Sku-te - Down With Nana Hiiragi

Chapter 37: The Weight of an Impossible Idea

The fire in the cave, which had earlier seemed a small beacon of warmth and fragile hope, now seemed to cast long, dancing, almost accusatory shadows on the faces of the assembled survivors as Arthur Ainsworth’s words settled into the damp, smoky air. His proposal – to return to the island academy, that wellspring of their collective trauma, under a false identity, to somehow teach the “truth” to a new generation of unsuspecting Talents – hung between them, heavy, audacious, and bordering on the suicidally insane.

The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the incessant, indifferent roar of the waterfall outside and the sharp, sudden crackle of a log shifting in the flames. Arthur watched them, his own heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his ribs. He had laid it out, his desperate, improbable plan. He had endured their questions about his past, his origins, the unbelievable truth of his connection to their world. Now, this. He felt a familiar wave of English reserve, a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to apologize for having spoken at all, for having suggested something so clearly preposterous. Debating infiltration strategy for a secret government death school versus arguing over minor discrepancies in the petty cash tin back in the Crawley borough council office… a lifetime ago, on what felt like an entirely different, blessedly sane planet. Though even then, he mused with a flicker of grim internal humor, some of those protracted budget review meetings, especially on a bleak, rain-swept Tuesday afternoon, had felt like their own peculiar, soul-destroying form of psychological warfare. This, however, was several orders of magnitude beyond that.

It was Nana Hiiragi who finally broke the spell, her voice low, laced with a disbelief that bordered on horror. “Return?” she whispered, her violet eyes wide, fixed on Arthur as if he had sprouted a second head. “Arthur-san, you can’t be serious. Tsuruoka wants you dead. You said so yourself. He knows you’re an anomaly. Going back there, willingly walking back into that… that abattoir… it would be…” She trailed off, unable to voice the obvious conclusion.

“Extremely dangerous, yes, Hiiragi-san, I am acutely, painfully aware of that fundamental truth,” Arthur acknowledged, his voice quiet but firm. “I have no illusions about the personal risks involved.”

“The risks are not just personal, Ainsworth,” Kyouya Onodera interjected, his tone as cool and analytical as ever, though Arthur thought he detected a new, sharper edge of concern beneath the characteristic stoicism. “Your plan, while… bold… is predicated on a cascade of highly improbable variables. Creating a convincing new identity that can withstand even cursory Committee scrutiny? Fabricating academic qualifications that would allow you access as a teacher? Infiltrating their system without immediate detection by someone like Tsuruoka, who is already aware of your… unusual prior knowledge?” He shook his head slowly. “The logistical hurdles alone are monumental, perhaps insurmountable. And that’s before we even consider what you would do if you did somehow succeed in gaining entry. How does one ‘teach the truth’ in such an environment without triggering every alarm, without immediately being identified and neutralized?”

Michiru Inukai, who had been listening with a growing expression of wide-eyed anxiety, finally spoke, her voice small and trembling. “Arthur-san… it’s… it’s too dangerous. Please. Isn’t there… isn’t there another way? A safer way for us to fight? Perhaps we could… try to find other escaped Talents? Build a community somewhere far away from here, somewhere they can’t find us?” Her plea was heartfelt, her gentle nature recoiling from the thought of Arthur deliberately placing himself in such mortal peril.

Arthur looked at Michiru, his heart aching at her innocent, desperate hope for a simple, peaceful solution. “I wish it were that easy, Michiru-san,” he said softly. “But Tsuruoka, The Committee… they won’t stop looking for us. For any of us. And they won’t stop their program on the island, or the new camps they are building. They will continue to find, to indoctrinate, to… process… Talented children. Hiding, surviving, it’s important, yes. But it won’t stop them. It won’t change anything fundamental.”

He turned back to the group. “Kyouya-san, your points are all valid. The risks are enormous. The chances of success, admittedly, are slim. But what is our alternative? Do we remain here, in this cave, in these mountains, for weeks, months, perhaps even years, always looking over our shoulders, gradually being hunted down one by one as Jin-san’s resources, his ability to shield us, inevitably dwindle? Is that a strategy for victory, or merely a plan for a slower, more protracted defeat?”

He saw Nana wince at his blunt assessment. She knew, better than anyone, the Committee’s relentless, unforgiving nature.

“My proposal,” Arthur continued, trying to keep the desperation from his voice, “is not without its severe flaws, I grant you. But its core objective – to reach the next generation of Talents before they are fully indoctrinated, before they are turned into weapons or victims, to plant the seeds of doubt, of critical thought, of resistance from within one of their key institutions – that objective, I believe, is sound. It is a way to fight their lies directly, at the source.”

Jin Tachibana, who had remained a silent, unreadable observer throughout the exchange, finally spoke, his voice as smooth and cool as polished river stone. “The concept of ideological infiltration is a proven, if perilous, strategy, Ainsworth-san.” His pale eyes flicked towards Nana, then back to Arthur. “However, the specific target you propose – that particular island academy – is Tsuruoka’s personal fortress. It is where he forges his most dangerous assets. It will be guarded with a zealotry bordering on the fanatical, especially now, after the… recent embarrassments of our collective escape from his mainland facility, and Hiiragi-san’s subsequent, rather public, defiance.” He paused, a faint, almost imperceptible smile touching his lips. “Your chances of surviving such an endeavor, even with a flawless new identity, are, I would assess, statistically… negligible.”

“Perhaps,” Arthur conceded, his own internal Englishman recoiling at the sheer, almost cavalier understatement of Jin’s assessment. Negligible. Yes, that was probably about right. “But as I said…” He looked around at their grim, uncertain faces, at the firelight reflecting in their haunted eyes. “Anything we do now, anything meaningful, won’t be quick. And it certainly won’t be easy. Or safe.” He sighed, a deep, weary exhalation that seemed to carry the weight of his impossible, displaced years. “But something needs to be done. We cannot simply let this stand. We cannot allow them to continue.”

He held their gazes, one by one, trying to convey the desperate sincerity, the grim resolve that underpinned his insane proposal. “So, that is my idea. My only idea, at present.” He spread his hands in a gesture of weary openness. “Unless, of course,” he repeated his earlier challenge, his voice quiet but firm in the sudden, renewed silence of the cave, “anyone else has any better ideas?”

The fire crackled again, the only sound for a long, tense moment. The weight of their situation, the sheer, overwhelming audacity of Arthur’s plan, and the stark, terrifying absence of any readily apparent, less suicidal alternatives, pressed down upon them all, a heavy, suffocating blanket of grim reality. The debate, Arthur knew, had only just begun.

Chapter 35: Unravelling Threads of a Told Tomorrow

The fire in the damp cave crackled, spitting a shower of orange sparks into the heavy, charged silence that followed Arthur Ainsworth’s almost whispered invitation. For a long moment, no one spoke. The only sound was the distant, ceaseless roar of the hidden waterfall, a monotonous, indifferent rush of water that seemed to echo the vast, empty chasm of disbelief his words had torn open in their reality. Nana Hiiragi stared at him, her expression a battlefield of warring emotions: shock, anger, a dawning, horrified comprehension, and beneath it all, a flicker of something else – a desperate, almost unwilling hope. Kyouya Onodera’s usually impassive features were tight with a focused, almost predatory intensity, his mind clearly working at furious speed to process, dissect, and analyze the impossible. Michiru Inukai looked pale and stricken, her gentle eyes wide with a mixture of fear and a deep, compassionate sorrow for the sheer, unbelievable weight Arthur must have been carrying. Even Jin Tachibana, his enigmatic calm usually an impenetrable shield, seemed to regard Arthur with a new, sharp, almost piercing alertness.

It was Kyouya who finally broke the spell, his voice preternaturally calm, yet with an underlying edge as sharp as the makeshift blade resting by his side. “Ainsworth-san,” he began, the use of Arthur’s true surname a deliberate, pointed acknowledgement of the new reality between them. “You claim this… ‘story’… this ‘Munō na Nana’… it accurately depicted events on the island, events involving us, with a specificity that allowed you to make your… ‘predictions.’ How can you be certain this wasn’t merely a series of astute observations on your part, perhaps amplified by a genuine, if limited, precognitive Talent you are now choosing to deny for reasons of your own?” It was a logical, almost lawyerly challenge, an attempt to find a more rational, if still extraordinary, explanation.

Arthur met his gaze squarely. “Because, Onodera-san,” he said, his voice weary but firm, his Japanese surprisingly steady, “the details were too specific. Not just the ‘who’ but often the ‘how,’ sometimes even snatches of dialogue, internal motivations of characters that I couldn’t possibly have guessed. The sequence of Nana-san’s targets in that first year, for example, the methods she employed… many were almost identical to what I remembered from this… this narrative.” He paused. “And believe me, if I actually possessed a genuine Talent for seeing the future, I would likely have managed this entire horrifying situation with considerably more competence and far fewer… casualties.” The self-deprecating bitterness in his tone was palpable.

Nana spoke next, her voice low, hoarse, almost raw. “This… ‘Nana’… in your story. You said she… she changed. That she started to… to save Talents? That she wanted to destroy Tsuruoka?” There was a desperate, almost hungry intensity in her eyes. “Did it say how? Did it show her succeeding? What else did it say about… about what I became?”

Arthur looked at her, his heart aching with a complex pity. “The story, as I said, was ongoing when I… left my time. It showed her making that profound shift, yes. Driven by… well, by events similar to what you yourself experienced, Nana-san. By betrayal, by the realization of Tsuruoka’s true nature, by the influence of… of someone like Michiru-san.” He glanced at Michiru, who flushed slightly. “She became fiercely determined to dismantle everything Tsuruoka had built. As for how she went about it, or if she ultimately succeeded… those were parts of the story I never got to see. It was, as you might say, a continuing serial. I only had access to the ‘published volumes’ up to a certain point.” He hesitated. “It did show her becoming… incredibly ruthless in her pursuit of Tsuruoka. Almost as ruthless as she had been when serving him.”

“And my parents?” Nana pressed, her voice barely a whisper now. “The story… it truly said Tsuruoka arranged their murders? That they weren’t… my fault?”

“It was unequivocally clear on that point,” Arthur affirmed gently. “They were good people who opposed him. He had them eliminated and then, with sickening cruelty, manipulated you into believing you were responsible, to break you and bind you to him. That was a central, tragic element of your character’s backstory in the narrative.”

Nana closed her eyes, a single tear escaping and tracing a path through the grime on her cheek. The validation, however bizarre its source, seemed to offer a tiny, almost unbearable sliver of solace.

“What about the Committee?” Kyouya interjected, his focus shifting to more strategic concerns. “Did this narrative provide details about its internal structure? Its ultimate objectives beyond what you’ve already speculated? Were there insights into Tsuruoka’s specific long-term plans, or the identities of other key figures within the organization?”

Arthur sighed. “Frustratingly few concrete details, I’m afraid. Tsuruoka was always depicted as the primary antagonist, the mastermind. Other Committee members were shadowy, ill-defined figures. Their goals seemed to be about control, about manipulating society through fear of Talents, and perhaps, as I mentioned, about weaponizing those ‘Enemies of Humanity.’ But the intricate details of their hierarchy or their decades-long endgame… that was mostly left to speculation even within the story’s fanbase, as far as I can recall.” He paused. “Explaining a Japanese comic book that somehow predicted, or perhaps even influenced, their entire horrific existence… it felt like trying to summarize a particularly bizarre, convoluted dream to a skeptical psychiatrist. Or perhaps attempting to convince the local parish council back in Crawley – or for that matter, any sensible, rational person from Chichester to Land’s End – that their lives, their deepest pains and struggles, were nothing more than a work of popular fiction from another dimension. Utterly, certifiably mad.”

Michiru, who had been listening with a mixture of wide-eyed horror and profound sadness, finally spoke, her voice small and trembling. “Arthur-san… were… were other people we knew from the island… people like Nanao-kun, or Hoshino-kun, or Tachibana-kun… were they also… characters in this story? Did you know what was going to happen to them too, all along?”

Arthur looked at her gentle, troubled face, and the weight of his past inactions, his often-ineffectual interventions, pressed down on him anew. “Yes, Michiru-san,” he said softly. “Many of them were. And yes, I had… glimpses… of their fates. Sometimes clearer than others. As I tried to explain to Kyouya-san, my knowledge was often too little, too late, or too vague to act upon decisively without risking even greater catastrophe.”

“And what of me?” Jin Tachibana’s voice, smooth and cool as polished silk, cut through the charged atmosphere. He had remained silent throughout the exchange, his pale eyes fixed on Arthur, his expression unreadable. “This… ‘Rin’… Kyouya’s sister, who supposedly took on the identity of a boy named Jin Tachibana after a past tragedy. Was her specific role, her full story, also detailed in this… chronicle you remember so selectively, Ainsworth-san?” There was a subtle, almost imperceptible challenge in his tone.

Arthur met Jin’s gaze, choosing his words with extreme care. “The narrative I recall touched upon a character with a deeply tragic past, someone connected to Kyouya-san’s sister, yes. Someone who had been grievously harmed by the Committee’s system, who had lost their original identity, and who later operated from the shadows, with… complex and often ambiguous motivations.” He offered no more, sensing the dangerous, shifting currents beneath Jin’s calm façade. He knew he was treading on very thin ice.

“Why?” Nana asked suddenly, her voice raw with a new kind of pain. “Why didn’t you tell us all of this sooner, Arthur-san? From the very beginning?”

Arthur looked down at his hands, the hands of Kenji Tanaka, a boy whose life he had unwillingly usurped. “Would you have believed me?” he asked quietly. “If, on my first day, a strange boy speaking through a telephone had told you that your entire reality was a Japanese comic book from his world? You, Nana Hiiragi, trained assassin, would you have simply accepted that?” He shook his head. “You would have marked me for immediate elimination as a dangerous lunatic, and rightly so. I told you what I felt I could, when I felt I could, in ways I hoped might make a small difference, without getting myself killed in the process, or making things catastrophically worse. My ‘Talent depletion’ announcement after the escape… that was the first moment I felt it might be safe, or even necessary, to begin unravelling the true extent of the… absurdity of my situation.”

A long silence fell, filled only by the crackling of the fire and the distant, soothing roar of the waterfall. The survivors sat, each lost in their own thoughts, grappling with a truth that redefined their past, their present, and their utterly uncertain future. The world had not just been turned upside down; it had been revealed as a strange, distorted echo of a fiction from another dimension.

Finally, Kyouya spoke, his voice thoughtful, pragmatic. “This knowledge, however outlandish its origin, however unsettling its implications… it changes nothing about our immediate objectives. Tsuruoka is still out there. The Committee still operates. The threat to Talents, to all of us, remains.” He looked at Arthur. “But it does, perhaps, give us a new, if deeply unorthodox, perspective on our enemy. And on ourselves.”

Nana nodded slowly, a new, hard light dawning in her violet eyes, the earlier flicker of desperate hope now solidifying into something far more dangerous, more focused. “A story…” she murmured, almost to herself. “So Tsuruoka thought he was writing my story.” A small, chilling smile touched her lips. “Perhaps it’s time I started writing my own ending. And his.”

Arthur watched them, a strange sense of detachment settling over him. He had unburdened himself of his greatest secret. The pieces were now on the board, for all to see. His "one idea," the thought that had been coalescing in his mind since their escape, now felt more urgent, more necessary than ever. But first, they had to truly absorb this. They had to decide if they could even move forward together, now that the very foundations of their reality had been so profoundly, so utterly, shaken.

Chapter 11: The Time Traveler's End

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 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.

Chapter 5: Saving Nanao

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nana is an evil little bitch

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.

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).

.

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).

.