Chapter 1: The Unwanted Journey
Chapter 1: The Unwanted Journey
The absolute, unequivocal last sensation Arthur Ainsworth, fifty-one years, three months, and a dreary Tuesday into a life he often felt was on loan from a particularly uninspired mail-order catalogue, registered with any degree of certainty was the gritty, slightly abrasive texture of overly toasted wholemeal bread lodging uncomfortably between his teeth. The sharp, familiar, and frankly unwelcome tang of too-bitter, cheap chunky marmalade still coated his tongue. He’d been staring blankly out of his perpetually damp Crawley kitchen window, past the condensation fogging the lower pane, at the aggressively, almost offensively cheerful fuschia in Mrs. Henderson’s meticulously manicured, gnome-infested garden. He was contemplating, with a familiar sense of existential dread, the yawning, featureless abyss of another interminable Tuesday morning meeting about synergistic resource allocation and departmental overheads, when the very fabric of his mundane reality had simply… dissolved.
Not in a gentle, cinematic fade to black, but with a violent, nauseating, wrenching compression, as if he were being forcibly, painfully squeezed through the eye of a cosmic needle that was far too small for his middle-aged, slightly paunchy frame. A silent scream, a pure rictus of terror and disbelief, tore from lungs that, a horrifying microsecond later, felt alarmingly… undersized, tight, and distressingly inefficient.
He blinked. Once. Twice. His vision swam, a nauseating, disorienting blur like looking through a disturbed goldfish bowl that had been filled with murky water. The comforting, slightly musty, entirely familiar aroma of his own small kitchen – old tea towels needing a boil wash, the faint, lingering ghost of last night’s overcooked shepherd’s pie, the metallic tang of the ancient gas hob – was gone, brutally, inexplicably supplanted. Now, his nostrils flared against an aggressive, unwelcome olfactory assault: the sharp, briny sting of sea air, the unmistakable, oily reek of diesel fumes, and beneath it all, a cloying, faintly sweetish, almost chemical perfume he couldn’t quite identify – cheap cherry blossom air freshener, perhaps? It made his stomach roil with a sudden, violent wave of nausea.
He wasn’t standing, a half-eaten piece of toast clutched in his rapidly cooling hand. He was seated, or rather, vibrating, perched precariously on a ridiculously hard, unforgivingly cold plastic bench that thrummed with the powerful, rhythmic, almost hypnotic beat of a massive engine. The vibration resonated through his slight, unfamiliar frame, up his spine, and into his teeth, making them ache. His entire field of vision still swam, a nauseating blur that slowly, reluctantly, resolved into... a boat? No, this was larger, more substantial. A ferry, judging by its considerable size and the churning, slate-grey-green water visible through a salt-streaked, grimy window.
His hands. He stared down at his hands, which were resting, almost formally, on knees that felt strangely knobbly, pointed, and alarmingly close to his face. They were small, slender, the skin unnervingly smooth and pale, entirely unblemished. Gone were the familiar, comforting liver spots, the intricate network of fine wrinkles he’d painstakingly earned over fifty-one years of worry and indifferent skincare. Gone, most shockingly, was the faded, silvery-white scar on his left thumb, a cherished, almost nostalgic memento from a foolish, boyish attempt to whittle a stick with his father’s intimidatingly sharp penknife when he was barely ten. These were the hands of a boy, a complete stranger. A wave of pure, unadulterated vertigo, cold and terrifying, washed over him, making the already unsteady deck beneath his feet seem to tilt and sway even more alarmingly.
Panic, sharp, icy, and visceral as a shard of glass plunged into his chest, clawed its way up his throat, a silent, suffocating, desperate scream. He looked down further, a strangled, wheezing gasp escaping lips that felt thin, unfamiliar, and strangely unresponsive to his mental commands. A pristine, almost unnaturally dark-blue school uniform – a tailored blazer with an unfamiliar, elaborate embroidered crest on the breast pocket, a stark white, slightly stiff shirt, a neatly, tightly knotted tie that felt like a miniature noose around his suddenly slender neck, and sharply creased, unfamiliar trousers – encased a frame so lean, so light, it felt like inhabiting a fragile, empty birdcage. His comfortable, tea-stained cardigan, his worn, beloved corduroys, his trusty, down-at-heel slippers – all relegated to a life, a world, a self, that felt galaxies, lifetimes, away.
This isn't happening, the thought was a frantic, desperate, looping denial against the overwhelming, irrefutable sensory evidence. This is a stroke. A brain aneurysm. A complete psychotic breakdown. A ridiculously vivid, cheese-induced dream brought on by that questionable Stilton I had before bed. But the insistent, bone-jarring thrum of the powerful engine beneath him, the penetrating chill of the damp sea air seeping through the thin, unfamiliar fabric of the school uniform, the too-tight, starched collar chafing uncomfortably against his strangely youthful skin – it was all terrifyingly, undeniably, horribly concrete.
He was on a ferry. A modern, somewhat utilitarian vessel, judging by the functional, uncomfortable plastic seating and the smeary, salt-streaked windows that offered a bleak, uninviting view of the turbulent, grey-green water churning past under a bruised, weeping, overcast sky. In the middle distance, wreathed in a swirling, clinging mist that seemed to swallow the light, an island rose steeply, almost menacingly, from the restless sea, its slopes a dense, unbroken, unwelcoming carpet of dark green. It reminded him, vaguely, unsettlingly, of some of the starker, more dramatic parts of the south coast back home, but… wrong. Utterly, fundamentally wrong. The light was wrong, the air felt wrong, the very angle of the sun, when it briefly, weakly, pierced the oppressive cloud cover, seemed alien. What a dreadful, dreadful May this was turning out to be, he thought with a sudden, bizarrely specific pang of dislocated misery, before shaking his head to dispel the irrelevant, nonsensical thought.
Around him, other teenagers – actual, living, breathing teenagers, their faces a sea of youthful energy and incomprehensible expressions – chattered and laughed and scrolled through their phones, their voices a bewildering, overwhelming cacophony in a language that flowed around him like fast-moving water, every sibilant hiss, every sharp vowel, every lilting intonation entirely, utterly alien and incomprehensible. They all wore the same dark blue uniform, a depressing ocean of conformity. They were all, he noted with a fresh, sinking wave of despair, Japanese.
“Excuse me,” he tried, the English words feeling thick, clumsy, unnaturally foreign, and obscenely loud in this new, higher-pitched, unfamiliar voice. A few heads turned, their expressions ranging from mild curiosity to outright, disdainful indifference. Blank, uncomprehending eyes stared back at him for a moment before dismissively turning away. One girl, her hair an impossible, almost aggressive shade of bubblegum pink tied into ridiculously perky pigtails, giggled openly into her hand, then whispered something clearly amusing to her smirking friend, who also giggled. The isolation was immediate, profound, absolute. He was a foreigner in a land he didn’t recognize, in a body that wasn’t his own, speaking a language no one here apparently understood. He was, he realized with a sudden, sickening lurch of his stomach, utterly, terrifyingly alone.
His heart, this new, unfamiliar heart, hammered a frantic, panicked rhythm against ribs that felt alarmingly close to the surface of his skin. He patted the pockets of the unfamiliar school blazer, a desperate, fumbling, almost spastic search for something, anything, familiar, an anchor in this maelstrom of unreality. His worn leather wallet, with its comforting, familiar collection of well-thumbed loyalty cards, a few emergency pound coins, and that faded, creased photograph of his late, beloved spaniel, Buster? Gone. His house keys, his car keys, the comforting jingle they usually made in his pocket? Vanished. But then, his fingers, these new, slender, unnervingly smooth fingers, brushed against a familiar, solid rectangular outline in the blazer’s inside pocket.
His mobile phone. An older, slightly battered, but entirely reliable smartphone. His lifeline. With trembling, uncoordinated hands, he pulled it out, its familiar weight a small, almost insignificant comfort in this ocean of terrifying unfamiliarity. The screen flickered to life, displaying its usual, incongruously cheerful background of a slightly out-of-focus bluebell wood he’d photographed on a long-forgotten bank holiday walk. 27% battery. A fresh, sharp spike of pure, undiluted panic lanced through him, colder and more terrifying than the sea wind. Twenty-seven percent. How long would that last? Hours? Minutes? It was his only link to potential understanding, his only tool for navigating this waking nightmare.
He fumbled with the touchscreen, his larger, older man’s muscle memory struggling, fighting against the delicate, precise coordination required by these smaller, younger, entirely unfamiliar teenage hands. He found the voice translation app – a half-forgotten relic from a disastrous, sunburnt package holiday to Majorca with his ex-wife nearly a decade ago, an app he’d kept on his phone for reasons he couldn’t now fathom but was, in this moment, profoundly, desperately grateful for. He jabbed clumsily at the English-to-Japanese setting, his finger slipping twice on the smooth glass.
Clutching the phone like a drowning man grasping a flimsy piece of driftwood, he turned to a boy slumped apathetically beside him on the hard plastic bench. The boy was entirely, almost aggressively, engrossed in a sleek, brightly coloured handheld gaming device that emitted a series of tinny, irritatingly cheerful bleeps and bloops. “Excuse me,” Arthur said again, his voice shaking slightly as he spoke clearly and slowly into the phone’s microphone. The device chirped once, a small, tinny, almost hopeful sound, then emitted a short, polite, perfectly synthesized Japanese phrase.
The boy jumped as if he’d been poked with a sharp stick, startled, his game momentarily forgotten. He looked up, his eyes wide with surprise, then narrowed with suspicion as he took in Arthur’s clearly foreign, distressed appearance. He pointed a questioning finger at himself, then at Arthur. “Watashi? Anata?” (Me? You?)
Arthur nodded vigorously, a ridiculous, almost hysterical wave of relief washing over him at this tiny, fragile, almost insignificant flicker of basic human comprehension. He spoke urgently into the phone again, the question feeling utterly absurd, almost laughably inadequate, even as he voiced it. “Where are we going? Please, can you tell me where this ferry is going?”
The phone chirped. The boy listened, his expression still wary, then replied in a rapid, almost unintelligible stream of Japanese, gesturing vaguely with his free hand towards the misty, forbidding island looming ever closer on the grey horizon. The phone dutifully, if somewhat tinnily, translated back: “To the island. We are all going to the island. For the special school.”
“School?” Arthur croaked, the word catching in his throat like a fishbone. He repeated it into the phone, needing confirmation, needing something, anything, to make sense.
“Yes. The academy. For those with Talents.”
Talents? A sliver of icy, unwelcome unease, sharp as a shard of freshly broken glass, pierced through the thick fog of Arthur’s confusion and terror. The word echoed with a dark, half-forgotten, deeply unpleasant familiarity. The island. The special school. For the Talented. His mind, sluggish with shock, began to churn, to sift through old, discarded memories, searching for a connection, a terrifying, almost unthinkable recognition beginning to dawn.
The ferry docked with a gentle, almost anticlimactic bump against a solid, seaweed-stained concrete pier. The previously chattering students began to gather their bags, a river of dark blue uniforms flowing with a surprising, almost disciplined orderliness towards the disembarkation ramp. Arthur, feeling like a man walking to his own execution, followed them woodenly, his legs like leaden stilts, his mind a maelstrom of fear and dawning, horrifying comprehension. The island air, when he finally stepped onto solid, unmoving ground, was humid, heavy, carrying the cloying scent of pine needles, damp earth, and something else, something faintly metallic, like old blood. A few stern-faced adults, presumably teachers, their expressions uniformly unwelcoming, were directing the arriving students with curt, impatient gestures towards a narrow, winding path leading steeply upwards, into the island’s dense, shadowy, and deeply foreboding interior.
He walked as if in a trance, the phone clutched in his hand like a talisman against the encroaching darkness. This new, young body, this ‘Kenji Tanaka’ as his hastily discovered student ID card (found in another pocket of the unfamiliar blazer) proclaimed him to be, was a reluctant, terrified automaton, and he, Arthur Ainsworth, was its bewildered, unwilling, and increasingly horrified pilot.
Evening found him in a small, stark, sparsely furnished dormitory room, shared with another silent, sullen boy – his roommate, Suzuki, who had grunted a minimal, almost resentful greeting earlier before burying himself completely in a brightly coloured manga volume, effectively vanishing from Arthur’s immediate reality. The overwhelming, unrelenting newness of it all – the constant, bewildering barrage of the unfamiliar Japanese language assaulting his ears, the strange, unappetizing food he’d barely been able to touch at dinner (a slimy, unidentifiable fish and a bowl of disturbingly grey rice), the constant, terrifying, almost schizophrenic disconnect between his fifty-one-year-old mind and this unfamiliar, unwieldy teenage body – was crushing, suffocating.
He sat heavily on the edge of the narrow, unyielding bed, the phone’s battery indicator now a glaring, accusatory, terrifying red 15%. He needed to charge it. Urgently. Desperately. It was his only link to comprehension, his only tool for navigating this bewildering, hostile new reality. But the power sockets in the dorm room wall were a different, unfamiliar shape, and he hadn’t seen his own trusty charger since… well, since his own familiar, comforting kitchen in Crawley, a lifetime, an eternity, ago.
He had to think. He forced his panicked, reeling mind to focus. Talented. Island academy for the Talented. Snippets of disjointed conversation, hazy, half-recalled images from a garishly coloured, excessively violent animation his teenage nephew had been briefly, inexplicably obsessed with some years ago, flickered like faulty neon signs at the frayed edges of his memory. A pretty, innocent-looking girl with bright pink hair and an unnervingly sweet, almost predatory smile. A sullen, white-haired boy with an obsession with immortality and a penchant for asking inconvenient questions. Gruesome, inventive deaths, casually, almost gleefully, inflicted. Dark secrets. Government conspiracies.
Talentless Nana.
The name, the title, hit him with the force of a physical blow, knocking the last vestiges of air from his already constricted lungs. No. It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t. That was fiction, a dark, twisted, nihilistic little piece of entertainment his sister had tutted disapprovingly about. He wasn’t in an anime. Such things didn’t happen. They couldn’t happen.
But the evidence, the terrible, mounting, undeniable evidence, was all around him. The isolated island, miles from any recognizable mainland. The special school, exclusively for "Talented" youth. The subtle, pervasive undercurrent of something… predatory, something dangerous, he’d sensed beneath the thin, fragile veneer of enforced institutional normalcy.
If this was true, if this waking nightmare was indeed his new reality, then he was in unimaginable, immediate, and quite possibly terminal danger. Everyone here was. And he, Arthur Ainsworth, a mild-mannered, unremarkable, fifty-one-year-old former accounts clerk from the peaceful, predictable suburbs of Crawley, was trapped, helpless and horrified, in the unfamiliar, ill-fitting body of a Japanese schoolboy named Kenji Tanaka, days, perhaps mere hours, from the inevitable arrival of a ruthless, highly trained, government-sanctioned teenage assassin.
The phone’s screen flickered ominously, then dimmed. 10%.
The raw, animalistic panic gave way, momentarily, to a desperate, pragmatic, almost cold urgency. He had to find a charger. A compatible one. And a socket that would accept it. Now. Without the phone, without his translator, without his only tenuous link to the world around him, he was deaf, dumb, defenceless, and almost certainly, irrecoverably, dead.
He scrambled to his feet, his earlier exhaustion forgotten, replaced by a surge of pure, undiluted adrenaline. He left his silent, manga-absorbed roommate without a word and ventured cautiously out into the dimly lit, echoing corridor. The dorm was quieting down for the night, most of the other students presumably already in their rooms. He found a common room at the end of the corridor, its lights still on, though it was deserted. It smelled faintly of stale noodles and cheap cleaning fluid. A few students were chatting quietly within, others were hunched over textbooks, already studying. His eyes, wild and desperate, scanned the walls, searching. There. A grimy, overloaded power strip, with a couple of tantalizingly vacant sockets. And discarded carelessly on a low, battered coffee table, amidst a scattering of empty snack wrappers, discarded manga volumes, and students’ textbooks, was a tangled, spaghetti-like mess of assorted charging cables. One of them, a generic-looking black one, looked promising, its micro-USB connector seemingly, blessedly, similar to his own phone’s charging port.
His heart pounding in his throat like a trapped bird, he darted forward and snatched it up. It was a cheap, no-name brand, but the connector looked right. He hurried back to the precious, vacant sockets in the power strip, his hands shaking so badly he could barely insert the plug. He then, with a silent, fervent prayer to any deity, any force, any cosmic entity that might conceivably be listening in this godforsaken corner of reality, connected the other end of the cable to his phone.
The charging icon appeared on the screen. 10%. Then, after an agonizing, heart-stopping pause, 11%.
A tiny, almost hysterical, choked laugh escaped him, a sound perilously close to a sob. One problem, at least, one immediate, life-threatening crisis, was temporarily, blessedly, solved. But as he slumped weakly against the cool, indifferent wall, watching the battery percentage slowly, painstakingly, begin to climb, the larger, more terrifying, more inescapable reality of his utterly impossible situation settled upon him with a crushing, suffocating, and unyielding weight. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, on Murder Island. And the deadly, bloody games, he knew with a certainty that chilled him to the very marrow of his new, young bones, were about to begin.
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Chapter 16: A Fragile Return
The new term, the second year of Arthur’s nightmarish island sojourn, arrived with the noisy, unwelcome, and almost aggressive intrusion of the returning ferries. They disgorged their reluctant cargo of students onto the familiar, weathered pier – a chaotic, uneasy mix of fresh, unsuspecting new faces, their expressions ranging from nervous apprehension to a misplaced, naive excitement, and the more hardened, deeply wary, haunted-eyed returnees from the previous, blood-soaked, traumatic year. The island, which had been Arthur’s silent, mournful, and strangely, almost peacefully, isolated kingdom for many long weeks, was suddenly, jarringly, violently alive again with the cacophony of shrill youthful chatter, the thud of hastily unloaded, battered luggage, and the forced, brittle, almost desperate cheerfulness of the few remaining, equally traumatized teaching staff.
Arthur had somehow survived the long, profoundly solitary inter-term break through a combination of meticulous, desperate scavenging from the surprisingly well-stocked (if obscurely located and heavily fortified) emergency food larders he’d discovered deep in the school’s damp, echoing basement, and a grim, almost monastic, unwavering determination. His solitude had been absolute, his only constant, silent companion the still, unnervingly unchanged form of Michiru Inukai in her sealed, undisturbed dormitory room. He’d kept the room cool, the heavy blackout blinds permanently drawn against the harsh, unforgiving summer sun. The official story of her "tragic, contagious illness" and subsequent "peaceful passing" meant her room remained a sealed-off, almost taboo memorial, a place none of the superstitious or frightened staff dared enter.
But Arthur knew – or rather, desperately, fiercely hoped for – something more. Her body, even after all these weeks, was inexplicably, almost unnaturally, warm to the touch – a faint, persistent, life-like warmth that defied all rational explanation for someone supposedly deceased. This, for Arthur, was a stunning, almost terrifying confirmation that Michiru wasn't truly, irrevocably dead; that her extraordinary healing Talent could well be working in some profound, unseen way, fighting a slow, silent, almost impossible battle against the finality of death.
He hadn't breathed a word of this astonishing, terrifying possibility to a living soul. The reasons were manifold, each one a cold knot of fear in his gut. Firstly, any hint that he believed Michiru might return from the dead would invite immediate, intense, and deeply unwelcome scrutiny of his own "Talent." How could he possibly know such a thing? What "glimpse" could have shown him that? His fabricated abilities were already a precarious balancing act; any further probing could bring the whole charade crashing down around him. Secondly, and far more chillingly, was the thought of The Committee. If, by some infinitesimally small chance, news of Michiru's anomalous state, of his secret vigil and his bizarre hope, were to leak out, to somehow find its way back to Tsuruoka’s ears… they would undoubtedly descend upon her. They believed in the potential of powerful Talents to regenerate, he recalled that much with a shudder – it was probably the only vaguely true or insightful thing they’d ever inadvertently let slip about the true nature of these strange abilities amidst their mountain of lies. But their interest would be purely exploitative, monstrous. And if they discovered someone actively tending to such a phenomenon, actively hoping for it, they might see it as something more than just grief – they might interpret it as… defiance. Specks of resistance to their grand, evil designs. And if word of that got back to Nana, likely twisted by Tsuruoka to paint Arthur as an even greater, more unpredictable threat… That was a scenario Arthur certainly didn't want, a prospect that filled him with a unique and specific dread: going up against the full weight and force of the Japanese government, with all its shadowy resources, as well as a potentially re-conditioned, lethally focused Nana Hiiragi. The thought was unbearable.
So, he kept his vigil, his astonishing secret, locked tight within his own breast, the faint, persistent warmth of Michiru's hand beneath his own questing fingers his only, fragile confirmation. It transformed his lonely watch from one of hopeless grief into one of almost unbearable, anxious expectation. The terrifying unknown, of course, was the timescale. If such regeneration were even possible, how long would it take? Days? Weeks? Months? Or, God forbid, years? He didn’t know. Nobody did. But he had vowed to watch over her, to protect her, for as long as it took. He would not let her become an experiment. And he would not, he swore, allow her, if she did somehow return and was left alone, terrified, and uncontrolled, to eventually transform into one of those monstrous “Enemies of Humanity” that Tsuruoka cultivated, a fate he dimly understood from his anime memories to be a horrifying potential endpoint for unchecked or traumatized Talents.
When the other students returned, flooding the familiar corridors and common rooms with their unwelcome, boisterous vitality, Arthur Ainsworth was a visibly, profoundly changed individual. He was thinner, almost gaunt, his ill-fitting school uniform hanging loosely on his still-teenage frame. His eyes, sunk deeper into their sockets and shadowed with a perpetual weariness, held a haunted, faraway, almost unnervingly intense look. His interactions, always stilted due to his lack of a phone and his painfully rudimentary Japanese, were now even more clipped, his pronouncements, when he was forced to make them, often bleak, cynical, and unsettlingly prescient. He had become a pariah, an outcast, a figure of fear and morbid curiosity amongst his peers – the “creepy Tanaka-kun.” This strange, unending May, which had bled into a sweltering, oppressive summer on the island, felt so utterly disconnected from any concept of season or normalcy he had ever known; it was just an endless, timeless expanse of dread.
Nana Hiiragi was among the returnees. Her own transformation, Arthur noted, was less overtly physical but no less profound. The almost manic, candy-coated cheerfulness that had once been her primary, impenetrable camouflage was noticeably, significantly muted, replaced by a more sombre, introspective, and almost melancholic air. When her violet eyes, shadowed with a weariness that seemed too profound for her young face, inevitably met Arthur’s across the crowded, reawakened canteen on that first chaotic day back, he saw a complex, unreadable flicker of emotions – surprise at his continued, stubborn presence, perhaps a lingering trace of the raw guilt and profound confusion from their last terrible encounter, and a renewed, deeply wary, almost fearful assessment. The air between them, whenever their paths crossed, was thick with unspoken things.
Arthur knew he needed an ally, or at least, someone who wouldn’t immediately dismiss his dire warnings as madness. His thoughts, inevitably, reluctantly, turned to Kyouya Onodera. Kyouya was a consummate observer, a cold, logical, and entirely dispassionate analyst. He was, Arthur suspected, perhaps the only person on this godforsaken island who might, just might, possess the intellect and the detachment to believe even a fraction of the unbelievable truth, or at least to find his warnings pragmatically useful.
He found Kyouya in his usual self-imposed sanctuary in the furthest, quietest, most dust-laden corner of the school library. “Onodera,” Arthur began, his Japanese hesitant but firm. “We need to talk. Urgently. About what is coming.” Kyouya slowly closed his ancient book. He regarded Arthur with that unnerving, unblinking stare. “Tanaka. You look… remarkably unwell. Even more so than before the break.” “This island… it has that effect,” Arthur managed. He sat. “Listen to me. The Committee… they will create food shortages. Severe ones. To make us fight. Civil war.” Kyouya raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Your ‘glimpses’ tell you this?” “Among other things,” Arthur confirmed, his expression grim. “And Nana Hiiragi… she uses blackmail, manipulation. She is a tool, yes, but a thinking one.” He paused, a bitter irony in his voice. “I’m supposed to see the future. But I’m trapped in this bloody, repeating past, watching it all happen.” Kyouya listened with an unnerving, focused stillness. He had witnessed too many of Arthur’s strange, unsettlingly accurate “predictions” come to pass. “Deliberate food shortages,” Kyouya mused aloud after a long silence. “That would create precisely the chaos you describe. And Hiiragi… I have had my own suspicions.” He looked directly at Arthur. “What do you propose, Tanaka? Given your… unique perspective?” “Propose?” Arthur echoed, a harsh laugh escaping him. “I propose we try not to starve. We watch our backs.” He then hesitated, the weight of his incredible secret about Michiru immense. He couldn’t reveal the full truth, not yet, not even to Kyouya. It was too dangerous, for Michiru, for himself. But he had to say something. “And… I am keeping Michiru Inukai… safe… in her room. She deserves that. The Committee… they would not understand her… her condition.” He chose his words carefully, hinting at something beyond mere death, hoping Kyouya’s sharp mind might grasp the unspoken. “She is still… warm.” Kyouya’s expression didn’t change, but Arthur saw a flicker of something new in his eyes – not disbelief, but a profound, analytical curiosity. “Inukai Michiru sacrificed herself,” Kyouya stated, his voice flat. “A most… perplexing event. Her current… anomalous condition… is noted, Tanaka.” He paused. “If what you say about the Committee’s intentions is true, then this year will be… significantly more trying.” It wasn’t an alliance. Not yet. But Kyouya Onodera was listening. And Arthur, though still burdened by the full weight of his secret hope for Michiru, felt a fraction less alone in the encroaching darkness.
Chapter 32: A New Beginning, An Old Fight
The night chosen for their desperate gamble, their improbable escape, arrived cloaked in a maelstrom of furious, driving wind and torrential, sheeting rain. It was a late autumn storm, one of the worst in recent memory, that lashed the internment camp with a savage, almost sentient fury – perfect, chaotic cover for the desperate endeavour that was about to unfold. For weeks, Kenichi Tanaka, their quiet, nervous “Architect,” had been painstakingly, almost obsessively, working in the damp, freezing, and carefully concealed confines of a long-disused, partially collapsed storage shed at the far, neglected perimeter of the camp. Shielded by the sound-dampening Talent of a timid girl named Hana and by the watchful, rotating guard duty of Kyouya and a few other trusted inmates, Kenichi had been slowly, agonizingly coaxing their improbable, monstrous escape vehicle into existence from scavenged scrap metal, compacted earth, shattered concrete, and sheer, unyielding force of will.
It was a hideous, utilitarian creation, a testament to desperate ingenuity rather than engineering aesthetics – less a train or a conventional vehicle and more a heavily armored, multi-terrain articulated transport, its hull a patchwork of rusted plating and reinforced rubble. Arthur had privately, grimly, dubbed it the “Land Leviathan.” Its motive power was a complex, jury-rigged, and highly unstable system cobbled together by Kyouya and a handful of other resourceful Talents, relying on a dangerous combination of kinetic energy conversion, makeshift steam power, and Kenichi’s own ability to subtly manipulate its structural integrity for movement.
On Nana Hiiragi’s quiet, tense signal, relayed through a chain of trusted whispers just as the storm reached its terrifying zenith, the meticulously planned operation snapped into motion. Hana, her face pale with concentration and fear, extended her sound-dampening field to its absolute limit, creating a precious cone of relative silence around Kenichi’s makeshift workshop as the final, noisy, and dangerously volatile connections were made to the Leviathan’s power core. Another student, an older boy named Ren whose Talent allowed him to cause localized, temporary electronic interference, focused his abilities on the camp’s main perimeter fence sensors and the central guardhouse communication lines, hoping to buy them precious, crucial minutes of confusion and disarray at precisely the right moment.
Kyouya Onodera, leading a small, handpicked, and utterly determined team of their strongest and most disciplined allies, moved like avenging shadows through the howling wind and driving rain, their movements swift, silent, and deadly. They neutralized the few terrified, rain-lashed guards patrolling the designated breach point near Kenichi’s workshop with swift, brutal, non-lethal efficiency, adhering strictly to Nana’s unwavering directive for minimal violence against their captors, if at all possible. They used chokeholds, pressure points, and improvised restraints, leaving the guards bound and unconscious, but alive.
The rumbling, groaning emergence of the Land Leviathan from the collapsing remnants of the workshop was a moment of terrifying, breathtaking, almost suicidal audacity. Its massive, misshapen form, slick with rain and mud, seemed to absorb the dim, flickering emergency lights of the camp, a creature born of desperation and shadow. Nana, a small, rain-soaked figure of calm amidst the controlled, adrenaline-fueled chaos, her voice sharp and clear above the howl of the storm, directed the first wave of chosen prisoners – the old, the sick, the youngest children, along with those whose specific Talents would be most useful in the immediate aftermath – towards the vehicle’s hastily constructed, reinforced loading ramp. Arthur found himself, alongside a surprisingly resolute Michiru Inukai, helping to guide a small, terrified group of wide-eyed children, their faces pale with fear, towards the relative, if claustrophobic, safety of the Leviathan’s dark, cavernous, metallic hull.
Then came the breach. With a deafening, tortured groan of protesting, tortured metal and crumbling ferroconcrete, the Land Leviathan, with a stoic, grim-faced Kyouya wrestling with its crude, unresponsive controls, ploughed with terrifying, unstoppable force through the first electrified perimeter fence, then the second, and finally, with a cataclysmic roar, through the main camp wall itself. Alarms, shrill and panicked, finally began blaring belatedly across the entire compound, their desperate cries almost lost in the fury of the storm. Guards, confused and disoriented, emerged from their shelters, firing wildly, their bullets pinging harmlessly off the Leviathan’s thick, improvised armor or whining away into the storm-tossed darkness. The monstrous vehicle, shuddering and groaning under the strain, surged forward, a juggernaut of desperate hope, into the dark, unforgiving, and unknown wilderness beyond the camp’s rapidly receding, oppressive lights.
Not everyone made it. In the ensuing chaos of the breach, amidst the shouting of guards and the panicked scramble of prisoners, some were caught by Ide’s enraged security forces, their desperate bid for freedom ending in brutal recapture. Others, overcome by fear or confusion, hesitated too long and were left behind. But a significant number – well over a hundred desperate souls – rumbled away into the stormy, concealing night, leaving Commandant Ide to survey the smoking, gaping hole in his perimeter wall and the utter wreckage of his authority in a transport of impotent, murderous fury.
They travelled for what felt like an eternity, the Land Leviathan crashing and lurching through the dense, trackless forest, pushing its makeshift, Talent-powered engine to its absolute limits. Kyouya, his face a mask of grim concentration, wrestled with the controls, navigating by instinct and the occasional, shouted direction from Jin Tachibana, who seemed to possess an uncanny, almost preternatural knowledge of the surrounding, uncharted terrain. Finally, just as the first, watery, grey light of a stormy dawn began to filter through the dense canopy, the monstrous vehicle, with a final, shuddering, metallic sigh, ground to a halt deep within a remote, mist-shrouded mountain valley, its power core finally, irrevocably, depleted.
Exhausted, mud-caked, soaked to the bone, but undeniably, miraculously free, the escapees stumbled out into the cold, damp air, their faces a mixture of stunned disbelief, dawning elation, and a profound, soul-deep weariness. They had done it. Against all odds, against all reason, they were out.
In the difficult, uncertain days that followed, a fledgling, fragile resistance began to take shape in their secluded, temporary mountain hideout – a series of interconnected, damp caves hidden behind a waterfall that Jin had, with his usual uncanny foresight, led them to. Nana Hiiragi, Kyouya Onodera, Arthur Ainsworth, Michiru Inukai, and Jin Tachibana (who, as always, appeared and disappeared with unsettling, mysterious ease, often returning with vital supplies of scavenged food, medicine, or crucial intelligence about Committee movements in the region) formed the de facto core of its hesitant, informal leadership. There were disagreements, naturally; tensions born of fear, exhaustion, and conflicting personalities. The constant, gnawing fear of discovery, of Tsuruoka’s inevitable, relentless pursuit, was a shadow that hung over them all. But there was also, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, a shared, defiant purpose.
For Nana, that purpose had now crystallized into an unwavering, all-consuming obsession: find the absolute, unvarnished truth about her parents’ murders, expose Commander Tsuruoka for the monster he was, and then, with every fibre of her being, dedicate herself to dismantling the Committee’s entire rotten, bloodsoaked infrastructure. For Kyouya, it was simpler, yet no less profound: protect his rediscovered sister, Rin (Jin), and ensure that no one else ever had to endure the horrors he had witnessed, the pain he had suffered. For Michiru, it was a quiet, unwavering commitment to healing, to offering comfort, to nurturing the fragile sparks of hope in the hearts of her fellow survivors.
It was during one of their first, tentative strategy sessions, huddled around a smoky, sputtering fire in the largest of the damp caves, the sound of the nearby waterfall a constant, rushing counterpoint to their hushed voices, that Arthur Ainsworth decided it was time to unburden himself of his longest-held, most significant secret. He looked at the tired, determined faces around him – Nana, her expression now one of fierce, almost righteous resolve rather than haunted guilt; Kyouya, his stoic presence a silent, unshakeable bedrock for them all; Michiru, her gentle strength an unexpected, vital anchor in their storm-tossed existence; Jin, his enigmatic smile hinting at depths of knowledge and purpose still unknown.
“There’s something… something important you all need to understand about me,” Arthur began, his voice quiet but firm, his Japanese, learned through years of painful necessity and now constant, unavoidable immersion, surprisingly steady, though still carrying the unmistakable, softened consonants of his native English. He no longer had his phone, his crutch, his electronic voice; these words, this truth, had to be his own. “My Talent… the ‘Chrono-Empathic Glimpse,’ as I once called it… it was always a finite thing. A limited resource. Like a well that, through overuse, eventually, inevitably, runs dry.” He paused, meeting their expectant, curious eyes, one by one. “That well… it is dry now. Completely. I’ve seen too far, too often, peered too deeply into futures that were not mine to see. I can no longer glimpse what is to come. I am, for all intents and purposes, truly Talentless now.”
A profound silence fell over the small, firelit group, broken only by the crackle of the flames and the distant roar of the waterfall. Nana looked at him, a flicker of complex, unreadable understanding in her violet eyes – perhaps a memory of his earlier, pointed comment in that rainy alleyway about Talents not having a monopoly on wrongdoing. “From here on,” Arthur continued, a new, unfamiliar, almost liberating resolve hardening his own expression, “I have no special foresight, no prophetic warnings, to offer any of you. What I have left is simply what you all possess: whatever intuition remains, the sum of the experiences we’ve endured, the lessons we’ve learned, and whatever stubborn, foolish determination we can collectively muster. We’re all… flying blind in that respect now, I suppose.”
He looked down at his hands, these unfamiliar teenage hands of Kenji Tanaka, hands that had, in the course of his bizarre, unwilling journey, performed acts, witnessed horrors, that Arthur Ainsworth, the mundane accounts clerk from Crawley, could never have begun to imagine. He wondered, as he often did in these quiet, reflective moments, about his old life, his old world, the one he had been so violently, so inexplicably, torn from. Could he ever truly return? And even if it were somehow, miraculously possible, after everything he had seen, everything he had done, everything he had become… would he even want to? The question, vast and unanswerable, hung heavy and unspoken in the damp, cave air.
Nana was the first to break the silence, her voice surprisingly gentle. “Your ‘glimpses’ may be gone, Arthur-san,” she said, using his first name with a newfound, hesitant, almost shy respect, the Japanese honorific a quiet acknowledgment. “But your insight, your unique understanding of Tsuruoka, your… your perspective… that is still valuable. More valuable now, perhaps, than ever before. We all still have a role to play in what’s to come.”
Kyouya Onodera, his gaze fixed on the dancing flames, nodded once in silent, stoic agreement. “We fight with what we have,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble. “And with who we are.”
They began to strategize then, their voices gaining a new strength, a new conviction, in the flickering, uncertain firelight. They were a small, battered, and profoundly unlikely band of survivors, pitted against a powerful, ruthless, and deeply entrenched enemy. The fight ahead was uncertain, perilous, the odds overwhelmingly stacked against them. But as they spoke, as they planned, as they began to forge a new, shared path forward into that terrifying, unknown future, Arthur Ainsworth felt a strange, unfamiliar, almost forgotten sensation begin to stir within him. It wasn’t foresight. It wasn’t prescience. It was something far simpler, far more fundamental, and perhaps, in the end, far more powerful. It was hope.
Chapter 18: Nana's Gambit, Michiru's Return
The revelation about Jin Tachibana being Kyouya Onodera’s tragically disguised sister, Rin, had forged a stronger, if unspoken and deeply somber, bond between Arthur and Kyouya. Kyouya, now armed with this devastating personal truth, became even more focused in his quiet investigations, his every observation tinged with a new, sharper, almost painful urgency. Arthur, meanwhile, continued his grim, solitary watch over Michiru Inukai’s still, unnervingly preserved, and blessedly warm form in her sealed-off dormitory room. That persistent, inexplicable warmth, a defiant spark against the cold finality of supposed death, was the fragile ember of his almost insane hope, a hope that had sustained him through weeks of profound isolation and gnawing despair. This strange, suspended season of his life, so utterly removed from any May or June he’d ever known back in England, felt like a fever dream played out on the edge of reality.
Nana Hiiragi observed Arthur with an increasing, almost palpable disquiet. His continued, brooding presence on the island, his uncanny "predictions" that so often disrupted her meticulously laid plans or exposed uncomfortable, hidden truths, his unwavering, almost devotional care for what everyone else believed to be Michiru’s lifeless body – it all deeply unsettled her. He was an anomaly she couldn’t categorize, an unpredictable, inconvenient variable in her deadly equations. Perhaps, too, her own recently awakened conscience, brutally pricked into existence by Michiru’s selfless sacrifice, was making Arthur’s silent, grieving judgment of her actions even harder to bear. His very existence, his quiet, sorrowful gaze, seemed to be a constant, unwelcome reminder of her own compromised humanity, of the monster she had been forced to become, and the friend she had, in essence, allowed to die for her. The guilt, a new and corrosive emotion, gnawed at her relentlessly.
She began to target his evident, growing despair. It wasn’t an overt physical attack; Kyouya’s subtle but constant watchfulness over Arthur, and her own profound internal hesitation, made such direct action too risky, too complicated. This was psychological warfare, subtle, insidious, and far crueler. During their infrequent, unavoidable encounters in the desolate corridors or the half-empty, depressing canteen, she would make comments, her voice laced with a poisonous, false sympathy, her violet eyes wide with perfectly feigned concern.
“You look so terribly tired, Tanaka-kun,” she’d say, her tone dripping with a cloying pity as she “happened” to pass his solitary table. “This island… it truly does weigh so very heavily on sensitive souls, doesn’t it? Sometimes, you know, Tanaka-kun, true peace, real release, can only be found when the burdens we carry become far too great to bear.”
Or, if she saw him looking out towards the northern cliffs – the very cliffs where he’d first, so infuriatingly, saved Nanao Nakajima, the place where her carefully laid plans had first been significantly, unforgivably challenged by his inexplicable interference – she might murmur, as if sharing a profound, melancholy, and deeply personal secret, “Such a dramatic, beautiful, and rather final view from up there, isn’t it? They say the fall is… surprisingly quick. Almost peaceful, a final letting go. A moment of release, perhaps, from all this unending suffering and terrible confusion.”
Her words, each one a carefully chosen, precisely aimed barb, were like tiny drops of acid, insidiously, relentlessly eroding his already fragile, traumatized mental state. He was profoundly haunted by the faces of those he couldn’t save, by the constant, simmering threat of Nana herself, by the crushing, absolute loneliness of his impossible, unbelievable situation. Michiru’s unresponsive, yet still warm, form in that silent, sealed room was both a sacred duty, a desperate hope, and a daily, agonizing, almost unbearable torment of waiting. The weight of it all – the deaths, the lies, the fear, the guilt, his own terrifying, persistent inadequacy – was becoming truly unbearable, a suffocating, clinging shroud.
One bleak, windswept, unseasonably cold afternoon, under a sky the colour of bruised plums and lead, Arthur found himself standing at the very edge of that familiar, accursed cliff. The wind, cold and smelling of impending rain and the distant, indifferent sea, whipped at his threadbare school uniform, trying with an almost malicious insistence to pluck him from the precarious precipice. The waves, a churning, angry, slate-grey, crashed far, far below against the jagged, unforgiving black rocks, their relentless roar a hungry, seductive, almost hypnotic invitation. Nana’s insidious, poisonous suggestions, her soft, sympathetic whispers of peace and ultimate release, echoed and re-echoed in the desolate landscape of his mind, mingling with his own profound, soul-deep exhaustion and a vast, bottomless, encroaching despair. What was the point anymore? He was failing. He was trapped in this endless, repeating nightmare. The thought of simply letting go, of surrendering to the siren call of the abyss, of finally, blessedly, ending the constant, agonizing struggle, the constant, unbearable pain, was a seductive, almost irresistible whisper in the howling wind. He closed his eyes, the roar of the waves filling his ears, a final, sorrowful goodbye forming on his lips, and took a small, decisive, almost eager step closer to the crumbling, treacherous edge.
“Tanaka-kun, don’t!”
The voice was impossibly weak, fragile as spun moonlight, raspy and cracked from long disuse, but achingly, heart-stoppingly, miraculously familiar. Arthur’s eyes snapped open. His heart seemed to stop, to cease beating entirely for one eternal, suspended moment, then restarted with a painful, violent, almost convulsive lurch. He whirled around, his balance precarious, teetering on the very lip of the cliff edge.
Stumbling unsteadily, erratically towards him, her face pale as death and shockingly gaunt, her once vibrant cloud of white, fluffy hair now matted, dull, and lifeless, but undeniably, impossibly, miraculously her, was Michiru Inukai. She was incredibly, terrifyingly frail, leaning heavily on a makeshift crutch fashioned from a twisted, fallen tree branch, each agonizing step a monumental, visible effort, but her gentle, unmistakable, beloved eyes, fixed on him, shone with a desperate, terrified, and utterly selfless plea.
Arthur stared, dumbfounded, his mind utterly unable to process, to comprehend, the impossible, glorious sight before him. Michiru? Alive? His vigil, his desperate, irrational, almost insane hope… the persistent, inexplicable warmth of her skin beneath his tentative, daily touch… It had worked! She had healed herself! The realization crashed through him with the force of a physical blow, a dizzying, overwhelming surge of incredulous joy, of profound, earth-shattering relief that was so potent it almost buckled his knees. All those weeks, all those silent, lonely hours spent by her bedside, monitoring that faint, precious warmth… it hadn’t been a delusion. It had been real. Her Talent had triumphed.
He felt a sob, a mixture of joy and disbelief, rise in his throat. “Michiru…?” he choked out, the name a prayer, a miracle.
From the shadowy edge of the nearby tree line, another figure emerged, her pink hair a shocking, almost offensive splash of vibrant colour against the grey, desolate, unforgiving landscape – Nana Hiiragi. She had clearly, silently, followed Arthur, perhaps intending to witness the tragic, final culmination of her subtle, psychological prodding, to see her unwelcome, inconvenient problem eliminate himself. Her face, as she saw Michiru, as she registered the impossible, undeniable reality of the resurrected girl, was a mask of utter, frozen disbelief, her jaw slack, her violet eyes wide with an emotion that transcended mere surprise into something akin to awe, stark terror, and a dawning, world-altering, sanity-shattering confusion. She stared at Michiru as if seeing a divine, avenging apparition, or a beloved, betrayed ghost returned inexplicably, impossibly, from the grave.
Michiru, with a final, agonizing, lurching effort, reached Arthur, her small, ice-cold hand gripping his arm with surprising, desperate strength. “Don’t do it, Tanaka-kun,” she pleaded again, her voice a hoarse, painful, almost inaudible whisper. “Please. Life… your life… it’s precious. You… you taught me that. By… by caring. By hoping. Even when… when I was… gone.”
The sight of Michiru, so impossibly, heartbreakingly weak yet so fiercely, incredibly determined, alive and breathing and warm before him, pleading for his life after he had sat with her seemingly lifeless, yet persistently warm, body for so many hopeless months, shattered something deep and fundamental within Arthur. And it clearly, catastrophically, irrevocably, shattered something within Nana Hiiragi too.
The carefully constructed, Committee-forged walls around Nana’s deeply buried, long-suppressed emotions seemed to explode, to crumble into radioactive dust. The profound shock of seeing Michiru alive, undeniably, miraculously resurrected by her own incredible, self-consuming Talent, the raw, naked, suicidal despair etched on Arthur’s face as he teetered on the very brink of oblivion, Michiru’s selfless, desperate, loving plea – it was too much, a perfect storm of emotional overload. Nana rushed forward, her earlier manipulative, murderous intent, her cold, inhuman Committee programming, utterly, completely forgotten, obliterated by the sheer, overwhelming, transformative force of the impossible, sacred moment. She reached out, her hands trembling violently, and instinctively, unthinkingly, helped Michiru support Arthur, pulling him further back from the precipice, away from the hungry, waiting call of the abyss.
Tears, hot, scalding, and unstoppable, began to stream down Nana’s face, genuine, heartbroken, wracking sobs tearing from her chest, sounds of an agony so profound, so pure, they seemed to rend the very air around them. “Michiru… oh, Michiru! You’re… you’re alive!” she cried, her voice breaking, cracking with an unbearable agony of guilt, disbelief, and a dawning, terrifying hope. She sank to her knees on the damp, unforgiving earth, pulling Michiru into a desperate, crushing, almost hysterical hug, heedless of Arthur’s stunned, uncomprehending presence, heedless of everything but the miraculous, terrifying, world-altering reality of her resurrected, beloved friend. “I… I’m so sorry! I was so scared… I didn’t know what to do… I didn’t want… This place… this island… it makes you a monster! It made me a monster! Forgive me, Michiru! Please, forgive me!” Her confession was a torrent of confused, anguished, broken words – not a full, rational accounting of her specific, horrific crimes, not yet, but an unstoppable, cathartic outpouring of the profound fear, the suffocating guilt, and the deep, internal, existential conflict she had suppressed for so long, had denied even to her own fractured, tormented soul.
Arthur watched them, his mind reeling, his senses overwhelmed – Michiru, blessedly, miraculously alive, weakly returning Nana’s fierce, almost hysterical embrace; Nana, the cold-blooded killer, weeping uncontrollably, her carefully constructed facade of cheerful ruthlessness utterly, irrevocably demolished, her raw, wounded, surprisingly human soul laid bare for all the world to see. The world tilted, shimmered, then seemed to spin violently on its axis. Michiru was alive. He had been right to hope. Nana was… confessing? Weeping? Broken? The emotional whiplash, the sheer, overwhelming, impossible unreality of it all, was too intense, too much for his already frayed, exhausted, and now joy-and-relief-saturated system to bear. His legs, which had been trembling uncontrollably, finally, blessedly, gave way. He collapsed onto the cold, damp earth, the darkness of complete emotional and physical exhaustion, compounded by the almost unbearable release of months of pent-up hope and fear, rushing up to claim him like a welcome, long-overdue tide.
The last thing he saw before the welcoming blackness of unconsciousness completely enveloped him was Michiru’s worried, tear-streaked, but blessedly, beautifully alive face looking down at him, and Nana Hiiragi, her own face a maelstrom of tears, shock, and a dawning, unreadable, and utterly transformative emotion, staring at him as if seeing him, truly seeing him, the strange, grieving, hopeful boy who had inexplicably saved her friend, for the very first, profound time.
Would serve her right
Chapter 19: Scarcity and Control
Arthur awoke slowly, his head throbbing with a dull, persistent ache, to find himself not on the cold, windswept cliff edge where he had collapsed, but tucked into the surprisingly comfortable confines of his own narrow dormitory bed. For a disorienting, heart-stopping moment, he thought the previous day’s extraordinary, impossible events – Michiru’s miraculous return from apparent death, Nana’s shattering emotional breakdown – had been nothing more than a vivid, desperate hallucination, a final, merciful product of his unravelling, exhausted mind. Then, a soft, hesitant voice, fragile as new spring leaves but blessedly, undeniably real, spoke his island name.
“Tanaka-kun? Are you… are you awake now?”
He turned his head, his stiff muscles protesting with every small movement. Michiru Inukai sat in a rickety wooden chair that had been pulled up beside his bed, a chipped teacup containing water held carefully in her small, still frail hands. She was terribly pale and gaunt, an ethereal, almost translucent waif-like figure, but her gentle, unmistakable eyes, though shadowed with a profound fatigue, were clear, lucid, and undeniably, wonderfully alive. A shy, almost hesitant, yet incredibly precious smile touched her lips when she saw him looking at her. The sight of her, truly, tangibly alive and present in the mundane, familiar reality of his small dorm room, sent a jolt of profound, overwhelming relief through him, so potent it brought an unexpected, embarrassing sting to his eyes.
“Michiru…” he rasped, his own voice hoarse, cracked, and unfamiliar even to his own ears. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position.
“Easy now, Tanaka-kun,” she said, her voice still weak but infused with a gentle, soothing warmth as she helped him prop himself awkwardly against the thin, lumpy pillows. “You were… very, very exhausted. Nana-chan and I… we managed to bring you back here after you fainted. Nana-chan was very worried about you, you know.”
Nana. The memory of her raw, uncharacteristic breakdown at the cliff, her tearful, fragmented, almost incoherent confession, her utter, soul-deep devastation at seeing Michiru alive, returned to him with a fresh jolt. He looked past Michiru’s concerned, gentle face and saw Nana Hiiragi herself standing awkwardly, uncertainly, in the doorway of his room. Her usually vibrant pink hair was slightly dishevelled, her bright school uniform rumpled and bearing faint traces of mud from the cliff path. Her usual effervescent, almost manic cheerfulness was entirely, strikingly absent, replaced by a hesitant, almost timid, and deeply uncertain expression. Her violet eyes, usually sparkling with mischief or cold, hard calculation, were red-rimmed, swollen, and shadowed with a new, unfamiliar vulnerability. The dynamic between the three of them, Arthur realized with a growing sense of profound unease and weary, almost resigned acceptance, was now irrevocably, seismically altered, suspended in a strange, fragile, and deeply, profoundly uncomfortable new reality.
The official explanation for Michiru Inukai’s miraculous return from the “dead” was, when it came, as predictably flimsy and insultingly inadequate as Arthur had expected. A few days after the incident at the cliff, once Michiru was deemed strong enough to leave the infirmary (where she had been kept under observation, much to Nana’s now fiercely protective, almost possessive anxiety), a visibly flustered and deeply uncomfortable Mr. Saito made a brief, stammering announcement during morning homeroom. He explained, his voice cracking several times, that there had been a “most regrettable and unfortunate series of diagnostic errors” by a “very junior, inexperienced mainland doctor” who had initially, and incorrectly, pronounced Michiru-san deceased following her sudden, severe illness at the end of the previous term. Further, more thorough examinations by the island’s own “more experienced medical staff,” he’d continued, his gaze skittering nervously around the room, had revealed that Michiru-san had merely been in a “profoundly deep, coma-like state” from which, through the miracle of modern medical science and her own youthful resilience, she had now, thankfully, fully recovered. “A simple, yet almost tragic, misdiagnosis, class,” was the best, most pathetic explanation the homeroom teacher could apparently come up with, his face slick with nervous sweat.
Michiru being alive again, having been officially declared dead and her passing mourned (however briefly and superficially by most), certainly surprised a few of the more observant pupils in the class. There were some whispered exclamations, a few wide-eyed, incredulous stares directed at the pale but smiling Michiru. Arthur watched their reactions with a kind of detached, weary cynicism. Back in England, back in his old life, such an event – a person returning from the dead after weeks, months even! – would have been a nine-day wonder, a media sensation, a cause for profound existential debate. Here, on this island where the bizarre was rapidly becoming the mundane, where death was a casual acquaintance and survival a daily struggle… well. Not that the surprise, the mild titillation, lasted very long. Within half an hour, Arthur noted with a grimace, talk among the students had soon moved on to more immediately “interesting” and pressing topics, like who had managed to hoard an extra bread roll from breakfast, or the latest outrageous rumour about Commandant Ide’s new, even more draconian camp rules back on the mainland (as news of the internment camps had, by now, become common, if terrifying, knowledge). This strange, unending, almost timeless May, which had now bled into a sweltering, oppressive early summer on the island, felt so utterly disconnected from any concept of season, or normalcy, or rational human behavior he had ever known; it was just an endless, surreal expanse of dread, punctuated by moments of sheer, stark insanity.
Over the next few days, as Arthur slowly regained his own physical strength and Michiru continued her own gradual, delicate, yet steady recovery – a process that seemed to draw on some deep, internal, almost inexhaustible wellspring of her miraculous healing Talent – an unsettling new tension, a different, more insidious kind of menace, began to grip the island. The already dwindling food supplies in the school canteen started to diminish with an alarming, noticeable rapidity, just as Arthur had grimly “predicted” to Kyouya Onodera weeks before. At first, it was subtle, almost deniable: the portions became slightly, almost imperceptibly smaller, the more popular, palatable dishes ran out much quicker, the once-generous fruit bowls looked suspiciously less bountiful. Then, the choices became starkly, undeniably more limited, the quality of what little was available noticeably, appallingly poorer. The usual comforting, if unexciting, variety of snacks and drinks in the small, usually well-stocked school store vanished almost overnight, replaced by sparsely, almost grudgingly stocked shelves displaying dusty, unappetizing, and often near-expired items.
The teachers, led by a visibly stressed, increasingly harassed, and clearly out-of-his-depth Mr. Saito, offered a series of vague, unconvincing, and often wildly contradictory explanations: unforeseen, severe logistical problems with the regular mainland supply ships; unexpected, unseasonable, and particularly violent storms delaying crucial deliveries; sudden, inexplicable, and entirely unforeseeable issues with their long-standing mainland procurement contracts. Their excuses sounded hollow, almost insultingly flimsy, even to the most naive or least suspicious students. A low, anxious hum of discontent, of fear, began to spread like a contagion through the dormitories. Whispers of hunger, of being forgotten and abandoned by the outside world, of the island’s carefully maintained, picturesque isolation becoming a terrifying, inescapable, and potentially lethal trap, grew louder, more insistent, more desperate with each passing, increasingly meagre, unsatisfying mealtime.
Arthur watched it all with a grim, weary sense of vindication, the bitter taste of unwelcome prescience like ash in his mouth. He saw Kyouya Onodera observing the rapidly deteriorating situation with a keen, coldly analytical, almost predatory gaze, their earlier, urgent conversation in the dusty library clearly at the forefront of his sharp, calculating mind. Kyouya began to spend more of his free time away from the main school buildings, his movements quiet, purposeful, almost furtive, as if he were methodically scouting for alternative, hidden resources or making discreet, necessary preparations for a coming siege that Arthur wasn’t yet privy to. He would occasionally catch Kyouya’s eye across the increasingly tense, half-empty canteen, a silent, almost imperceptible nod passing between them – a grim, unspoken acknowledgment of Arthur’s unwelcome, terrifying prescience.
Nana Hiiragi, too, seemed to view the unfolding, manufactured crisis through new, deeply troubled, and profoundly disillusioned eyes. Her emotional implosion at the cliff edge, her raw, unfiltered confrontation with her own buried guilt and manipulated past, had irrevocably cracked her carefully constructed facade of cheerful, unquestioning obedience. While she hadn’t confessed the full, horrifying extent of her past actions as Tsuruoka’s assassin to either Arthur or Michiru, her interactions with Michiru, in particular, were now tinged with a fierce, almost desperate, suffocating protectiveness and a profound, soul-deep, sorrowful guilt. When the teachers stammered their increasingly unconvincing, almost pathetic excuses for the rapidly dwindling food supplies, Arthur saw Nana listening with a deep, thoughtful frown, a dangerous flicker of bitter doubt and dawning, angry understanding in her expressive violet eyes. Perhaps, he thought with a sliver of grim hope, she was finally, truly beginning to see the callous, manipulative, bloodstained strings of the Committee she had served so blindly, so devotedly, for so tragically long. Perhaps she was beginning to question the supposed benevolence, the absolute authority, of the monstrous Commander Tsuruoka.
“This is precisely what I told you would happen, Onodera,” Arthur said quietly to Kyouya one evening, his limited Japanese surprisingly steady, his voice low and urgent, as they stood observing a near-riot that had broken out with shocking suddenness in the canteen over the last few pathetic, fought-over servings of stale, mould-flecked bread. Several desperate, starving students were shouting, pushing, their faces pinched and pale with hunger and a growing, frightening, animalistic desperation. “The Committee. They’re tightening the screws, deliberately, methodically, applying unbearable pressure.”
Kyouya Onodera nodded, his chiselled expression grim, his pale eyes as hard and cold as flint. “Your foresight, Tanaka,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, “continues to be distressingly, if predictably, and I must admit, increasingly useful, accurate. They create desperation, they foster internal division, then they will undoubtedly offer just enough insufficient relief to maintain a semblance of control, all while callously, dispassionately observing how we react – who breaks under the pressure, who fights for scraps, who leads, who crumbles. It is a classic, if particularly cruel and inhumane, method of psychological assessment and brutal social control.”
And indeed, just as Kyouya had so cynically predicted, just as tensions in the camp reached a fever pitch, when open, violent fights were beginning to break out with alarming regularity over hoarded scraps of often inedible food and genuine, gnawing, debilitating fear had taken firm, unshakeable root in the hearts of even the most optimistic or naive students, a supply ship was finally, dramatically, sighted on the distant horizon. A wave of ragged, desperate, almost hysterical cheers went up from the starving students. But it was, as Kyouya had so accurately predicted Arthur would have foreseen, far, far too little, and far, far too late to fully alleviate the worsening, deliberately manufactured problem. The shipment that was eventually, grudgingly unloaded onto the pier was significantly smaller than usual, the quality of the provisions noticeably, insultingly poorer – mostly low-grade dried goods, suspiciously discoloured preserved vegetables, and very little in the way of fresh produce, protein, or medical supplies. It was just enough to prevent outright, widespread starvation, just enough to quell the immediate, simmering panic and prevent a full-scale, violent breakdown of order. But it was not nearly enough to restore any sense of security, or to dispel the growing, chilling, terrifying realization among the more astute students that their very survival was fragile, tenuous, entirely dependent on the cruel, capricious whims of unseen, uncaring, and utterly malevolent forces who could withdraw their meager lifeline at will.
The Committee’s manipulative, bloodstained hand was subtle, almost invisible to the untrained eye, but to Arthur, and now to Kyouya and perhaps even Nana, it was undeniably, chillingly apparent. They were master puppeteers, coolly, dispassionately orchestrating events from afar, content to let hunger, fear, and profound desperation do their brutal, dehumanizing work, systematically weeding out the weak, identifying potential threats or future assets, all under the carefully constructed, plausible guise of unfortunate, unavoidable, and entirely unforeseen logistical circumstances.
Michiru Inukai, though still physically weak from her own miraculous, near-fatal ordeal, instinctively, selflessly shared her meagre, often insufficient portions with those students she felt were more in need, particularly the younger, more frightened ones, her innate, unwavering kindness a small, flickering, precious candle of compassion in the rapidly encroaching darkness of their desperate, deteriorating situation. Nana Hiiragi, her own internal, unspoken torment a constant, silent, brooding companion, often, almost furtively, supplemented Michiru’s share with her own, a quiet, almost unconscious act of profound, desperate atonement, her gaze when she looked at Michiru a complex, almost painful mixture of overwhelming guilt, profound awe, and a fierce, new-found, almost suffocating protectiveness.
Arthur Ainsworth, watching them both, felt a strange, almost imperceptible, yet undeniable shift in the island’s oppressive, death-haunted atmosphere. Nana’s murderous, Committee-ordained crusade, for the moment at least, seemed to be on hold, overshadowed, perhaps even temporarily derailed, by this new, more widespread, and insidious threat of starvation, and by the profound, ongoing emotional upheaval of Michiru Inukai’s impossible, miraculous return. But he knew, with a weary, bone-deep certainty, that the Committee’s cruel, inhuman game was far from over. This was merely a new, more subtle, perhaps even more sadistic phase, a different kind of insidious pressure designed to test them all, to break them down, to see what, if anything, of value emerged from the unforgiving, brutal crucible of manufactured desperation. And Arthur suspected, with a cold, sickening dread that settled deep in the marrow of his bones, that the tests, the trials, the suffering, were only just beginning, and were destined to get harder, more brutal, and far more unforgiving.
