Chapter 28: Justice, Parole, And A Ghost From The Past
Chapter 28: Justice, Parole, and a Ghost from the Past
Nana Hiiragi’s fragile, newfound resolve to confront Commander Tsuruoka, precariously bolstered by Jin Tachibana’s enigmatic counsel and Arthur Ainsworth’s devastating revelations, was tragically, almost laughably, short-lived. She had woefully underestimated the speed, the reach, and the utter ruthlessness of her former handler. Just a few desperate days after her clandestine, rain-swept meeting with Jin, as she was cautiously, almost timidly, trying to gather meager resources and formulate even the most rudimentary plan of action from the squalid sanctuary of her tiny, anonymous apartment, Tsuruoka made his decisive, inevitable move. He contacted Detective Maeda, the outwardly respectable police officer to whom the earnest, unsuspecting Akari Hozumi had so trustingly entrusted her meticulously compiled dossier of damning evidence against Nana.
“Maeda,” Tsuruoka’s voice was cold, devoid of inflection, and utterly decisive over the secure, encrypted line, “it is time to officially activate the Hiiragi case file. I want a full-scale, highly publicized manhunt. And I want her found. Quickly. Public interest in this matter is… considerable.”
The well-oiled machinery of the law, its gears greased and subtly guided by Tsuruoka’s pervasive, unseen influence, ground into motion with terrifying, unstoppable efficiency. Within hours, Nana Hiiragi’s face – a younger, more innocent-looking photograph taken from her old school records – was plastered across national news broadcasts, online forums, and police bulletins. She was branded “The Island Schoolgirl Killer,” a teenage monster who had preyed on her unsuspecting classmates. Her carefully constructed anonymity evaporated like morning mist under a harsh sun. The city, once a sprawling, indifferent refuge, transformed overnight into a vast, tightening net. Within days, her desperate attempts to change her appearance, to melt into the urban sprawl, proved futile. She was cornered in a crowded, brightly lit suburban shopping mall by an alert off-duty police officer who recognized her from a wanted poster. Her frantic, desperate attempt to flee, to lose herself in the throng of shoppers, was short-lived and brutally curtailed. Nana Hiiragi, the Committee’s former star assassin, the girl Tsuruoka had molded into a perfect weapon, was apprehended, her brief, flickering hope of confronting her tormentor on her own terms extinguished.
Her trial was a media sensation, a lurid, captivating spectacle that fed the public’s morbid fascination with youthful depravity. The damning evidence Akari Hozumi had so meticulously gathered was laid bare for all to see: chilling witness testimonies from former island students (their own traumas carefully managed and selectively presented by the prosecution), Akari’s own unnervingly precise forensic reconstructions of multiple murder scenes, and Nana’s own fragmented, tearful, partial confession made by the lake on the island. The prosecution, led by a sharp, ambitious young lawyer, painted Nana as a cold, calculating, remorseless serial killer, a monstrous aberration who had systematically preyed on her innocent, unsuspecting fellow students. The public outcry was immense, a wave of revulsion and fear. The death penalty seemed not just a possibility, but an almost foregone conclusion.
But Nana’s court-appointed lawyer, a tenacious, fiercely idealistic, and surprisingly skilled older woman named Haruka Ito, fought tirelessly, passionately, against the overwhelming tide. Ito, with a quiet dignity that often wrong-footed the more aggressive prosecution, argued for diminished responsibility. She meticulously detailed Nana’s brutal, isolated upbringing, her systematic indoctrination from a young, impressionable age, and the extreme, undeniable psychological manipulation she had endured at the hands of a shadowy, unaccountable government organization. She portrayed Nana not as an inherent monster, but as a tragic, deeply damaged victim, a child soldier psychologically tortured and molded into a weapon in a covert war she hadn’t understood, couldn’t possibly have comprehended. Nana herself, during the long, agonizing trial, remained mostly silent, a pale, hollow-eyed ghost in the defendant’s box, her demeanor one of profound numbness, punctuated by occasional, barely perceptible flickers of remorse and a deep, soul-crushing weariness. Haruka Ito’s defense was compelling, deeply unsettling to the public narrative. While it could not exonerate Nana of the terrible acts she had committed, it cast enough doubt on her sole, unmitigated culpability. The death sentence was, to the shock and outrage of many, commuted. Nana Hiiragi was instead sentenced to a lengthy, indeterminate prison term for multiple counts of culpable homicide. She disappeared into the unforgiving, anonymous depths of the penal system, her name forever synonymous with betrayal, youthful monstrosity, and the dark, hidden secrets of the nation’s clandestine operations.
Three years later, in the mild, cherry-blossom-scented spring of late 2028, Arthur Ainsworth was expertly wiping down a small, Formica-topped table in “The Corner Nook,” the bustling, unpretentious restaurant in a quiet, residential Tokyo suburb where he now worked as a waiter. He was surprisingly, almost guiltily, content. The mundane, predictable rhythm of the work – taking orders, delivering food, clearing tables, the easy, unforced banter with the regular patrons – was a soothing balm to his once-tormented soul. His Japanese, honed by years of daily immersion and supplemented by diligent attendance at informal language exchange meetups, was now reasonably fluent, his English accent a minor, charming novelty that amused the customers and his co-workers alike. He had even, cautiously, begun to make a few tentative friendships.
The island, Tsuruoka, Nana Hiiragi – they were ghosts that still haunted the periphery of his thoughts, their sharp edges softened by the healing balm of time and distance, but their presence, their impact, was undeniable. Annually, on the grim anniversary of his inexplicable, violent arrival on that cursed shore, he would make a quiet pilgrimage to a large, peaceful, and entirely anonymous public cemetery on the outskirts of the city. He didn’t know where Nana’s victims were truly buried, or if their families had even been allowed the dignity of a grave. So, he would choose a weathered, unnamed, forgotten headstone at random, lay a single, pure white chrysanthemum at its base, and talk to them, to Michiru, to Nanao, to Hoshino, to Tachibana, to Habu, even to the foolish, cruel bullies, Etsuko and Marika. He would speak to them in quiet English, recounting their small, stolen lives as he remembered them, acknowledging their needless deaths. It was his private penance, his way of remembering, of shouldering the small share of responsibility he felt for their fates.
The world outside the comforting, predictable routine of his quiet restaurant, however, was growing increasingly, palpably uneasy. News reports, both mainstream and from more fringe online sources, spoke with alarming frequency of rising anti-Talent sentiment across Japan, often fueled by isolated, sensationalized incidents of Talents losing control of their abilities or, more disturbingly, using their unique powers for overtly criminal, even terroristic, acts. Whispers, then more overt discussions, of government-run “Protective Custody and Assessment Centers” – internment camps, Arthur knew them to be, his blood running cold at the familiar, chilling euphemism – for individuals with “problematic” or “unstable” Talents were becoming more frequent, more insistent, presented as a necessary measure for public safety. The seeds of fear and division Tsuruoka and the Committee had so carefully, so cynically, sown over the years were now bearing bitter, poisonous fruit.
It was on a cool, clear spring evening, as Arthur was meticulously cashing up for the night, the familiar scent of soy sauce and grilled fish still lingering in the air, that Nana Hiiragi walked, not back into his life, but back into the turbulent, unforgiving life of the world at large. She had been paroled, her release from prison quiet, unpublicized, almost surreptitious – likely another of Tsuruoka’s intricate, inscrutable machinations, Arthur suspected. Her first act as a conditionally free woman, her gaunt face hardened by three years in the brutal, dehumanizing environment of prison, her eyes still burning with a desperate, unquenched need for truth and retribution, was not to seek anonymity or a fragile peace, but to confront her primary tormentor, the architect of her ruined life.
She found Commander Tsuruoka, as she somehow knew she would, in his heavily fortified, opulently appointed private office deep within the Committee’s impenetrable headquarters. He received her with a chillingly calm, almost paternally amused demeanor, as if her unexpected appearance was an entirely predictable, mildly entertaining diversion from his important work. Nana, older now, her youthful softness almost entirely erased, her voice raspy from disuse but her resolve like tempered steel, demanded answers – about her parents, about the Committee’s lies, about the true nature of the “Enemies of Humanity,” about everything.
Tsuruoka deflected her every accusation, her every anguished question, with infuriating, condescending ease, his words a masterclass in psychological manipulation, twisting reality, subtly shifting blame, painting Nana herself as the architect of her own misfortunes, a flawed, inherently unstable instrument who had inevitably, disappointingly, broken under pressure. He smirked, a slight, dismissive, utterly contemptuous expression that finally, irrevocably, shattered Nana’s fragile, prison-honed composure.
Consumed by years of suppressed, impotent rage, by the fresh, agonizing grief of her remembered, manipulated past, Nana lunged, not for Tsuruoka himself, but for the heavy, ornate, antique silver letter opener lying innocuously on his vast, polished mahogany desk – a poor, desperate substitute for a real weapon, but the only thing immediately at hand. She tried to stab him, to silence his maddening, condescending voice, to inflict even a fraction of the pain he had caused her. At the last possible second, Tsuruoka’s ever-present, stoic, and utterly loyal adjutant, a career military man who had served him faithfully for over two decades, threw himself in front of his boss with a shout of warning. The sharp, pointed steel of the letter opener plunged deep into the adjutant’s chest. He collapsed with a surprised, gurgling grunt, a dark, rapidly spreading stain blooming on the crisp white front of his uniform.
Tsuruoka looked down dispassionately at his dying, devoted aide, then back at Nana, who stood frozen, horrified, the bloody letter opener dropping with a clatter from her trembling, suddenly nerveless hand. A slow, cold, almost predatory smile spread across Tsuruoka’s face. “Is that all you’ve got, Hiiragi?” he taunted, his voice soft, laced with a chilling amusement. “Still so… predictably emotional. So very… disappointing.” Panic, raw and absolute, seized Nana. She had just killed again, this time an innocent man, a man who had tried to protect his monstrous boss, right in front of her nemesis, the man who held all the power. She turned and fled, stumbling from the opulent office, Tsuruoka’s derisive, mocking laughter echoing in her ears, a soundtrack to her renewed, now doubly damned, fugitive status.
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Chapter 27: The Cat's Counsel
The relentless, cold rain continued its merciless assault on the sprawling, indifferent city as Nana Hiiragi, her thin clothes plastered to her shivering frame, stumbled numbly through the labyrinthine backstreets. Arthur Ainsworth’s devastating words echoed and re-echoed in the shattered ruins of her mind, each revelation a fresh, agonizing hammer blow against the crumbling, indoctrinated edifice of her former life. Tsuruoka, her parents, the true, horrifying nature of the “Enemies of Humanity,” her own unwitting, monstrous role as a Talentless executioner in a grand, grotesque, and terrifying deception – it was too much to absorb, too much for any sane mind to bear. She was a ghost in her own stolen life, her hands, her very soul, stained with the indelible blood of those she had been so cruelly, so thoroughly, manipulated into killing. The city lights – reds, greens, whites – blurred into meaningless, swirling patterns through her tear-filled eyes, the cacophony of urban sounds a distant, irrelevant roar.
She eventually, through some dazed, unconscious homing instinct, reached her current, miserable hideout – a small, squalid, single-room apartment tucked away in a decaying, rat-infested tenement building, its grime, its anonymity, its pervasive air of neglect and despair her only shield against the world that now hunted her. As she fumbled with the rusty, ill-fitting key in the lock, a silent flash of white darted past her legs from the shadows of the crumbling stoop. The scrawny white cat from the alley, the one that had watched her and Arthur with such unnerving, almost sentient stillness, slipped silently into the room just before she could close the rickety, ill-fitting door. It padded softly across the grimy linoleum floor and settled itself on the room’s only chair, a broken-backed wooden reject, regarding her with those same intelligent, unblinking, luminous green eyes.
Soaked to the bone, shivering uncontrollably more from profound shock and existential horror than from the penetrating cold, Nana sank onto the threadbare, stained mattress that served as her bed. She stared blankly at her hands – these hands. Murderous hands. Hands that had, with such chilling efficiency, such blind obedience, snuffed out so many young lives, so many bright futures, all predicated on a foundation of monstrous, unforgivable lies. The weight of it all, the sheer, crushing, suffocating enormity of her unwitting, unforgivable crimes, pressed down on her, stealing her breath, extinguishing the last, faint embers of her will to live.
In a daze, her movements slow, almost mechanical, she rose from the mattress and walked with an unsteady gait into the tiny, grimy kitchenette alcove. Her vacant eyes fell upon a long, thin, serrated kitchen knife lying on the chipped, rust-stained draining board, its blade glinting faintly in the dim, flickering light from the single bare bulb hanging precariously from the ceiling. It seemed to beckon to her, a silent, gleaming promise of a swift, definitive, and perhaps even merciful end to her unbearable pain, her suffocating guilt, her wretched, pointless, and now utterly exposed existence. This, she thought with a strange, cold clarity, was the only atonement left to her. The only way out. She picked up the knife, its cold, surprisingly heavy metal a stark, unwelcome contrast to the feverish, chaotic turmoil raging within her. Turning the unforgiving steel blade towards her own throat, she closed her eyes, a single, silent tear escaping to trace a path through the grime on her cheek, ready, almost eager, to embrace the oblivion she so richly deserved.
Just as the cold, sharp edge of the blade kissed the delicate skin of her neck, a white blur, impossibly fast, launched itself from the shadows of the broken chair. The cat, with a surprisingly powerful, perfectly aimed leap, slammed into her outstretched arm, its small body a furry projectile of unexpected force. The knife, knocked from her nerveless grasp, clattered loudly, skittering across the grimy linoleum floor to come to rest beneath the leaking sink.
Nana gasped, her eyes flying open, her body jolting with a fresh wave of shock, this time not of horror, but of sheer, uncomprehending surprise. She stared at the white cat, which now sat a few feet away, calmly, almost nonchalantly, licking its paw, as if knocking a deadly weapon from a suicidal girl’s trembling hand was the most natural, most everyday occurrence in the world.
Then, before her disbelieving, traumatized eyes, the cat, the ordinary-looking stray from the alley, began to shimmer and change. Its form elongated, solidified, its white fur receding, its feline features melting and reforming, coalescing with an almost liquid grace into the figure of a young man with stark white hair, pale, intelligent features, and an unnervingly calm, enigmatic smile. Jin Tachibana.
Nana’s mind, already reeling from Arthur’s revelations, struggled to process this new, impossible reality. This… this was the man she had glimpsed, so briefly, so unsettlingly, in that sterile observation room at Tsuruoka’s monstrous facility, the one whose brief, intense, almost accusatory stare had inexplicably, uncomfortably, stuck in her memory. “You…” she whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible. “You were there. At Tsuruoka’s base. In that… that room. I saw you.” Jin’s faint, enigmatic smile widened almost imperceptibly. “Yes, Hiiragi Nana-san,” he said, his voice calm, melodious, entirely at odds with the squalor of the room and the suicidal despair he had just interrupted. “You are quite correct. Your observational skills remain… commendably sharp, even under duress.” A new wave of bewildered confusion, mixed with a desperate, clawing need for answers, for any kind of sense in this senseless, collapsing world, washed over her. “But… why?” she stammered, her gaze darting between him and the discarded knife. “If you’re… if you have a Talent… why would you be there? Why would you work for an organization that wants to eradicate us all?”
Jin regarded her for a long, silent moment, his pale eyes unreadable, his calm composure utterly unnerving. Then, with a graceful, almost dismissive gesture, he indicated the tiny, dilapidated bathroom cubicle in the corner of the room. “You’re soaked through to the bone, Hiiragi-san,” he observed, his tone surprisingly gentle. “You’ll catch your death of cold, or something far worse, if you remain in those wet clothes any longer. Why don’t you avail yourself of a hot shower, if such a thing is possible in this charming establishment? Find something dry to wear. Then, perhaps, we can talk. Some questions, I find, are best answered on a full stomach, and with a clearer head, don’t you think?”
An hour later, scrubbed clean, dressed in a set of surprisingly clean, if ill-fitting, clothes Jin had inexplicably produced from a small satchel he carried, Nana found herself seated opposite him in a discreet private booth in a surprisingly expensive, almost opulent restaurant, the kind of place she hadn’t imagined she’d ever set foot in again. The warm, ambient lighting, the soft, unobtrusive classical music, the starched white linen, the delicious, exquisitely prepared food Jin ordered for them both without consulting her – it was a deliberate, disorienting, almost aggressive contrast to the squalor of her hideout and the black, churning turmoil in her soul. Jin, she was beginning to understand, was a master of subtle psychological manipulation himself, though his methods seemed geared towards creating a temporary illusion of comfort and security, perhaps to disarm her, to make her more receptive to what he had to say, or simply to demonstrate a level of capability and resourcefulness that was both vaguely reassuring and deeply, profoundly unsettling.
As they ate, Jin began to speak, his voice calm, measured, almost hypnotic. He told her about Kyouya Onodera, a name she knew, a presence she had felt on the island. And then, he spoke of Kyouya’s younger sister, Rin. “Rin,” Jin explained, his gaze steady, unwavering, “was a profoundly gifted, yet deeply troubled young woman. She suffered from a severe, almost crippling depression, always felt like she was an unbearable burden to her beloved older brother, Kyouya, whom she adored with a fierce, protective loyalty.”
Nana listened, her own food forgotten, captivated, wondering with a growing sense of dread and anticipation where this unexpected, intimate narrative was leading. “Rin,” Jin continued, his voice dropping slightly, drawing her further into his confidence, “eventually reached a point where she believed she could no longer bear the weight of her own perceived inadequacy. She left Kyouya, hoping, in her own tragic way, to spare him further pain, further worry.” He paused, allowing the sadness of it to settle. “Unfortunately, Hiiragi-san, in her vulnerability, in her despair, Rin ended up falling into the insidious, waiting clutches of the Committee. She was… one of your direct predecessors, Nana. One of the talented, broken young women Commander Tsuruoka identified, indoctrinated, and meticulously trained to be an efficient, unquestioning assassin. She saw the horrors of his program firsthand, the endless lies, the soul-destroying manipulation, the casual cruelty.” He paused again, his pale eyes searching hers, letting the full, terrible implication of his words sink in. He didn’t explicitly state that he was Rin, that he had endured those horrors himself. But he implied a deep, intimate, almost unbearable knowledge. “I learned everything I now know about the Committee, about Tsuruoka’s monstrous ‘Enemies of Humanity’ project, about his methods, his ultimate goals, from Rin. What she endured… what they did to her… it motivated me. Profoundly. I decided then that I would infiltrate the Committee, that I would gather information, that I would understand the true, horrifying extent of their despicable plans, and perhaps, just perhaps, find a way to dismantle their entire bloodsoaked operation from within.”
By the end of the surprisingly elaborate meal, Nana felt a fragile, hesitant sense of something akin to hope begin to flicker within the desolate wasteland of her soul. Jin’s story, his apparent deep-seated opposition to the Committee, his calm confidence, offered an unexpected, almost unbelievable lifeline. She wasn’t entirely alone in this. There were others who knew, others who fought. She returned to her dingy, cold apartment later that night feeling slightly less burdened, her mind, though still reeling, already beginning to formulate a new, desperate, reckless plan – a plan to confront Tsuruoka directly, to wring the full, unvarnished truth from him herself, armed with the terrible, empowering knowledge that Arthur Ainsworth, and now this enigmatic Jin Tachibana, had given her.
Jin escorted her to her grimy doorstep, then, with another of his inscrutable, faint smiles and a quiet promise to be in touch, he simply melted away into the dark, rain-swept city night, leaving Nana with a fragile, newfound resolve, but also a lingering, disquieting sense of unease. She felt as though she had merely traded one form of potential manipulation for another, possibly more subtle, more complex kind. But for now, any ally, any weapon, in the desperate, coming fight against Tsuruoka and the Committee was a welcome, if deeply wary, development.
Unfortunately for Nana Hiiragi, her desperate desire for immediate confrontation, her burning need to act on this new, terrible clarity, would be her swift undoing. She didn’t realize, couldn’t possibly have known, how closely Commander Tsuruoka was already watching her every move, how quickly his invisible, inescapable net was already closing tightly around her. Her time as a fugitive was rapidly running out.
Chapter 9: Immortality and a Doomed Boy
Arthur’s grotesque and shocking presentation with Shinji’s severed head had undeniably sent profound shockwaves through the student body and the teaching staff. It had also, in its own horrific way, achieved one of his desperate objectives: Yūka Somezaki was broken, her necromantic Talent voluntarily renounced, and thus, she was no longer an immediate, practicing threat that Nana Hiiragi might feel compelled to eliminate. However, Arthur knew this act of desperate intervention wouldn’t stop Nana for long. She was a force of nature, a meticulously programmed killer, and she would simply recalibrate and move on to other names on her unseen list.
And so she did. Perhaps driven by a need to understand or neutralize one of the most overtly powerful Talents on the island, or maybe even by a flicker of genuine curiosity that occasionally surfaced beneath her assassin’s programming, Nana Hiiragi found herself accepting an unexpected invitation. Kyouya Onodera, the aloof, white-haired boy who had bluntly declared his immortality upon arrival, had invited her to his small, somewhat dilapidated house on the outskirts of the main school grounds. It was an unusual gesture from the solitary Kyouya, and Nana, ever watchful for an opportunity to assess a potential threat or gather intelligence, had agreed.
Arthur only learned of this visit later, through the island’s surprisingly efficient student rumour mill – whispers of Nana being seen heading towards Kyouya’s secluded cottage – and by his own grim piecing together of the explosive events that followed.
During Nana’s visit to Kyouya’s surprisingly cluttered and book-filled house, as she’d excused herself to use his small, old-fashioned bathroom, she was reportedly struck by an almost overwhelming olfactory assault – the cloying, combined scent of various strong, masculine toiletries: harsh antiseptic soaps, pine-scented shampoos, a bracingly powerful aftershave, all mingling in the small, poorly ventilated space. When she casually commented on the rather potent aroma, remarking that he must have a fondness for particularly fragrant products, Kyouya had merely looked blank, a slight frown of confusion on his face. He claimed, with apparent sincerity, that he didn’t smell anything particularly strong or out of the ordinary.
It was then, Arthur deduced, that Nana, with her razor-sharp observational skills and intuitive understanding of human tells, realized Kyouya Onodera suffered from anosmia – the partial or complete inability to smell. A critical weakness, hidden in plain sight.
This discovery, Arthur knew, would have immediately sparked a deadly, opportunistic idea in Nana’s cold, calculating mind. Kyouya’s older, somewhat neglected house, unlike the more modern dormitories, still utilized bottled gas for its heating and cooking appliances. Anosmia meant he wouldn’t detect a gas leak until it was far too late. It was a perfect, almost untraceable method of elimination for an otherwise unkillable target.
A day or two after Nana’s seemingly innocuous visit, a powerful, ground-shaking explosion ripped through the northern, more secluded part of the island, sending a roiling plume of black smoke billowing into the clear afternoon sky. Panic, a now familiar companion to the students, flared anew. Teachers, their faces pale with alarm, rushed towards the site of the blast. Arthur’s heart sank with a sickening thud; he knew immediately where it had occurred, what it signified. He could almost picture Nana, arriving at the scene with a carefully orchestrated display of shock and concern, perhaps even feigning an attempt to "rescue" Kyouya, all the while expecting to find his scattered, incinerated remains among the smouldering wreckage.
Instead, she would have witnessed the utterly impossible: Kyouya Onodera, emerging like a phantom from the smoking, demolished ruin of his home, his clothes scorched, his skin blackened, yet already regenerating before her very eyes. Cuts would have been sealing, burns fading to new pink skin, his white hair dishevelled but his body remaking itself with an unnerving, silent speed.
Later, Kyouya, with his characteristic, infuriating stoicism, would have calmly confirmed to a stunned, undoubtedly seething Nana that yes, he was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Her meticulously planned assassination, exploiting a cleverly deduced hidden weakness, had failed spectacularly against a Talent that trumped even her lethal precision. For Nana, it must have been a deeply frustrating, almost insulting setback, another name she couldn’t cross off her list. For Arthur, hearing the fragmented, awed accounts of the explosion and Kyouya’s miraculous survival, it was another grim confirmation of the established script, a small island of terrible predictability in the chaotic, churning sea of his new reality. Kyouya Onodera was a problem Nana couldn’t easily solve.
While Nana was grappling with the Kyouya problem and the aftershocks of Arthur’s classroom stunt, another, quieter tragedy was inexorably unfolding, one that Arthur felt with a particular, poignant helplessness: the fading life of Touichirou Hoshino. Arthur remembered Hoshino vividly from the anime – a frail, gentle-faced boy with a shy smile and a Talent for cryokinesis, who was, by his own quiet admission to a few trusted classmates, slowly, inexorably dying of an aggressive, untreatable form of cancer. His time was short, regardless of Nana Hiiragi’s murderous intervention.
Arthur felt a particular, unexpected pang of sympathy for Hoshino. He knew the boy didn’t have long, and the thought of Nana callously cutting that already tragically short life even shorter, purely to meet some unseen, monstrous quota, filled him with a quiet, impotent rage. It struck too close to home, perhaps – the specter of mortality, the unfairness of a life curtailed. He’d tried, in his awkward, phone-assisted way, to find Hoshino during breaks in the days following the Yūka incident, hoping to offer some small, stilted comfort, perhaps even a vague, reassuring “prediction” of a peaceful passing to ease the boy’s final days. But Hoshino, increasingly weak, was often secluded in his room, resting, or had simply wandered off to find a quiet spot to be alone with his thoughts and his pain. He was proving difficult to find.
And then, Arthur was too late.
News, carefully managed and somberly delivered, filtered through the school via a visibly grieving Mr. Saito: Hoshino Touichirou had been found dead. The official story, corroborated by a “traumatized” but “brave” Nana Hiiragi, was that Hoshino, in a bout of melancholic restlessness, had wandered off from the main school grounds, seeking solitude in one of the island’s many natural caves. Nana, ever the caring class representative, had noticed his absence and, filled with concern, had gone looking for him. She’d found him deep within a dark, damp cave, just as they were suddenly, inexplicably attacked by shadowy, indistinct figures – the ubiquitous “Enemies of Humanity.” Hoshino, in a final, heroic act of self-sacrifice, had apparently tried to protect Nana with his ice Talent, but had been fatally stabbed in the struggle. Nana herself, she tearfully recounted, had sustained a “defensive wound” to her forearm – a shallow, suspiciously neat cut – while “bravely” fighting off the attackers before fleeing to report the terrible tragedy.
It was a neat, almost plausible story, playing perfectly into the prevailing atmosphere of fear and paranoia that the school authorities seemed keen to cultivate. But Arthur knew the sickening truth. Nana had found Hoshino alone in that cave, likely in his final, pain-wracked hours, and had murdered him with her poisoned pen-knife, a quick, “merciful” elimination to tick another name off Tsuruoka’s list. The self-inflicted wound was merely a theatrical prop, a cynical flourish to solidify her alibi and paint herself as both a heroine and a fellow victim.
Kyouya Onodera, who had also been present among the group of students and teachers to whom Nana recounted her harrowing tale, had listened with his usual unnerving, impassive expression. But Arthur, watching from the periphery of the shocked gathering, saw the almost imperceptible narrowing of Kyouya’s eyes, the way his gaze lingered for a fraction too long on Nana’s artfully bandaged “wound.” Kyouya was suspicious. He didn’t buy Nana’s overly dramatic, conveniently vague story, not entirely. The pieces weren’t fitting together neatly enough for his sharply analytical mind.
For Arthur, Hoshino’s death, and the fabricated narrative surrounding it, was another heavy, suffocating blow. He hadn’t even been able to offer a single kind word, a moment of shared humanity. He was a man who supposedly held disruptive glimpses of the future, yet he was constantly, frustratingly outmanoeuvred by the brutal, unfolding present. He retreated to the relative anonymity of his dorm room that evening, the phone idle in his hand, the English words of frustration, grief, and self-recrimination dammed up inside him, untranslatable by any app, comprehensible only to the silent, judgmental ghosts of his own conscience. He was an unwilling passenger on a ship of fools, sailing straight into a maelstrom, able to see the waves crashing ahead but with his hands bound, unable to steer clear of the jagged, waiting rocks. The weight of his terrible knowledge, and his profound, repeated inability to act effectively on all fronts, was becoming a leaden cloak, threatening to drag him down into the depths of despair.
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 17: The Truth About Jin
The uneasy, unspoken truce that had formed between Arthur and Kyouya Onodera settled into the grim, unfolding routine of the second school year. Kyouya, armed with Arthur’s dire warnings about manufactured food shortages and impending internal conflict, became even more watchful, his movements more deliberate, his observations more acute. Arthur, for his part, continued his solitary, heartbreaking watch over Michiru Inukai’s still, unnervingly preserved form in her sealed-off dormitory room, a silent, daily ritual that did little to soothe his frayed nerves but provided a strange, painful focal point for his grief and his stubborn, almost defiant hope.
The long, isolated weeks of the inter-term break, however, had afforded him ample, unwelcome time for reflection, for sifting through the chaotic, fragmented memories of the anime that served as his cursed, unreliable roadmap through this deadly reality. He’d replayed scenes in his mind, pieced together snatches of dialogue, connected half-forgotten character arcs. One name, one enigmatic face, had begun to trouble him more insistently during those lonely vigils: Jin Tachibana. The aloof, strikingly white-haired student who had arrived later in the previous year, the one whose presence often felt… dissonant, out of sync with the other students, his pronouncements occasionally too insightful, his detachment too profound. There was a piece of the intricate, horrifying puzzle missing, a vital connection he hadn’t quite made.
Then, late one night, as he sat by Michiru’s bedside, the silence of the deserted school pressing in on him, it had clicked. A chilling cascade of forgotten details from the anime resurfaced from the depths of his recall – a complex, tragic backstory involving Jin, another student, a past conflict, and a hidden identity. It was a deeply personal revelation, one that directly, devastatingly, concerned Kyouya Onodera.
For weeks into the new term, Arthur wrestled with the knowledge, the weight of it a heavy burden. Should he tell Kyouya? Such a truth could shatter him, derail his relentless quest for his missing sister, Rin. Or, perhaps, it could provide him with a new, terrible focus. Their wary understanding was still fragile; this could destroy it, or solidify it in ways Arthur couldn’t predict. But as the food supplies visibly dwindled, as Arthur’s grim forecast began to manifest with chilling accuracy, and as Kyouya’s quiet respect for Arthur’s unwelcome prescience grew, Arthur decided he couldn’t withhold it any longer. Kyouya deserved to know, whatever the cost.
He sought out Kyouya a few weeks into the new term, finding him, as he often did, in a quiet, secluded corner of the school library, surrounded by stacks of arcane-looking texts. The initial whispers of dwindling food supplies in the canteen, just as Arthur had “predicted” to him, were now becoming anxious murmurs throughout the student body, adding a new, sharp layer of tension to the already oppressive school atmosphere.
“Onodera,” Arthur began, his phone held ready, his expression grim. He didn’t bother with pleasantries; their interactions were rarely burdened by them. “There’s something else. Something more… personal. It concerns… your sister, Rin.”
Kyouya looked up from the ancient, leather-bound volume he was studying, his pale eyes instantly sharpening, losing their distant, scholarly focus. His sister. Rin was his driving motivation, the unwavering, singular reason he endured the horrors of this island, the burning core of his relentless search for answers. Any mention of her, however oblique, was guaranteed to command his absolute, undivided attention.
“What about her?” Kyouya’s voice was low, dangerously controlled, but with an unmistakable undercurrent of coiled intensity. He placed his book down carefully, his full attention now fixed on Arthur.
Arthur took a deep, steadying breath. This was it. There was no easy way to deliver such news. “Your sister, Rin…” he began, his phone translating his carefully chosen, hesitant English words into precise, unpitying Japanese. “I believe she is here, Onodera. On this island. But not… not as you would expect her to be.” He paused, letting the synthesized words hang in the heavy silence of the library alcove. “She’s here, I believe, as Jin Tachibana.”
Kyouya’s stoic, almost carved expression finally, catastrophically, broke. A flicker of utter disbelief, then a dawning, rapidly escalating wave of horrified understanding, washed across his usually impassive features. He said nothing, his lips parting slightly as if to speak, then closing again. His knuckles were bone-white where he gripped the edge of the heavy wooden table.
Arthur pressed on, his own heart aching with a reluctant sympathy for the pain he was inflicting, laying out the grim theory his fragmented, cursed knowledge had pieced together. “The real Jin Tachibana… I believe he was a student here some years ago. There was a… a significant conflict on this island. A civil war, of sorts, between factions of students, quite possibly triggered by the kind of manufactured food shortages I warned you about. A previous iteration of the Committee’s cruel experiments in social pressure.” He watched Kyouya absorb this, his face pale as death, his eyes wide and haunted. “During that conflict, I believe the real Jin Tachibana was severely injured, perhaps critically, while trying to protect your sister, Rin. He might be hospitalized somewhere on the mainland now, brain-damaged beyond recovery… or he could be dead. My… glimpses… are unclear on his precise fate.”
He saw Kyouya swallow hard, his gaze dropping to the scarred surface of the table, his mind clearly reeling from the brutal implications of Arthur’s words. “Rin… your sister…” Arthur continued, his phone’s voice softening almost imperceptibly, though the words themselves remained sharp as glass. “She was deeply troubled, wasn’t she? You’ve mentioned her struggles. Prone to depression, perhaps even suicidal ideations? Burdened by a profound sense of guilt, especially if Jin, this other boy, was so grievously hurt, or even died, protecting her.” Arthur’s phone conveyed the gentle but firm assertion. “After that incident, perhaps needing an identity to shield herself, a way to survive in the aftermath of whatever horrors she witnessed, or perhaps even found and manipulated by the Committee who saw a broken, malleable asset… she took on Jin Tachibana’s name, his persona. The Jin Tachibana we see now, the one who walks these halls… I believe that is your sister, Rin, hiding in plain sight, perhaps even from herself.”
The silence in the library alcove was thick, suffocating, broken only by the distant, careless rustle of someone turning pages in another section. Kyouya stared at the table, his shoulders slumped, as if the weight of Arthur’s revelation was a physical burden pressing him down. His quest, his entire reason for being on this island, had just been twisted into a horrifying, unrecognizable shape.
“Why?” Kyouya finally managed to choke out, his voice barely a whisper, raw with a pain and confusion that cut Arthur to the core. “Why would she do that? Why not… why not come to me, if she was here?”
“Fear, perhaps,” Arthur’s phone translated softly. “Profound, overwhelming guilt. A belief that she was a burden, as you’ve sometimes feared she felt. Or, and this is just as likely, Onodera, manipulation. The Committee… Tsuruoka… they are masters of it. Perhaps they found her in her despair, offered her a deal, a way to disappear into a new identity, leveraging her trauma, her vulnerability. They are not above such monstrous tactics.” He paused, then added the most chilling possibility. “Rin might even have been… one of their assets for a time, before Nana Hiiragi. A predecessor, broken by her experiences, then repurposed by Tsuruoka. It would fit their pattern.”
Kyouya Onodera slowly raised his head. The raw pain was still evident in his eyes, but beneath it, a new, colder, almost terrifying resolve was beginning to solidify. The news was clearly devastating, a seismic shock to the foundations of his world, but it also seemed to galvanize him, to forge his grief and confusion into a sharper, more focused weapon. If Rin was here, if she was truly Jin Tachibana, then his quest had a new, terrible, and immediate focus. The island’s secrets, he now understood, were not just abstract horrors; they were deeply, terrifyingly personal.
“This ‘Talent’ of yours, Tanaka,” Kyouya said at last, his voice regaining some of its usual hard, steady cadence, though an undercurrent of profound turmoil still resonated within it. “It reveals… exceptionally inconvenient, and often painful, truths.”
“It often feels more like an inescapable curse, Onodera,” Arthur’s phone replied, the weariness in his own English tone undoubtedly lost in translation. “But this is what I have seen. This is what I believe, with a fair degree of certainty, to be the truth of the matter.”
Kyouya nodded slowly, his gaze distant, already processing, analyzing, re-evaluating everything he thought he knew. “If Rin is Jin…” he murmured, almost to himself. “…then everything changes.” He stood up abruptly, the ancient book he had been reading forgotten on the table. “Thank you, Tanaka,” he said, his voice surprisingly formal. “You have given me… a great deal to consider. And to act upon.”
He turned and walked away, his strides long and purposeful, leaving Arthur alone in the quiet, shadowed alcove. Arthur watched him go, a sense of grim satisfaction mingling with a profound unease. He had armed Kyouya Onodera with a terrible, transformative truth. Whether it would ultimately help him, or lead him to further despair, Arthur couldn’t say. But Kyouya now possessed a crucial, agonizingly personal piece of the island’s dark puzzle. And their strange, unspoken, almost unwilling alliance, built upon a shared foundation of unwelcome knowledge and the ever-present shadow of the island’s darkness, had undeniably, irrevocably, deepened. The game, Arthur knew, was evolving once more, and the stakes, already impossibly high, were rising for everyone involved.
Nana Hiiragi
Of course the hate for her is well deserved.
First off, blaming "brainwashing" lets her off the hook far too easily. Patty Hearst tried the same trick in the 1970's and it didn't exactly work out well for her. Ironically, Patty spent more time in prisoner for her bank robberies than Nana does for her 10+ murders, which in itself is unfair - Nana gets away with far too much because she's a girl, instead of in spite of it.
Yes, she would be hated just as much if Nana was male (probably more so).
It should be noted that all Nana's murders were premeditated, on her own cognisance and with malice. Just because she was told to do so, doesn't mean she had to.
In addition to that, just because she may not have wanted to do kill anyone, she was certainly happy to do so (smiling when thinking about killing Mirichu as well as the "won't be shy in killing you" part). Nana is a person who would rather murder someone than think of any sort of alternative (as is the case later on).
Futher more, stating that she's a "child soldier" carries no weight - she's killing civilians, which if she was a soldier makes her actions even more odious.
The fact that people try to exonerate Nana because she was "mind controlled" doesn't hold much water considering she was fully aware of what she was doing; didn't need to; didn't bother querying anything and was fully cognisant during her pre-meditated murders; and she quite happily carried another one out, with no doubt more to come.
In addition, there is no reason why she couldn't have asked questions or even did her own reason about Talents and so forth.
I wasn't surprised that the anime didn't get a second season (if it wasn't just for boosting manga sales) because Nana is so unrelatable, unrelatable and pretty much evil personified. Even later on, she's totally dislikable, obnoxious character.
Considering she's supposed to be intelligent, you would have thought, at the very least, queries the morality, if not the legality and ethics of killing schoolchildren (let alone those she killed before she arrived at the island). She's fully aware of what she's doing, so it's all on her own head. She certainly deserves to be punished far longer than three years (that ends up around 3 months for every kid).
I wouldn't be surprised if Nana Hiiragi does enjoy killing people - she is always smiling happily when thinking about killing her victims.
Whilst she may say that she doesn't want to kill any more, later on - it certainly doesn't stop her (no doubt it would be the first thing she thinks of to solve problems, instead of anything else).
Hopefully, she won't have a happy ending (preferably meet a nasty end - with her own poison needs would be nicely ironic). Whilst she may have "changed" for dubious reasons she will have to end up killing people again at some point. Even though she's changed, she's still an insufferable, nasty little bitch. I've got very little sympathy for her, especially as she was sadistic killing everyone.
And yes, killing Nano led to more people suffering - all because of Nana (no idea why Nano should forgive her - obviously he forgot how Nana taunted him before he fell, although I do hear he did beat the crap out of her as well).
Hopefully she will pay some sort of price for her actions.
Whist Nanao killed more people than Nana, it should be noted that Nana was the cause. It was nice of him really to leave Nana alone, considering she had no compulsion about killing Nanao - he certainly would have had a good reason to seek revenge on her.
In addition, for those who subscribe to those who view Nana as a child soldier (which is dubious to say the least), there is still precedent for requesting reparations and the same for prosecuting child soldiers too (DOMINIC ONGWEN).
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