Chapter 22: Mainland Purgatory
Chapter 22: Mainland Purgatory
The mainland was a brutal, disorienting awakening into a new kind of hell. Stripped of the insular, albeit perilous, structure of the island academy, and now, crucially, without his phone translator which had been casually confiscated by a bored Committee agent during the chaotic disembarkation, Arthur found himself utterly adrift in a sea of indifferent, uncomprehending faces and a language that was now an almost impenetrable barrier. The yen he’d had in “Kenji Tanaka’s” school uniform pockets had been minimal and was quickly exhausted on a few meagre portions of rice balls. He was just another nameless, homeless youth, lost and invisible in the sprawling, pitiless concrete jungle of a large Japanese port city. His limited, halting Japanese, learned through painful necessity on the island, was woefully inadequate for navigating this complex new world.
Days blurred into a miserable, exhausting cycle of gnawing hunger, damp cold, and the constant, weary, often fruitless search for some form of shelter from the elements or a discarded, half-eaten meal in a fast-food restaurant’s overflowing bin. He slept in darkened alleyways that stank of stale urine and rotting garbage, under the echoing concrete arches of bridges, the ever-present fear of discovery by police patrols or less savory, predatory elements of the city’s underbelly a constant, unwelcome companion. He missed Michiru with an ache that was a physical pain in his chest; her quiet presence, her unwavering kindness, their shared, fragile peace during the last island break, had been a small, precious light in his otherwise oppressive darkness. Now, that light was extinguished, and he was stumbling blindly.
A few desperate, soul-crushing weeks into this miserable existence, as he was huddled in a damp shop doorway, trying to escape a biting, persistent late summer rain, a sleek, anonymous black car with tinted windows purred to a silent halt beside him. A man in a sharp, impeccably tailored dark suit emerged, holding a large black umbrella with practiced ease, shielding himself as he approached. He addressed Arthur by his island name, his Japanese precise and formal.
“Tanaka Kenji-kun?” the man inquired, his voice polite but utterly devoid of warmth or inflection, his eyes cold and appraising as they took in Arthur’s ragged, rain-soaked appearance. “My employer has taken an active interest in your current welfare. He understands, through various channels, that you may be… experiencing some temporary difficulties adjusting to mainland life.” He paused, allowing Arthur to absorb the implications of being so easily found. “He is, therefore, prepared to offer you refuge, assistance, a chance to rebuild your life under more… favorable circumstances.”
Arthur stared at the man, then at the opulent, waiting car, a stark symbol of power and influence in this grimy, indifferent street. He didn’t need his phone to translate the chilling intent behind the polite words. This was the Committee. This was Tsuruoka, reaching out with a silken, poisoned glove. “Who… who is your employer?” Arthur managed, his own voice raspy and weak from disuse, the Japanese words clumsy and heavily accented.
“A concerned benefactor,” the man replied smoothly, his expression unchanging. “He believes that Talented individuals like yourself, particularly those who have endured the… unique rigors of the island program, deserve ongoing support and guidance, not abandonment.”
Arthur almost choked on a bitter, hysterical laugh. Support. Guidance. From the very people who ran a death camp for unsuspecting, Talented teenagers. “Tell your ‘concerned benefactor’,” Arthur said, the English words a sudden, angry torrent from his lips, before he caught himself and forced out a stumbling, defiant Japanese reply, “that I… I appreciate the offer… but I prefer to manage my own affairs. I require no assistance.”
The man’s thin lips curved into the faintest, most chilling of smiles. “A most regrettable decision, Tanaka-kun. My employer is not accustomed to having his… generous offers so readily dismissed. This opportunity may not present itself again.” He produced a plain, unmarked white card from his inner pocket, offering it to Arthur. It held a single, untraceable phone number. “Should you reconsider your position.” Then, with a slight, almost imperceptible bow, he returned to his car, which slid silently away into the rain-swept streets, leaving Arthur alone once more, shivering in the damp doorway, the card quickly turning to sodden pulp in his trembling hand. He knew, with absolute certainty, that he’d made the right, the only, choice, but the brief, chilling contact, the effortless demonstration of their reach, left him profoundly shaken and with a renewed sense of being hunted.
Meanwhile, many miles away, Commander Tsuruoka was indeed displeased. Not only had this Kenji Tanaka anomaly refused his "generous" offer of controlled reintegration, but Nana Hiiragi, his once-star asset, was proving increasingly problematic, her operational effectiveness compromised by sentimentality and doubt. During a particularly harsh, psychologically invasive debriefing session following her return from the island after the truncated second year, Tsuruoka informed Nana that her next assignment would be a return to the island academy, with a new, carefully selected intake of students. He then fed her a meticulously constructed, entirely false narrative: “Kenji Tanaka has become a dangerous rogue element, Hiiragi. His so-called prescient abilities are unstable, making him a unpredictable threat. He has evaded all our attempts at compassionate control and assistance. He is now, regrettably, considered a significant threat to the integrity of the program, potentially even to wider national security interests if his abilities fall into the wrong hands. Your primary, non-negotiable objective for the upcoming term will be his swift and permanent elimination. There will be no failures this time. Is that understood?” Nana, still reeling from her own recent traumas and Tsuruoka’s chilling manipulations regarding Mai, had listened with a pale face, her mind a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and a growing, terrifying dread. Arthur, a threat to national security? The haunted, weary boy who had so tenderly cared for Michiru’s lifeless body? It didn’t track, not at all, yet Tsuruoka’s orders were absolute, backed by the implicit threat of unimaginable consequences should she disobey.
Arthur, entirely oblivious to Nana’s new, horrifying directive concerning him, eventually, through sheer, desperate persistence, found work. It was grueling, back-breaking, spirit-crushing labour on a sprawling construction site on the city’s outskirts, hauling bags of cement, shoveling rubble, mixing concrete under the relentless summer sun. The pay was insultingly minimal, barely enough for a shared, flea-ridden bunk in a crowded, squalid flophouse that reeked of stale sweat and cheap alcohol, and a daily bowl of watery, tasteless noodles. His days became a monotonous, exhausting blur of brutal physical exertion and profound mental despair. He was Kenji Tanaka, anonymous construction grunt, his past life as Arthur Ainsworth, respected (if unfulfilled) accounts clerk, a fading, almost unbelievable dream; his time on the island, with its constant terror but also its strange, intense connections, a recurring, vivid nightmare. He thought often, achingly, of Michiru, wondering where the Committee had taken her, if she was safe, if he would ever see her gentle smile again. The hope of it was a distant, flickering, almost extinguished candle in the vast darkness of his current existence. The irony of his current occupation, he sometimes thought with a bitter twist of his lips, was that this was the kind of life Kyouya Onodera had apparently endured before his own arrival on that cursed island.
His miserable reprieve, such as it was, didn’t last. One sweltering evening, as he trudged wearily back towards the dubious sanctuary of the flophouse, his body aching from head to toe, his spirit numb with exhaustion, a dark, unmarked van screeched to a halt beside him on the deserted, dusty road. Before he could even register the threat, before he could think to run, several grim-faced figures in plain, dark clothes erupted from its sliding door and bundled him inside with brutal, practiced efficiency. He struggled instinctively, a desperate, futile thrashing, but they were strong, their movements coordinated, their grips like iron. A rough cloth, smelling faintly of chemicals, was pressed hard over his face, a sweet, cloying, sickeningly artificial scent filled his nostrils, and the ugly, indifferent world dissolved into a suffocating, unwelcome blackness.
He awoke, gagging and disoriented, in a bare, sterile, windowless room, strapped tightly to a hard metal chair. A single, painfully bright spotlight shone directly into his face, making him squint. Tsuruoka himself wasn’t present – Arthur was clearly not yet deemed worthy of the commander’s personal attention for this particular stage of his “re-education” – but a subordinate, a cold-eyed, stern-faced woman in a severe, dark military-style uniform, stood before him, her arms crossed, her expression devoid of any discernible emotion.
“Tanaka Kenji,” she stated, her voice flat, impersonal, chillingly devoid of inflection. She consulted a thin file in her hand. “Or perhaps, given your rather… unusual background, you currently prefer the designation Arthur Ainsworth?” She didn’t elaborate on how they might know his original name; the casual, confident implication of their far-reaching, invasive intelligence network was, in itself, a potent form of intimidation. “You have proven to be a persistent, and rather tiresome, inconvenience, Mr. Ainsworth. You were given a generous opportunity to cooperate with our organization. You unwisely declined.”
She took a step closer, her shadow falling over him. “Our organization has a significant, long-term investment in the island program, and its successful outcomes. Uncontrolled, unpredictable variables such as yourself cannot, and will not, be tolerated indefinitely. You will be returning to the island academy for the next academic year, with the new intake of students.” Her lips curved into a smile that held no warmth, only a cold, clinical menace. “Consider this your final opportunity to demonstrate your potential utility to the Committee. Or, failing that,” her smile widened fractionally, “to be… neutralized, shall we say, in a more controlled, predictable, and entirely deniable environment. The choice, as they say, is yours. Though, I suspect, largely illusory.”
Arthur said nothing. There was nothing left to say. He was trapped, a terrified, exhausted pawn being forcibly moved back onto the bloodstained, treacherous board.
The journey back to the island was a disorienting, humiliating blur of sedatives, blindfolds, and the gruff, dispassionate presence of his Committee guards. When he finally stumbled off the transport vessel onto the chillingly familiar pier, the sight of the imposing school buildings, nestled amidst the island’s unnervingly lush, verdant landscape, filled him with a profound, soul-deep sense of dread and utter resignation. A new intake of students, fresh, innocent faces full of naive hope or nervous apprehension, were already disembarking from another, larger ferry, their excited chatter a grotesque counterpoint to his own internal despair. The Third School Year was about to begin, and Arthur Ainsworth knew, with a terrifying, inescapable certainty, that he was now not just an unwilling observer or a clumsy, desperate interferer, but a designated, marked target. And this time, he had no phone, no easy means of communication, and very few allies left.
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Nana is an evil little bitch
Chapter 3: Nana's Arrival and a Glimpse of the Future
The intervening three days passed in a blur of anxious anticipation for Arthur. He went through the motions of school life, his phone his constant companion, his mind a whirl of half-remembered anime plots and desperate, improbable strategies. He tried to engage Nanao Nakajima in brief, awkward conversations, hoping to build some semblance of trust, some foundation for the warning he knew he’d have to deliver. Nanao, in turn, seemed mostly bewildered by the persistent, if stilted, attention from the strange new student.
Then, on the third day, during morning homeroom, Mr. Saito clapped his hands together with an air of forced cheerfulness that did little to dispel the underlying tension Arthur constantly felt. “Class, I have a happy announcement! Our two remaining new students have arrived safely on the island and will be joining us today. Please, let’s give a warm welcome first to Hiiragi Nana-san!”
The classroom door slid open with a soft rattle, and she walked in. Nana Hiiragi. It was as if a switch had been flipped, illuminating the room with a manufactured, almost painfully bright effervescence. Her vibrant pink hair, tied into energetic twin tails that seemed to defy gravity, bounced with every step. Her smile was wide, dazzling, a perfectly crafted confection of innocence and warmth. Her eyes, large and a startling shade of violet, sparkled with what appeared to be genuine excitement. She was, Arthur had to concede with a sickening lurch in his stomach, utterly disarming. A beautifully packaged viper.
“Hello everyone!” Nana chirped, her voice as sweet and bubbly as her appearance. She executed a perfect, graceful bow. “I’m Nana Hiiragi! I’m so, so excited to be here and to make lots and lots of new friends! Please take good care of me!”
A wave of welcoming murmurs, tinged with admiration, swept through the classroom. Even from his seat near the back, Arthur could feel the pull of her charisma, the almost magnetic quality of her feigned openness. He gripped his phone tightly under his desk, his knuckles white. This was her. The killer.
“And,” Mr. Saito continued, beaming as if he’d personally orchestrated this delightful addition to their class, “we also have Onodera Kyouya-kun joining us today.”
The second arrival was Nana’s diametric opposite, a study in stark contrasts. Kyouya Onodera entered not with a bounce, but with a quiet, almost sullen deliberation. His shock of white hair was striking against the dark uniform, his features sharp, his expression impassive, almost bored. His pale eyes, however, were anything but vacant; they swept the room with a quick, coolly analytical scrutiny that seemed to miss nothing, lingering for a fraction of a second longer on Arthur before moving on. Instead of a bow, he offered a curt, almost imperceptible nod. “Kyouya Onodera,” he stated, his voice flat and devoid of inflection. “My Talent is immortality. Try not to make my life too inconvenient for me.”
His blunt, almost arrogant pronouncement, so different from Nana’s saccharine greeting, sent another ripple of whispers through the class – this time, a mixture of surprise and perhaps a little intimidation. Arthur watched him intently. Kyouya, the relentless investigator, the logical counterpoint to Nana’s emotional manipulations. A potential ally, perhaps, if Arthur could ever figure out how to breach that wall of icy indifference, and if Kyouya didn’t decide Arthur himself was too much of an inconvenient anomaly.
The new arrivals were seated – Nana, naturally, secured a spot near the front, perfectly positioned to engage with the teacher and her classmates. Kyouya, with an air of someone deliberately seeking solitude, chose an empty desk near the back, not far from Arthur, a silent, brooding presence.
Lessons resumed, a drone of unfamiliar Japanese Arthur mostly tuned out, his attention almost entirely consumed by Nana. He watched her feigned attentiveness in class, the way she subtly charmed those around her during the brief breaks between periods, her eyes occasionally, thoughtfully, flicking towards him – the “other” new student, the one with the strange, vaguely unsettling Talent. He knew she’d be assessing him, filing him away, classifying him. Threat, tool, or irrelevant? Her survival, her mission, would depend on such categorizations.
The inevitable confrontation, or rather, Nana’s carefully orchestrated initial probe, came at lunchtime. The canteen was a cacophony of clattering trays and boisterous chatter. Arthur had found a relatively quiet corner, nursing a bowl of ramen that tasted like salty dishwater to his unaccustomed palate, his mind racing. He saw her approaching, weaving through the crowded tables with a practiced ease, a bright, innocent smile fixed on her face, a tray laden with a surprisingly modest meal in her hands.
“Tanaka-kun, isn’t it?” Nana said, her voice perfectly pitched to sound friendly, open, and just a little bit shy. She gestured with her chopsticks to the empty seat opposite him. “Do you mind if I join you? It’s all a bit overwhelming, being new and not knowing anyone.” Her eyes sparkled with that manufactured sincerity.
Arthur swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm noodles that suddenly felt like a knot of lead in his stomach. He knew this wasn’t a casual encounter. This was an assessment. He managed a stiff nod and a quiet, “どうぞ (Douzo - Please),” through his phone, which he already had open on the table beside his bowl, a habit he’d quickly adopted.
“Thank you so much!” She settled down, her movements fluid and graceful. For a few moments, she ate with a delicate, almost bird-like appetite, then looked up, her head tilted in an expression of artless curiosity. “So, Tanaka-kun, some of the others were saying you have a very… unique Talent. Something about seeing the future?”
Here it was. The opening gambit. He’d known it was coming, but the directness of it still set his nerves on edge. He took a slow, deliberate breath, feigning a slight weariness, hoping to project an image of someone burdened by an inconvenient gift rather than a terrified imposter. “Sometimes,” he replied, his phone translating his carefully chosen English word. “It’s not particularly reliable.”
“Oh, but it sounds absolutely fascinating!” Nana pressed, her violet eyes wide with perfectly feigned intrigue. “I’m so curious about everyone’s abilities. I was wondering… if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you… could you perhaps… try it with me? I’d be so incredibly interested to know what you might see!”
Arthur stalled, pretending to consider her request, his mind racing. This was a test, a dangerous one. She wanted to gauge his abilities, see if his “Talent” could be a threat to her, perhaps even subtly intimidate him if his “vision” was negative or too accurate. His fabricated Talent was his only shield and, potentially, his most dangerous weapon. He had to play this perfectly. He needed to give her something that was specific enough to be memorable and unsettling, vague enough to be unverifiable, and perhaps, just perhaps, something that might subtly nudge her in a direction that could be useful to him, or at least disruptive to her. The directives from the original prompt about Nana’s potential bisexuality and Michiru’s significance came to mind. This was his chance to plant a very strange, very specific seed.
“It can be… rather unpleasant,” he warned, his translated voice deliberately flat and devoid of enthusiasm. “And the things I see are often… intensely personal.”
“Oh, I don’t mind a bit!” Nana insisted, leaning forward slightly, her smile unwavering, a picture of brave curiosity. “I’m very resilient!”
Resilient enough to handle a fabricated, deeply uncomfortable future? We’ll see, Arthur thought grimly. He sighed internally. There was no avoiding this. “Very well, Hiiragi-san.” He put down his chopsticks, the cheap wood suddenly feeling slick in his sweaty palm. “As I mentioned in class, physical contact is usually required.”
Nana immediately extended her hand across the small table, palm up. Her skin was smooth, her fingers slender and well-manicured. The hand of a practiced, efficient killer. Arthur hesitated for a fraction of a second, the thought of touching her sending a wave of revulsion through him, then, steeling himself, he placed his own slightly trembling hand lightly on hers. Her skin was cool. He closed his eyes, feigning deep concentration, focusing on the fabricated narrative he’d mentally constructed – a blend of seemingly benign domesticity with a sudden, unsettling twist designed to unnerve her and, perhaps, to subtly foreshadow Michiru’s eventual importance.
He began to speak, his voice low, dictating the words into his phone in English, letting the device translate phrase by phrase into Japanese. “I see… a considerable time from now. Perhaps… forty years.” He paused, as if struggling to bring a hazy image into focus. “There’s a house… a comfortable, sunlit home. A garden outside, flowers blooming. Inside… there is a photograph on a mantelpiece.” He let the silence stretch for a beat. “It’s you… older, of course. Lines around your eyes, but you’re smiling. Beside you, a man… your husband, I presume. And two young girls… your daughters. They look happy.” He offered this initial, idyllic scene as bait, something universally desired.
He felt a slight, almost imperceptible relaxation in Nana’s hand under his. Her smile, he guessed without looking, would have softened a fraction, a flicker of something almost wistful in her eyes.
Then, he introduced the shift. “But then… the scene changes. You are leaving that house. The older you. Your husband… he waves you off from the doorway. There’s a profound sadness in his eyes, a resignation.” He frowned, as if puzzled by the vision. “You get into a black, official-looking car… a government vehicle, I think.” He continued, building the new scenario. “You are driven to a large, imposing building. All stone and marble, very grand. The kanji on the entrance plaque… I cannot read them from this distance, too ornate.”
He let the silence hang again, then injected a note of confusion. “You are in a spacious, well-lit room. Marble floors, high ceilings, echoing slightly. You’re looking at some notes, official-looking documents spread on a large desk. You seem… preoccupied. Then… a woman approaches you.” He paused dramatically. “She has… white, very fluffy hair.” He made sure his translated voice carried a note of slight surprise, as if this detail were unexpected. “She speaks to you. You look up, you smile at her. A different kind of smile than the one in the photograph. And then… you lean in and… you kiss her. Passionately. On the lips.”
He opened his eyes abruptly, pulling his hand back from hers as if he’d received an electric shock. He looked away, deliberately breaking eye contact, feigning acute discomfort and embarrassment. “I had to stop,” he mumbled, his voice, via the phone, sounding strained and slightly breathless. “It was becoming… extremely embarrassing. Far too intimate. I apologize.”
Nana was staring at him, her cheeks flushed a delicate, undeniable pink. The wide, innocent smile was gone, replaced by a look of stunned surprise that quickly morphed into something more complex, more calculating, as her mind raced to process the bizarre, explicit details. She recovered with astonishing speed, forcing a slightly shaky, overly bright laugh. “My goodness, Tanaka-kun!” she exclaimed, fanning her face with her hand in a gesture of flustered amusement. “What a… truly vivid imagination… or rather, Talent! A husband, daughters… and then… well!” She giggled again, a little too loudly. “Quite the scandalous future you’ve painted for me! How… interesting!”
Her mind, Arthur knew, would be a whirlwind. Was this real? A bizarre trick? Was he trying to mock her, to unsettle her? The detail about the white, fluffy-haired woman… it was meaningless to her now, an irrelevant, almost comical detail in a strange prediction. But Arthur had planted the seed. Michiru Inukai, with her cloud of soft, white hair, wasn’t yet a significant figure in Nana’s world, but she would be. And perhaps, just perhaps, this deeply personal, strangely specific “prediction” might resurface in Nana’s mind when their paths eventually, tragically, intertwined. It was a long shot, a desperate gamble based on fragmented knowledge and a wild hope.
“As I said, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur reiterated through his phone, keeping his gaze determinedly downcast, playing the part of the embarrassed seer. “Unpleasant glimpses. Unreliable. Often intensely personal. I am sorry if it caused you any discomfort.”
“Not at all, Tanaka-kun! Not at all!” Nana trilled, her composure almost fully restored, though her eyes, when they rested on him, now held a new, sharp, speculative watchfulness. “It was… certainly memorable.” She picked at her food for another moment, then pushed her tray back with a decisive movement and stood. “Well, I really should go and try to mingle a bit more, make some more friends! It was truly lovely chatting with you!”
With another bright, slightly forced smile, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the lunchtime throng. Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, his hand still tingling faintly from the brief contact with hers. Round one, he thought, his stomach still churning, had been a qualified, terrifying success. He’d given her a story so outlandish yet specific that she wouldn’t easily dismiss it. He’d subtly hinted at a future that played on universal desires while injecting a disorienting, personal element designed to lodge itself in her subconscious. And he’d survived the first direct probe from the island’s apex predator.
He looked down at his own hand, the one that had touched Nana’s. It felt cold, contaminated. He had survived. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that Nana Hiiragi was far from finished with Kenji Tanaka and his inconvenient, embarrassing glimpses into the future.
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 36: An Idea Forged in Unreality II
He looked at them, his gaze steady, his heart pounding in his chest. “It’s a long shot. A horribly dangerous, probably insane long shot. But it’s a start. It’s an idea. And right now, frankly, it’s the only one I have that doesn’t involve us just… waiting in this damp, cold cave for Tsuruoka’s agents to eventually find us and pick us off one by one.”
He let out a slow breath, the weight of his own audacious proposal settling upon him. He, Arthur Ainsworth, former accounts clerk, a man whose most daring act in his previous life had probably been disputing a parking ticket, was now seriously suggesting infiltrating a secret government death camp for super-powered teenagers to foment rebellion based on a half-remembered Japanese comic book. The sheer, unadulterated madness of it was almost enough to make him laugh, or weep. It was hardly a board meeting strategy session back in… well, anywhere remotely normal, he thought with a grim internal shake of his head. The utter bizarreness of asking a group of traumatized children and young adults for ‘better ideas’ on how to dismantle a tyrannical shadow regime, huddled in a makeshift shelter in what felt like a never-ending, surreal, and increasingly dangerous May… if he wasn’t living this waking nightmare, he would never in a million years believe it.
Arthur ran a hand through his already dishevelled hair. “Look,” he said, his voice infused with a weary but unyielding earnestness, “anything we decide to do, anything we can do, it won’t be quick. And it certainly won’t be easy.” He met their wide, stunned eyes one by one. “But something needs to be done. We can’t just hide here forever. We can’t let Tsuruoka and The Committee win, not after everything, not after what they’ve done, what they plan to do.”
He squared his shoulders, a flicker of the old, pragmatic Englishman surfacing through the layers of trauma and disbelief. “That’s my proposal. My… one idea.” He offered a small, almost apologetic shrug. “Unless, of course, anyone else has any better ideas?”
The fire crackled, its small, hungry sounds loud in the sudden, profound silence. The weight of his words, the sheer, almost suicidal audacity of his plan, hung heavy and palpable in the damp, smoky air of the cave. Arthur had laid his desperate, improbable strategy on the table. Now, he could only wait for their reaction, for their judgment, for their decision on whether to embrace this madness, or to seek another, perhaps even more perilous, path.
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.
Chapter 14: Sacrifice at the Docks
Arthur’s mind raced, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he pounded the worn pathway leading away from the deceptively cheerful gymnasium. The distant, tinny music of the leaving party faded behind him, replaced by the frantic thudding of his own heart and the lonely sigh of the wind whistling through the island’s sparse, salt-stunted trees. He had to calculate where Rentaro would take Michiru, where Nana, in her desperate pursuit, would inevitably follow. The boat docks – isolated, exposed, offering few escape routes and an abundance of shadowy hiding places – loomed large and ominous in his mind as the most logical, and therefore most horrifying, stage for the unfolding confrontation.
He sprinted towards the harbour, his unfamiliar teenage legs burning with the unaccustomed exertion, his phone clutched tightly in his hand, though he had no time for the laborious process of translation now. The air grew colder, tasting of salt and damp, decaying wood as he neared the coast.
He arrived, breathless and his chest aching, just as the scene at the end of the longest, most dilapidated pier reached its horrifying crescendo. Silhouetted against the dull, bruised pewter of the overcast evening sky, Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s spectral form – a shimmering, translucent duplicate of his arrogant human self – had Michiru Inukai cornered against the rotting railings. Razor-sharp, crystalline projectiles, like shards of malevolent ice, hovered menacingly in the air around him, glinting faintly in the dim light. Michiru was crying, her small body trembling, her face a mask of pure terror, but even so, she seemed to be trying to shield herself, a tiny, defiant figure against a monstrous, ethereal threat.
Nana Hiiragi stood between them, a fierce, protective tigress in a party dress. Her usual neat pink pigtails were askew, her clothes torn in several places, and a dark bruise was blooming on her cheekbone, but her violet eyes blazed with a desperate, almost feral fury Arthur had never witnessed in her before – not the cold, calculating fury of an assassin about to make a kill, but something raw, deeply personal, and utterly protective. She was intercepting Rentaro’s psychic attacks, her own movements preternaturally quick and agile, dodging and weaving, but she was clearly outmatched, her physical efforts largely ineffective against the intangible, relentlessly attacking projection that could still, somehow, inflict real harm upon her.
“You won’t touch her, Tsurumigawa!” Nana snarled, her voice hoarse and strained as she narrowly dodged a volley of shimmering blades that sliced through the air where she’d been a split second before. One of the shards grazed her arm, drawing a thin line of blood.
“She ruined everything!” Rentaro’s projected voice was a distorted, inhuman screech, filled with venom and thwarted rage. “She deserves to die for her meddling! And you too, Class Rep, for getting in my way!”
Just as Rentaro’s astral form lunged forward with a particularly vicious-looking ethereal spear, its crystalline point aimed directly at Michiru’s heart, Nana, with a desperate cry, shoved Michiru violently aside. The smaller girl stumbled, falling hard onto the rough wooden planks of the pier. The spectral weapon, impossibly, plunged deep into Nana’s side. Nana gasped, a choked, pain-filled, liquid sound, her eyes flying wide with shock and disbelief. She stumbled, her hand instinctively going to the phantom wound in her side, though no spectral blood flowed from the astral injury, the devastating impact on her life force, her very essence, was terrifyingly apparent. Her face began to pale with an alarming rapidity.
At that exact, critical moment, Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s shimmering projection flickered violently, like a faulty hologram. It let out a final, agonized, drawn-out shriek that seemed to tear through the very air, then dissolved into nothingness, vanishing as if it had never been. Kyouya. Kyouya Onodera had found him. He had found Rentaro’s hidden, vulnerable physical body and neutralized the threat. Arthur let out a shaky, almost sob-like breath of relief for that small, vital mercy, but his gaze was fixed, horrified, on Nana, who was collapsing slowly to her knees, her face now a ghastly, waxy white.
Michiru scrambled to Nana’s side, her face streaked with tears and grime, her voice a desperate, broken wail. “Nana-chan! Nana-chan, no! Please, no!”
Arthur finally reached them, his chest heaving, his own terror a cold, hard knot in his stomach. He saw the life visibly draining from Nana’s eyes, the way her body was becoming limp. He saw the way Michiru was looking at her – a dawning, terrible understanding mixed with a desperate, almost fanatical resolve. He knew, with a sudden, sickening certainty, what Michiru was going to do. Her healing Talent… he remembered the whispers, the theories about its ultimate, desperate application. It could, some said, even bring back the recently departed, but only at the ultimate cost: the user’s own life force.
“Michiru, no!” Arthur yelled, the words tearing from him in raw, desperate, unthinking English, forgetting the phone, forgetting the language barrier, forgetting everything but the impending, pointless tragedy unfolding before his eyes. He lunged forward, his hands outstretched, trying to pull her away from Nana’s rapidly cooling body. “Don’t do it! You’ll die! It’s not worth it!”
But Michiru was lost in her grief, her loyalty, her terrible, loving determination. She barely seemed to register his presence, his frantic, foreign words. Shaking her head, her cloud of fluffy white hair matted with tears and sea spray, she gently, almost absently, pushed his restraining hands away. “She saved me, Tanaka-kun,” she whispered, her voice trembling but resolute, her gaze fixed on Nana’s still face. “She saved my life. I have to… I have to save her. It’s the only way.”
Ignoring Arthur’s renewed, frantic pleas, Michiru pressed her small, trembling hands against Nana’s still form, over the place where the spectral spear had struck. A soft, ethereal white light began to glow around her, emanating from her palms, then engulfing both her and Nana. The light intensified, pulsing with a gentle, almost heartbreaking rhythm, bathing the grim, windswept scene in its otherworldly luminescence. Michiru’s small body began to tremble violently, her face contorting in an agony Arthur could only imagine, but her hands remained firmly fixed on Nana, a conduit for the impossible. The light flared, becoming blindingly bright for a single, eternal moment, then, with a soft, final sigh that seemed to carry all the sorrow of the world, it receded, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
Michiru Inukai crumpled to the rough wooden planks of the pier, a small, still heap, her vibrant life force utterly extinguished.
A heartbeat later, Nana Hiiragi gasped, a ragged, shuddering intake of breath, her eyes flying open. She sat up slowly, looking around in dazed, profound confusion, her hand going to her side, where only moments before a fatal wound had been. Then, her gaze fell upon Michiru’s still, lifeless form beside her. Understanding, followed by a wave of raw, uncomprehending anguish, crashed over her. A sob, harsh, broken, and utterly devoid of artifice, tore from Nana’s throat – a sound so full of genuine, unadulterated pain, so unlike anything Arthur had ever heard from her, that it momentarily stunned him into silence. This wasn't the calculated grief she’d so expertly feigned for her previous victims; this was real, shattering, soul-deep sorrow.
Arthur stepped forward, his own face a grim mask, his earlier panic replaced by a cold, weary, and profound anger. He raised his phone, his fingers deliberately, almost violently, typing out his words.
“Well, Hiiragi,” his translated voice stated, flat and devoid of any inflection, cutting through Nana’s ragged, heartbroken sobs. She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears, her violet eyes wide with a mixture of confusion, grief, and dawning horror. “It seems you finally got what you wanted. Another Talent eliminated from this island.” Nana stared at him, her mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. “You should be rejoicing, shouldn’t you?” Arthur pressed, his voice, even through the phone, laced with a cruel, cutting sarcasm. “Or,” he paused, letting the words sink in, twisting the knife, “are some Talents worth more than others, after all?”
Nana flinched as if he had physically struck her. She looked from Arthur’s cold, accusing face back to Michiru’s peaceful, lifeless body, and a look of dawning, unutterable horror began to mix with her grief.
“I’m taking her,” Arthur’s phone continued, his voice now unwavering, filled with a cold, hard resolve. “Tsuruoka and his damned Committee won’t get their hands on her for experimentation.” He saw Nana’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly at the casual, knowing mention of Tsuruoka’s name. Yes, she knew now that he knew. The game had changed. “She deserves to be treated with dignity in death, Hiiragi, not carved up like some lab specimen for your masters to study.”
He knelt beside Michiru, his own heart aching with a profound, unexpected sorrow for this gentle, brave girl he had barely known, yet had come to care for. “You killing Tachibana… the time traveler… that was your worst, most senseless act. You couldn’t even let a dying boy like Hoshino live out what little time he had left in peace.” He looked directly at Nana, who had stopped crying now, her expression a frozen mask of shock, confusion, and a dawning, terrible guilt. “There were times, Hiiragi, so many times, I was sorely tempted to stop you permanently. To end your murderous spree myself. For Michiru’s sake, for Nanao’s, for my own damn principles, I refrained.”
He paused, then added, his voice, even through the phone’s impersonal synthesizer, laced with a profound, weary sorrow, “She deserved so much better than you. Better than any of us on this cursed island.”
Without another word, Arthur gently, carefully, scooped Michiru Inukai’s small, impossibly light, lifeless body into his arms. He stood, turned his back on the stunned, grieving, and utterly shattered Nana Hiiragi, and began the slow, heavy walk back towards the distant, uncaring lights of the school buildings. He left Nana alone on the windswept pier with the accusing ghost of her actions, the devastating weight of Michiru’s sacrifice, and the first, agonizing, unwelcome taste of genuine, heartbreaking loss. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t.
