, a strange kind of acceptance. “There is something more I need to tell you. Something… fundamental.”

He saw Kyouya’s eyes narrow slightly, Nana pause in her map-making, Michiru look up with gentle concern. Jin’s expression remained unreadable.

“In the spirit of… of complete honesty, now that we are in this together,” Arthur continued, his heart pounding a nervous tattoo against his ribs, “I must confess something. First and foremost… I never actually possessed any Talent. Not in the way you understand it. The ‘Chrono-Empathic Glimpse,’ the future prediction… it was all a fabrication. A lie I concocted on my first day on the island out of sheer terror and a desperate need to survive.”

A ripple of surprise went through the small group. Michiru looked confused. Nana’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, a flicker of reassessment, perhaps even a dawning understanding of some of his past, inexplicable actions, crossing her face. Kyouya merely nodded slowly, as if confirming a long-held, private suspicion.

“I have no doubt,” Arthur pressed on, encouraged by their mostly silent, attentive reception, “that many of you, especially Kyouya-san, perhaps even Nana-san, suspected as much. My ‘predictions’ were often… conveniently vague, or unsettlingly specific in ways that defied conventional precognition.” He met their gazes, one by one. “Therefore, you’ll all undoubtedly be wondering how I was so frequently, so disturbingly accurate with those predictions. After all, guessing such specific events, such personal futures, so often… that would be statistically, almost astronomically, impossible.”

He paused, gathering his courage for the next, far more difficult part. The air in the cave felt thick with unspoken questions. “Well,” he said, a humorless, self-deprecating smile touching his lips, “this is where things get… considerably weirder. More than weird, in fact. Almost unbelievable. And to be frank, even I struggle to comprehend it most days. It sounds like something out of a cheap, sensationalist paperback I’d have scoffed at back in… well, back home, on a dreary, ordinary May evening, a lifetime ago.”

He took another deep breath. “The truth is… I’m not actually from this time period. Not your time period, anyway. To me, this era, your present… it is a future. A horrible, disastrous, almost unthinkable future.” He saw Michiru’s hand fly to her mouth, Nana’s eyes widen further in stunned disbelief. Kyouya’s expression remained intensely focused, analytical. “I’m actually from what you would all regard as the distant past. Well before the first, and certainly before the second, of the great Talent Wars that so catastrophically shaped your world.” The mention of "two Talent Wars" was a deliberate insertion, a piece of world history he knew, that they perhaps only half-remembered or had been taught a sanitized version of.

“How I got here, from my time to yours,” Arthur continued, his voice low, earnest, “I honestly, truly, do not know. I was in my kitchen, in Crawley – that’s a town in England – and then… I was on that ferry, in Kenji Tanaka’s body. One moment, marmalade and existential despair; the next, a Japanese school uniform and a one-way ticket to this island nightmare.” He shook his head. “My best guess is that either The Committee have access to some sort of rudimentary, perhaps unstable, time-traveling technology or experimental Talent they were testing… or, and this feels somehow more likely given the sheer, random improbability of it all, I was pulled here, torn from my own existence, by some incredibly powerful, unknown Talent for reasons I cannot begin to fathom.”

He saw the disbelief warring with a dawning, horrified curiosity on their faces. “The second, and perhaps more immediate, problem this presents for me,” he pressed on, needing to get it all out now that he had started, “is that I don’t know for certain whether this future I’ve found myself in is my own world’s future, a terrible timeline I am now trapped within… or if I’m in some kind of parallel universe, an alternate reality, or even, though it sounds absurd, another entirely different Earth-like planet that just happens to have a similar history up to a certain point.”

He looked at them, their faces illuminated by the flickering firelight, their expressions a mixture of shock, skepticism, and a reluctant, dawning consideration. “Now,” he said, his voice dropping even lower, his gaze intense, “now I get to the weirdest part. The part that explains everything, and yet, explains nothing at all.” He hesitated, the sheer, unbelievable audacity of what he was about to say almost choking him. “In my time, in my world… there was a popular Japanese anime television series, based on an even more popular manga comic book series. It was called ‘Munō na Nana’.” He pronounced the Japanese title carefully, watching their faces. “Talentless Nana.”

He saw Nana Hiiragi herself flinch, her eyes widening in startled, almost fearful recognition of her own name embedded in that bizarre, foreign title. Kyouya’s head tilted, a flicker of something sharp and analytical in his gaze.

Arthur leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper now, yet carrying an unbearable weight of impossible truth. “Can you all,” he asked, his gaze sweeping across their stunned, uncomprehending faces, “can you all perhaps begin to see where this is going?”

The fire crackled, spitting a shower of sparks into the heavy, charged silence of the cave. The only other sound was the distant, ceaseless roar of the waterfall, a sound that suddenly felt like the rushing, indifferent torrent of a reality that had just been irrevocably, terrifyingly, and perhaps liberatingly, undone.