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 36: An Idea Forged in Unreality

The crackling fire cast flickering, uncertain light upon the stunned, contemplative faces of the survivors huddled in the damp chill of the cave. Arthur Ainsworth’s revelations – the impossible truth of his origin, the bizarre mirroring of their lives in a fictional narrative from his world – had settled over them, a heavy, almost suffocating blanket of existential shock. The questions had come, a barrage of disbelief, anger, sorrow, and dawning, horrified comprehension. He had answered them as honestly, as completely as his fragmented memory and his own profound bewilderment allowed. Now, an exhausted, uneasy silence held sway, broken only by the drip of water from the cave ceiling and the distant, ceaseless roar of the waterfall. They were all looking at him, waiting. He had mentioned an idea, before the floodgates of their questions had opened.

Arthur looked from one face to another – Kyouya’s sharp, analytical gaze, now tinged with a new, almost grudging respect; Michiru’s gentle, compassionate eyes, still wide with a mixture of awe and sorrow; Jin’s unreadable, placid mask, which perhaps concealed a universe of calculation; and Nana’s, her expression raw, vulnerable, yet with a new, hard glint of something that might have been a terrible, nascent resolve. He thought of all they had endured, all the horrors Tsuruoka and the Committee had inflicted upon them, all the senseless death and suffering. His own small, English life, with its mundane worries about council tax and the leaky guttering back in Crawley, felt like a half-forgotten dream from another planet, another eon. This, right here, this cave, these faces, this desperate struggle – this was his reality now. And these people, these… characters made real… they deserved more than the grim narrative he remembered.

“Yes,” he said, his voice quiet but carrying a surprising conviction in the stillness, almost as if speaking to unseen arbiters of fate as much as to them. He managed a small, tired smile. “Yes, I truly would like you all to write a happy ending for yourselves. You do all, more than anyone I have ever known, truly deserve it.” It was a strange thing to say, he knew, echoing the user's own prompt to him as an AI, a bizarre breaking of a fourth wall that only he was truly aware of. It felt like something one might say when discussing the merits of a play seen in a small theatre, perhaps somewhere on the festival circuit down near the coast, not to people whose very lives were at stake. Yet, the sentiment was utterly, profoundly sincere.

He then turned, his gaze finding Nana Hiiragi’s. She looked back at him, her violet eyes wary, still shadowed with the pain of his revelations and the memory of her own brutal unmasking. He knew, before he could even speak of his idea, there was something else that needed to be said, a personal reckoning that was long overdue.

“Hiiragi-san… Nana,” he began, his voice softer now, the Japanese words chosen with care, though the sentiment was pure, unadulterated Arthur Ainsworth. “I do have one apology I must make before I mention the idea I have. An apology specifically to you.”

Nana’s eyes widened slightly, a flicker of surprise, perhaps suspicion, in their depths. The others watched, silent, intrigued.

“Back in the alleyway,” Arthur continued, the memory of that cold, rainy night, his own harsh, unforgiving words, vivid in his mind, “all those months ago… after you had escaped from Tsuruoka’s… ‘lesson’.” He saw her flinch almost imperceptibly at the euphemism. “What I said to you then… the things I revealed about your parents, about Tsuruoka’s manipulations… while the information itself was true, as far as my knowledge of the ‘story’ went, the way I delivered it… my attitude towards you…” He shook his head, a deep shame washing over him. “I had let my knowledge of what you had done on the island, what the ‘Nana’ in the story had done, control my feelings towards you, the person standing before me, far too much. Especially then, when you were so clearly… broken, desperate.”

He took a breath, forcing himself to meet her gaze. “What I said to you then, my tone, my accusations… it was unnecessarily cruel, Hiiragi-san. No,” he corrected himself, the English word slipping out before he rephrased it in Japanese, “it was more than cruel. It was… indakuteki… vindictive. I was judging you, condemning you, based on a script I carried in my head, without truly seeing the manipulated, suffering individual before me. I saw only the monster I remembered from the fiction, and I acted monstrously in return.” He bowed his head slightly, a gesture of genuine remorse. “For that, for my cruelty, for my lack of compassion in that moment… I sincerely, deeply, apologize.”

The silence in the cave was absolute. Nana stared at him, her expression unreadable for a long moment. Arthur kept his head slightly bowed, awaiting her reaction, his own heart pounding. He had laid himself bare again, this time not with a grand, unbelievable truth about the nature of their reality, but with a simple, personal admission of his own flawed humanity, his own capacity for cruelty.

Then, almost imperceptibly at first, Nana nodded. A single, slow inclination of her head. When she looked up, her eyes were glistening, but not with anger. It was something else, something softer, more vulnerable. “Thank you… Arthur-san,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the crackling fire. The use of his true first name, without any prompting, was a quiet acknowledgment, perhaps even an acceptance. “I… I did many terrible things. I deserved… your anger.”

“Perhaps,” Arthur said quietly. “But no one deserves to have their pain used against them in that way. My knowledge… it should have led to more understanding, not less.”

Kyouya cleared his throat, breaking the fragile moment. “Your apology is noted, Ainsworth. Your capacity for… self-reflection… is unexpected.” There was no sarcasm in his voice, merely a statement of analytical observation. Michiru offered Arthur a small, watery smile of approval. Jin remained, as ever, a silent, watchful enigma.

Arthur felt a small measure of peace settle within him. It wasn’t absolution, not for him, perhaps not even for Nana. But it was a clearing of the air, a necessary step. He straightened up, feeling as though a small, personal weight had been lifted, allowing him to focus on the larger, more pressing burdens that still remained, the ones that threatened to crush them all. He thought of the sheer, unmitigated audacity of what he was about to propose – an unqualified, middle-aged Englishman, a former accounts clerk from Crawley, suggesting a plan to a group of fugitive teenagers with superhuman abilities that involved infiltrating a secret Japanese government facility for similarly gifted children, all to teach them the "truth" based on a half-remembered comic book and his own horrifying experiences. If someone had pitched that as a film idea back in England, even on a dreary, uninspired Tuesday afternoon in a sleepy town like Chichester, they’d have been politely, or perhaps not so politely, laughed out of the room. Yet here he was, in a damp cave in the Japanese wilderness, about to do just that. The sheer, surreal madness of his current existence was still, at times, utterly overwhelming.

“Right then,” he said, his voice a little stronger now, his gaze sweeping over their expectant, firelit faces. “My idea…” He paused, collecting his thoughts, trying to frame the sheer improbability of his plan in a way that sounded at least partially sane.

“Let’s be brutally honest with ourselves,” Arthur began, his Japanese measured, each word chosen with care. “It’s obvious, painfully so, that we, as we are now – a handful of fugitives with limited resources – can’t possibly hope to take on not just the established Japanese government, but by extension, its army, its security forces, and a large, increasingly hostile population of Talentless civilians who are being deliberately, systematically fed a diet of fear and misinformation.”

He saw nods of grim agreement from Kyouya and even Nana. Michiru looked anxious, but attentive.

“Therefore,” Arthur continued, “our primary battle isn’t a physical one, not yet. It’s a battle for hearts and minds. A battle against lies. We need to show the government’s propaganda for what it truly is: a calculated deception. We need to expose The Committee for the monstrous, manipulative entity it is. And, perhaps most painfully, but most crucially, we need to show other Talents, especially the younger ones, what their likely ultimate fate is under Tsuruoka’s regime – that horrifying transformation into those… ‘Enemies of Humanity’ – no matter how unpleasant that truth may be.” He saw Nana flinch slightly at the memory, her own experience in Tsuruoka’s facility no doubt still raw.

“But,” Arthur pressed on, a new note of urgency in his voice, “we also need to offer an alternative. We need to show that, with the right guidance, the right training, perhaps even a different understanding of their own abilities, Talents can be controlled, can be a force for good, or at least, not for inevitable monstrosity. We need to find a way, if one even exists, to hopefully stop that terrible fate, that transformation, that Tsuruoka seems so keen to either weaponize or present as an unavoidable horror. We need to give everyone – Talentless and Talented alike – a genuine reason to question the government’s narrative, to doubt The Committee’s authority.”

He leaned forward slightly, his gaze earnest. “We need to make it abundantly clear that Talents are, at their core, essentially the same as Talentless people. They have the same fears, the same hopes, the same desires for peace and security. They buy the same food, listen to the same music, laugh at the same stupid jokes.” A faint, sad smile touched his lips. “To that end, if we are to have any hope at all, we need enough people, a critical mass, willing to understand this, willing to help us bring down a corrupt government and its insidious support structure. We need to bring those who facilitate all these horrors, like Tsuruoka and his Committee cronies, to justice.”

He paused, letting his words sink in. “It’s a monumental task. Almost impossible. So, where do we even begin?” He looked around at their faces again. “To that end, I think one place to start, perhaps the most vulnerable yet potentially the most receptive, would be with school children. Specifically, with the students who are currently, or will soon be, funneled into the Committee’s island academies. We need to show them what The Committee truly has in store for them, show them the lies they are being fed, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll start to think for themselves, to want something different – something better than the future Tsuruoka is offering them.”

He took a deep breath, then laid out the core of his audacious, almost suicidal plan. “Therefore, I propose this: if a certain island school, the one we all know so well, is still running – and I have no doubt Tsuruoka would have restaffed it and filled it with a new batch of unsuspecting students by now – I believe I should return there.”

A stunned silence greeted his words. Michiru gasped. Nana’s eyes widened in disbelief, then narrowed in sharp concern. Kyouya simply stared at him, his expression unreadable. Jin, as always, remained a placid enigma.

“Return?” Nana finally managed, her voice incredulous. “Arthur-san, Tsuruoka wants you dead. You said so yourself. Going back there would be…”

“Extremely dangerous, yes, I’m acutely aware of that,” Arthur acknowledged, his voice grim. “But hear me out. I would return with a new identity, of course. Different appearance, if possible. Fake qualifications, certainly. The Committee’s bureaucracy, while efficient in its brutality, is likely still susceptible to well-crafted forgeries, especially for something as mundane as a new teaching position for a seemingly harmless, Talentless foreigner.” He almost snorted at the irony. “And once I’m there, once I’m inside… I start teaching. Not mathematics, or history, or whatever subject they might deem me qualified for. I start teaching… well, I start teaching the truth. Subtly at first, then more overtly as I identify potential allies, as I gauge the students’ receptiveness. I expose the lies, I plant the seeds of doubt, I try to give them the tools to think for themselves, to resist the indoctrination.”

He looked at them, his gaze steady, his heart pounding in his chest. “It’s a long shot. A horribly dangerous, probably insane long shot. But it’s a start. It’s an idea. And right now, frankly, it’s the only one I have that doesn’t involve us just… waiting in this cave for Tsuruoka’s agents to eventually find us and pick us off one by one.”

The fire crackled again, filling the sudden, heavy silence. Arthur had laid his desperate, improbable plan on the table. Now, he could only wait for their reaction.

More AI stuff coming soon!

Chapter 21: Descent into Chaos

The third term of the second, brutal school year began under a palpable, suffocating cloud of dread. The students, those who had survived the Committee’s earlier culling via starvation and the subsequent forced, chaotic “evacuation” to the mainland for a bizarrely truncated “break,” returned to the island not with any sense of relief or academic purpose, but with the grim, weary resignation of conscripts being redeployed to a particularly unpleasant front line. Nana Hiiragi was among them, her journey back from Tsuruoka’s mainland base having been a silent, internal torment. Her demeanour was now profoundly subdued, her usual bright, almost manic smile often strained and fleeting, her violet eyes shadowed with a depth of conflict and unwelcome knowledge that aged her beyond her teenage years. Her experiences with Tsuruoka, the horrifying “lesson” with Mai, and her own act of defiant, protective murder had deepened her internal chasm of doubt and self-loathing. The orders to resume her deadly mission on the island, to continue Tsuruoka’s bloody cull, now felt like grotesque chains forged in hell.

Arthur Ainsworth, though physically somewhat recovered from his collapse at the cliff edge weeks prior, remained emotionally fragile, a tightly wound spring of anxiety and grief. Michiru Inukai, also returned to the island and now mostly restored to a semblance of her former health (though still bearing the quiet, ethereal marks of her ordeal and miraculous regeneration), was a constant, bittersweet source of both comfort and profound anxiety for him. He watched Nana closely, a silent, wary observer. Her internal struggle was almost palpable to him. He noticed she made no overt moves to target any new students, her energy seemingly consumed by a fierce, almost desperate protectiveness towards Michiru and a weary navigation of the increasingly dangerous social landscape of the decaying school. Kyouya Onodera, too, was a silent, watchful presence, his earlier conversations with Arthur about impending, Committee-manufactured hardships clearly at the forefront of his astute mind. They formed an unspoken, uneasy triumvirate – Arthur, the unwilling seer of doom; Kyouya, the stoic pragmatist; and Nana, the compromised assassin – bound by their shared, unwelcome knowledge of the island’s true, malevolent nature.

As Arthur had grimly foreseen, the Committee’s starvation tactics, which had been temporarily eased during the brief mainland dispersal, were now re-implemented with a vengeance, and with a brutal, accelerated intensity. The meagre supplies that had tided them over at the very end of the last term were now a distant, almost unbelievable memory. The canteen, once a place of at least minimal sustenance, now offered little more than watery, flavorless broth, a few handfuls of rice often containing more weevils than grain, and occasionally, slices of dry, stale bread that tasted like sawdust. The small school store, once a source of minor treats and supplementary snacks, was now entirely barren, its shelves gathering dust. Hunger became a constant, gnawing, visceral presence, a relentless torment that frayed tempers, eroded civility, and ground down spirits.

The carefully maintained, increasingly fragile illusion of a functioning educational institution shattered completely. Fights, brutal and desperate, erupted with terrifying frequency over the smallest scraps of hoarded food – a mouldy potato, a handful of dried beans, a forgotten candy bar. Cliques, bound by mutual desperation and a primal need for security, formed and reformed, hoarding what little they could find or steal, suspicion and aggressive hostility becoming the new, ugly currency of their daily interactions. The teachers, including a visibly overwhelmed and demoralized Mr. Saito, were utterly powerless, their authority completely eroded. They retreated into a shell of ineffective platitudes and frightened avoidance, clearly as much prisoners of the island’s grim new reality as their starving students.

Kyouya Onodera, however, with his characteristic grim pragmatism, rose to the challenge. Drawing on a surprising wellspring of practical, hard-won survival knowledge Arthur hadn’t known he possessed, Kyouya began to covertly teach basic survival skills to a small, trusted group of students, including Arthur, Nana, and Michiru. He showed them how to identify the few edible, if unappetizing, roots and tubers that grew in the island’s less-travelled interior, how to set simple, effective snares for the island’s scarce small game, how to purify brackish water using makeshift filters. Arthur, his Japanese still halting but functional for simple warnings, would sometimes offer Kyouya cryptic “insights” based on his fragmented anime memories, cloaked in the guise of his now-unspoken, depleted "Talent." “The old, abandoned shrine grounds on the eastern ridge…” he might murmur to Kyouya, “…the soil there, particularly near the largest fallen stone lantern, might hide overlooked, edible tubers if one digs deep enough and knows what to look for.” Or, “The tidal pools in the western cove, especially after a particularly strong spring tide… they sometimes trap small crabs and other shellfish. But be wary of the treacherous currents and the slippery rocks.” Kyouya would listen to these pronouncements intently, his expression unreadable, then often act upon them with quiet, methodical success, sometimes returning with a meagre but life-sustaining haul.

Despite their combined efforts, it wasn’t nearly enough to combat the systemic, Committee-orchestrated starvation. Some students, driven to extremes by gnawing hunger or simple incompetence, fell violently ill from eating poisonous berries or incorrectly prepared shellfish. Others were seriously injured in increasingly vicious fights over hoarded food supplies or died in tragic accidents while foraging for sustenance in the island’s more treacherous, unexplored terrain. The island was rapidly devolving into a brutal, lawless state, a horrifying real-world reenactment of some dystopian novel. Nana, caught between her deeply ingrained Committee orders (which she was now clearly, if silently, defying by not actively culling Talents) and her burgeoning, tormented conscience, seemed almost paralyzed by her internal conflict. She made no attempts to kill, her energy consumed by ensuring Michiru’s safety and navigating the increasingly dangerous, unpredictable social landscape of the starving school. Arthur even saw her, on several occasions, discreetly sharing some of Kyouya’s hard-won foraged supplies with students weaker or younger than herself, a silent, almost ashamed act of atonement.

Then, just as the situation seemed about to spiral into complete, irreversible anarchy, with students on the very brink of open, violent rebellion against the cowering teachers, ships appeared on the horizon. Not supply vessels, but sleek, grey, menacing Committee crafts manned by uniformed agents. They weren’t here for resupply; they were here for “evacuation.”

It was a brutal, efficient, and entirely impersonal operation. The Committee agents, armed and uncommunicative, swarmed the school grounds, rounding up the remaining, emaciated students with cold, terrifying precision. There was no concern for comfort, no gentle handling. They were herded like bewildered, terrified cattle, their meagre possessions often confiscated. Arthur realized with a sickening lurch that this was the Committee’s endgame for this cohort: create extreme privation, observe the fallout, then forcibly remove the survivors. The sheer, organized chaos of it reminded him, incongruously, of a bank holiday crush at Brighton Pier back in England, but stripped of all joy, replaced with a chilling, military efficiency. This surreal, nightmarish May was unlike any he could have ever conceived.

In the terrifying chaos of the forced embarkation, as students were violently shoved and prodded towards the waiting transport vessels, Arthur desperately tried to keep Michiru in sight. He saw her, pale and frightened but surprisingly resolute, near the edge of the panicked crowd being funnelled towards one of the smaller transports. For a moment, their eyes met. Then, with a small, almost imperceptible shake of her head and a swiftness that belied her recent frailty, Michiru darted sideways, slipping behind a stack of forgotten cargo containers just as a wave of students surged forward, obscuring her from his view. Had she managed to hide? Had she chosen to stay? Or had she simply been swept onto a different boat in a different section of the pier? He screamed her name, but his voice was lost in the din of shouting guards and crying students. He was shoved forward himself by a black-clad agent, prodded with a stun baton, and forced aboard a crowded, stifling transport. He searched frantically for her amongst the terrified faces packed around him, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Arthur found himself disembarked hours later on a grimy, unfamiliar port on mainland Japan, with nothing but the ragged uniform on his back. He was destitute, utterly alone, and now, consumed by a new, agonizing uncertainty about Michiru. Had she been caught trying to hide? Was she alone and terrified on that now-empty, cursed island? Or was she, like him, just another lost soul swallowed by the Committee’s vast, indifferent machine, perhaps on a different transport, heading to a different, unknown fate? The not knowing was a fresh torment.

Miles away, in his sterile headquarters, Tsuruoka reviewed the reports from the island "evacuation." The number of survivors was… higher than anticipated. His cold gaze fell upon Nana Hiiragi’s file. Her kill rate had plummeted to zero in this final term. Her performance was unacceptable. He would need to address her… profound shortcomings… personally. And this Kenji Tanaka, the boy with the supposed future sight, he too was an anomaly that needed closer scrutiny. The island experiment had yielded interesting, if not entirely satisfactory, results. The next phase would require… adjustments.

Chapter 29: An Unwelcome Alliance

Nana ran. She fled Tsuruoka’s opulent, soundproofed office, the chilling echo of his mocking laughter a spur in her side, the image of his dying adjutant a fresh, searing brand on her already overburdened conscience. She had no plan, no destination, only the desperate, primal, animal instinct to escape, to put as much distance as possible between herself and that monster. The sprawling, indifferent city became a bewildering labyrinth of glaring lights, hostile shadows, and a million unseeing faces. Hours later, utterly exhausted, drenched in a cold sweat of terror and exertion, her body aching, her mind a chaotic whirl of guilt and fear, she found herself drawn by some subconscious, desperate current, some fragile, unacknowledged homing instinct, towards a quiet, unassuming suburban street, the kind of place where ordinary people lived ordinary, peaceful lives she could now only dream of. She stumbled, almost collapsing, into the first open establishment she saw that offered a dim promise of warmth and temporary, anonymous sanctuary – a small, unpretentious neighborhood restaurant called “The Corner Nook,” its windows steamy, its air smelling faintly of grilled meat and soy sauce.

Arthur Ainsworth was just finishing his shift. It had been a surprisingly busy Saturday evening for mid-May, the small restaurant bustling with local families and chattering groups of friends. He was tired but content in a way that still occasionally surprised him, looking forward to the quiet sanctuary of his modest nearby apartment and a soothing cup of strong English breakfast tea – a small, hoarded luxury. As he untied his waiter’s apron and hung it neatly on a hook in the tiny staff area, the bell above the restaurant’s front door chimed with a discordant jingle, and a dishevelled, wild-eyed, rain-soaked figure stumbled in, leaning heavily against the doorframe for support. Arthur looked up, a polite, professional enquiry forming on his lips, and his blood ran cold, freezing him in place. Nana Hiiragi. Her face was pale as death and streaked with grime, her once-vibrant pink hair was lank and darkened by rain, her clothes were torn and filthy, and her eyes – those unforgettable violet eyes – were wide with a hunted, desperate terror he recognized all too well from the darkest days on the island.

“Hiiragi?” he breathed, the name a shocked, involuntary exhalation, his carefully constructed wall of mundane peace crumbling in an instant. This was a ghost from a past he had tried so desperately, so diligently, to bury.

Before either of them could utter another coherent word, another figure materialized, as if stepping out of the deepening evening shadows themselves, silently in the restaurant doorway. It was Jin Tachibana, his white hair a stark contrast to his dark, unobtrusive clothing, his expression as calm, as unnervingly serene, as ever. He gave a small, almost imperceptible, acknowledging nod to a stunned Arthur. From the rain-swept street outside, a scrawny, spectral white cat watched them for a long, silent moment from beneath a parked car, its eyes gleaming with an unnatural intelligence, then, with a flick of its tail, it vanished into the gloom.

“It seems,” Jin said, his voice a low, melodious murmur that somehow cut through Arthur’s shock and Nana’s ragged breathing, “our disparate paths converge once more. And at a most… opportune, if somewhat dramatic, moment.” He gestured with a subtle inclination of his head towards a small television flickering almost unnoticed in the corner of the nearly empty restaurant, currently tuned to a late-night news channel. The lurid banner headline screamed: “TALENTED TERRORISTS: Public Menace Escalates Dangerously – Government Pledges Swift, Decisive Action.” The news anchor, his face grim, was speaking in grave, measured tones about a recent series of violent incidents supposedly involving rogue Talents, painting them as a dangerous, unstable, and increasingly hostile element within society, a threat to public order and national security.

“The societal situation, as you can see, is deteriorating with alarming rapidity,” Jin stated, his cool gaze sweeping between a visibly trembling Nana and a still-reeling Arthur. “My sources within the Committee – and yes, Ainsworth-san, I still maintain certain… useful connections – confirm what these inflammatory news reports are merely foreshadowing. Mass roundups are imminent. Internment camps, cynically styled as ‘Protective Talent Re-education and Assessment Facilities,’ are being prepared, staffed, and expanded across the country. They will start taking everyone with a known or even merely suspected Talent. Very soon. Within days, perhaps hours.”

Arthur felt a familiar, icy chill crawl up his spine. Internment camps. It was the logical, horrifying, and entirely predictable next step in Tsuruoka’s monstrous, systematic plan.

Nana looked frantically from Jin’s calm, assessing face to Arthur’s shocked, wary expression, her desperation palpable, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. “I… I didn’t know where else to go,” she stammered, her voice barely a whisper, raw with exhaustion and fear. “Tsuruoka… I… I tried to… and then his adjutant…” Her words dissolved into a choked sob.

“You tried to confront him,” Jin finished for her smoothly, his tone devoid of any surprise, as if he had foreseen this very eventuality. “And it went badly. Predictably so, given Tsuruoka’s nature.” He then turned his unnervingly perceptive gaze fully on Arthur. “Ainsworth-san, or do you still prefer your island moniker, Tanaka-kun?” Arthur flinched almost imperceptibly at the casual, confident use of his true surname; Jin’s intelligence network, his sources of information, were clearly as formidable and far-reaching as ever. “You and Hiiragi-san here, despite your… shall we say, rather complicated and unfortunate history, are now two rather tarnished sides of the same devalued coin. You both know more about Commander Tsuruoka and his insidious machinations than almost anyone else still breathing and at liberty. She possesses firsthand, intimate experience of his brutal methods and his psychological manipulations; you, Ainsworth-san, have your… unique, and often unsettlingly accurate, insights into his patterns and potential future actions.”

Jin’s implication, Arthur knew, was clear. His ‘Talent,’ his cursed knowledge from another world, however much he wished it gone, was still perceived as a valuable, if dangerous, commodity.

“The world, as you are no doubt beginning to appreciate,” Jin continued, his voice still a low, calm murmur that nonetheless commanded their absolute attention, “is about to become a very, very dangerous place for anyone possessing abilities beyond the accepted norm. Alliances, however improbable, however distasteful, will be absolutely essential for even short-term survival. You two,” he looked from Nana’s desperate, pleading face to Arthur’s grim, conflicted one, “need each other now, whether you like it or not. Whether you can even bear to be in the same room as each other.” He looked directly at Nana. “He, Ainsworth-san, knows the true depth of Tsuruoka’s evil. He understands, perhaps better than anyone alive, what you’ve been through, what has been done to you.” Then, his gaze shifted back to Arthur. “And she, Hiiragi-san, for all her past, deplorable actions, is now one of the Committee’s most significant, most dangerous loose ends. Tsuruoka will not rest, cannot rest, until she is silenced. Permanently. Her intimate knowledge of his operations, however incomplete or manipulated, makes her an intolerable threat to him.”

Arthur looked at Nana, truly looked at her. He saw not the cold, efficient teenage assassin from the island, not the monster of his nightmares, but a broken, terrified, and perhaps, just perhaps, redeemable young woman, a fellow victim of a system far larger, far more monstrous, than either of them had ever initially imagined. He still felt the visceral anger, the deep, aching bitterness over Michiru’s sacrifice, over all the other innocent lives lost. But Jin, damn him, was right. The true enemy, the ultimate architect of all their suffering, was Tsuruoka, was the Committee. And in this new, desperate, unfolding war, old, bitter enmities might have to be, however reluctantly, however painfully, set aside for the simple, brutal sake of survival.

“I don’t like this, Jin,” Arthur said, his voice low and gravelly, the English words escaping him out of ingrained habit when stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. He caught himself, then forced out a few halting Japanese phrases, his accent thick, his grammar clumsy. “She is… abunai. Dangerous. Unpredictable.”

“And you are not, Ainsworth-san?” Jin countered, a fleeting, almost invisible hint of a smile playing on his lips. “We are all dangerous in our own ways now, are we not? The only pertinent question is, can we learn to direct that danger towards a common, and far more deserving, enemy?”

Nana looked pleadingly at Arthur, her violet eyes, shadowed with exhaustion and terror, brimming with unshed tears. “I… I’ll do anything,” she whispered, her voice raw with desperation. “Anything you ask. Just… I don’t want to go back to him. I don’t want to be his monster anymore. Please.”

Arthur sighed, a deep, weary, soul-shaking sound that seemed to carry the weight of all his years, all his regrets, all his impossible knowledge. His quiet, carefully reconstructed life was over, shattered once more by the long, inescapable shadow of that cursed island and its monstrous puppeteers. “Alright, Hiiragi,” he said at last, the name still tasting like ash and bile in his mouth, the Japanese words stiff and reluctant. “Alright. We… we try to figure out what to do next. Issho ni. Together. For now.” He looked at her, his gaze hard, unwavering. “But if you even think about reverting to your old, murderous ways… if you betray what little trust this desperate situation forces me to place in you…” His unspoken threat, his grim promise of retribution, hung heavy, palpable, in the suddenly silent, steamy air of the nearly deserted restaurant.

Nana nodded quickly, almost violently, a flicker of desperate, unbelievable relief in her haunted eyes.

Jin observed them both, his expression one of cool, enigmatic satisfaction. “Excellent,” he murmured. “A most… pragmatic, if somewhat unenthusiastic, decision. We should leave this place immediately. It will not be safe for any of us for much longer.” He glanced meaningfully at the television screen in the corner, where the news anchor, his face grim, was now detailing new, sweeping emergency powers being granted by the government to special security units for the “humane and efficient management of potentially disruptive Talented individuals.” The trap, as Jin had so accurately predicted, was closing around them all with terrifying speed.

The unlikeliest, most uncomfortable of alliances had just been forged, born not of trust or affection, but of raw desperation, shared trauma, and a common, monstrous enemy. It had been brokered in the fading, artificial warmth of a humble suburban eatery, as the world outside, whipped into a frenzy of fear and prejudice, prepared to hunt them all down like diseased animals.

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

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

Chapter 6: The Camera Fiend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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