Chapter 7: The Necromancer's Secret And A Ghastly Plan
Chapter 7: The Necromancer's Secret and a Ghastly Plan
The swift, brutal efficiency of Ryouta Habu’s demise, following so closely on the heels of Arthur’s successful, if temporary, safeguarding of Nanao Nakajima, sent a chillingly clear message: Nana Hiiragi would not be easily deterred or gracefully outmanoeuvred. If one target became too difficult or inconvenient, she would simply pivot to another, or ruthlessly eliminate any immediate threats to her mission or her cover. Arthur knew, with a sickening certainty, that simply playing defence, reacting to her moves, was a losing strategy. He had to find a way to be proactive, to disrupt Nana’s rhythm, to sow confusion, perhaps even to expose one of the other potent Talents on the island before Nana could get to them. If he could muddy the waters, create other suspects, other focal points of fear and suspicion, it might just buy him, and others, more time.
His attention, with a grim sense of reluctant necessity, turned to Yūka Somezaki.
Arthur remembered her vividly from the anime – a quiet, almost morose girl with wide, haunted eyes and an unhealthy, possessive fixation on her supposedly deceased boyfriend, Shinji. Her Talent, necromancy, was one of the island’s more disturbing secrets. She was, he knew, reanimating Shinji’s corpse nightly, engaging in a macabre, delusional charade of continued romance. The circumstances of Shinji’s actual death – a house fire that had occurred shortly before this cohort of students arrived on the island – were deeply suspicious, almost certainly a case of arson committed by a jealous, enraged Yūka herself, though she had likely long since convinced herself, and perhaps others, that it was a tragic accident.
He began to observe Yūka more closely, his scrutiny carefully veiled. Her tendency to isolate herself from the other students, the way her gaze would occasionally, furtively, drift towards the northern, less frequented and more overgrown part of the island. The almost feverish, defensive intensity with which she spoke of "Shinji" if his name ever, however rarely, came up in conversation, as if he were still alive, merely temporarily absent. It all fit the disturbing profile he remembered.
His plan was audacious, morally dubious, and frankly, gruesome. It carried a significant risk of exposure for himself, and of further traumatizing an already unstable individual. But if it worked, it might unsettle Yūka profoundly, perhaps enough to make her stop her nightly rituals, or at the very least, expose her dangerous Talent in a way that didn’t directly involve Nana identifying and eliminating her. It was a desperate gamble, an attempt to preempt Nana by creating a different kind of chaos.
One quiet afternoon, during a sparsely attended optional study period in the school library, Arthur approached Yūka Somezaki’s secluded table. She was hunched over a thick textbook, though he noted her eyes weren’t actually moving across the page. She looked up as he approached, her eyes widening with a startled, almost hunted expression.
He placed his phone on the worn wooden table between them, the now-familiar ritual initiating his stilted communication. “Somezaki-san,” his translated voice said, pitched low and serious, designed to command attention. He paused, affecting the distant, unfocused look he used when invoking his “Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” “My visions… they have been particularly troubled these past few days. I sense… a significant unrest. A dark activity, concentrated on the north side of the island.”
Yūka’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, her knuckles whitening as she gripped her textbook. The north side. That was where the burnt-out, abandoned shell of Shinji’s former dwelling stood, a place she likely considered her private, desecrated shrine.
“I believe,” Arthur continued, his translated voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that nonetheless seemed to echo in the quiet library alcove, “that the so-called ‘Enemies of Humanity’ may be planning something there. Something… unholy. Perhaps even tonight, under the cover of darkness.” He leaned forward slightly. “I intend to investigate. It could be extremely dangerous, of course. Would you… consider assisting me, Somezaki-san? Your unique perspective, your sensitivity, might prove invaluable in uncovering their plot.”
He watched her carefully, observing the subtle play of fear and suspicion across her pale features. He was banking on her profound fear of exposure, her desperate desire to protect her terrible secret, outweighing any faint curiosity or misplaced sense of civic duty. The specific mention of the north side, and the insinuation of unholy activities, was the carefully baited hook.
Yūka paled visibly, a sheen of sweat appearing on her upper lip. Her hands clenched convulsively in her lap. “I… I can’t, Tanaka-kun,” she stammered, her voice barely audible, a thin, reedy whisper that the phone dutifully translated. “I… I haven’t been feeling at all well recently. All this… terrible upset about Habu-kun’s death… I think I just need to rest this evening. Perhaps another time?” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere past his shoulder.
“A great pity, Somezaki-san,” Arthur’s phone intoned, his own expression carefully neutral. “But entirely understandable, given the circumstances. Rest well.” He picked up his phone and walked away, leaving her to her rapidly escalating agitation. He’d achieved his first objective: she would be terrified, deeply unnerved by his seemingly specific “hunch,” and almost certainly wouldn’t venture anywhere near the north side of the island that night.
That evening, under the oppressive cloak of a moonless, heavily overcast sky, Arthur slipped out of the hushed dormitory. He had discreetly “borrowed” a sturdy canvas art satchel from a mostly unused supply closet and a heavy-duty utility knife that had, for some inexplicable and fortunate reason, been left amongst a jumble of tools in the common room’s lost-and-found box. The island was eerily quiet, the usual nocturnal chorus of cicadas and the distant, rhythmic sigh of the ocean seeming only to amplify the profound silence and his own thudding heartbeat.
He navigated by the hazy memory of the island map he’d once glimpsed and the faint, almost invisible glow of his phone screen, its brightness turned down to the absolute minimum. The path to the northern, more remote part of the island was poorly maintained, overgrown and treacherous in the pitch darkness. After nearly an hour of stumbling through dense, clinging undergrowth, his shins scraped and his nerves screaming, he finally found it: the charred, skeletal remains of a small, isolated shack, its blackened timbers stark against the dark sky, just as he remembered it from a brief, unsettling panning shot in the anime. The air here was heavy, still thick with the faint, acrid, ghostly smell of old smoke and damp decay.
He found a concealed spot within a dense thicket of bushes, downwind from the ruin, and settled in to wait. His heart pounded a nervous, unsteady rhythm against his ribs. This was, he told himself for the hundredth time, certifiably insane. He, Arthur Ainsworth, a fifty-one-year-old former paper-pusher from Crawley, a man whose greatest prior adventure involved misplacing his spectacles during a rather staid Thomas Cook package holiday to the Costa del Sol, was now lurking in the haunted wilderness of a deadly island, preparing to confront a reanimated corpse. The sheer, terrifying absurdity of it all threatened to overwhelm him.
Hours crawled by with agonizing slowness. The cold night air, damp and clinging, seeped into his bones, making him shiver uncontrollably. Doubt, a insidious, gnawing worm, began to eat at his resolve. What if he was wrong? What if Yūka, spooked by his earlier veiled threats, didn’t summon Shinji tonight? What if some other creature, one of the real Enemies of Humanity, if such things truly existed beyond the manipulative government propaganda and Tsuruoka’s monstrous fabrications, found him first? He clutched the utility knife, its cold, unforgiving metal a poor and insufficient comfort against the rising tide of his fear.
Just as the first, almost imperceptible hint of bruised grey began to lighten the eastern sky, dimming the stars, he heard it – a distinct, unnatural shuffling sound, the sharp snap of a dry twig under a clumsy footfall. He peered cautiously through the dense leaves, his breath catching in his throat. A figure was lurching out of the pre-dawn darkness, moving with an unsettling, jerky, puppet-like gait. It was vaguely human-shaped, its clothes tattered and mud-stained, its skin a mottled, unhealthy, almost phosphorescent hue in the gloom. Shinji. Or rather, what Yūka Somezaki’s dark Talent had made of him.
Arthur’s breath hitched. This was it. No turning back. He gripped the utility knife, its handle slick in his sweaty palm. He’d never considered himself a brave man, not by any stretch of the imagination. He wasn’t entirely sure he was one now. But a desperate, cold, almost inhuman resolve had settled over him, born of fear and a grim, overriding necessity.
He waited, every muscle tensed, until the shambling, reanimated corpse lurched past his hiding place, then he lunged.
The struggle was a nightmarish, clumsy, terrifying wrestle in the damp earth and decaying leaves. The creature, despite its decayed state, was surprisingly strong, its dead limbs animated by an unnatural, jerky power. It clawed at him with surprising force, its decaying flesh exuding a fetid, sweetish odour of grave dirt and rot that made Arthur gag and his stomach heave. It moaned, a low, guttural, inhuman sound that seemed to vibrate in his very bones. He dropped the utility knife in the initial, frantic scuffle but managed to bring the heavy canvas bag down hard on its head, stunning it for a precious, disorienting moment. Scrambling desperately in the dirt, his fingers closed around a hefty, sharp-edged rock.
He didn’t allow himself to think, to hesitate. He just acted, driven by a primal survival instinct and the grim, horrifying necessity of his insane plan. It was a brutal, sickening, desperate business. When it was finally, blessedly over, he was shaking uncontrollably, his clothes torn, his body covered in dirt and something he desperately hoped wasn’t zombie effluvia. Shinji’s reanimated form lay still, a grotesque parody of life extinguished.
With trembling, bloodied hands, he retrieved the utility knife. The next part, he knew, would be even worse. He had to force himself, fighting back waves of nausea and a rising tide of self-loathing, to complete the terrible task he had set himself. Finally, his heart pounding a mad tattoo against his ribs, his stomach churning with revulsion, he managed to secure the zombie’s severed head in the canvas satchel. The weight of it was obscene.
As the sun began its slow, indifferent ascent, casting a sickly yellow light over the gruesome, desecrated scene, Arthur Ainsworth, or rather, the boy known as Kenji Tanaka, stumbled back towards the distant, still-sleeping school. He was physically and emotionally wrecked, a hollow shell of a man. The thought of what he had to do next, of presenting this horrifying, violating trophy to a classroom of unsuspecting teenagers, filled him with a fresh, overwhelming wave of revulsion and despair. But it was necessary. He had to try and break Yūka Somezaki’s cycle of delusion and necromancy, and perhaps, just perhaps, save her from Nana Hiiragi in the process – even if it meant becoming a figure of profound terror and moral ambiguity himself. He was walking a very dark path, and he wasn't sure he'd ever find his way back.
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Chapter 10: The Bullies and a Calculated Message
Life on the island continued its grim, unsettling rhythm, a macabre dance between Nana Hiiragi’s relentless, unseen hunt and Arthur Ainsworth’s increasingly desperate, often futile, attempts to anticipate her moves and shield potential victims. After the murder of Touichirou Hoshino and her spectacular failure to eliminate the immortal Kyouya Onodera, Nana seemed to withdraw slightly, her usual bubbly energy muted by a layer of something colder, more watchful. Arthur knew this wasn't a reprieve, but a recalculation. She would be feeling the pressure from Tsuruoka, needing to demonstrate continued success. He feared she might target someone less formidable, an easier mark to reassert her deadly prowess.
His attention, and a growing sense of protective unease, was increasingly drawn to Michiru Inukai. A small, unassuming girl with a cloud of startlingly white, incredibly fluffy hair that seemed to possess a life of its own, Michiru exuded an aura of gentle, almost painfully earnest innocence. She was kind to a fault, quick to offer help or a shy smile, often to her own detriment in the harsh social ecosystem of the isolated academy. And it was this inherent vulnerability, this lack of guile, that soon made her an unfortunate target – not for Nana, not yet, but for a pair of mean-spirited, bored female students who had clearly identified Michiru as an easy mark for their petty cruelties.
Arthur first witnessed their bullying during a lunch break in the bustling, noisy canteen. The two girls, Etsuko and Marika, whose names he’d reluctantly learned through ambient classroom chatter, had cornered Michiru near the tray return. They were taunting her in rapid, spiteful Japanese that Arthur’s phone, tucked away, couldn’t catch, but their sneering expressions and aggressive postures were universally translatable. They mocked her fluffy hair, calling it “lamb’s wool” and “dandelion fluff,” tugging at it playfully, yet painfully. They belittled her shyness, her quiet voice, her general lack of assertiveness. Then, with a deliberately clumsy shove, Etsuko knocked Michiru’s carefully stacked lunch tray from her hands, sending her bowl of soup and chopsticks clattering and splashing across the floor. Their laughter was sharp, malicious, drawing a few uncomfortable glances from nearby students who quickly looked away, unwilling to get involved. Michiru, her face flaming red, close to tears, just stood there, trembling, absorbing the humiliation, stammering apologies for her own “clumsiness.”
Before Arthur could even formulate a stilted, phone-translated intervention – what would he even say? How could he interfere without drawing dangerous attention to himself? – a clear, bright voice cut through the air, sharp as a shard of ice despite its sweet tone. “Is there a problem here, ladies?”
It was Nana Hiiragi. She walked towards the tense little group, her expression one of polite, innocent concern, though Arthur, now highly attuned to her micro-expressions, detected a steely, almost predatory glint in her violet eyes.
“This is none of your business, Class Rep,” Etsuko sneered, though she looked significantly less confident now, her bravado faltering under Nana’s direct, unwavering gaze. Marika, her cohort, merely shuffled her feet and avoided eye contact.
“Oh, but I think it is my business,” Nana said, her smile unwavering, yet somehow conveying an icy displeasure. “It’s never pleasant to see someone upsetting a classmate, especially one as sweet as Inukai-san.” She gestured towards the mess on the floor. “Now, why don’t you two apologize properly to Inukai-san for your rudeness and help her clean this up? Then, perhaps, we can all just forget this unfortunate little incident ever happened.” Her tone was light, almost playful, but the underlying current of command was unmistakable.
Etsuko and Marika, clearly unwilling to pick a direct fight with the popular, deceptively formidable class representative, and perhaps sensing the dangerous undercurrent beneath her smile, mumbled a reluctant, insincere apology. They made a token, clumsy effort to pick up the debris before slinking away, casting venomous glares back at a bewildered Michiru.
Nana then turned to Michiru, her face instantly softening into an expression of pure, heartfelt sympathy. She gently took Michiru’s trembling hand. “Are you alright, Inukai-san? Please don’t listen to them. Their words are meaningless. And for what it’s worth,” she added, her smile becoming genuinely warm as she gently touched a strand of Michiru’s cloud-like hair, “I think your hair is absolutely lovely. Like freshly fallen snow.”
Michiru, overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, could only stammer her thanks, her eyes shining with unshed tears. From that moment on, her devotion to Nana Hiiragi became absolute, almost worshipful. She trailed after Nana like a devoted, fluffy white puppy, her loyalty unwavering and unquestioning, seeing in the pink-haired girl a savior and a true friend.
Arthur watched this entire exchange with a complicated, sinking feeling in his stomach. Nana’s intervention had been smooth, effective, and undeniably helpful to Michiru in that moment. But he also knew, with a weary certainty, that Nana rarely, if ever, did anything without a calculated motive. She was likely cultivating Michiru as an unwitting pawn, a source of information, a loyal admirer whose devotion could be exploited for an alibi, or perhaps even as a human shield if necessary. The almost tender way Nana had mentioned Michiru’s “lovely” white, fluffy hair sent a particular, ominous chill down Arthur’s spine – a grim, unwelcome echo of the fabricated future he’d described to Nana during their first unsettling lunchtime encounter. A woman approaches… white, fluffy hair… He wondered, with a jolt of unease, if Nana herself felt any resonance, or if his bizarre words had been buried too deep under layers of her own deceptions and the Committee’s indoctrination.
The bullies, however, had made a fatal, if unknowing, mistake. They had drawn Nana Hiiragi’s direct attention, and not in a favorable way. They had threatened and humiliated someone Nana had, for whatever strategic or nascent emotional reason, decided to take under her wing.
A few days later, the first bully, Etsuko, was found dead in her dorm room by her horrified roommate. The official cause of death, after a cursory examination by the island’s doctor, was listed as a sudden, violent, and inexplicable allergic reaction. Arthur, however, felt a cold knot of certainty in his gut. He remembered a chilling detail from the anime – a virtually untraceable method of assassination involving a contact lens coated with a fast-acting, synthesized poison. Nana was nothing if not meticulous, her methods designed to leave minimal evidence.
The second bully, Marika, met her end a week later, under even more elaborate and horrifying circumstances. Her body, alongside that of another girl Arthur didn’t recognize – likely an unfortunate acquaintance who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time – was discovered on a secluded, windswept stretch of beach on the island’s western shore. Both had apparently succumbed to a fast-acting, potent poison, consistent with the effects of Nana’s signature tainted needles. The discovery of two more deaths, so soon after Etsuko’s, rocked the already traumatized student body, sending fresh waves of fear and paranoia through the dormitories.
But Nana, Arthur knew, would have already woven her alibi with her usual chilling foresight. As Kyouya Onodera, his expression grimmer than usual, began his inevitable, meticulous investigation, it soon came to light that the unknown girl, just moments before her estimated time of death, had apparently sent a seemingly innocuous text message to Marika’s phone. The message, something trivial about meeting up on the beach, was found on Marika’s phone, which lay beside her lifeless hand. The timestamp on the message suggested Marika had died first, and the other girl had texted her, unaware of her friend’s demise, before also succumbing to whatever unknown toxin had claimed them.
Arthur, however, knew Nana’s almost supernatural cunning. He recalled the gruesome, ingenious trick from the source material: Nana would have killed them both, likely Marika first, then the other girl. Then, using the second dead girl’s phone, she would have angled it precisely on the sand so that the bright, unimpeded sunlight, refracted through a deliberately cracked portion of the phone’s screen, would overheat a specific point on the touch-sensitive display, simulating a finger press and sending the pre-typed message. It was a diabolical, if ghoulishly clever, way to manufacture a timeline that seemingly exonerated her from any involvement.
He listened with a growing sense of revulsion as the teachers discussed the “tragic accident,” the “unforeseen environmental toxicity” perhaps from some poisonous marine life they’d touched or something they’d unknowingly ingested on the desolate beach. He watched Kyouya Onodera frown at the cracked phone screen presented as evidence, a thoughtful, deeply suspicious expression on his face. Kyouya was no fool; he would sense the artificiality, the staged nature of it all, even if he couldn’t yet prove it.
For Arthur, these latest, brutal deaths were another stark, chilling reminder of Nana’s unwavering ruthlessness and her terrifying adaptability. He was managing, by the skin of his teeth, to protect Nanao Nakajima, for now, but he was just one increasingly weary, emotionally frayed man with severely limited resources and a fragile, dangerous secret. He couldn’t be everywhere at once, couldn’t save everyone on Nana’s list. Each murder Nana committed was another gruesome piece of data for him, another chilling insight into her methods and her mindset, but it was also another young life extinguished, another soul lost, another failure weighing heavily on his already overburdened conscience. He felt like a grim accountant, silently cataloguing the dead in a secret war he had no hope of winning, only, perhaps, surviving for a little longer. And with each successful, unpunished kill, Nana’s confidence, her sense of untouchability, and the omnipresent danger she posed to everyone on the island, only seemed to grow.
Nana is an evil little bitch
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.
‘Full-blown meltdown’ at Pentagon after Hegseth’s second Signal chat revealed
Existence of group chat including Hegseth, his wife and others prompt calls for defense secretary to step down
Would be even better if Nana is killed by someone she trusted. Would be nicely ironic
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.
Nana Hiiragi
Of course the hate for her is well deserved.
First off, blaming "brainwashing" lets her off the hook far too easily. Patty Hearst tried the same trick in the 1970's and it didn't exactly work out well for her. Ironically, Patty spent more time in prisoner for her bank robberies than Nana does for her 10+ murders, which in itself is unfair - Nana gets away with far too much because she's a girl, instead of in spite of it.
Yes, she would be hated just as much if Nana was male (probably more so).
It should be noted that all Nana's murders were premeditated, on her own cognisance and with malice. Just because she was told to do so, doesn't mean she had to.
In addition to that, just because she may not have wanted to do kill anyone, she was certainly happy to do so (smiling when thinking about killing Mirichu as well as the "won't be shy in killing you" part). Nana is a person who would rather murder someone than think of any sort of alternative (as is the case later on).
Futher more, stating that she's a "child soldier" carries no weight - she's killing civilians, which if she was a soldier makes her actions even more odious.
The fact that people try to exonerate Nana because she was "mind controlled" doesn't hold much water considering she was fully aware of what she was doing; didn't need to; didn't bother querying anything and was fully cognisant during her pre-meditated murders; and she quite happily carried another one out, with no doubt more to come.
In addition, there is no reason why she couldn't have asked questions or even did her own reason about Talents and so forth.
I wasn't surprised that the anime didn't get a second season (if it wasn't just for boosting manga sales) because Nana is so unrelatable, unrelatable and pretty much evil personified. Even later on, she's totally dislikable, obnoxious character.
Considering she's supposed to be intelligent, you would have thought, at the very least, queries the morality, if not the legality and ethics of killing schoolchildren (let alone those she killed before she arrived at the island). She's fully aware of what she's doing, so it's all on her own head. She certainly deserves to be punished far longer than three years (that ends up around 3 months for every kid).
I wouldn't be surprised if Nana Hiiragi does enjoy killing people - she is always smiling happily when thinking about killing her victims.
Whilst she may say that she doesn't want to kill any more, later on - it certainly doesn't stop her (no doubt it would be the first thing she thinks of to solve problems, instead of anything else).
Hopefully, she won't have a happy ending (preferably meet a nasty end - with her own poison needs would be nicely ironic). Whilst she may have "changed" for dubious reasons she will have to end up killing people again at some point. Even though she's changed, she's still an insufferable, nasty little bitch. I've got very little sympathy for her, especially as she was sadistic killing everyone.
And yes, killing Nano led to more people suffering - all because of Nana (no idea why Nano should forgive her - obviously he forgot how Nana taunted him before he fell, although I do hear he did beat the crap out of her as well).
Hopefully she will pay some sort of price for her actions.
Whist Nanao killed more people than Nana, it should be noted that Nana was the cause. It was nice of him really to leave Nana alone, considering she had no compulsion about killing Nanao - he certainly would have had a good reason to seek revenge on her.
In addition, for those who subscribe to those who view Nana as a child soldier (which is dubious to say the least), there is still precedent for requesting reparations and the same for prosecuting child soldiers too (DOMINIC ONGWEN).
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Chapter 13: Rentaro's Rampage
The end of the first tumultuous school year was fast approaching, and with it, the much-touted, almost feverishly anticipated third-term “leaving party.” For most of the surviving students, those who hadn’t mysteriously vanished or succumbed to tragic “accidents,” it was a time of genuine, if somewhat brittle, excitement – a chance to celebrate the end of arduous exams, the temporary cessation of classes, and the upcoming blissful release of the term break. For Arthur Ainsworth, however, the impending festivities, with their forced gaiety and chaotic energy, only served to heighten his ever-present anxiety. In a place as steeped in deception and sudden violence as this island academy, a large, boisterous, and poorly supervised gathering felt less like a celebration and more like a powder keg perilously close to an open flame. He knew from the grim tapestry of his fragmented foreknowledge that the end of this first year was traditionally marked by yet another brutal series of violent events, a bloody full stop to the semester.
The spark, when it finally came, ignited just a few tense days before the scheduled party, delivered in the arrogant, sneering form of Rentaro Tsurumigawa. Rentaro was a smug, perpetually smirking student with a distinct air of self-importance, whose Talent, Arthur recalled with a shiver of unease, involved a particularly potent and dangerous form of astral projection. His projected self, an ethereal, shimmering duplicate, was largely intangible but could, with terrifying focus, manifest sharp, crystalline projectiles – deadly shards of solidified psychic energy – making him an elusive and lethal opponent. His physical body, however, remained inert, vulnerable, and necessarily hidden while he was projecting his consciousness elsewhere.
The first victim of Rentaro’s sudden escalation was Moguo Iijima, a somewhat boorish, athletically built boy known more for his loud voice and short temper than his intellect. Iijima was found dead in one of the communal bathhouses late one evening, slumped against the tiled wall, his chest and throat impaled by multiple glittering, razor-sharp crystalline shards that seemed to have materialized out of thin air, leaving wounds that spoke of a swift, vicious, and utterly merciless attack. The sheer brutality of the assault, and its almost surgical precision, sent a fresh wave of terror through the already traumatized student body.
Suspicion, swift and almost universal, immediately fell upon Iijima’s volatile and fiercely possessive girlfriend, Saeko Mochizuki. Saeko’s Talent, conveniently and damningly, allowed her to generate and propel similar-looking blades of solidified energy from her hands. She was known for her fiery temper and her jealous outbursts.
Nana Hiiragi, in her official capacity as the concerned and diligent class representative, took immediate charge of the initial “investigation,” her lovely face a mask of grave concern and profound sympathy. Arthur watched her closely as she moved among the shocked students, her voice soft and reassuring, yet her questions subtly probing. She interviewed a hysterical and vehemently protesting Saeko, who swore she hadn’t seen Iijima since earlier that afternoon. Nana’s questioning of Saeko was a masterclass in feigned empathy, yet her inquiries relentlessly circled back to Saeko’s relationship with the deceased. It soon emerged, through carefully elicited “gossip” that Nana “just happened to overhear” from supposedly distraught friends of the couple, that Iijima had been seriously considering breaking up with Saeko, complaining that she was too clingy, too demanding. It was the perfect, almost classical setup: a jealous girlfriend, a spurned lover with the known means and now, apparently, a powerful motive. Saeko looked guiltier by the minute, her frantic denials only serving to further entrench the suspicion against her in the eyes of her frightened peers.
Arthur, however, felt a persistent, nagging prickle of doubt. It all seemed a little too neat, too conveniently packaged. While Saeko was certainly capable of dramatic, volatile emotions, the cold, calculated precision of the attack, the deliberate nature of the wounds designed to mimic her Talent so perfectly, felt off. It felt… framed. He found himself observing Rentaro Tsurumigawa, who was among the most vocal in expressing his profound "shock" and "outrage" at Iijima's murder, his performance just a shade too theatrical, his condemnations of Saeko a little too quick, a little too vehement for Arthur's liking.
The one person on the entire island who seemed to genuinely believe in Saeko’s innocence, who refused to be swayed by the mounting circumstantial evidence and the tide of popular opinion, was Michiru Inukai. Driven by her innate, unwavering empathy and a profound, almost childlike refusal to believe anyone could be so cruel without overwhelming, irrefutable proof, Michiru quietly, almost invisibly, began her own gentle inquiries. While Nana was methodically building a seemingly airtight circumstantial case against the increasingly distraught Saeko, Michiru, with her disarming gentleness and shy persistence, spoke to students who had seen Saeko around the supposed time of the murder, students who could, if pieced together, provide a surprisingly solid alibi. She found small, almost insignificant inconsistencies in the presumed timeline, tiny details that didn’t quite add up. She even, with a courage Arthur found astounding in someone so timid, managed to find a nervous underclassman who admitted, under Michiru’s gentle questioning, to having seen Rentaro Tsurumigawa lurking near the bathhouse shortly before Iijima’s body was discovered, looking unusually agitated and furtive.
Michiru, her heart pounding in her chest but her quiet resolve firm as steel, presented her painstakingly gathered findings to Nana and a clearly reluctant Mr. Saito. The evidence wasn’t conclusive, irrefutable proof of Rentaro’s guilt, but it was more than enough to completely dismantle the flimsy, circumstantial case against Saeko, who promptly collapsed in a heap of tearful, gasping relief. Nana, faced with Michiru’s earnest, undeniable facts and the clear, logical holes they punched in her preferred narrative, had no choice but to publicly concede that Saeko was, in all likelihood, innocent. Arthur saw a distinct, dangerous flicker of cold annoyance in Nana’s eyes – Michiru’s unwavering, inconvenient goodness had complicated things considerably. It had also, he realized with a sudden, sickening lurch, unknowingly painted a very large, very dangerous target on Michiru’s own back.
Rentaro Tsurumigawa was incandescent with fury. His meticulous, arrogant plan to eliminate Iijima (for reasons Arthur still couldn’t fathom, though he suspected some deep-seated prior grudge, a bitter rivalry, or perhaps simply a demonstration of his own perceived superiority) and then neatly frame the volatile Saeko for the crime had been utterly, unexpectedly ruined by, of all people, the timid, fluffy-haired, seemingly insignificant Michiru Inukai. His rage, Arthur sensed, was a poisonous, festering thing.
The day of the leaving party arrived, cloaked in an atmosphere of forced jollity and underlying, unspoken fear. The school gymnasium had been hastily and somewhat haphazardly decorated with colourful streamers and balloons that seemed to mock the grim realities of their island existence. Music, tinny and overly cheerful, blared from a set of aging speakers. Students, dressed in their slightly less formal attire, milled about, attempting a semblance of normal teenage festivity, their laughter often a shade too loud, their smiles a little too bright.
Arthur, however, couldn’t shake a profound sense of impending doom. He kept a close, anxious eye on Michiru, who was trying her best to enjoy herself, chatting shyly with a small group of girls, but seemed subdued, her usual gentle radiance dimmed, perhaps by a subconscious sense of the danger she had courted.
Then, Michiru, looking a little pale, excused herself from her group, murmuring something about needing some fresh air. A moment later, Arthur, his senses on high alert, saw Rentaro Tsurumigawa detach himself from the edge of the crowd and slip silently out of the gymnasium through a side door, his eyes glinting with a chilling, predatory light. Arthur’s blood ran cold. Rentaro was going after Michiru.
Before Arthur could even begin to formulate a plan, before he could push through the throng of dancing students, Nana Hiiragi, who had also, Arthur now realized, been observing Michiru with an unusually protective, almost hawk-like gaze, noticed Rentaro’s stealthy departure and Michiru’s sudden absence. A look of genuine, unfeigned alarm – an expression Arthur had rarely, if ever, seen on her carefully controlled features – flashed across Nana’s face. Without a word, without a moment’s hesitation, Nana sprinted out of the gymnasium, her own party dress a blur of pink, clearly in pursuit.
This was escalating far too quickly, spiraling out of his limited control. Arthur knew he couldn’t possibly catch up to them on foot, nor could he hope to fight Rentaro’s deadly, intangible astral projection. His gaze swept frantically across the gymnasium, landing on Kyouya Onodera, who was standing near the overloaded punch bowl, his usual expression of aloof indifference firmly in place, looking utterly bored by the surrounding revelry. Kyouya, with his immortality and his sharp, analytical mind, was the only one on the island who might conceivably be able to help Nana, to stop Rentaro.
Arthur rushed over to him, his phone already active, his fingers flying across the small screen. “Onodera-san!” his translated voice was sharp, urgent, cutting through Kyouya’s apparent reverie. “It’s Rentaro Tsurumigawa! He’s projecting! He’s hunting Michiru Inukai! Nana Hiiragi just went after them, trying to protect her!” Kyouya’s eyes, usually cool and indifferent, sharpened instantly with a focused intensity, and perhaps, Arthur thought, a flicker of something that might have been genuine concern. “His real body… while he’s projecting, it has to be hidden somewhere nearby, probably within the school building! It’ll be vulnerable! If you can find it, attack it, you can disrupt the projection, stop him completely!”
Kyouya Onodera didn’t waste time with questions or expressions of surprise. He simply absorbed the information, his mind clearly processing it at lightning speed. He gave Arthur a single, curt nod, then strode purposefully out of the gymnasium, his gaze already sweeping the corridors with a focused, predatory intensity, as if he were already searching for Rentaro’s hidden, vulnerable physical form.
Arthur was left standing amidst the oblivious, laughing, dancing party-goers, a knot of cold, sickening fear tightening in his stomach. Nana, Michiru, Rentaro, Kyouya – they were all heading for a violent, inevitable collision, and he could only pray, with a fervour he hadn’t felt in years, that Kyouya would be fast enough, and Nana strong enough, to avert the worst of the tragedy he knew, with a terrible, chilling certainty, was coming. The distant, tinny sound of festive music seemed to mock his rising, helpless panic. He knew, with a sudden, desperate clarity, where they would likely end up: the isolated docks. He turned and fled the gymnasium himself, his own desperate chase beginning.
