Chapter 30: The Roundup

Hej

Chapter 26: Reunion in the Rain

The chaotic, premature end of the third school year on the island had seen Arthur, along with the other bewildered and traumatized student survivors, unceremoniously dumped back onto the mainland like so much unwanted refuse. For him, it meant a grim, dispiriting return to the life he had briefly, miserably known before his forced return to the academy: the anonymity of the teeming city, the gnawing ache of poverty, and the soul-crushing, repetitive labour of a sprawling construction site on the urban fringe. The bitter irony wasn’t lost on him; he was now walking the same path of grueling menial toil, enduring the same casual cruelties from foremen and co-workers, that Kyouya Onodera had apparently walked before his own arrival on that cursed island. He endured the harsh, unforgiving conditions, the meagre, often insufficient pay that barely covered the rent for a shared, squalid room in a decaying lodging house, and the constant, wearying taunts from his fellow labourers who mocked his still-halting Japanese and his foreigner’s awkwardness. Each day was a fresh testament to his unwanted, unwelcome survival. His phone, his former lifeline to communication and understanding, had been confiscated during the island evacuation, leaving him to navigate this complex, indifferent world with only his painfully limited vocabulary and a profound, isolating sense of linguistic inadequacy.

Months bled into one another, a dreary, monotonous procession of exhausting physical labour and long, lonely nights spent staring at the cracked ceiling of his cramped room. He heard nothing of Nana, nothing of Michiru, nothing of Kyouya. The island, and the unspeakable horrors it held, began to feel like a distant, terrible fever dream, its sharp edges softened by time and the sheer, grinding drudgery of his current existence.

One particularly bleak, miserable evening in late autumn, as a cold, persistent, sleety rain lashed the city, relentlessly turning the streets into slick, reflecting rivers of neon and grime, Arthur trudged wearily away from the cacophonous, muddy construction site. His body ached with a bone-deep exhaustion, his spirit felt numb, hollowed out. He took a shortcut through a narrow, dimly lit, garbage-strewn alleyway, more to escape the biting, rain-laden wind than to save any appreciable time. And there, huddled in a recessed, darkened doorway, trying desperately to find some meagre shelter from the relentless downpour, was a figure he recognized instantly, despite her ragged, filthy clothes and the haunted, almost feral terror in her eyes. Nana Hiiragi.

She looked up with a start as he approached, her eyes – those once bright, violet, calculating eyes – widening in shocked, terrified recognition. She was thinner, almost skeletal, her once vibrant pink hair now lank, faded, and plastered to her skull by the rain, her face smudged with dirt and etched with a weariness that went far beyond mere physical exhaustion. She looked like a cornered, wounded animal, a desperate fugitive who had finally run out of places to hide. On top of a nearby overflowing, reeking rubbish bin, a scrawny, spectral white cat sat preternaturally still, its intelligent, luminous eyes fixed on them both, seemingly entirely unfazed by the driving rain or the charged atmosphere in the narrow alley.

“Tanaka-kun?” Nana whispered, her voice hoarse, cracked, barely audible above the drumming of the rain, disbelief warring with a flicker of raw, desperate fear, and perhaps, Arthur thought with a jolt, a tiny, almost imperceptible spark of desperate, unwelcome hope. She looked utterly broken. She began to stammer, incoherent words of regret, of apology for… for everything, her body trembling violently.

Arthur, his own weariness a heavy, sodden cloak upon his shoulders, cut her off, his voice flat, the English words falling like chips of ice in the damp, cold air. “Save it, Hiiragi. Just… save it.” He saw the last vestiges of fight, of defiance, go out of her. She sagged against the grimy, graffiti-covered wall, the rain plastering her thin clothes to her shivering frame.

“Tsuruoka,” he began, speaking slowly, deliberately, still in English, knowing she had some comprehension, and needing the precision of his own tongue for what he had to say. “Commander Tsuruoka… he killed your parents, Nana. Not you. He did.” He saw her flinch as if he had physically struck her, her eyes widening in stunned, uncomprehending horror. “He hired two Talented criminals to do the job, individuals with existing convictions, easily manipulated, easily controlled. They were likely… disposed of… after they’d served their purpose. Silenced. Standard Committee operating procedure.” Nana stared at him, her mouth agape, rain dripping from her chin, her breath catching in her throat. “Your parents,” Arthur continued, his voice relentless, a grim, emotionless recital of terrible truths. “They supported Talents. They were actively opposed to Tsuruoka’s ideology, his methods, his growing power within the Committee. He decided not only to eliminate them as a threat but, as the ultimate, monstrous act of revenge against their memory, to take their only daughter and twist her, mold her, into the very thing they fought against. It was so much easier to shape you, to control you, if you could be blamed for their horrific murders, wasn’t it? If you truly believed yourself a monster from the very start.” He saw the dawning, unutterable horror in her eyes as pieces of her shattered, manipulated past began to align with his brutal words. “You running to that police station, a terrified child clutching your own father’s severed head… the accusations, the recriminations you faced there… that was all part of Tsuruoka’s meticulous, diabolical plan. The reason you were shunted from one uncaring, abusive foster family to another. It was all designed to break you, to isolate you, to make you utterly pliable, to make you his perfect, unquestioning weapon.”

He paused, letting the crushing weight of his words sink into her already fractured psyche. “You could have asked more questions, Hiiragi,” he said, his voice softening almost imperceptibly, a hint of weary sorrow creeping in. “You could have done more research. Yes, many Talents are bad, dangerous, destructive. But it was never your place to be their judge, their jury, and their executioner.” He looked her directly in the eye, his gaze unwavering, trying to convey the full import of his next statement. “And Talents, Hiiragi,” he added, his voice dropping to a low, pointed near-whisper, “they don’t have a monopoly on doing bad things.” The implication that he knew she, Nana Hiiragi, the Committee’s most feared assassin of Talents, was herself entirely Talentless, hung heavy, unspoken but deafening, between them in the cold, rain-swept alley. “Now, perhaps, after everything, you finally understand the full, terrible extent of my ‘Talent.’ My ‘predictions.’ And believe me, Hiiragi, things are going to get much, much worse. For all of us.”

Nana, looking utterly numb, her face a mask of dawning, unbearable truth and profound, world-shattering despair, finally spoke, her voice a mere breath, almost lost in the relentless drumming of the rain. “I’ve seen them… Tanaka-kun. I’ve seen… the Enemies of Humanity.”

Arthur, who had almost turned to leave, to walk away from her and the vortex of pain and violence she represented, froze in his tracks. Her words, so quiet, so full of a new, specific terror, stopped him cold. He knew, with a sudden, sickening lurch, where this was heading, to the most bizarre, the most terrifying, the most inexplicable aspect of this twisted, nightmarish world. He turned back slowly to face her, the rain dripping from his hair, from the collar of his thin jacket. He struggled for a moment with his limited Japanese, then resorted to blunt English again. “Tsuruoka. He’s shown you, hasn’t he?” he asked, his voice grim. “Two of them, I’d wager. Two of those… monsters. And he told you that Talents don’t truly die when you kill them? That they just… change? That they turn into those things?” Nana, her eyes wide and haunted, brimming with a fresh, unspeakable horror, nodded slowly, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on her cheek.

“He was telling you the truth, Nana,” Arthur said, his voice heavy with a weariness that seemed to age him decades in that moment. “Up to a point, at least. My own… additional information… it may not be entirely precise, you understand. It’s… fragmented. But from what I’ve managed to piece together, from what I remember… when a person with a Talent reaches a certain point in their life – late teens, their twenties, sometimes as late as their forties, it varies – their Talent can undergo a kind of… profound, often terrifying metamorphosis. Think of it as… as puberty, but with new, often unstable, uncontrollable superpowers. A secondary, more monstrous blossoming.” He saw the flicker of horrified understanding in her eyes. “Unfortunately, from what I know, it’s not long after that stage, that secondary manifestation, that they can… they can transform. Become those creatures Tsuruoka so proudly, so callously, displayed for you. The process, I believe, can also happen, perhaps even accelerate, if a Talent appears to be dead to our eyes, like Etsuko, the girl he showed you in that body bag. Their essence, their Talent, it just… festers, corrupts, transforms.”

He saw the recognition of Etsuko’s name, the confirmation of her own terrible experience in Tsuruoka’s charnel house, reflected in Nana’s horrified gaze. “I don’t know what the Committee’s ultimate, endgame plan is, Nana,” Arthur admitted, running a hand through his wet hair. “I truly don’t. But I strongly suspect Tsuruoka will use – or perhaps already is using – these so-called ‘Enemies of Humanity’ as a potent, terrifying tool. Maybe, just maybe, it’s to keep the current Japanese government in power, by presenting these monsters as a constant, existential threat that only he, and the Committee, can manage, can protect them from. Or, and this seems far more likely given his megalomania, once he’s successfully eliminated all other Talents he deems problematic or uncontrollable, he’ll use these monsters, these transformed Talents, to try and take over the world himself.”

He looked at Nana, her face a canvas of shock, dawning comprehension, and utter, soul-crushing despair. “He played you, Nana,” he said, his voice softer now, almost gentle. “From the very beginning. He played us all.” With that, Arthur Ainsworth turned and began to walk away, his shoulders slumped, leaving Nana Hiiragi alone in the cold, dark, rain-lashed alley to absorb the full, crushing weight of his devastating revelations. As he reached the grimy, graffiti-scarred end of the alley, he glanced back, a brief, almost involuntary movement. Nana was slowly, unsteadily, pushing herself to her feet, a small, broken figure in the vast, uncaring city. The scrawny white cat, which had been watching their entire exchange with an unnerving, almost sentient stillness from its perch on the overflowing rubbish bin, hopped down with a silent, graceful leap and, with an almost imperceptible flick of its tail, began to follow Nana as she stumbled out of the alley and disappeared into the rainy, indifferent labyrinth of the darkened city streets. He knew, somehow, with a certainty that settled like a stone in his own weary heart, that their paths, his and Nana’s, were still destined to cross again. The island’s dark, insidious tendrils reached far, even into the deepest, most anonymous shadows of the sprawling mainland.

Nana is an evil little bitch

Chapter 16: A Fragile Return

The new term, the second year of Arthur’s nightmarish island sojourn, arrived with the noisy, unwelcome, and almost aggressive intrusion of the returning ferries. They disgorged their reluctant cargo of students onto the familiar, weathered pier – a chaotic, uneasy mix of fresh, unsuspecting new faces, their expressions ranging from nervous apprehension to a misplaced, naive excitement, and the more hardened, deeply wary, haunted-eyed returnees from the previous, blood-soaked, traumatic year. The island, which had been Arthur’s silent, mournful, and strangely, almost peacefully, isolated kingdom for many long weeks, was suddenly, jarringly, violently alive again with the cacophony of shrill youthful chatter, the thud of hastily unloaded, battered luggage, and the forced, brittle, almost desperate cheerfulness of the few remaining, equally traumatized teaching staff.

Arthur had somehow survived the long, profoundly solitary inter-term break through a combination of meticulous, desperate scavenging from the surprisingly well-stocked (if obscurely located and heavily fortified) emergency food larders he’d discovered deep in the school’s damp, echoing basement, and a grim, almost monastic, unwavering determination. His solitude had been absolute, his only constant, silent companion the still, unnervingly unchanged form of Michiru Inukai in her sealed, undisturbed dormitory room. He’d kept the room cool, the heavy blackout blinds permanently drawn against the harsh, unforgiving summer sun. The official story of her "tragic, contagious illness" and subsequent "peaceful passing" meant her room remained a sealed-off, almost taboo memorial, a place none of the superstitious or frightened staff dared enter.

But Arthur knew – or rather, desperately, fiercely hoped for – something more. Her body, even after all these weeks, was inexplicably, almost unnaturally, warm to the touch – a faint, persistent, life-like warmth that defied all rational explanation for someone supposedly deceased. This, for Arthur, was a stunning, almost terrifying confirmation that Michiru wasn't truly, irrevocably dead; that her extraordinary healing Talent could well be working in some profound, unseen way, fighting a slow, silent, almost impossible battle against the finality of death.

He hadn't breathed a word of this astonishing, terrifying possibility to a living soul. The reasons were manifold, each one a cold knot of fear in his gut. Firstly, any hint that he believed Michiru might return from the dead would invite immediate, intense, and deeply unwelcome scrutiny of his own "Talent." How could he possibly know such a thing? What "glimpse" could have shown him that? His fabricated abilities were already a precarious balancing act; any further probing could bring the whole charade crashing down around him. Secondly, and far more chillingly, was the thought of The Committee. If, by some infinitesimally small chance, news of Michiru's anomalous state, of his secret vigil and his bizarre hope, were to leak out, to somehow find its way back to Tsuruoka’s ears… they would undoubtedly descend upon her. They believed in the potential of powerful Talents to regenerate, he recalled that much with a shudder – it was probably the only vaguely true or insightful thing they’d ever inadvertently let slip about the true nature of these strange abilities amidst their mountain of lies. But their interest would be purely exploitative, monstrous. And if they discovered someone actively tending to such a phenomenon, actively hoping for it, they might see it as something more than just grief – they might interpret it as… defiance. Specks of resistance to their grand, evil designs. And if word of that got back to Nana, likely twisted by Tsuruoka to paint Arthur as an even greater, more unpredictable threat… That was a scenario Arthur certainly didn't want, a prospect that filled him with a unique and specific dread: going up against the full weight and force of the Japanese government, with all its shadowy resources, as well as a potentially re-conditioned, lethally focused Nana Hiiragi. The thought was unbearable.

So, he kept his vigil, his astonishing secret, locked tight within his own breast, the faint, persistent warmth of Michiru's hand beneath his own questing fingers his only, fragile confirmation. It transformed his lonely watch from one of hopeless grief into one of almost unbearable, anxious expectation. The terrifying unknown, of course, was the timescale. If such regeneration were even possible, how long would it take? Days? Weeks? Months? Or, God forbid, years? He didn’t know. Nobody did. But he had vowed to watch over her, to protect her, for as long as it took. He would not let her become an experiment. And he would not, he swore, allow her, if she did somehow return and was left alone, terrified, and uncontrolled, to eventually transform into one of those monstrous “Enemies of Humanity” that Tsuruoka cultivated, a fate he dimly understood from his anime memories to be a horrifying potential endpoint for unchecked or traumatized Talents.

When the other students returned, flooding the familiar corridors and common rooms with their unwelcome, boisterous vitality, Arthur Ainsworth was a visibly, profoundly changed individual. He was thinner, almost gaunt, his ill-fitting school uniform hanging loosely on his still-teenage frame. His eyes, sunk deeper into their sockets and shadowed with a perpetual weariness, held a haunted, faraway, almost unnervingly intense look. His interactions, always stilted due to his lack of a phone and his painfully rudimentary Japanese, were now even more clipped, his pronouncements, when he was forced to make them, often bleak, cynical, and unsettlingly prescient. He had become a pariah, an outcast, a figure of fear and morbid curiosity amongst his peers – the “creepy Tanaka-kun.” This strange, unending May, which had bled into a sweltering, oppressive summer on the island, felt so utterly disconnected from any concept of season or normalcy he had ever known; it was just an endless, timeless expanse of dread.

Nana Hiiragi was among the returnees. Her own transformation, Arthur noted, was less overtly physical but no less profound. The almost manic, candy-coated cheerfulness that had once been her primary, impenetrable camouflage was noticeably, significantly muted, replaced by a more sombre, introspective, and almost melancholic air. When her violet eyes, shadowed with a weariness that seemed too profound for her young face, inevitably met Arthur’s across the crowded, reawakened canteen on that first chaotic day back, he saw a complex, unreadable flicker of emotions – surprise at his continued, stubborn presence, perhaps a lingering trace of the raw guilt and profound confusion from their last terrible encounter, and a renewed, deeply wary, almost fearful assessment. The air between them, whenever their paths crossed, was thick with unspoken things.

Arthur knew he needed an ally, or at least, someone who wouldn’t immediately dismiss his dire warnings as madness. His thoughts, inevitably, reluctantly, turned to Kyouya Onodera. Kyouya was a consummate observer, a cold, logical, and entirely dispassionate analyst. He was, Arthur suspected, perhaps the only person on this godforsaken island who might, just might, possess the intellect and the detachment to believe even a fraction of the unbelievable truth, or at least to find his warnings pragmatically useful.

He found Kyouya in his usual self-imposed sanctuary in the furthest, quietest, most dust-laden corner of the school library. “Onodera,” Arthur began, his Japanese hesitant but firm. “We need to talk. Urgently. About what is coming.” Kyouya slowly closed his ancient book. He regarded Arthur with that unnerving, unblinking stare. “Tanaka. You look… remarkably unwell. Even more so than before the break.” “This island… it has that effect,” Arthur managed. He sat. “Listen to me. The Committee… they will create food shortages. Severe ones. To make us fight. Civil war.” Kyouya raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Your ‘glimpses’ tell you this?” “Among other things,” Arthur confirmed, his expression grim. “And Nana Hiiragi… she uses blackmail, manipulation. She is a tool, yes, but a thinking one.” He paused, a bitter irony in his voice. “I’m supposed to see the future. But I’m trapped in this bloody, repeating past, watching it all happen.” Kyouya listened with an unnerving, focused stillness. He had witnessed too many of Arthur’s strange, unsettlingly accurate “predictions” come to pass. “Deliberate food shortages,” Kyouya mused aloud after a long silence. “That would create precisely the chaos you describe. And Hiiragi… I have had my own suspicions.” He looked directly at Arthur. “What do you propose, Tanaka? Given your… unique perspective?” “Propose?” Arthur echoed, a harsh laugh escaping him. “I propose we try not to starve. We watch our backs.” He then hesitated, the weight of his incredible secret about Michiru immense. He couldn’t reveal the full truth, not yet, not even to Kyouya. It was too dangerous, for Michiru, for himself. But he had to say something. “And… I am keeping Michiru Inukai… safe… in her room. She deserves that. The Committee… they would not understand her… her condition.” He chose his words carefully, hinting at something beyond mere death, hoping Kyouya’s sharp mind might grasp the unspoken. “She is still… warm.” Kyouya’s expression didn’t change, but Arthur saw a flicker of something new in his eyes – not disbelief, but a profound, analytical curiosity. “Inukai Michiru sacrificed herself,” Kyouya stated, his voice flat. “A most… perplexing event. Her current… anomalous condition… is noted, Tanaka.” He paused. “If what you say about the Committee’s intentions is true, then this year will be… significantly more trying.” It wasn’t an alliance. Not yet. But Kyouya Onodera was listening. And Arthur, though still burdened by the full weight of his secret hope for Michiru, felt a fraction less alone in the encroaching darkness.

Chapter 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.

Chapter 39: A Desperate Covenant

The dying embers of the fire in the cave cast long, flickering shadows, mirroring the uncertain, shifting thoughts of the fugitives huddled around its meager warmth. Arthur Ainsworth had laid bare his desperate, almost suicidal proposal, and now, the heavy silence was thick with unspoken fears, unvoiced objections, and the stark, terrifying absence of any readily apparent, less perilous alternatives. He had asked if anyone had better ideas, and the silence itself was a grim, eloquent answer.

Nana Hiiragi was the first to speak again, her voice low, almost rough with a new, unfamiliar emotion that Arthur couldn’t quite decipher – was it reluctant admiration for his sheer audacity, or a chilling premonition of shared doom? “If… if Jin-san truly believes he can create a convincing enough identity for you, Arthur-san… if there is even a ghost of a chance that you could get inside that… that place…” She paused, her gaze flicking towards Michiru, then back to Arthur, a fierce, protective light glinting in her violet eyes. “Then the information you could gather, the… the seeds of doubt you might be able to sow amongst those new students… it would be invaluable. More valuable, perhaps, than anything we could achieve by simply… running and hiding.” Her own past as Tsuruoka’s tool, her intimate knowledge of the Committee’s indoctrination methods, gave her a unique perspective on the potential impact of Arthur’s proposed counter-narrative. She knew how potent, how insidious, the right words, planted in the right minds at the right time, could be.

Kyouya Onodera, who had been staring intently into the flames, his face a mask of cold, hard calculation, finally nodded, a single, sharp, decisive movement. “The risks, as I have stated, remain astronomically high,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. “However, the potential strategic gains, should you succeed in establishing a foothold and disseminating even a fraction of the truth about Tsuruoka and The Committee, are… significant.” He looked directly at Arthur. “If Jin-san can provide the necessary logistical support – a credible identity, a viable insertion method – then this plan, for all its inherent lunacy, warrants further, serious consideration. We are currently… outmaneuvered, out-resourced, and largely reactive. This, at least, offers a proactive, if extraordinarily high-stakes, gambit.”

Michiru, her gentle face still pale with worry, looked from Kyouya to Nana, then finally to Arthur. She twisted her small hands in her lap. “I… I am still so very frightened for you, Arthur-san,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. “But… if Nana-chan and Kyouya-san believe this is… this is a path we must consider… and if you are truly determined…” She took a small, shaky breath. “Then… then I will support you in any way I can. I will pray for your safety.” Her quiet courage, her unwavering loyalty, was a small, steadying anchor in the midst of their swirling fears.

All eyes now turned to Jin Tachibana. He had listened to their deliberations with his usual unnerving, almost preternatural calm, his faint, enigmatic smile never quite leaving his lips. He tilted his head slightly, his pale eyes glinting in the firelight. “To create a new identity for Arthur Ainsworth, an identity as a qualified, unremarkable, and entirely Talentless foreign educator seeking employment in the Japanese school system,” he began, his voice as smooth and cool as polished jade, “will require… considerable finesse, access to certain restricted databases, and the cooperation of individuals with highly specialized, and often highly illegal, skill sets.” He paused. “It will also require a significant investment of time, and what few remaining financial resources I can… redirect.”

He looked at Arthur. “The alteration of your physical appearance will also be paramount. Subtlety will be key. Nothing too drastic, initially, but enough to ensure that the Kenji Tanaka who once walked the halls of that academy is no longer recognizable. We will also need to craft a comprehensive, verifiable, yet entirely fictitious personal and professional history for your new persona. Every detail must be perfect.” He made it sound almost mundane, like planning a particularly complex holiday itinerary. The sheer, almost casual audacity of it all made Arthur’s head spin. Becoming a convincing Japanese schoolteacher, complete with a fabricated past and forged credentials… it was a far cry from his predictable, meticulously ordered accounting routines back in his old life. The most acting he, Arthur Ainsworth, had ever done was feigning polite interest during Mrs. Henderson’s lengthy, unsolicited discourses on the blight affecting her prize-winning roses back in Crawley. Or perhaps when trying to look suitably enthusiastic about the tombola stall at the annual village fete, somewhere on a soggy summer green in the heart of Sussex… This level of sustained, high-stakes deception felt like preparing for a leading role in a West End stage production, with a significantly more lethal form of audience heckling if he flubbed his lines.

“As for gaining entry to that specific academy,” Jin continued, his gaze unwavering, “that will be the most… challenging aspect. Kyouya-san is correct. They do not advertise vacancies in the usual manner. However…” A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. “…organizations, even ones as tightly controlled as Tsuruoka’s, are still comprised of individuals. Individuals have routines. Individuals make mistakes. And sometimes, unexpected… vacancies… can arise, or be discreetly engineered, if one knows where and how to apply the appropriate leverage.” The chilling implication in his soft-spoken words was not lost on anyone in the cave.

He stood then, a graceful, almost fluid movement. “I will make the necessary initial inquiries,” he stated, his tone conveying a quiet, unshakeable confidence that was both reassuring and deeply unsettling. “I will assess the feasibility of creating this new identity for you, Ainsworth-san. I will explore potential avenues for your… insertion. This will take time. I will need to travel, to access resources not available to us here.” He looked at Nana and Kyouya. “In my absence, your group’s security, your continued evasion of Committee patrols, will be paramount. Maintain vigilance. Conserve your resources.”

He then turned back to Arthur. “And you, Ainsworth-san. While I am… engaged… you must begin your own preparations. Improve your spoken Japanese beyond its current, shall we say, charmingly rudimentary level. Learn everything you can about current Japanese educational curricula, about the expected comportment of a teacher in such an institution. You must become this new person, inhabit this role so completely that even you begin to believe the lie. Your life will depend on it.”

With a final, enigmatic nod to the assembled group, Jin Tachibana turned and, with the silent grace of a phantom, slipped out of the cave and into the pre-dawn gloom, vanishing as if he were merely a figment of their collective, desperate imagination.

With a final, enigmatic nod to the assembled group, Jin Tachibana turned and, with the silent grace of a phantom, slipped out of the cave and into the pre-dawn gloom, vanishing as if he were merely a figment of their collective, desperate imagination.

A new kind of silence descended upon the remaining occupants of the cave – Arthur, Nana, Kyouya, and Michiru. It was no longer the silence of stunned disbelief or fearful hesitation, but the heavy, contemplative silence of individuals who had just made a pact, a desperate covenant, with an uncertain and terrifyingly dangerous future. The fire had burned down to glowing embers, casting their faces in a dim, ruddy light. The decision, however tentative, however fraught with peril, had been made. They were going to try. Arthur Ainsworth was going back to the island, if Jin could pave the way.

Arthur looked at their faces, etched with weariness, fear, but also a new, fragile determination. He, an unqualified former accounts clerk from Crawley, was about to embark on a mission that would make most seasoned spies blanch. The idea of needing to become an expert on an alternate Japan's entire socio-political history, on top of faking teaching credentials and a new identity, was daunting. His mother, he thought with a fleeting, absurd internal pang, would have a fit if she knew. Still, it certainly beat another dreary Tuesday afternoon trying to make sense of overly complicated departmental spreadsheets back in... well, back where things, however mundane, at least made a modicum of conventional sense.

He cleared his throat, breaking the quiet. “Thank you, everyone,” he said, his voice heartfelt, his gaze encompassing Nana’s newfound, wary resolve, Kyouya’s stoic acceptance, and Michiru’s anxious but supportive expression. “For… for being willing to even consider this. I know it’s… a lot to ask.”

He pushed himself to his feet, a sudden, restless energy coursing through him despite his exhaustion. “There’s much to do, and Jin-san is right, I need to prepare. Not just the language, not just pretending to be a teacher.” He looked around the cave, at the crude drawings Nana had been making on a piece of salvaged slate. “I also need to learn about the history of this world as well as well. Properly. Beyond the fragments I remember from that… that story. If I’m to be convincing, if I’m to understand the context of what I’ll be walking into.”

A small, determined smile touched his lips. He clapped his hands together once, a decisive sound in the stillness. “Well,” he declared, a spark of his old, almost forgotten pragmatic energy returning. “No time like the present!”

The long, dangerous road ahead was shrouded in uncertainty, but for the first time in a very long time, Arthur Ainsworth felt not just the crushing weight of a terrible, unwanted fate, but the faintest, most fragile stirring of active, defiant purpose.

Chapter 19: Scarcity and Control

Arthur awoke slowly, his head throbbing with a dull, persistent ache, to find himself not on the cold, windswept cliff edge where he had collapsed, but tucked into the surprisingly comfortable confines of his own narrow dormitory bed. For a disorienting, heart-stopping moment, he thought the previous day’s extraordinary, impossible events – Michiru’s miraculous return from apparent death, Nana’s shattering emotional breakdown – had been nothing more than a vivid, desperate hallucination, a final, merciful product of his unravelling, exhausted mind. Then, a soft, hesitant voice, fragile as new spring leaves but blessedly, undeniably real, spoke his island name.

“Tanaka-kun? Are you… are you awake now?”

He turned his head, his stiff muscles protesting with every small movement. Michiru Inukai sat in a rickety wooden chair that had been pulled up beside his bed, a chipped teacup containing water held carefully in her small, still frail hands. She was terribly pale and gaunt, an ethereal, almost translucent waif-like figure, but her gentle, unmistakable eyes, though shadowed with a profound fatigue, were clear, lucid, and undeniably, wonderfully alive. A shy, almost hesitant, yet incredibly precious smile touched her lips when she saw him looking at her. The sight of her, truly, tangibly alive and present in the mundane, familiar reality of his small dorm room, sent a jolt of profound, overwhelming relief through him, so potent it brought an unexpected, embarrassing sting to his eyes.

“Michiru…” he rasped, his own voice hoarse, cracked, and unfamiliar even to his own ears. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position.

“Easy now, Tanaka-kun,” she said, her voice still weak but infused with a gentle, soothing warmth as she helped him prop himself awkwardly against the thin, lumpy pillows. “You were… very, very exhausted. Nana-chan and I… we managed to bring you back here after you fainted. Nana-chan was very worried about you, you know.”

Nana. The memory of her raw, uncharacteristic breakdown at the cliff, her tearful, fragmented, almost incoherent confession, her utter, soul-deep devastation at seeing Michiru alive, returned to him with a fresh jolt. He looked past Michiru’s concerned, gentle face and saw Nana Hiiragi herself standing awkwardly, uncertainly, in the doorway of his room. Her usually vibrant pink hair was slightly dishevelled, her bright school uniform rumpled and bearing faint traces of mud from the cliff path. Her usual effervescent, almost manic cheerfulness was entirely, strikingly absent, replaced by a hesitant, almost timid, and deeply uncertain expression. Her violet eyes, usually sparkling with mischief or cold, hard calculation, were red-rimmed, swollen, and shadowed with a new, unfamiliar vulnerability. The dynamic between the three of them, Arthur realized with a growing sense of profound unease and weary, almost resigned acceptance, was now irrevocably, seismically altered, suspended in a strange, fragile, and deeply, profoundly uncomfortable new reality.

The official explanation for Michiru Inukai’s miraculous return from the “dead” was, when it came, as predictably flimsy and insultingly inadequate as Arthur had expected. A few days after the incident at the cliff, once Michiru was deemed strong enough to leave the infirmary (where she had been kept under observation, much to Nana’s now fiercely protective, almost possessive anxiety), a visibly flustered and deeply uncomfortable Mr. Saito made a brief, stammering announcement during morning homeroom. He explained, his voice cracking several times, that there had been a “most regrettable and unfortunate series of diagnostic errors” by a “very junior, inexperienced mainland doctor” who had initially, and incorrectly, pronounced Michiru-san deceased following her sudden, severe illness at the end of the previous term. Further, more thorough examinations by the island’s own “more experienced medical staff,” he’d continued, his gaze skittering nervously around the room, had revealed that Michiru-san had merely been in a “profoundly deep, coma-like state” from which, through the miracle of modern medical science and her own youthful resilience, she had now, thankfully, fully recovered. “A simple, yet almost tragic, misdiagnosis, class,” was the best, most pathetic explanation the homeroom teacher could apparently come up with, his face slick with nervous sweat.

Michiru being alive again, having been officially declared dead and her passing mourned (however briefly and superficially by most), certainly surprised a few of the more observant pupils in the class. There were some whispered exclamations, a few wide-eyed, incredulous stares directed at the pale but smiling Michiru. Arthur watched their reactions with a kind of detached, weary cynicism. Back in England, back in his old life, such an event – a person returning from the dead after weeks, months even! – would have been a nine-day wonder, a media sensation, a cause for profound existential debate. Here, on this island where the bizarre was rapidly becoming the mundane, where death was a casual acquaintance and survival a daily struggle… well. Not that the surprise, the mild titillation, lasted very long. Within half an hour, Arthur noted with a grimace, talk among the students had soon moved on to more immediately “interesting” and pressing topics, like who had managed to hoard an extra bread roll from breakfast, or the latest outrageous rumour about Commandant Ide’s new, even more draconian camp rules back on the mainland (as news of the internment camps had, by now, become common, if terrifying, knowledge). This strange, unending, almost timeless May, which had now bled into a sweltering, oppressive early summer on the island, felt so utterly disconnected from any concept of season, or normalcy, or rational human behavior he had ever known; it was just an endless, surreal expanse of dread, punctuated by moments of sheer, stark insanity.

Over the next few days, as Arthur slowly regained his own physical strength and Michiru continued her own gradual, delicate, yet steady recovery – a process that seemed to draw on some deep, internal, almost inexhaustible wellspring of her miraculous healing Talent – an unsettling new tension, a different, more insidious kind of menace, began to grip the island. The already dwindling food supplies in the school canteen started to diminish with an alarming, noticeable rapidity, just as Arthur had grimly “predicted” to Kyouya Onodera weeks before. At first, it was subtle, almost deniable: the portions became slightly, almost imperceptibly smaller, the more popular, palatable dishes ran out much quicker, the once-generous fruit bowls looked suspiciously less bountiful. Then, the choices became starkly, undeniably more limited, the quality of what little was available noticeably, appallingly poorer. The usual comforting, if unexciting, variety of snacks and drinks in the small, usually well-stocked school store vanished almost overnight, replaced by sparsely, almost grudgingly stocked shelves displaying dusty, unappetizing, and often near-expired items.

The teachers, led by a visibly stressed, increasingly harassed, and clearly out-of-his-depth Mr. Saito, offered a series of vague, unconvincing, and often wildly contradictory explanations: unforeseen, severe logistical problems with the regular mainland supply ships; unexpected, unseasonable, and particularly violent storms delaying crucial deliveries; sudden, inexplicable, and entirely unforeseeable issues with their long-standing mainland procurement contracts. Their excuses sounded hollow, almost insultingly flimsy, even to the most naive or least suspicious students. A low, anxious hum of discontent, of fear, began to spread like a contagion through the dormitories. Whispers of hunger, of being forgotten and abandoned by the outside world, of the island’s carefully maintained, picturesque isolation becoming a terrifying, inescapable, and potentially lethal trap, grew louder, more insistent, more desperate with each passing, increasingly meagre, unsatisfying mealtime.

Arthur watched it all with a grim, weary sense of vindication, the bitter taste of unwelcome prescience like ash in his mouth. He saw Kyouya Onodera observing the rapidly deteriorating situation with a keen, coldly analytical, almost predatory gaze, their earlier, urgent conversation in the dusty library clearly at the forefront of his sharp, calculating mind. Kyouya began to spend more of his free time away from the main school buildings, his movements quiet, purposeful, almost furtive, as if he were methodically scouting for alternative, hidden resources or making discreet, necessary preparations for a coming siege that Arthur wasn’t yet privy to. He would occasionally catch Kyouya’s eye across the increasingly tense, half-empty canteen, a silent, almost imperceptible nod passing between them – a grim, unspoken acknowledgment of Arthur’s unwelcome, terrifying prescience.

Nana Hiiragi, too, seemed to view the unfolding, manufactured crisis through new, deeply troubled, and profoundly disillusioned eyes. Her emotional implosion at the cliff edge, her raw, unfiltered confrontation with her own buried guilt and manipulated past, had irrevocably cracked her carefully constructed facade of cheerful, unquestioning obedience. While she hadn’t confessed the full, horrifying extent of her past actions as Tsuruoka’s assassin to either Arthur or Michiru, her interactions with Michiru, in particular, were now tinged with a fierce, almost desperate, suffocating protectiveness and a profound, soul-deep, sorrowful guilt. When the teachers stammered their increasingly unconvincing, almost pathetic excuses for the rapidly dwindling food supplies, Arthur saw Nana listening with a deep, thoughtful frown, a dangerous flicker of bitter doubt and dawning, angry understanding in her expressive violet eyes. Perhaps, he thought with a sliver of grim hope, she was finally, truly beginning to see the callous, manipulative, bloodstained strings of the Committee she had served so blindly, so devotedly, for so tragically long. Perhaps she was beginning to question the supposed benevolence, the absolute authority, of the monstrous Commander Tsuruoka.

“This is precisely what I told you would happen, Onodera,” Arthur said quietly to Kyouya one evening, his limited Japanese surprisingly steady, his voice low and urgent, as they stood observing a near-riot that had broken out with shocking suddenness in the canteen over the last few pathetic, fought-over servings of stale, mould-flecked bread. Several desperate, starving students were shouting, pushing, their faces pinched and pale with hunger and a growing, frightening, animalistic desperation. “The Committee. They’re tightening the screws, deliberately, methodically, applying unbearable pressure.”

Kyouya Onodera nodded, his chiselled expression grim, his pale eyes as hard and cold as flint. “Your foresight, Tanaka,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble, “continues to be distressingly, if predictably, and I must admit, increasingly useful, accurate. They create desperation, they foster internal division, then they will undoubtedly offer just enough insufficient relief to maintain a semblance of control, all while callously, dispassionately observing how we react – who breaks under the pressure, who fights for scraps, who leads, who crumbles. It is a classic, if particularly cruel and inhumane, method of psychological assessment and brutal social control.”

And indeed, just as Kyouya had so cynically predicted, just as tensions in the camp reached a fever pitch, when open, violent fights were beginning to break out with alarming regularity over hoarded scraps of often inedible food and genuine, gnawing, debilitating fear had taken firm, unshakeable root in the hearts of even the most optimistic or naive students, a supply ship was finally, dramatically, sighted on the distant horizon. A wave of ragged, desperate, almost hysterical cheers went up from the starving students. But it was, as Kyouya had so accurately predicted Arthur would have foreseen, far, far too little, and far, far too late to fully alleviate the worsening, deliberately manufactured problem. The shipment that was eventually, grudgingly unloaded onto the pier was significantly smaller than usual, the quality of the provisions noticeably, insultingly poorer – mostly low-grade dried goods, suspiciously discoloured preserved vegetables, and very little in the way of fresh produce, protein, or medical supplies. It was just enough to prevent outright, widespread starvation, just enough to quell the immediate, simmering panic and prevent a full-scale, violent breakdown of order. But it was not nearly enough to restore any sense of security, or to dispel the growing, chilling, terrifying realization among the more astute students that their very survival was fragile, tenuous, entirely dependent on the cruel, capricious whims of unseen, uncaring, and utterly malevolent forces who could withdraw their meager lifeline at will.

The Committee’s manipulative, bloodstained hand was subtle, almost invisible to the untrained eye, but to Arthur, and now to Kyouya and perhaps even Nana, it was undeniably, chillingly apparent. They were master puppeteers, coolly, dispassionately orchestrating events from afar, content to let hunger, fear, and profound desperation do their brutal, dehumanizing work, systematically weeding out the weak, identifying potential threats or future assets, all under the carefully constructed, plausible guise of unfortunate, unavoidable, and entirely unforeseen logistical circumstances.

Michiru Inukai, though still physically weak from her own miraculous, near-fatal ordeal, instinctively, selflessly shared her meagre, often insufficient portions with those students she felt were more in need, particularly the younger, more frightened ones, her innate, unwavering kindness a small, flickering, precious candle of compassion in the rapidly encroaching darkness of their desperate, deteriorating situation. Nana Hiiragi, her own internal, unspoken torment a constant, silent, brooding companion, often, almost furtively, supplemented Michiru’s share with her own, a quiet, almost unconscious act of profound, desperate atonement, her gaze when she looked at Michiru a complex, almost painful mixture of overwhelming guilt, profound awe, and a fierce, new-found, almost suffocating protectiveness.

Arthur Ainsworth, watching them both, felt a strange, almost imperceptible, yet undeniable shift in the island’s oppressive, death-haunted atmosphere. Nana’s murderous, Committee-ordained crusade, for the moment at least, seemed to be on hold, overshadowed, perhaps even temporarily derailed, by this new, more widespread, and insidious threat of starvation, and by the profound, ongoing emotional upheaval of Michiru Inukai’s impossible, miraculous return. But he knew, with a weary, bone-deep certainty, that the Committee’s cruel, inhuman game was far from over. This was merely a new, more subtle, perhaps even more sadistic phase, a different kind of insidious pressure designed to test them all, to break them down, to see what, if anything, of value emerged from the unforgiving, brutal crucible of manufactured desperation. And Arthur suspected, with a cold, sickening dread that settled deep in the marrow of his bones, that the tests, the trials, the suffering, were only just beginning, and were destined to get harder, more brutal, and far more unforgiving.

Chapter 15: The Long Watch

The aftermath of the horrific confrontation at the docks was, with chilling Committee efficiency, unsettlingly, almost surreally, muted across the wider school. News of Rentaro Tsurumigawa’s sudden, immediate, and permanent “expulsion” for “egregious and violent misbehaviour that endangered fellow students” spread like a carefully managed wildfire, a conveniently sanitized and deliberately vague narrative disseminated by a pale-faced, visibly shaken Mr. Saito and the other grim-lipped, tight-faced teachers. It was designed, Arthur knew with a cold certainty, to mask the true, terrifying violence of that awful evening and prevent any semblance of mass panic just as the students were on the cusp of departing for the long-awaited, much-needed term break.

Nana Hiiragi, it was quietly, almost confidentially, announced, had suffered a “severe emotional shock” from her “brave and selfless intervention” in the Rentaro incident and was under strict, isolated medical care in the school infirmary, strictly forbidden any visitors for her own well-being. Of Michiru Inukai, there was initially no official word, a heavy, pregnant silence that was, in itself, deeply, profoundly ominous. Then, just hours before the first ferry was due to depart, a sombre, almost funereal Mr. Saito informed the assembled students during a hastily called morning assembly that Michiru-san had, with tragic, heartbreaking suddenness, succumbed to a rare, aggressive, and previously entirely undiagnosed latent medical condition. Her passing, he’d said, his voice thick with carefully feigned sorrow and his eyes not quite meeting those of his students, had been peaceful. A suitable memorial service, he’d assured them, would be held at the start of the next term to honour her gentle spirit.

Arthur listened to the carefully constructed, insidious lies with a cold, contemptuous, almost murderous anger churning in his gut. He knew the truth. He knew, with a sickening certainty, that the Committee, through the school’s puppet authorities, would desperately want Michiru’s body. A Talent user who had performed such an unprecedented, almost unbelievable act of resurrection, sacrificing her own life to restore another’s, was an invaluable, unique research specimen. They would want to study her, to dissect her, to understand the profound, terrifying nature of her ultimate sacrifice, perhaps even to weaponize it. He would not allow it.

While the other students – a volatile mixture of genuinely relieved, superficially excited, and still deeply, palpably unnerved – bustled about the dormitories packing their bags, their chatter a jarring counterpoint to Arthur’s grim resolve, he moved with a singular, almost predatory purpose. He had already, under the cover of the pre-dawn darkness, retrieved Michiru’s impossibly light, still form from the cold slab in the school’s small, under-equipped morgue where she had been temporarily, disrespectfully placed. He’d carefully, reverently wrapped her in a clean, new sheet he’d "requisitioned" from the infirmary linen closet when no one was looking. Carrying her small, precious burden, he walked with a steady, determined gait through the increasingly deserted school corridors, a sombre, solitary spectre of grief and defiance amidst the fading echoes of youthful excitement and hurried departures. No one questioned him; no one tried to stop him. Perhaps it was the stark, unapproachable, almost dangerous grief etched on his face, a silent, potent warning against any form of intrusion. Or perhaps, more likely, in the frantic, institutional rush to vacate the cursed island, the lone, grim-faced boy carrying what looked like a peacefully sleeping, sheet-shrouded classmate was simply an oddity too inconvenient, too unsettling, too difficult to address or explain away.

He took Michiru to her own small, now entirely empty dormitory room. It was neat, almost clinically tidy, and already stripped of most personal belongings, her former roommate having clearly departed on the earliest available transport, eager to escape the island’s oppressive atmosphere. The silence in the room was profound, heavy as a shroud, broken only by Arthur’s own ragged, hitching breathing and the distant, mournful cry of the first ferry horn sounding its departure from the docks, a sound that seemed to echo his own internal desolation. This strange, suspended May, he thought with a fleeting, dislocated sense of temporal confusion – so different from any May he’d ever known back in England, a time usually of burgeoning hope, of lengthening, sunlit days, not this… this cold, grey, empty waiting.

Gently, with an almost reverent tenderness that felt alien yet entirely natural to his grieving heart, he laid Michiru on her narrow, bare mattress. Her white, fluffy hair, usually so vibrant and full of innocent life, seemed dull and lifeless against the stark, utilitarian pillow. Arthur found a washcloth and a basin of clean water from the thankfully still-functional communal bathroom and, with a gentleness that surprised even himself, began to clean the lingering traces of grime and sea spray from her pale face and small, delicate hands. It felt like a vital, final act of profound respect, a small, silent, defiant rebellion against the island’s casual, brutal disregard for its young, vulnerable charges. He straightened her simple school uniform, which he’d managed to keep relatively clean, and smoothed her soft hair back from her forehead. He wanted her to look at peace, to be accorded a dignity in death that this island, and the monsters who controlled it, so readily, so callously, stole from the living.

Then, the long, solitary, and uncertain watch began.

The final ferry horn blared in the distance, a mournful, fading cry signalling the departure of the last contingent of students and the few remaining skeletal staff. From Michiru’s small, heavily curtained window, Arthur could see the vessel pulling away from the pier, growing smaller and smaller until it was just an indistinct, insignificant speck on the vast, indifferent grey horizon. He was alone now. Utterly, terrifyingly, and in a strange way, almost peacefully alone, on an island saturated with unspoken secrets, spilt blood, and the sorrowful ghosts of lost innocence, with only the silent, still form of a girl who had so bravely, so selflessly, sacrificed her own precious life for her damaged, deeply undeserving friend.

He pulled the room’s single, uncomfortable wooden chair beside Michiru’s bed and sat, the silence in the room, in the entire deserted dormitory wing, in the whole silent, echoing school, pressing in on him, vast, profound, and suffocating. He knew the Committee would eventually realize Michiru’s body was missing from their cold storage. They would search. But he also knew something else, a strange, chilling piece of information gleaned from his fragmented anime memories, a detail about the Committee's own twisted beliefs regarding extraordinary Talents. They believed, or at least theorized, that a Talent as potent as Michiru’s, one capable of true resurrection, might possess a residual capacity for self-regeneration, even after apparent death. It was probably, Arthur thought with a cynical twist of his lips, the only vaguely true or insightful thing the Committee had ever inadvertently revealed about the true nature of Talents amidst their mountain of lies and manipulative propaganda.

The critical, terrifying unknown, however, was the timescale. If such a regeneration were even possible – and Arthur clung to this thought with a desperate, almost ferocious tenacity, fueled by the unnatural coolness that still eman మనed from Michiru’s body, a bizarre stasis that defied normal decomposition – how long would it take? Days? Weeks? Months? Or, God forbid, years? He didn’t know. Nobody did. But he made a silent, solemn vow to the still, silent girl before him, a vow that resonated in the deepest chambers of his weary, grief-stricken soul. He would tend to Michiru. He would watch over her. For as long as it took. He would not abandon her. He would not let her become just another experiment for Tsuruoka’s butchers. And more than that, a new, chilling fear took root: he would not see Michiru, if she did somehow return and was left alone, terrified, and uncontrolled, eventually transform into one of those monstrous “Enemies of Humanity” he knew were a horrifying potential endpoint for unchecked or traumatized Talents. That, he vowed, he would prevent at any cost.

In that profound, echoing emptiness, he found himself talking to her, his voice low, hesitant at first, then spilling out in a quiet, rambling stream of his native English, a stark, intimate contrast to the stilted, carefully translated Japanese he was forced to use with the living.

“It’s Arthur, you know,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on her pale, still face, so achingly young. “My real name. Arthur Ainsworth. From Crawley, down in Sussex. You wouldn’t know it, of course. Terribly dull place, Crawley. Grey skies, mostly. Nothing like this… this Technicolor, blood-soaked madhouse.” He spoke of his mundane, unfulfilling job as an accounts clerk, his quiet, amicable but ultimately failed marriage to a woman who had deserved better than his own hesitant apathy, the soul-crushing, quiet desperation of his previous, unlamented life, a life that now seemed like a distant, almost unimaginable, sepia-toned, irrelevant dream. “Funny, isn’t it, Michiru?” he continued, a dry, humourless, almost painful chuckle escaping his lips. “I used to think my life back there was utterly pointless, completely devoid of any real meaning or purpose. Now… now I’m here, trapped in this waking nightmare, and I’m failing on a truly epic, spectacular, almost biblical scale.”

He told her about his impossible, inexplicable predicament, his fragmented, cursed foreknowledge gleaned from a garish, violent television show his teenage nephew had been briefly, inexplicably obsessed with some years ago. “I knew… I knew so much of this horror was going to happen. Nanao, Habu, Hoshino… even you, in a way, though not like this. Never, ever like this.” A wave of profound, helpless, suffocating guilt washed over him, so potent it almost choked the words in his throat. “I tried to stop you, Michiru. With Nana. I really did. I shouted until my voice was raw. But you were so… so damned determined. So brave. Far braver than I could ever be.” His voice cracked, and for a long time, he simply sat in the silence, the only sound his own ragged, unsteady breathing.

Hours bled into days, an eternity of dim light and profound, echoing silence, marked only by the slow crawl of the sun across the dusty, curtained window. He ate sparingly from the dwindling tins of forgotten, non-perishable emergency supplies he managed to pilfer from the deserted school kitchens, his phone, its battery now carefully, obsessively conserved, his only companion for checking the slow, agonizing passage of time. He slept in fitful, nightmare-plagued starts in the uncomfortable wooden chair beside her bed, or sometimes, when the exhaustion became too much to bear, curled up on the cold, unforgiving floor at her feet, waking with a jolt, the oppressive, unnatural silence always the first thing to greet him, a constant, unwelcome, terrifying reminder of his utter, profound isolation.

As the first long, silent, grief-haunted week of the term break drew to its close, Arthur Ainsworth sat his solitary, unwavering vigil, a self-appointed, grief-stricken, and increasingly desperate guardian in a silent, empty, and deeply cursed school. He watched over a brave, gentle, and selfless girl who embodied a purity and unconditional love that this island, and the dark, malevolent forces that controlled its destiny, seemed hell-bent on eradicating from existence. He was adrift, his own future an utter, terrifying, featureless unknown, his only certainty the profound, crushing weight of the recent, tragic past and the silent, solemn promise he’d made to protect Michiru’s final, precious rest, and her even more precious, if improbable, potential return.