Sku-te - Down With Nana Hiiragi
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Chapter 25: Tsuruoka's Monsters
In the chaotic, fear-drenched aftermath of Nana Hiiragi’s public unmasking and the subsequent savage beating by her terrified peers, a semblance of grim, heavily enforced order was slowly, painfully restored on the island by the few remaining, deeply shaken teachers and a grimly determined, stone-faced Kyouya Onodera. Nana, battered, bruised, and her spirit utterly shattered, was confined to the stark, unwelcoming island infirmary under the constant, wary guard of two stern-faced school orderlies. Her future, everyone assumed, would involve mainland authorities and a lengthy prison sentence, if not worse.
Akari Hozumi, the quiet, intense catalyst for this brutal upheaval, meticulously compiled her damning findings – detailed witness statements elicited with her unnerving, truth-compelling Talent, her own chillingly precise forensic reconstructions of multiple murder scenes, and the fragmented, tearful, partial confession Nana herself had made amidst the chaos by the lake. As soon as the next heavily guarded transport to the mainland was available, Akari, clutching her meticulously organized dossier of irrefutable evidence, departed the island, her expression one of grim, unwavering satisfaction. She presented everything to a Detective Maeda at the nearest mainland police precinct, a man whose calm, reassuring professionalism and apparent dedication to justice she found commendable. She was entirely unaware, of course, that Detective Maeda’s calm professionalism was bought and paid for, his primary loyalty sworn not to the law, but to the shadowy, all-powerful Commander Tsuruoka. Maeda assured Akari Hozumi that the matter would be investigated with the utmost thoroughness and urgency, then, as soon as she had departed, he promptly contacted Tsuruoka, who listened to the report with cold, silent interest. For the moment, Tsuruoka decided, it was best to let the official police investigation stall, to become mired in bureaucratic delays. He preferred to deal with his now dangerously rogue asset, Nana Hiiragi, personally, and far more… creatively.
A few disorienting days later, Nana, still nursing her extensive physical injuries and her profoundly fractured spirit, was abruptly, unceremoniously removed from the island infirmary by a team of silent, black-clad Committee agents. She was transported, not to a mainland hospital or a secure police detention facility as she had expected, but back to the cold, sterile, and deeply foreboding confines of Commander Tsuruoka’s isolated military base.
The debriefing, when it came after hours of being left alone in a featureless, windowless interrogation room, was a masterclass in psychological torture. Tsuruoka didn’t bother with pretenses, with veiled threats or subtle manipulations this time. He flayed Nana’s psyche with cold, surgical precision, recounting in meticulous, agonizing detail the horrific circumstances of her parents' tragic deaths, subtly, cruelly twisting the known facts to imply her own childish culpability, her inherent monstrosity, her predisposition to violence. He spoke with chilling calm of her myriad failures on the island, her rapidly declining kill rate, her inexplicable and operationally disastrous sentimentality towards certain targets, her ultimate, unforgivable betrayal of the Committee’s trust by allowing herself to be so comprehensively, so humiliatingly, exposed.
“But perhaps,” Tsuruoka said at last, his voice a silken, venomous whisper that seemed to slither into the deepest recesses of her mind, “you simply lack the proper, fundamental motivation, Hiiragi. Perhaps you’ve forgotten what it is we are truly, desperately fighting against in this shadow war.” He stood, his movements precise and economical. “Come with me. It is long past time for a… refresher course. A practical lesson in the true nature of our enemy.”
Flanked by two heavily armed, impassive guards whose faces she didn’t recognize, Nana, her body aching, her mind reeling, was escorted out of the interrogation room and down a long, blindingly white, sterile passageway deep within the bowels of the facility. The air was cold, recycled, smelling faintly of strong antiseptic and something else, something metallic and vaguely unsettling. As they passed a series of heavy, unmarked steel doors, one was inexplicably, fractionally ajar. Through the narrow gap, Nana caught a fleeting, disorienting glimpse of a figure inside a dimly lit observation room – a pale-faced man with stark white hair, his features indistinct in the gloom, who seemed entirely out of place amongst the banks of complex monitoring equipment. The man’s eyes, cold and piercing, met hers for a single, unnerving, unforgettable split second, a look of unreadable, almost alien intensity, before he slowly, deliberately, closed the door, plunging the room back into darkness. “Eyes front, Hiiragi! Maintain your composure!” Tsuruoka barked sharply from ahead, his voice echoing in the sterile corridor. Nana didn’t know it, couldn’t possibly have known it, but she had just seen Jin Tachibana – or rather, Kyouya Onodera’s sister, Rin, in her male disguise, a fellow prisoner or perhaps even an unwilling operative within Tsuruoka’s monstrous machine.
They arrived at a heavy, reinforced steel door at the end of the long corridor. Tsuruoka paused, then, with a faint, almost anticipatory smile, he opened it, revealing another vast, white, sterile room. In its exact centre, illuminated by harsh, shadowless overhead lights, stood a large, heavily barred cage, constructed of thick, gleaming metal alloys. Inside, a creature of impossible, nightmarish geometry writhed and pulsed, its form shifting and coalescing in ways that defied sanity and the known laws of physics. It was an abomination, vaguely, disturbingly humanoid in its basic outline, but utterly, terrifyingly alien in its execution, a living воплощение of a madman’s darkest fever dream.
“This, Nana,” Tsuruoka said, his voice resonating with a strange, almost proprietary pride as he ushered her and the two guards into the room, the heavy door hissing shut behind them with a sound of absolute finality. “This is what we’re fighting against. This is the true face of our enemy.” “What… what is it?” Nana whispered, her voice trembling, her eyes fixed in horrified fascination on the grotesque, shifting entity in the cage. “The Enemy of Humanity,” Tsuruoka replied, his tone matter-of-fact. Just then, the monster in the cage stirred, its multi-jointed, chitinous limbs twitching, and a horrifying, guttural, stuttering voice, like stones grinding together, echoed in the stark, white room: “H…help… me… Please…” Tsuruoka’s face tightened in a brief spasm of annoyance. He gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod to one of the guards, then gestured dismissively for Nana and the other guard to follow him out. As they exited the room, Nana heard faint, high-pitched, almost childlike screeching from within, abruptly, sickeningly, cut short. The door hissed shut behind them, sealing the horror within.
Tsuruoka, his composure perfectly restored, led them to another identical steel door, further down the echoing corridor. He pushed it open without ceremony. Inside this second room, the immediate, overwhelming stench of stale blood, chemical disinfectants, and visceral decay made Nana gag and her stomach heave. Another reinforced cage stood in the centre, containing a different, though equally grotesque and pitiable, monster. But this room was far worse than the first. It was a charnel house. The corpses of several uniformed Committee guards lay strewn haphazardly across the tiled floor, their bodies mangled, their weapons discarded. And lining the walls, stacked three deep, were rows upon rows of ominous, filled black body bags.
Tsuruoka, seemingly oblivious to the carnage and the stench, strode purposefully over to one of the body bags on the nearest stack and, with a theatrical flourish, unzipped it. Nana’s breath caught in her throat, a strangled, horrified gasp. Inside, lay the lifeless, greyish-white, waxy form of Etsuko, one of the female bullies Nana had so clinically, so callously, poisoned with tainted contact lenses during her first year on the island. Her eyes were wide, staring, her expression frozen in a silent scream of terror.
“I believe you know this girl, Hiiragi?” Tsuruoka stated, his voice cold, almost conversational. Wide-eyed with a dawning, sickening horror, Nana could only nod, backing away instinctively. The remaining guard, his face impassive, grabbed her arm in an iron grip, forcing her closer to the horrifying display. “A very… creative and deniable method of elimination, this one,” Tsuruoka mused, tapping the body bag thoughtfully. “A clear victory for you at the time, Hiiragi, a demonstration of your early potential. Though your operational record has, I must say, slipped quite considerably since then.” He gestured to Etsuko’s corpse. “Now, touch the body.” Nana recoiled, trying to pull her arm free, but the guard tightened his brutal grip, his fingers digging into her flesh, forcing her reluctant hand onto Etsuko’s cold, unnervingly clammy skin. Nana snatched her hand back as if burned, a small, choked cry escaping her lips. “Still warm, isn’t she?” Tsuruoka said, a predatory, almost gleeful smile playing on his lips. “That’s because, you see, whatever arcane, unfortunate force creates a person’s Talent also keeps them… lingering, their essence tethered, even when they appear quite dead to our conventional, unenlightened eyes. And eventually…” He gestured dramatically towards the gibbering, miserable monster currently confined in the cage. “…that is what they invariably become. No matter how many times you ‘kill’ them, Hiiragi, no matter how thoroughly you believe you have extinguished their lives, they just won’t truly, permanently die. They transform.” He strode over and casually kicked another body bag, then another, some of them showing clear evidence of multiple, massive gunshot wounds, others bearing the marks of even more esoteric, violent ends. “And yet, their bodies, their core temperature, remains inexplicably, unnaturally warm. This, my dear Nana, is the true, horrifying nature of our enemy. This is what we’re truly up against. And you, Nana,” his voice hardened, “you have failed. Badly. Profoundly. Perhaps The Committee no longer has any use for you. Perhaps it’s time you were… discarded. Like your unfortunate, less effective predecessors.”
He walked calmly towards the reinforced steel door. “Perhaps a more… direct lesson is required for you to fully appreciate the stakes.” He opened the door. “Guard!” he barked. “Open the cage!” The remaining Committee guard, his face suddenly pale with stark, unconcealed terror, stammered, his voice cracking, “N-no, sir! I can’t! You know what will happen if… if that thing gets out unrestrained! It’s too dangerous!” Tsuruoka, his patience clearly, finally, at an end, his eyes glinting with cold, murderous displeasure, drew his sidearm with blinding speed and shot the disobedient guard through the head without a moment’s hesitation. The man crumpled to the floor in a heap, his eyes wide with surprise and sudden, terminal understanding. “That,” Tsuruoka said, his voice chillingly calm as he holstered his weapon, “is the inevitable price of failing The Committee, Hiiragi. A lesson you would do well to internalize.” With that, he raised his weapon again, aimed it carefully at the cage’s complex locking mechanism, and fired twice, shattering it. He then stepped swiftly out of the room, a grim, satisfied smile playing on his lips, and the heavy steel door slammed shut behind him, its locks engaging with a series of definitive, echoing thuds. Nana Hiiragi was trapped. Alone. With a monster.
The grotesque “Enemy of Humanity” in the now-open cage let out a deafening, ear-splitting screech, a sound that seemed to resonate with all the pain and madness in the universe. “THIS IS WHAT EVERYONE BECOMES!” it shrieked, its voice a horrifying, discordant chorus of countless suffering souls. “THIS IS YOUR FUTURE! OUR FUTURE!” And then, with terrifying speed and agility, it launched itself at Nana.
The fight was a desperate, brutal, almost primal struggle for survival in the bloody, gore-strewn charnel house Tsuruoka had so callously, so deliberately, created as her final, horrifying classroom. Nana, driven by a surge of pure, undiluted adrenaline and a fierce, unyielding will to live, used every ounce of her assassin’s training, her agility, her cunning, her sheer desperation. The creature was inhumanly strong, terrifyingly relentless, its attacks bizarre, unpredictable, and sickeningly violent. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of pain, fear, and brutal exertion, Nana, bleeding from numerous deep wounds, her body screaming in protest, managed to exploit a momentary weakness in the creature’s defense, using a jagged shard of metal she’d wrenched from the broken cage lock to deliver a decisive, severing blow to the monstrous entity’s primary neural cluster, or what she desperately hoped was its equivalent. It collapsed with a final, gurgling shriek, its unnatural form dissolving into a viscous, rapidly evaporating ichor.
Exhausted beyond measure, bleeding freely from numerous wounds, but astonishingly, miraculously alive, Nana frantically, desperately searched for an escape route from the horrifying, sealed room. Her eyes, wild with adrenaline and a dawning, desperate hope, fell upon a small, almost hidden maintenance hatch set high in one of the walls. With the last of her strength, she managed to reach it, pry it open, and narrowly, miraculously, bypassed a series of sophisticated security measures within the narrow, suffocating crawlspace beyond. Somehow, running on sheer, unadulterated will, she managed to flee the nightmarish facility. She emerged, hours later, into the indifferent, sprawling anonymity of the vast, uncaring city, a wounded, traumatized, and hunted fugitive, her illusions shattered, her understanding of the world, of Talents, of good and evil, irrevocably, horrifically, and permanently altered.
Back on the distant, isolated island, life – or what passed for it in the wake of Nana’s dramatic exposure and removal – continued in a state of uneasy, fearful chaos. Arthur Ainsworth watched the fallout, the fear and anger amongst the surviving students slowly, inevitably giving way to a confused, rudderless, and deeply pervasive anxiety. He was entirely unaware of Nana’s current, even more horrific ordeal at the hands of Commander Tsuruoka, entirely unaware that she was now on the run, her entire worldview, her very sanity, demolished. He only knew that Nana Hiiragi, the island’s most prolific, most dangerous, and most enigmatic killer, was gone, and the future, for himself and for everyone else trapped in this terrible, unending game, was now more uncertain, more perilous, and more terrifying than ever before.
Chapter 2: The Lie and the Lifeline
The insistent, jarring clang of a bell dragged Arthur from a fitful, shallow sleep. He lay for a moment on the unfamiliar, unyielding mattress, the cheap fabric of the thin blanket rough against his cheek. The dormitory room was small, spartan, and already filled with the grey, pre-dawn light filtering through a single curtained window. His roommate, a lanky boy whose name Suzuki he’d managed to glean through a torturous, phone-assisted exchange the previous evening, was already up and rustling about, his movements brisk and efficient. Arthur felt a familiar ache in his back – this teenage body, while undoubtedly more resilient than his 51-year-old original, was not accustomed to sleeping on what felt like a thinly disguised board.
His phone. The thought jolted him fully awake. He reached for it on the small, battered nightstand. 98%. He’d managed to keep it plugged into the common room charger for most of the night, a small victory in a sea of overwhelming disorientation. It was his shield, his voice, his only tenuous connection to understanding in this utterly alien landscape.
Breakfast in the canteen was a cacophony of unfamiliar sounds, smells, and social rituals. The clatter of chopsticks against ceramic bowls, the rapid-fire Japanese chatter, the aroma of miso soup, grilled fish, and pickled vegetables – it was a sensory assault. Arthur, acutely aware of his own clumsy foreignness, navigated the serving line with a series of awkward bows, nods, and pointing gestures, managing to acquire a tray of food he wasn’t entirely sure how to eat. He found a relatively isolated table and ate mechanically, his gaze sweeping the room, a new, terrible kind of people-watching. Were any of these bright-eyed, chattering teenagers future corpses? Future killers? The rice stuck in his throat. He kept his phone hidden, reserving its precious battery for interactions more critical than ordering natto, which he’d mistakenly selected and was now eyeing with deep suspicion.
The first class of the day was in a classroom that could have been pulled from any number of nostalgic school dramas – worn wooden desks scarred with generations of graffiti, a large, dusty chalkboard, and tall windows that looked out onto a dense, almost suffocatingly lush greenery. The air smelled of chalk dust, old wood, and the faint, lingering scent of floor polish. The teacher, a man named Mr. Saito according to the timetable Arthur had painstakingly deciphered, was balding, with a kindly, slightly harassed smile and a suit that had seen better decades. He beamed at the assembled students, then his eyes, magnified by thick-lensed glasses, found Arthur, the conspicuous late arrival.
“Ah, class, good morning!” Mr. Saito began, his voice surprisingly warm and resonant. He beckoned Arthur towards the front. “We have a late arrival joining our happy group today. This is Tanaka Kenji-kun. Please, let’s all make him feel welcome.”
A smattering of polite, if somewhat curious, applause rippled through the room. Arthur walked to the front, each step feeling like a mile, the thirty pairs of young eyes boring into him. He felt like an imposter in a badly rehearsed school play, acutely aware of the ill-fitting uniform and the sheer absurdity of his presence. He managed a stiff, jerky bow, an approximation of what he’d seen others do.
“Tanaka-kun,” Mr. Saito continued, his smile unwavering, “perhaps you could introduce yourself to your new classmates? And, of course, this being an academy for the Talented, we’d all be very interested to hear about your special gift.”
This was it. The moment he’d been dreading since the horrifying realization of where he was had crashed down upon him. His stomach churned. He fumbled for his phone, the smooth plastic cool against his clammy palm. The slight delay as he typed, the almost imperceptible whir as the translation app processed his English words, felt like an eternity.
“Good morning,” he began, his voice, when it finally emerged from the phone’s small speaker, sounding unnervingly calm and even, a stark contrast to the frantic, terrified monologue screaming inside his own head. “My name is Tanaka Kenji. It is… an adjustment being here. I hope to learn much.” He kept it brief, hoping against hope they might just move on.
No such luck. A girl in the front row, her dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, her eyes sharp and inquisitive, asked the inevitable question, her Japanese clear and direct. “And your Talent, Tanaka-kun? What can you do?”
Arthur took a ragged, internal breath. He’d spent most of the night staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of the dorm room, his mind racing through a dozen half-baked lies, discarding each one as too outlandish or too easily disproved. He needed something plausible within the insane logic of this world, something difficult to verify, something that sounded vaguely impressive but was, in practical terms, utterly useless in a fight or for any kind of nefarious purpose. He typed furiously, his English words a desperate scramble on the small screen.
“My Talent,” the phone announced after a moment, its synthesized voice echoing slightly in the quiet classroom. He paused for dramatic effect he didn't feel, then continued his input. Right, a suitably grand name. Something that sounds… profound. “I call it… Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” He let that hang in the air, allowing the unfamiliar syllables to settle over the room. He could feel the weight of their expectant silence.
He continued dictating to his phone, carefully constructing the parameters of his fabricated ability. “If I make physical contact with someone…” Physical contact, yes, that’s a good limitation. Makes it less likely they’ll just demand a demonstration on a whim, and it gives me an out if I need one. “…I sometimes… see a brief, vivid moment from their future.” Vague. Good. Keep it vague. “Usually this moment is from twenty to fifty years ahead.” Far enough that no one here will ever be able to verify it. “It tends to be a moment of… significant emotional resonance for that person.” More vagueness. Could be joy, could be sorrow. Unpredictable.
Then came the crucial caveats, the built-in flaws. It can’t be reliable. It can’t be useful for fighting or predicting enemy movements. It must be a burden. “It’s… not always clear what I’m seeing,” the phone translated his carefully typed English. “The glimpses are often fragmented, deeply personal, and sometimes… quite unsettling.” That should deter casual requests. No one wants an unsettling glimpse into their private future. “And I have no control over what I see, or indeed, if I see anything at all when I make contact.” Perfect. Utterly unreliable, therefore, from their perspective, mostly useless. He finished with a touch of feigned weariness, allowing his shoulders to slump slightly, hoping he looked suitably burdened by this incredible, yet terribly inconvenient, “gift.” “It can be quite… draining, emotionally and physically.”
A low murmur rippled through the class. He couldn’t decipher the individual Japanese words, but the collective tone suggested a mixture of awe, curiosity, and perhaps a little trepidation. It sounded suitably esoteric, suitably… Talented. He’d bought himself a sliver of credibility, or at least, a plausible, if rather outlandish, explanation for his presence in this extraordinary institution.
Mr. Saito nodded thoughtfully, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “A most fascinating and unique ability, Tanaka-kun. A window into distant futures… remarkable.” He seemed to accept it without question.
Arthur decided to press his advantage, however slight. He needed to confirm his timeline, to know how long he had before Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera arrived. This was risky; it might draw undue attention. But not knowing was worse. “Sensei,” he addressed Mr. Saito, his phone dutifully translating, “to help… orient my Talent to this new… temporal-spatial location, sometimes it helps to focus on specific upcoming arrivals. It can stabilize the… glimpses, you see. Could you perhaps tell me if students by the names of Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera are expected to arrive in the coming days?” It was utter nonsense, a pseudo-scientific justification he’d concocted on the spot, but he delivered it with as much conviction as he could feign.
Mr. Saito blinked, then consulted a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Ah, yes, indeed!” he exclaimed, looking mildly impressed. “Hiiragi Nana-san and Onodera Kyouya-kun are both due to join our class in… let me see… approximately three days. Excellent foresight, Tanaka-kun! Perhaps your Talent is already beginning to acclimatize!”
Arthur managed a small, noncommittal nod, trying to keep the wave of mingled relief and dread from showing on his face. Three days. He was in the right place, the right horrifying time. The confirmation was a cold comfort, but a vital one. Nana was coming. The clock was ticking, louder now.
The rest of the school day passed in a blur of hyper-vigilance and linguistic confusion. He recognized a few faces from his fragmented memories of the anime – their youthful, innocent appearances a disturbing contrast to the bloody fates he knew awaited some of them. There was the lanky boy with the ever-present camera, Habu, already making some of the girls uncomfortable with his leering gaze. And there, sitting alone by the window, his shoulders hunched, radiating an aura of profound anxiety and loneliness, was Nanao Nakajima. Nana’s first intended victim. Arthur’s stomach clenched with a sickening lurch. He looked so small, so vulnerable.
Later that afternoon, during the final homeroom period, Mr. Saito cleared his throat, recapturing the students’ attention. “Now, onto another important matter for our class. As you know, we need to elect a class representative. This individual will act as a liaison with the teaching staff, help organize class activities, and generally be a voice for all of you. It’s a position of some responsibility.” He smiled. “We’ll hold the vote at the end of the school day tomorrow. Please give some thought to who you might like to nominate, or indeed, if you’d like to nominate yourselves.”
Immediately, a girl in the front row, Inori Tamaki, the one with the severe ponytail and sharp eyes, raised her hand with an air of quiet confidence. “Sensei, I would like to put my name forward for consideration.” Other, less confident murmurs of interest followed.
Arthur watched Nanao Nakajima, who seemed to shrink further into his seat at the mere mention of a leadership role, his face paling. He remembered Nana’s cruel manipulation from the anime, the way she would prey on Nanao’s shyness and insecurity. An idea, impulsive and probably foolhardy, sparked in Arthur’s mind. If he could somehow insert himself into this process, even in a minor way…
He raised a hesitant hand, the unfamiliar gesture feeling alien. All eyes in the classroom turned to him again, the strange new student who spoke through a machine. He fumbled for his phone, his heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his ribs. “I… Tanaka Kenji…” the phone translated his typed words, “I would also… like to be considered for the role of class representative.”
A ripple of surprise went through the room. Mr. Saito, however, beamed with encouragement. “Excellent, Tanaka-kun! Active participation in class life is always to be commended!”
Arthur didn’t particularly want the role. He knew he was a terrible candidate – his communication was severely hampered, his understanding of their school customs was non-existent, and he radiated an aura of awkward outsiderness. But it was a way to be seen, to perhaps disrupt the expected dynamics, to gauge reactions. And maybe, just maybe, it was a way to signal to Nanao, however obliquely, that not everyone was an overwhelming force of charisma or intimidation. Perhaps it was a desperate, subconscious desire to plant a flag, however small, signifying his intention to do something, anything, in this terrifying new world, rather than just be a passive victim of its unfolding horrors.
For the remainder of the day, he tried to melt into the background, to be a ghost observing the ecosystem of the classroom. Every interaction he witnessed, every snippet of conversation his phone managed to catch and translate, was another piece of a deadly, intricate puzzle he was only just beginning to comprehend. He was an unwilling anthropologist in a viper’s nest, his field notebook replaced by a faltering smartphone and a growing, bone-deep sense of dread. His mission, he realized with a clarity that was both terrifying and strangely galvanizing, was twofold: somehow, he had to survive. And somehow, against all odds, against all reason, he had to try and prevent the coming slaughter. The latter felt like trying to hold back a tsunami with a teacup. But he had to try. He owed it to… someone. Perhaps to the frightened, bewildered boy whose body he now inhabited. Or perhaps, more selfishly, to the terrified, fifty-one-year-old Englishman, Arthur Ainsworth, who was screaming silently inside.
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 26: Reunion in the Rain
The chaotic, premature end of the third school year on the island had seen Arthur, along with the other bewildered and traumatized student survivors, unceremoniously dumped back onto the mainland like so much unwanted refuse. For him, it meant a grim, dispiriting return to the life he had briefly, miserably known before his forced return to the academy: the anonymity of the teeming city, the gnawing ache of poverty, and the soul-crushing, repetitive labour of a sprawling construction site on the urban fringe. The bitter irony wasn’t lost on him; he was now walking the same path of grueling menial toil, enduring the same casual cruelties from foremen and co-workers, that Kyouya Onodera had apparently walked before his own arrival on that cursed island. He endured the harsh, unforgiving conditions, the meagre, often insufficient pay that barely covered the rent for a shared, squalid room in a decaying lodging house, and the constant, wearying taunts from his fellow labourers who mocked his still-halting Japanese and his foreigner’s awkwardness. Each day was a fresh testament to his unwanted, unwelcome survival. His phone, his former lifeline to communication and understanding, had been confiscated during the island evacuation, leaving him to navigate this complex, indifferent world with only his painfully limited vocabulary and a profound, isolating sense of linguistic inadequacy.
Months bled into one another, a dreary, monotonous procession of exhausting physical labour and long, lonely nights spent staring at the cracked ceiling of his cramped room. He heard nothing of Nana, nothing of Michiru, nothing of Kyouya. The island, and the unspeakable horrors it held, began to feel like a distant, terrible fever dream, its sharp edges softened by time and the sheer, grinding drudgery of his current existence.
One particularly bleak, miserable evening in late autumn, as a cold, persistent, sleety rain lashed the city, relentlessly turning the streets into slick, reflecting rivers of neon and grime, Arthur trudged wearily away from the cacophonous, muddy construction site. His body ached with a bone-deep exhaustion, his spirit felt numb, hollowed out. He took a shortcut through a narrow, dimly lit, garbage-strewn alleyway, more to escape the biting, rain-laden wind than to save any appreciable time. And there, huddled in a recessed, darkened doorway, trying desperately to find some meagre shelter from the relentless downpour, was a figure he recognized instantly, despite her ragged, filthy clothes and the haunted, almost feral terror in her eyes. Nana Hiiragi.
She looked up with a start as he approached, her eyes – those once bright, violet, calculating eyes – widening in shocked, terrified recognition. She was thinner, almost skeletal, her once vibrant pink hair now lank, faded, and plastered to her skull by the rain, her face smudged with dirt and etched with a weariness that went far beyond mere physical exhaustion. She looked like a cornered, wounded animal, a desperate fugitive who had finally run out of places to hide. On top of a nearby overflowing, reeking rubbish bin, a scrawny, spectral white cat sat preternaturally still, its intelligent, luminous eyes fixed on them both, seemingly entirely unfazed by the driving rain or the charged atmosphere in the narrow alley.
“Tanaka-kun?” Nana whispered, her voice hoarse, cracked, barely audible above the drumming of the rain, disbelief warring with a flicker of raw, desperate fear, and perhaps, Arthur thought with a jolt, a tiny, almost imperceptible spark of desperate, unwelcome hope. She looked utterly broken. She began to stammer, incoherent words of regret, of apology for… for everything, her body trembling violently.
Arthur, his own weariness a heavy, sodden cloak upon his shoulders, cut her off, his voice flat, the English words falling like chips of ice in the damp, cold air. “Save it, Hiiragi. Just… save it.” He saw the last vestiges of fight, of defiance, go out of her. She sagged against the grimy, graffiti-covered wall, the rain plastering her thin clothes to her shivering frame.
“Tsuruoka,” he began, speaking slowly, deliberately, still in English, knowing she had some comprehension, and needing the precision of his own tongue for what he had to say. “Commander Tsuruoka… he killed your parents, Nana. Not you. He did.” He saw her flinch as if he had physically struck her, her eyes widening in stunned, uncomprehending horror. “He hired two Talented criminals to do the job, individuals with existing convictions, easily manipulated, easily controlled. They were likely… disposed of… after they’d served their purpose. Silenced. Standard Committee operating procedure.” Nana stared at him, her mouth agape, rain dripping from her chin, her breath catching in her throat. “Your parents,” Arthur continued, his voice relentless, a grim, emotionless recital of terrible truths. “They supported Talents. They were actively opposed to Tsuruoka’s ideology, his methods, his growing power within the Committee. He decided not only to eliminate them as a threat but, as the ultimate, monstrous act of revenge against their memory, to take their only daughter and twist her, mold her, into the very thing they fought against. It was so much easier to shape you, to control you, if you could be blamed for their horrific murders, wasn’t it? If you truly believed yourself a monster from the very start.” He saw the dawning, unutterable horror in her eyes as pieces of her shattered, manipulated past began to align with his brutal words. “You running to that police station, a terrified child clutching your own father’s severed head… the accusations, the recriminations you faced there… that was all part of Tsuruoka’s meticulous, diabolical plan. The reason you were shunted from one uncaring, abusive foster family to another. It was all designed to break you, to isolate you, to make you utterly pliable, to make you his perfect, unquestioning weapon.”
He paused, letting the crushing weight of his words sink into her already fractured psyche. “You could have asked more questions, Hiiragi,” he said, his voice softening almost imperceptibly, a hint of weary sorrow creeping in. “You could have done more research. Yes, many Talents are bad, dangerous, destructive. But it was never your place to be their judge, their jury, and their executioner.” He looked her directly in the eye, his gaze unwavering, trying to convey the full import of his next statement. “And Talents, Hiiragi,” he added, his voice dropping to a low, pointed near-whisper, “they don’t have a monopoly on doing bad things.” The implication that he knew she, Nana Hiiragi, the Committee’s most feared assassin of Talents, was herself entirely Talentless, hung heavy, unspoken but deafening, between them in the cold, rain-swept alley. “Now, perhaps, after everything, you finally understand the full, terrible extent of my ‘Talent.’ My ‘predictions.’ And believe me, Hiiragi, things are going to get much, much worse. For all of us.”
Nana, looking utterly numb, her face a mask of dawning, unbearable truth and profound, world-shattering despair, finally spoke, her voice a mere breath, almost lost in the relentless drumming of the rain. “I’ve seen them… Tanaka-kun. I’ve seen… the Enemies of Humanity.”
Arthur, who had almost turned to leave, to walk away from her and the vortex of pain and violence she represented, froze in his tracks. Her words, so quiet, so full of a new, specific terror, stopped him cold. He knew, with a sudden, sickening lurch, where this was heading, to the most bizarre, the most terrifying, the most inexplicable aspect of this twisted, nightmarish world. He turned back slowly to face her, the rain dripping from his hair, from the collar of his thin jacket. He struggled for a moment with his limited Japanese, then resorted to blunt English again. “Tsuruoka. He’s shown you, hasn’t he?” he asked, his voice grim. “Two of them, I’d wager. Two of those… monsters. And he told you that Talents don’t truly die when you kill them? That they just… change? That they turn into those things?” Nana, her eyes wide and haunted, brimming with a fresh, unspeakable horror, nodded slowly, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on her cheek.
“He was telling you the truth, Nana,” Arthur said, his voice heavy with a weariness that seemed to age him decades in that moment. “Up to a point, at least. My own… additional information… it may not be entirely precise, you understand. It’s… fragmented. But from what I’ve managed to piece together, from what I remember… when a person with a Talent reaches a certain point in their life – late teens, their twenties, sometimes as late as their forties, it varies – their Talent can undergo a kind of… profound, often terrifying metamorphosis. Think of it as… as puberty, but with new, often unstable, uncontrollable superpowers. A secondary, more monstrous blossoming.” He saw the flicker of horrified understanding in her eyes. “Unfortunately, from what I know, it’s not long after that stage, that secondary manifestation, that they can… they can transform. Become those creatures Tsuruoka so proudly, so callously, displayed for you. The process, I believe, can also happen, perhaps even accelerate, if a Talent appears to be dead to our eyes, like Etsuko, the girl he showed you in that body bag. Their essence, their Talent, it just… festers, corrupts, transforms.”
He saw the recognition of Etsuko’s name, the confirmation of her own terrible experience in Tsuruoka’s charnel house, reflected in Nana’s horrified gaze. “I don’t know what the Committee’s ultimate, endgame plan is, Nana,” Arthur admitted, running a hand through his wet hair. “I truly don’t. But I strongly suspect Tsuruoka will use – or perhaps already is using – these so-called ‘Enemies of Humanity’ as a potent, terrifying tool. Maybe, just maybe, it’s to keep the current Japanese government in power, by presenting these monsters as a constant, existential threat that only he, and the Committee, can manage, can protect them from. Or, and this seems far more likely given his megalomania, once he’s successfully eliminated all other Talents he deems problematic or uncontrollable, he’ll use these monsters, these transformed Talents, to try and take over the world himself.”
He looked at Nana, her face a canvas of shock, dawning comprehension, and utter, soul-crushing despair. “He played you, Nana,” he said, his voice softer now, almost gentle. “From the very beginning. He played us all.” With that, Arthur Ainsworth turned and began to walk away, his shoulders slumped, leaving Nana Hiiragi alone in the cold, dark, rain-lashed alley to absorb the full, crushing weight of his devastating revelations. As he reached the grimy, graffiti-scarred end of the alley, he glanced back, a brief, almost involuntary movement. Nana was slowly, unsteadily, pushing herself to her feet, a small, broken figure in the vast, uncaring city. The scrawny white cat, which had been watching their entire exchange with an unnerving, almost sentient stillness from its perch on the overflowing rubbish bin, hopped down with a silent, graceful leap and, with an almost imperceptible flick of its tail, began to follow Nana as she stumbled out of the alley and disappeared into the rainy, indifferent labyrinth of the darkened city streets. He knew, somehow, with a certainty that settled like a stone in his own weary heart, that their paths, his and Nana’s, were still destined to cross again. The island’s dark, insidious tendrils reached far, even into the deepest, most anonymous shadows of the sprawling mainland.
