Nana Hiiragi

Song about anime

This is based on Talentless Nana, and considering the story is AI generated the thriller aspect does kick in very well.

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.

Would serve her right

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.

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

Do hope Nana Hiiragi gets her comeuppance

Chapter 38: Weighing the Price of Truth

Arthur’s challenging question – “Unless, of course, anyone else has any better ideas?” – hung heavy in the smoky air of the cave, a stark invitation that no one seemed immediately eager to accept. The fire crackled, spitting a few defiant sparks, but otherwise, a profound, contemplative silence enveloped the small group of fugitives. He watched their faces: Nana, her expression a complex mixture of fear and a dawning, almost reluctant consideration; Kyouya, his gaze distant, already dissecting the proposal with his sharp, analytical intellect; Michiru, her brow furrowed with worry, her gentle eyes fixed on Arthur with a mixture of concern and a hesitant, fragile trust; and Jin, his usual enigmatic smile softened into something more thoughtful, more appraising.

It was Michiru who spoke first, her voice barely a whisper, yet carrying a surprising weight in the quiet. “Arthur-san… your idea… it is very brave. Terribly brave. But… surely there must be another way? A way that doesn’t put you in such… such direct, unimaginable danger? If we all stayed together, perhaps, found a truly remote place…”

Arthur offered her a small, sad smile. “I wish that were possible, Michiru-san. Truly, I do. But Tsuruoka’s reach is long. The Committee’s resources are vast. There is no place on this earth, I suspect, where we would be truly, permanently safe from them if they were determined to find us. Hiding is merely delaying the inevitable. We need to confront the source of the poison, not just flee its symptoms.”

Kyouya Onodera finally broke his silence, his voice cutting through the smoky air with its characteristic cool precision. “Setting aside, for the moment, the almost suicidal audacity of your core proposal, Ainsworth,” he began, his pale eyes fixed on Arthur, “let us consider the immediate logistical impossibilities. You propose to return to that island, an island where your previous persona, Kenji Tanaka, is now undoubtedly flagged as a problematic individual, possibly even believed dead or ‘neutralized’ by some. You would require an entirely new identity – one so flawless, so deeply embedded with verifiable, albeit fabricated, history, that it could withstand the Committee’s intense, paranoid scrutiny.” He paused. “Crafting such an identity, complete with supporting documentation, academic credentials for a teaching position no less, and a believable backstory for a foreigner seeking employment in such a… unique educational institution… that is not a simple task.”

He was, Arthur knew, entirely correct. The sheer bureaucratic nightmare of what he was proposing, even before considering the physical dangers, was daunting. Forging a new life from whole cloth to bring down a shadowy, all-powerful government organization… it was a far cry from his old life, from debating complex VAT codes with Henderson from the accounts department back in the Crawley borough council offices. Though Henderson, Arthur mused with a flicker of grim internal humor, in his own quiet, pedantic way, could be just as terrifyingly thorough when he found a discrepancy. Still, this was hardly the stuff of the spy thrillers one might pick up from a dusty second-hand bookshop on a dreary Tuesday afternoon in… well, any quiet, ordinary English town. This was their insane, desperate reality.

Nana, who had been listening intently, her expression unreadable, now spoke, her voice low and strained. “Kyouya-san is right. The island’s security protocols, especially for new staff, will be… extreme. Tsuruoka is no fool. After the events of the last few years, after our escape from the mainland camp, he will have tightened everything. Background checks will be exhaustive. And even if you did somehow get through the initial vetting, as a teacher, you would be under constant surveillance. Every lesson, every interaction, potentially monitored.” Her gaze flickered towards Arthur, a silent warning in their violet depths. “And my… my own file… Tsuruoka knows I was… close… to Michiru-san. He knows you interfered with my assignment concerning Nanao Nakajima. He knows you are an anomaly. If he suspected for a moment that ‘Kenji Tanaka’ had somehow returned under a new guise…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

“I understand all of that,” Arthur said, his voice quiet but firm. “The risks are astronomical. But what are the alternatives? Do we have another viable plan? Another way to strike at the heart of the Committee’s operations, to reach those children before they are turned into… into what Tsuruoka intends for them?”

A heavy silence descended again. No one offered an alternative. Their current situation – fugitives, hiding in a cave, with limited resources and the constant threat of discovery – was a testament to their lack of viable long-term options.

It was Jin Tachibana who finally spoke, his voice as smooth and unruffled as ever, though his eyes, when they met Arthur’s, held a new, almost unnerving intensity. “The creation of a sufficiently robust new identity for a foreign national, complete with verifiable, if entirely fictitious, academic and professional credentials,” he began, his tone almost conversational, as if discussing the weather, “while indeed complex and resource-intensive, is not… entirely beyond the realm of possibility.”

All eyes turned to him. Nana looked particularly surprised.

“I maintain… certain connections,” Jin continued, a faint, enigmatic smile playing on his lips. “Individuals with particular… skills… in the art of information fabrication and bureaucratic navigation. It would be costly. It would be time-consuming. And there would be no guarantee of success. The Committee’s counter-intelligence measures are formidable.” He paused, his gaze sweeping over Arthur. “You would also, Ainsworth-san, need to significantly alter your physical appearance. Hair colour, eye colour, perhaps even subtle changes to your facial structure, if possible. You would need to adopt entirely new mannerisms, a new way of speaking, a new way of being. You would have to become someone else entirely, someone so unremarkable, so devoid of threat, that you could pass beneath Tsuruoka’s ever-watchful gaze.”

“And even if all of that were possible,” Kyouya interjected, his skepticism still evident, “how would you gain entry? That specific island academy is not a place one simply applies to for a teaching position through conventional channels. It is a black site, a secret institution. They recruit their staff, especially their foreign language instructors, through very specific, very carefully vetted, and often deeply compromised channels.”

Jin nodded slowly. “That,” he conceded, “would be the most significant hurdle. Finding a legitimate, or legitimately falsifiable, opening. Engineering an opportunity. It would require… patience. And a considerable degree of luck. Or, perhaps, the creation of a vacancy where none currently exists.” The last words were spoken with a chilling, almost casual quietness that sent a shiver down Arthur’s spine.

“So,” Nana said, her voice barely a whisper, her gaze fixed on Arthur with a mixture of fear, disbelief, and a dawning, reluctant respect. “You are truly… truly willing to attempt this? To walk back into that place?”

Arthur met her gaze, his own resolve hardening despite the terrifying litany of obstacles they had just outlined. “If Jin-san believes it is even remotely feasible to create the necessary cover,” he said, his voice steady, “and if a credible opportunity, however slim, can be found or made… then yes, Hiiragi-san. I am. Because, frankly,” he looked around at their tired, hunted faces, “I see no other way to even begin to fight back against what they are doing. We are currently reacting. This… this is an attempt, however desperate, however insane, to act.”

Michiru sniffled quietly, wiping a tear from her eye, but she said nothing more, her earlier protestations silenced by the grim, undeniable logic of their desperate situation.

Kyouya let out a long, slow breath. “The potential for catastrophic failure,” he stated, his voice flat, “is exceptionally high. The probability of your survival, Ainsworth, should you be discovered, is effectively zero.”

“I am aware of that, Onodera-san,” Arthur replied, his own voice equally devoid of emotion. “I have been living on borrowed time since the moment I arrived in this world. Perhaps it’s time I tried to make that borrowed time… count for something more than just my own continued, miserable existence.”

A new kind of silence fell upon the group then, no longer the silence of stunned disbelief, but the heavy, contemplative silence of individuals weighing the terrible, almost unbearable price of a desperate, fragile, and perhaps entirely illusory hope. The fire had burned low, casting long, flickering shadows that danced like accusing spectres on the damp cave walls. The decision had not yet been made, but the first, terrifying steps onto a new, even more perilous path, had been irrevocably taken.

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?

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.