Chapter 8: A Head In The Classroom
Chapter 8: A Head in the Classroom
Arthur managed to slip back into the hushed, pre-dawn stillness of the dormitory just as the faintest hint of grey was outlining the window frames. He looked like something dredged from a nightmare – his clothes were torn, caked with mud, and stained with darker, more ominous patches he refused to identify. His face was smudged with dirt, his hair matted with sweat and grime, and a wild, haunted, almost feral look burned in his eyes. He moved with the stiff, jerky movements of someone pushed far beyond their physical and emotional limits.
He quickly, furtively, bundled the obscene canvas satchel, with its horrifying, weighty contents, into the dark recesses at the bottom of his rickety wardrobe, beneath a pile of seldom-used spare blankets. Then, he made his way to the communal showers. He scrubbed himself raw under the steaming water, trying to wash away the physical filth and the clinging, fetid odour of the night’s gruesome ordeal, but the mental contamination, the profound sense of self-loathing and violation, felt indelible. His hands, when he eventually managed to stop their violent trembling, still felt slick with an imaginary residue.
He skipped breakfast, the mere thought of food threatening to bring up the meagre contents of his stomach. He spent the early part of the morning in a dissociated daze, sitting rigidly on the edge of his bed, the image of Shinji’s lifeless, accusing eyes and the horrifying, sickening thud of rock against decaying bone replaying in an endless, torturous loop in his mind. He had to do this. He had to see this terrible, self-appointed task through. There was no turning back now. The die was cast.
The opportunity he’d been dreading, yet grimly anticipating, came during a long, unstructured free period before lunch. Most of the students were in the classroom, the usual low hum of chatter, the rustle of textbook pages, and the occasional burst of laughter filling the air with a deceptive sense of normalcy. Mr. Saito was at his desk at the front, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, diligently grading papers. Yūka Somezaki was present, huddled at her usual isolated desk near the back, looking even more pale and drawn than usual. She kept darting nervous, frightened glances towards Arthur, her hands twisting restlessly in her lap. She clearly hadn’t slept well after his ominous “warning” the previous day.
Arthur took a deep, steadying breath, the air feeling thick and heavy in his lungs. He retrieved the heavy canvas satchel from his room, its grim weight a palpable reminder of his night’s work. He walked to the front of the classroom, the satchel held carefully in front of him. The low hum of chatter gradually died down as students noticed him, their expressions shifting from indifference to curiosity, then to a dawning unease. He looked tired, dishevelled, and profoundly grim – a stark, unsettling contrast to his usual awkward, almost invisible demeanour. He placed his phone on a nearby empty desk, its screen lighting up.
“Yesterday,” his translated voice began, the synthesized Japanese tones cutting cleanly through the sudden, expectant silence, “I mentioned my growing concerns about the activities of the ‘Enemies of Humanity’ and their potential operations on the north side of this island. Last night, I took it upon myself to investigate those concerns further.”
He paused, letting the tension build, his gaze sweeping slowly across the room, taking in the rows of young, now apprehensive faces. He looked particularly tired, his eyes bloodshot, his posture radiating a bone-deep weariness that was entirely genuine.
“The encounter was… more harrowing than I could have possibly imagined,” he continued, his voice via the phone carefully measured, almost flat, which only served to heighten the underlying menace. “They are more dangerous, more depraved, than any of us can truly comprehend. It seems they may have found a new, terrifying weapon… or perhaps, a new, unholy method for creating their soldiers.” He let his gaze linger for a charged moment on Yūka Somezaki, whose eyes were now wide with a dawning, visceral horror. She looked like a trapped animal. “They may be… reanimating the dead. Or perhaps… the dead are their new weapon.”
A collective, sharp intake of breath, a series of stifled gasps, went through the classroom. Horrified whispers erupted, quickly shushed by the sheer gravity of his pronouncement. Mr. Saito looked up sharply from his papers, his expression morphing from mild irritation at the interruption to genuine alarm.
Arthur slowly began to walk down the central aisle between the rows of desks, the canvas satchel held carefully, almost reverently, in front of him. Students leaned away instinctively as he passed, a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity on their faces. He could feel Nana Hiiragi’s sharp, intensely analytical gaze on him, a silent, probing question in her eyes. Kyouya Onodera’s stare was equally intense, unblinking, his usual impassivity overlaid with a flicker of something that might have been cold, scientific interest. Arthur stopped when he reached Yūka Somezaki’s desk.
Her face was chalk-white, devoid of all colour, her breath coming in shallow, rapid, audible gasps. She looked like she was about to bolt, her eyes darting wildly between Arthur, the ominous bag, and the distant, unreachable sanctuary of the classroom door.
“I brought back… evidence,” Arthur’s phone announced into the suddenly tomb-like, suffocating silence of the room. With a deliberate, almost ceremonial movement, he lifted the heavy, cloth-covered satchel and placed it directly onto the polished surface of Yūka’s desk. The top of the bag was loosely tied with a drawstring, but a horrifyingly familiar, vaguely spherical shape, still partially obscured by the stained canvas, was sickeningly evident. A hint of dark, matted hair. The pale, obscene curve of a decaying forehead. The unmistakable, ghastly outline of a human head.
Yūka Somezaki stared at the bag, her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the dreadful shape within. A strangled, gurgling whimper escaped her lips. Her body began to tremble violently. Then, she let out a raw, piercing, animalistic scream that seemed to tear through the very fabric of the room, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror and shattered sanity. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped sideways, fainting dead away, her chair crashing to the floor with a deafening clatter.
The classroom exploded into utter chaos. Students shrieked, some scrambling back from their desks in blind panic, knocking over more chairs, their faces contorted in horror and disbelief. Mr. Saito rushed forward, his own face a mask of horrified disbelief and dawning anger. “Tanaka-kun! What is the meaning of this outrage? What have you done?!” he babbled, his voice cracking.
Kyouya Onodera was on his feet, not joining the general panic, but moving with a grim, purposeful stride towards Yūka’s desk, his eyes narrowed, fixed on the dreadful bag and its horrifying contents. Nana Hiiragi, however, remained seated, a preternatural calm amidst the pandemonium. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her pen, her gaze flitting with sharp, analytical intensity between the bag, the unconscious Yūka, and Arthur himself. A chillingly thoughtful, almost appraising expression settled on her face. Arthur had just thrown a live, decapitated grenade into her carefully managed hunting ground, and she was trying to understand the trajectory, the motive, the potential fallout.
The immediate aftermath was a blur of hysterical shouting, terrified crying, and Mr. Saito’s increasingly desperate, high-pitched attempts to restore some semblance of order. The dreadful bag and its horrifying contents were quickly, and with much trepidation, removed by a shaken, pale-faced Mr. Saito himself, who then had Yūka carried off to the school infirmary by two equally terrified older students. Arthur found himself being sternly interrogated by a visibly furious Mr. Saito and another grim-faced teacher in the corridor, his phone struggling to keep up with the barrage of angry questions and accusations. He stuck rigidly to his story: he had found the reanimated corpse, a clear and undeniable sign of the ‘Enemies of Humanity’ at work on their very doorstep. He was merely presenting irrefutable proof of a dangerous new threat. He was met with profound disbelief, horrified condemnation for his barbaric methods, and stern warnings about vigilante actions, but no one could deny the sheer, visceral horror of what he had unveiled. The image of that bag, that shape, would be seared into their minds for a long time.
Later that day, after the initial chaos had subsided into a sort of stunned, fearful quiet, Nana Hiiragi, driven by a potent mixture of cold suspicion, intellectual curiosity, and the pressing need to understand this new, unpredictable variable that Arthur Tanaka represented, visited Yūka in her dormitory room. Yūka had been discharged from the infirmary but was clearly in a state of profound psychological distress, sedated but still babbling incoherently about Shinji, about monsters with decaying faces, about heads in bags.
Nana, seeing an opportunity to probe Yūka’s shattered psyche and perhaps confirm her own suspicions about the girl’s true Talent, began her subtle, psychological torment. "The dead are restless, aren’t they, Somezaki-san," Nana might have said, her voice a soft, sympathetic, almost hypnotic coo, as she sat beside Yūka’s bed. "They whisper things to me sometimes, you know? Especially around those who are… close to them. They say… they say Shinji is lonely. They say you should join him. They even whisper… that you should kill me before I tell everyone your dark secrets."
This, Arthur surmised from his anime knowledge, was the point at which Nana would have feigned terror at her own “revelations,” fleeing dramatically into the nearby woods, deliberately goading a terrified and now highly suggestible Yūka into sending her reanimated servitors (likely lesser zombies she’d created from small animals or perhaps even older, forgotten human remains from the island’s lightless past) after her. Nana would have then easily evaded them, using the orchestrated chase to confirm Yūka’s necromantic Talent beyond any doubt. She would have then confronted the distraught Yūka, expecting to force a full confession about the arson that had killed the real Shinji, before delivering her own fatal, poisoned strike.
But things didn’t go exactly as Nana might have planned, or as Arthur had recalled from the source material. Arthur’s brutal, shockingly public display with Shinji’s severed head had already done irreparable damage to Yūka’s carefully constructed delusions. The foundation of her morbid obsession had been shattered. When Nana confronted her, after the feigned flight and the easily evaded pursuit of a few pathetic, shambling creatures, Yūka was already broken, a hollow shell of her former self. She confessed to the fire, yes, her words tumbling out in a torrent of guilt, self-loathing, and raw terror, but her confession was interspersed with horrified babbling about Shinji’s true, decaying face, the unimaginable horror in that canvas bag, the monstrousness of it all. She wasn't just confessing a crime; she was reliving a profound, sanity-shattering trauma.
Nana, poised to strike, her poisoned needle glinting faintly in the dim light of the dorm room, hesitated. Yūka was a wreck, utterly defeated, her spirit seemingly crushed beyond repair. There was no fight left in her, no defiance, only a raw, pathetic, abject misery. Killing her now felt… empty. Almost unsporting. This wasn’t the calculated elimination of a dangerous, hidden threat; it was like putting down a wounded, whimpering, already dying animal. Perhaps Tsuruoka wouldn’t even count this as a proper, satisfying kill, not with the target already so mentally and emotionally destroyed by another student’s grotesque actions. Nana, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, reasons that felt uncomfortably like a nascent, unwelcome flicker of pity or perhaps even a dawning, unsettling doubt about her own mission, slowly lowered her hand. She left Yūka Somezaki to her madness, a broken toy she no longer had any interest in.
Later that night, alone in her room, tormented by the fractured images of Arthur’s terrible evidence and Nana’s insidious whispers, Yūka Somezaki, in a final, desperate act of denial or a desperate plea for reassurance, tried one last time to summon Shinji. But the image Arthur had so brutally seared into her mind – the decaying, unrecognizable horror in that bag, the vacant eyes, the lolling jaw – had irrevocably tainted her Talent, her connection to her morbid fantasy. When Shinji’s ghostly form flickered into existence before her, it was no longer the romanticised, beloved boyfriend of her carefully nurtured delusions. It was a leering, putrescent corpse, its eyes vacant pits of horror, its flesh sloughing from its bones, its silent scream an echo of her own shattered sanity. She saw, for the first, horrifyingly clear time, what she had truly been embracing, what she had truly become.
The disgust, the self-loathing, the sheer, unadulterated terror, were overwhelming. With a choked, animalistic sob, Yūka screamed at the horrifying apparition, revoking the necromantic energies with a violence that shook her to her core, letting Shinji’s ghastly form dissolve into nothingness for the final, absolute time. She collapsed onto the cold floor, weeping, her body wracked with convulsions, and vowed, with every fibre of her broken being, never again to touch the cursed, defiling power of necromancy.
Arthur, unaware of the specific details of Nana’s subsequent interaction with Yūka, only knew that Yūka Somezaki remained alive, albeit a profoundly changed, withdrawn, and terrified shell of her former self. He had, through a horrifying, morally grey, and deeply traumatizing act, indirectly saved a life from Nana Hiiragi’s list. The cost to his own psyche, however, was mounting with every passing day. He was no hero; he was just a desperate, frightened man playing an increasingly deadly game with pieces of his own sanity, in a world that seemed determined to strip him of every last shred of his former self. And he knew, with a chilling certainty, that his actions had not gone unnoticed by the island's true predator.
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Hej
Nana Hiiragi
Of course the hate for her is well deserved.
First off, blaming "brainwashing" lets her off the hook far too easily. Patty Hearst tried the same trick in the 1970's and it didn't exactly work out well for her. Ironically, Patty spent more time in prisoner for her bank robberies than Nana does for her 10+ murders, which in itself is unfair - Nana gets away with far too much because she's a girl, instead of in spite of it.
Yes, she would be hated just as much if Nana was male (probably more so).
It should be noted that all Nana's murders were premeditated, on her own cognisance and with malice. Just because she was told to do so, doesn't mean she had to.
In addition to that, just because she may not have wanted to do kill anyone, she was certainly happy to do so (smiling when thinking about killing Mirichu as well as the "won't be shy in killing you" part). Nana is a person who would rather murder someone than think of any sort of alternative (as is the case later on).
Futher more, stating that she's a "child soldier" carries no weight - she's killing civilians, which if she was a soldier makes her actions even more odious.
The fact that people try to exonerate Nana because she was "mind controlled" doesn't hold much water considering she was fully aware of what she was doing; didn't need to; didn't bother querying anything and was fully cognisant during her pre-meditated murders; and she quite happily carried another one out, with no doubt more to come.
In addition, there is no reason why she couldn't have asked questions or even did her own reason about Talents and so forth.
I wasn't surprised that the anime didn't get a second season (if it wasn't just for boosting manga sales) because Nana is so unrelatable, unrelatable and pretty much evil personified. Even later on, she's totally dislikable, obnoxious character.
Considering she's supposed to be intelligent, you would have thought, at the very least, queries the morality, if not the legality and ethics of killing schoolchildren (let alone those she killed before she arrived at the island). She's fully aware of what she's doing, so it's all on her own head. She certainly deserves to be punished far longer than three years (that ends up around 3 months for every kid).
I wouldn't be surprised if Nana Hiiragi does enjoy killing people - she is always smiling happily when thinking about killing her victims.
Whilst she may say that she doesn't want to kill any more, later on - it certainly doesn't stop her (no doubt it would be the first thing she thinks of to solve problems, instead of anything else).
Hopefully, she won't have a happy ending (preferably meet a nasty end - with her own poison needs would be nicely ironic). Whilst she may have "changed" for dubious reasons she will have to end up killing people again at some point. Even though she's changed, she's still an insufferable, nasty little bitch. I've got very little sympathy for her, especially as she was sadistic killing everyone.
And yes, killing Nano led to more people suffering - all because of Nana (no idea why Nano should forgive her - obviously he forgot how Nana taunted him before he fell, although I do hear he did beat the crap out of her as well).
Hopefully she will pay some sort of price for her actions.
Whist Nanao killed more people than Nana, it should be noted that Nana was the cause. It was nice of him really to leave Nana alone, considering she had no compulsion about killing Nanao - he certainly would have had a good reason to seek revenge on her.
Chapter 12: Jin, the Cat, and a Phone's Secret
While Arthur Ainsworth was consumed with the grim, unending task of tracking Nana Hiiragi’s deadly progress and grappling with his own mounting failures and compromised morality, other, more subtle currents of intrigue were moving beneath the deceptively placid surface of island life, entirely unnoticed by him. He was so focused on the immediate, known threats derived from his fragmented memories of the anime, so mired in his reactive, desperate attempts to save individual lives, that he remained largely oblivious to the complex machinations of the enigmatic and aloof student, Jin Tachibana – or rather, the skilled operative who currently wore that name and identity like a carefully tailored disguise.
One sun-drenched afternoon, a small commotion near an old, ivy-choked, and long-disused well on the periphery of the school grounds drew a modest crowd of curious students. A cat, a scrawny, dusty white stray with unusually intelligent, wary eyes, had somehow managed to fall into the deep, stone-lined shaft and was now mewling pitifully from the darkness below, its cries echoing faintly. Several students were peering down, their faces a mixture of concern and helplessness, debating various impractical methods of rescue, but no one seemed particularly willing to risk the uncertain descent into the gloom.
Then, Nana Hiiragi arrived, drawn by the small gathering. Pushing gently but firmly through the onlookers, her expression one of perfectly pitched concern, she assessed the situation with a swift, practical gaze. “Oh, the poor little thing!” she exclaimed, her voice filled with what sounded, even to Arthur who watched from a distance, like genuine sympathy. Dismissing suggestions of complicated rope systems or waiting for a teacher to fetch a ladder, Nana, with a surprising, almost cat-like agility herself, hitched up her school skirt slightly, found a secure handhold on the crumbling stonework, and began to shimmy partway down the moss-slicked well wall. She stretched to her utmost limit, her small hand reaching into the darkness, and after a moment of tense silence, she emerged, slightly dusty and with a triumphant smile, cradling the frightened, trembling white animal.
She petted it gently, murmuring soft, soothing words in Japanese, before a grateful teacher, who had just arrived on the scene, quickly procured a small cardboard box and a saucer of milk. For a moment, watching Nana’s tender, almost maternal care for the creature, Arthur felt a familiar flicker of profound confusion. It was such a jarring, stark contrast to her ruthless efficiency as a cold-blooded assassin. Was it possible, he found himself wondering yet again, for such profound, calculated cruelty and moments of seemingly genuine compassion to coexist so easily within one individual? Or was this, too, merely another carefully calibrated performance, designed to enhance her image as a kind, caring, and approachable class representative? The cat, after a few tentative laps of milk and a long, unblinking stare at Nana, suddenly bolted from the box and darted off into the dense undergrowth, vanishing as silently as a ghost. Arthur filed the incident away as another perplexing, unexplainable facet of Nana Hiiragi’s terrifyingly complex character. He didn’t know, of course, that the rescued white cat was, in fact, Jin Tachibana, who had perhaps engineered the entire incident for reasons of his own.
A few days later, a different, more personal kind of confusion began to beset Nana Hiiragi. Michiru Inukai, her devoted, fluffy-haired admirer, began acting… strangely. Uncharacteristically so. During a conversation where Nana was attempting her usual subtle probing for information about other students’ Talents, cloaked in friendly concern, "Michiru" responded not with her usual naive eagerness to please, but with an uncharacteristic, almost unnerving sharpness. Her questions were surprisingly insightful, her observations on the social dynamics of the class and the potential weaknesses of certain Talents were almost Kyouya-Onodera-like in their astute, detached analysis. Nana found herself, for the first time in her interactions with Michiru, on the back foot, her usual manipulative conversational tactics strangely ineffective against this suddenly perceptive, almost cynical version of her normally guileless friend. This "Michiru" even questioned Nana’s "mind-reading" Talent with a directness that was startling, forcing Nana to feign a sudden, debilitating headache and claim her powers were unfortunately weak and unreliable that particular day. Nana was baffled, even slightly paranoid; it was as if Michiru had undergone a complete and inexplicable personality transplant overnight. In reality, Jin, using a sophisticated illusion or subtle mental suggestion Talent that allowed him to temporarily overlay his mannerisms and lines of questioning onto the unsuspecting girl (or perhaps even fully impersonating her, if his abilities were that advanced), was actively testing Nana, gauging her reactions, her intelligence, and the limits of her own deceptions from behind the disarming guise of her most ardent, trusting follower.
The culmination of Jin’s quiet, meticulous investigation into Nana Hiiragi and her operational methods came during one of "Michiru’s" now-regular visits to Nana’s dorm room. The real Michiru, trusting and eager for Nana’s company as always, had prattled on about her day, then, feeling a little warm, had decided to take a quick, refreshing bath in Nana’s small ensuite bathroom, leaving "Michiru" (Jin, in his current disguised observation mode) alone in Nana’s modest living area. This was precisely the opportunity Jin had been patiently waiting for, an unguarded moment he had subtly engineered.
While the sound of running water and Michiru’s off-key humming echoed faintly from the bathroom, Jin, moving with a silent, practiced efficiency that utterly belied the clumsy, endearing persona of Michiru Inukai, located Nana’s ever-present, Committee-issued mobile phone. It lay innocently on her nightstand. Jin had long suspected something was profoundly amiss with Nana's seemingly direct line of communication to her handlers. Her ability to receive detailed orders and transmit reports from an island supposedly under a strict communication blackout had always struck him as a significant operational flaw, or a carefully constructed deception.
With deft, nimble fingers, Jin navigated the phone’s simple operating system, easily bypassing Nana's rudimentary passcode – a four-digit sequence embarrassingly easy to guess for someone with his observational skills. Jin didn’t attempt to make an outgoing call or send a message, knowing such an action would likely be logged, traced, or might even trigger some hidden security protocol. Instead, he focused his attention on the incoming call logs, the message archives, and the phone’s underlying software architecture, running a series of silent, non-invasive diagnostic checks that would be entirely invisible to a casual user like Nana.
The discovery was both illuminating and deeply chilling: the phone was a sophisticated sham, a cleverly designed closed-loop system. It could send signals, or at least give the convincing appearance of doing so, transmitting Nana’s reports into a dead-end receiver. But it couldn’t receive genuine, unscripted incoming communications from any external, human source. All the "replies" from her supposed handler, "Commander Tsuruoka," the new directives, the words of encouragement or admonishment – they were all generated by an incredibly advanced, adaptive AI program housed within the phone itself. This AI responded to Nana’s reports and queries with pre-programmed, contextually relevant, and psychologically manipulative scripts, creating a flawless illusion of direct, two-way communication. Nana Hiiragi believed she had a vital, secure line to her superiors; in reality, she was conversing with a highly sophisticated algorithm, her detailed reports vanishing into the digital ether, her orders conjured by a machine designed to keep her compliant, motivated, and murderously on task.
Jin carefully replaced the phone exactly where it had been, a grim, cold understanding settling within him. Nana wasn’t just a killer; she was a profoundly isolated puppet, more thoroughly manipulated and controlled by the Committee than even she could possibly imagine. This information was extraordinarily valuable, another critical piece in the complex, horrifying puzzle of the island, its true purpose, and the shadowy, ruthless organization that pulled all their strings.
When the real Michiru Inukai emerged from her bath a few minutes later, refreshed, changed into her pajamas, and cheerfully oblivious, Jin (still maintaining his flawless Michiru disguise) was sitting exactly where she’d left him, perhaps idly flipping through one of Nana’s textbooks, offering a perfectly innocent, sweet smile.
Arthur Ainsworth, meanwhile, remained entirely unaware of these hidden manoeuvres, these subtle games of espionage and counter-espionage playing out in the shadows around him. He was still grappling with the aftermath of the time traveler’s death, his mind consumed with trying to anticipate Nana’s next victim, his world largely confined to the deadly, predictable script he half-remembered from a world away. The island, he was slowly beginning to realize, held far more secrets and far more dangerous players than he currently knew, and the true game was infinitely more complex than a simple, desperate confrontation between a reluctant transmigrator and a pink-haired teenage assassin. Other, older schemes were in motion, and Jin Tachibana, the silent enigma, was quietly, patiently pulling strings from the deep, unnoticed shadows.
Chapter 40: The Unwritten Page
The days that followed their desperate covenant in the firelit cave settled into a strange, new rhythm, a tense counterpoint of meticulous preparation and gnawing uncertainty. Jin Tachibana had vanished as silently and enigmatically as he had arrived, presumably off to navigate the treacherous labyrinth of the Committee’s bureaucracy and the shadowy underworld of forgers and information brokers, on his near-impossible quest to craft a new life for Arthur Ainsworth.
In his absence, the remaining four became a study in focused, if often fearful, resolve. Arthur, with a grim determination that surprised even himself, began his daunting studies. Kyouya, using his sharp intellect and surprisingly broad, if eclectic, knowledge base, became his reluctant, if exacting, tutor in the complex, often heavily redacted, history of this Japan, this unfamiliar world, carefully guiding him through the official narratives and hinting at the unspoken, darker truths that lay beneath. Nana Hiiragi, her own past a raw, open wound, offered bitter, insightful, and often terrifyingly personal commentary on the Committee’s methods of indoctrination and control, her words painting a chilling picture of the psychological landscape Arthur would have to navigate. There were no illusions between them now, only the stark, shared understanding of the monstrous enemy they faced. Michiru Inukai, a quiet, steadfast presence, ensured they ate what little they had, tended to their spirits with her gentle optimism, and created a small, fragile pocket of normalcy amidst the overwhelming abnormality of their existence.
Arthur would spend hours poring over scavenged textbooks Kyouya produced from some hidden cache, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to make sense of timelines and political shifts so alien to his own lived experience. He, Arthur Ainsworth, former accounts clerk from Crawley, a man whose most pressing historical concerns had once revolved around the Tudors or the English Civil War for a pub quiz, was now attempting a crash course in the socio-political development of an alternate, Talent-riven Japan. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of it would sometimes strike him with an almost physical force, leaving him breathless. He thought of the quiet, predictable order of his old life, the mundane certainty of a bus arriving (usually) on time, the fixed point of a well-earned pint at the local on a Friday evening. Even the most chaotic council meeting back in what felt like a distant, almost imaginary England – perhaps debating fiercely over planning permission for a new supermarket on the outskirts of a town like Chichester, or some other sleepy southern borough – paled into utter insignificance compared to the life-or-death stakes of this new, terrifying "career" he was so desperately, so improbably, preparing for.
He looked at the crude map Nana was still meticulously sketching by the dim firelight, a map of an island that had become the nexus of his impossible new life, a place of horrors he was now planning to willingly return to. Back in his small semi-detached, the most pressing map he’d ever seriously consulted was likely an A-to-Z of Greater London for a rare trip up to town, or perhaps a well-worn Ordnance Survey map detailing the familiar, gentle contours of the South Downs for a bracing bank holiday ramble. This new map, sketched in rough charcoal on a salvaged piece of slate, its lines imbued with Nana’s painful, intimate knowledge, led not to quaint country pubs or historic, sun-dappled landmarks, but into the very dark, beating heart of a monstrous, inhuman deception.
Whether this path, this desperate, insane gamble, would lead them to any form of liberation, or simply to a new, even more terrible form of annihilation, was a page yet to be written, a future no story, no matter how bizarrely prescient or tragically detailed, had ever truly foretold. The narrative he remembered from his old world was now just that – a memory, a collection of increasingly unreliable echoes. Their lives had diverged, their choices now entirely their own, each step taken into a vast, terrifying, and utterly unscripted unknown.
And as the persistent May chill of the deep mountain cave – so unlike any English May he could recall from his past, a month that should have hinted at warmth, at summer, at hope – seeped into his weary bones, Arthur Ainsworth could only cling to the fragile, flickering ember of their shared, defiant purpose. He could only hope, with a desperation that was almost a prayer, that they possessed the strength, the luck, and the sheer, bloody-minded, stubborn resilience to survive the terrible, uncertain writing of it. The future stretched before them, a blank, ominous, and unforgiving page.
Another pointless poster
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.
