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The Council Of The Unseen Versus SPECTRE

Nana Hiiragi

Of course the hate for her is well deserved.

First off, blaming "brainwashing" lets her off the hook far too easily. Patty Hearst tried the same trick in the 1970's and it didn't exactly work out well for her. Ironically, Patty spent more time in prisoner for her bank robberies than Nana does for her 10+ murders, which in itself is unfair - Nana gets away with far too much because she's a girl, instead of in spite of it.

Yes, she would be hated just as much if Nana was male (probably more so).

It should be noted that all Nana's murders were premeditated, on her own cognisance and with malice. Just because she was told to do so, doesn't mean she had to.

In addition to that, just because she may not have wanted to do kill anyone, she was certainly happy to do so (smiling when thinking about killing Mirichu as well as the "won't be shy in killing you" part). Nana is a person who would rather murder someone than think of any sort of alternative (as is the case later on).

Futher more, stating that she's a "child soldier" carries no weight - she's killing civilians, which if she was a soldier makes her actions even more odious.

The fact that people try to exonerate Nana because she was "mind controlled" doesn't hold much water considering she was fully aware of what she was doing; didn't need to; didn't bother querying anything and was fully cognisant during her pre-meditated murders; and she quite happily carried another one out, with no doubt more to come.

In addition, there is no reason why she couldn't have asked questions or even did her own reason about Talents and so forth.

I wasn't surprised that the anime didn't get a second season (if it wasn't just for boosting manga sales) because Nana is so unrelatable, unrelatable and pretty much evil personified. Even later on, she's totally dislikable, obnoxious character.

Considering she's supposed to be intelligent, you would have thought, at the very least, queries the morality, if not the legality and ethics of killing schoolchildren (let alone those she killed before she arrived at the island). She's fully aware of what she's doing, so it's all on her own head. She certainly deserves to be punished far longer than three years (that ends up around 3 months for every kid).

I wouldn't be surprised if Nana Hiiragi does enjoy killing people - she is always smiling happily when thinking about killing her victims.

Whilst she may say that she doesn't want to kill any more, later on - it certainly doesn't stop her (no doubt it would be the first thing she thinks of to solve problems, instead of anything else).

Hopefully, she won't have a happy ending (preferably meet a nasty end - with her own poison needs would be nicely ironic). Whilst she may have "changed" for dubious reasons she will have to end up killing people again at some point. Even though she's changed, she's still an insufferable, nasty little bitch. I've got very little sympathy for her, especially as she was sadistic killing everyone.

And yes, killing Nano led to more people suffering - all because of Nana (no idea why Nano should forgive her - obviously he forgot how Nana taunted him before he fell, although I do hear he did beat the crap out of her as well).

Hopefully she will pay some sort of price for her actions.

Whist Nanao killed more people than Nana, it should be noted that Nana was the cause. It was nice of him really to leave Nana alone, considering she had no compulsion about killing Nanao - he certainly would have had a good reason to seek revenge on her.

In addition, for those who subscribe to those who view Nana as a child soldier (which is dubious to say the least), there is still precedent for requesting reparations and the same for prosecuting child soldiers too (DOMINIC ONGWEN).

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Chapter 4: The Vote and Early Manipulations

The lunchtime encounter with Nana Hiiragi left Arthur feeling raw and exposed. Her ability to mask her true nature behind such a dazzling facade of innocent charm was profoundly unsettling. He knew, with a certainty that settled like a stone in his gut, that she had filed away every detail of his fabricated “vision,” and would be dissecting it for any hint of threat or exploitable weakness. His decision to put himself forward for class representative now felt even more reckless, but also, paradoxically, more necessary. He needed to understand how she operated in a position of influence, however minor.

The day and a half leading up to the vote was an uncomfortable lesson in social dynamics for Arthur. The other serious contender, Inori Tamaki, the sharp-eyed girl with the severe ponytail, campaigned with earnest efficiency. She spoke logically about her organizational skills, her desire for a fair and well-run class, and her commitment to representing student concerns to the teachers. She garnered a respectable amount of quiet support from the more studious and pragmatic members of the class.

Then there was Nana Hiiragi. She didn’t so much “campaign” as weave a subtle, irresistible web of charm. She seemed to be everywhere at once, a whirlwind of perfectly pitched compliments and thoughtful gestures. She learned names with astonishing speed, remembered trivial details about classmates’ hobbies – a favorite manga series here, a struggling subject there – and offered to help with homework (though Arthur, watching closely, noticed she often then subtly delegated the actual work to other admirers). When she spoke to someone, she made them feel like they were, for that moment, the most important, most interesting person in the room. Her promises for her tenure as class representative were vague but universally appealing – a more fun, more inclusive class environment, more activities, a stronger sense of unity. It was a masterful performance, and Arthur, watching her, felt a kind of horrified admiration. She was a natural politician, a born manipulator wrapped in a veneer of utterly adorable sincerity.

Arthur’s own “campaign,” by stark contrast, was a masterclass in awkwardness. He made no speeches, offered no grand promises. His efforts consisted mostly of him standing near groups of students during breaks, occasionally offering a stilted, phone-translated comment if directly addressed, or a clumsy nod if someone caught his eye. He’d initially entertained the idea of trying to rally some support, perhaps making a vague, unsettling promise about using his “Chrono-Empathic Glimpse” for the vague benefit of the class’s future, but the words felt hollow, dangerous, and far too likely to backfire. His primary reason for even putting his name forward remained largely internal: to observe Nana more closely as she vied for influence, and perhaps, in some small, almost imperceptible way, to signal to Nanao Nakajima – who seemed to shrink visibly whenever the topic of leadership arose – that not everyone who sought a position of authority was an overwhelming force of charisma. He’d hoped his own unlikely, ill-equipped candidacy might make Nanao feel slightly less isolated in his timidity.

Nana, naturally, with her acute social antennae, noticed his continued, if quiet, presence in the running. During a break between classes, as Arthur was trying to decipher a particularly complex kanji in his textbook, she approached his desk, her expression one of perfectly crafted, almost sisterly concern.

“Tanaka-kun,” she began, her voice soft and melodious, “I was just thinking… are you absolutely sure you want the burden of being class representative? It really does take up so much time, you know, with meetings and organizing things. And there’s an awful lot of… well, social effort involved.” She tilted her head, her violet eyes wide with feigned sympathy. “With your communication being through your phone, it might be terribly stressful for you. I’d hate to see you overwhelmed.”

Arthur met her gaze for a moment, seeing the glint of calculation behind the concern. He looked down at his phone, typed a brief reply. “Responsibility is… sometimes necessary, Hiiragi-san,” the synthesized voice stated, deliberately opaque. He didn’t elaborate.

Nana’s smile didn’t falter, but he saw a new flicker of something – annoyance? Reassessment? – in her eyes. “Of course, Tanaka-kun,” she said smoothly, her voice still dripping with false sweetness. “Just looking out for a fellow new student.” She gave a little wave and flitted off to charm another group.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Arthur began to notice subtle shifts in how other students interacted with him. When he tried to join a conversation, even with his phone ready, one of the participants would suddenly remember an urgent task elsewhere. He overheard snippets – or rather, his phone, with its microphone active, caught stray Japanese phrases that it dutifully translated on his screen when he reviewed the ambient audio later: “Tanaka-kun is a bit… strange, isn’t he? Always so quiet, with that machine…” or “Can we really rely on someone who needs a phone to talk for him to speak for us?” and even, more pointedly, “I heard his ‘Talent’ makes him moody and unpredictable. What if he has a bad ‘glimpse’ about a class trip or something?”

The comments were always deniable, never directly attributable to Nana, but their timing was impeccable, their effect insidious. She was isolating him, not with overt aggression, but with carefully planted seeds of doubt and discomfort, painting him as an unreliable eccentric. It was unnervingly effective. He felt a knot of unease tighten in his stomach; he’d hoped to remain a minor curiosity, but her actions suggested she was already taking him more seriously, as a potential irritant, than he liked. This wasn't just about winning a symbolic vote for her; it was about ensuring no unpredictable elements, however minor, remained within her sphere of influence. She was methodically clearing the board.

Finally, the last period of the next day arrived. Mr. Saito, with his usual slightly flustered cheerfulness, produced a small, slotted wooden box. “Alright class,” he announced, rubbing his hands together. “Time to cast your votes for your new class representative! Please write the name of your chosen candidate clearly on the slip of paper I’ll provide, fold it once, and then come up to place it in the ballot box.”

Small slips of paper were distributed. Arthur stared at his for a moment. He had no illusions about his own chances, nor, if he was honest with himself, did he particularly want the job. His candidacy had served its quiet, observational purpose. He carefully wrote ‘Inori Tamaki’ in hesitant katakana, then folded the paper. As the students filed up row by row to deposit their votes, he watched Nana. She dropped her own slip into the box with a confident, radiant smile, even offering a cheerful little wave to Mr. Saito, who beamed back.

The counting was swift and public. Mr. Saito, with the surprisingly willing assistance of Inori Tamaki herself (a sign of her own good sportsmanship, Arthur thought, or perhaps a subtle power play by Saito to demonstrate impartiality), tallied the votes on the chalkboard. The chalk clicked with a steady rhythm.

The results were, to Arthur, hardly surprising, though the decisiveness was still a little startling. Inori Tamaki: 8 votes. Kenji Tanaka: 1 vote. (Arthur felt a small, inexplicable pang. He suspected, with a strange mixture of gratitude and embarrassment, that it was a pity vote from Nanao Nakajima, or perhaps even a mistake by someone else.) Nana Hiiragi: 21 votes. (The remaining students in their class of thirty).

“And the winner, by a very significant majority, is Hiiragi Nana-san!” Mr. Saito declared, leading a vigorous round of applause. “Congratulations, Hiiragi-san!”

Nana beamed, her eyes sparkling as she stood to accept the accolade, bowing graciously to the class. “Thank you, everyone! Thank you so much! I promise I’ll do my very best to represent you all and help make this a truly fantastic and memorable year for us all!” Her voice was full of earnest sincerity.

Arthur felt a strange cocktail of emotions. There was an undeniable surge of relief; the thought of actually having to perform the duties of class representative, with his profound communication handicap and utter lack of understanding of their school’s social labyrinth, was daunting. But beneath that relief was a profound, chilling sense of unease. Nana’s victory had been a foregone conclusion from the moment she’d entered the classroom, but the subtle, almost surgically precise way she had neutralized him as even a token competitor was a stark lesson. He had wanted to understand how she operated, and he’d received a masterclass in social engineering and covert manipulation. The downside was now glaringly clear: he was definitely, irrevocably on her radar, marked as someone who didn’t quite fit, someone who had, however ineptly and briefly, stood in the path of her ambition.

“And in other exciting news,” Mr. Saito continued, his voice full of oblivious good cheer after the applause for Nana had finally died down, “please do remember that at the end of this school year, we’ll be having our traditional leaving party for those students who might be moving on to other pursuits! It’s always a wonderful highlight of the academic calendar, a chance to celebrate our achievements together!”

Arthur almost snorted aloud, a bitter, mirthless sound he barely managed to suppress. A leaving party. The irony was a palpable, acrid taste in his mouth. There would be plenty of students “leaving” this island well before the end of the year, he knew with a sickening certainty, and their departures would be anything but voluntary or celebratory. He glanced at Nanao, who was looking at the newly elected Class Representative Hiiragi with an expression of timid, almost hero-worshipping admiration. Arthur’s jaw tightened. He might have lost this meaningless vote, but the real struggle, the one for Nanao’s life and the lives of so many others in this classroom, had barely begun. He had to be smarter, more careful, and somehow find a way to use his terrible, fragmented knowledge before it was too late. And Nana Hiiragi, now armed with a modicum of official power, would be watching his every move.

Would serve her right

Chapter 5: Saving Nanao

The next few days following Nana Hiiragi’s election as class representative were a torment of heightened, anxious vigilance for Arthur. He knew, with the chilling certainty of his fragmented foreknowledge, that Nanao Nakajima was destined to be her first victim on the island. The image from the anime – Nanao’s trusting face, the sudden, brutal push, the desperate scramble at the cliff edge, the cut rope – it played on a horrifying loop in Arthur’s mind, a constant, unwelcome guest. Every time he saw Nana interacting with Nanao, her expression one of cloying sweetness and deep, manufactured sympathy, a cold dread twisted in his gut. She was a spider, spinning a beautiful, deadly web around the unsuspecting fly.

Arthur made it his unwelcome mission to be Nanao’s inconvenient, awkward shadow. During breaks between classes, he’d find reasons – however flimsy – to be near Nanao, offering stilted, phone-translated observations about the surprisingly aggressive seagulls, or a particularly convoluted problem in their mathematics textbook. Nanao, a painfully shy boy by nature, with a habit of staring at his own feet whenever spoken to, seemed mostly bewildered by the sudden, persistent attention from the quiet, foreign-seeming Tanaka-kun. He was too polite, too timid, to actually rebuff him, but his nervous fidgeting and mumbled, monosyllabic replies made their interactions an exercise in social agony for both of them. Arthur, however, persisted, driven by a desperate urgency.

He knew the cliff incident was typically instigated by Nana preying on Nanao's profound feelings of worthlessness, his crippling lack of self-esteem. She would suggest they go somewhere quiet to talk, somewhere with a "beautiful view" where he could "clear his head." Arthur began to pay obsessive attention to the class schedule, noting the free periods, the lunch breaks, and the well-trodden routes students took to various scenic spots on the island – spots he’d mentally cross-referenced with the hazy, half-remembered visuals from his nephew's anime. The cliffs on the northern side of the island, with their dramatic drop to the churning sea, became a focal point of his dread.

It was a bright, deceptively cheerful Tuesday afternoon, during a longer-than-usual lunch break due to a cancelled afternoon class. Arthur, forcing down a dry bread roll in the noisy canteen, saw Nana approach Nanao’s solitary table. Her smile was particularly dazzling, her body language a study in practiced empathy. He couldn’t hear their conversation from across the crowded room, but Nanao’s slumped shoulders, the way he picked at his food without eating, and Nana’s earnest, head-tilted posture as she leaned in, speaking softly to him, were damningly eloquent. Then, with a gentle, encouraging hand on Nanao’s arm, Nana gestured vaguely in the direction of the northern cliffs. This was it. His stomach plummeted.

His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trapped in his chest. He had to intercept, but not too obviously. He couldn’t let Nana know he knew her intentions. That would be signing his own death warrant. He had to make it look like an accident, a product of his inconvenient, erratic "Talent."

He waited a minute, a torturous, agonizing sixty seconds, letting them get a head start, then followed, his own tray abandoned. He forced himself to walk at a casual pace, though every instinct screamed at him to run. He took a slightly different, less direct path, one that wound through a small, overgrown copse of whispering bamboo, a route he knew would converge with theirs just before the steeper, more treacherous incline leading to the cliff edge viewing area. The air in the bamboo grove was cool and damp, the rustling leaves sounding like hushed, conspiratorial whispers.

As he rounded a sharp bend, momentarily obscured by a particularly thick clump of bamboo, he saw them. Nana was a few steps ahead, her pink pigtails bouncing, beckoning Nanao forward with a bright, encouraging smile. Nanao was shuffling along behind her, his head bowed, his gaze fixed on the scuffed toes of his shoes, the picture of dejection. Arthur quickened his pace, his timing now critical.

Just as Nana was saying something about the “beautiful, clear view from the top” offering “such a wonderfully fresh perspective on things,” Arthur “accidentally” stumbled out of the bamboo path, his foot catching on an imaginary root. He lurched forward, bumping lightly but decisively into Nanao, who let out a small, startled yelp and stumbled himself.

“Ah, gomen nasai! My apologies! So clumsy of me!” Arthur exclaimed, his voice a little too loud, a little too forced. He quickly typed into his phone, his fingers surprisingly steady despite the adrenaline coursing through him, and held it up so that Nanao – and, crucially, Nana, who had turned at the commotion – could see the screen. “Nanao-san! Tanaka-kun, isn’t it? What a complete coincidence meeting you both here.”

Nana turned fully, her bright smile tightening almost imperceptibly at the edges. Her violet eyes, usually wide with feigned innocence, held a flicker of sharp annoyance. “Tanaka-kun. We were just going up to admire the view. Nakajima-kun was feeling a little down.”

“The view…” Arthur echoed, then he made a deliberate show of his eyes going distant, a slight frown creasing his brow, his head tilting as if listening to something only he could hear – his well-rehearsed charade of his “Talent” kicking in. He reached out, as if instinctively, his fingers brushing lightly against Nanao’s arm. Nanao flinched at the unexpected contact.

“Nanao-san,” Arthur said, his phone translating his low, urgent English words into equally grave Japanese, ensuring Nana, standing just a few feet away, could hear every syllable. “My Talent… it just showed me a flash. A very disturbing one. You… you were falling. From up there.” He gestured vaguely with his free hand towards the cliff edge, hidden from their current vantage point but looming in their immediate future. “Right here. On this path. Today. Please, I implore you, be incredibly careful if you go any further. Perhaps… perhaps it would be better not to go at all today.”

Nanao stared at him, his already pale face draining of all remaining colour. He looked from Arthur’s feigned distress to the path ahead, then back to Arthur, his eyes wide with a dawning, superstitious terror. Nana’s expression was a careful mask of polite concern, but Arthur could see the sharp calculation in her eyes, the way her smile didn’t quite reach them. His “prediction” was specific enough to be deeply alarming to Nanao, yet vague enough to be a lucky, albeit unsettling, coincidence from Nana’s perspective. To dismiss it out of hand, especially after his previous “accurate” forecast of her and Kyouya’s arrival, might look callous, even suspicious, particularly if something did then happen to Nanao. It complicated her plan beautifully.

“Oh my goodness,” Nana said, her voice dripping with a perfectly calibrated mixture of false sympathy and gentle skepticism. “That sounds… simply terrible, Tanaka-kun. Are you quite sure? Sometimes these strong feelings, these… glimpses… can be a little misleading, can’t they?” She was trying to downplay it, to regain control of Nanao, to coax him forward.

“It felt… horribly real, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur insisted gravely via his phone, meeting Nana’s gaze for a brief, challenging moment before turning back to Nanao with an expression of profound, urgent concern. “Perhaps another day would be better for admiring the view, Nanao-san? When the… the premonitions are less active? When the air feels less… fraught?”

Nanao, thoroughly spooked by the vivid image of himself falling from a great height, nodded vehemently, clutching at the excuse like a drowning man grasping a lifeline. “Yes! Yes, you’re right, Tanaka-kun! I… I suddenly remembered I left my history textbook in the classroom. A very important textbook. I should go back and get it. Right now.” He practically bolted, muttering apologies and thanks, scrambling back down the path the way they had come.

Nana was left standing on the path with Arthur, the silence between them thick with unspoken accusations and frustrated intent. Her smile was strained, a mere caricature of its usual brilliance. “Well, Tanaka-kun,” she said, her voice dangerously sweet. “You certainly possess a… most dramatic and timely Talent.”

“It is often more a curse than a blessing, Hiiragi-san,” Arthur’s phone replied, his translated tone suitably sombre and world-weary. He then made his own hasty excuses about needing to find a quieter spot to “clear his head” after such a disturbing “vision,” and retreated in the direction Nanao had fled, leaving Nana standing alone amidst the rustling bamboo, her meticulously planned murder for the day thoroughly, infuriatingly derailed.

He didn’t relax, however, not for a second. Nana was nothing if not persistent. For the rest of that afternoon, and indeed for the next couple of anxious days, Arthur made himself Nanao’s unofficial, relentlessly awkward bodyguard. He sat near him (or as near as Nanao’s discomfort would allow) at lunch, walked with him (or rather, a few paces behind him) between classes, manufacturing reasons to engage him in stilted, phone-mediated conversations about everything and nothing – the difficulty of certain kanji, the surprisingly palatable nature of the canteen’s curry, the migratory patterns of local birds (a topic Arthur knew absolutely nothing about but improvised wildly on). He learned, in brief, mumbled snippets from Nanao, that the boy was passionate about old, obscure strategy video games and surprisingly knowledgeable about the island’s limited local flora.

It was exhausting, maintaining this facade of casual proximity while his nerves were stretched taut as piano wire. Nana watched them, her expression unreadable but her presence a constant, simmering pressure. She made a few more subtle attempts to get Nanao alone, suggesting a visit to the library’s “quiet, secluded annex” for study, or a peaceful walk by the “tranquil, reflective pond” on the far side of the school grounds. But each time, Arthur, with a seemingly coincidental appearance and another vague, unsettling “glimpse” related to the proposed location (“I sense… a sudden, inexplicable chill… a feeling of being trapped, of deep water, near that pond, Nanao-san. Perhaps it is best avoided today?”), managed to thwart her with a maddening, if clumsy, consistency.

His repeated interventions were clearly making Nana increasingly wary of him. She couldn’t act overtly against him without potentially exposing her own malevolent intentions, especially since his “predictions,” however outlandish, kept proving… disturbingly prescient in their negativity, at least in Nanao’s increasingly rattled and grateful mind.

Nanao, for his part, was beginning to see Arthur not just as the “strange, quiet Tanaka-kun” but as some kind of eccentric, slightly frightening, but ultimately benevolent guardian angel. After the third “warning” that seemed to avert some unseen disaster, he’d looked at Arthur with an expression of genuine, almost teary-eyed gratitude.

“Tanaka-kun,” he’d said, his voice barely a whisper, as he nervously offered Arthur a small, slightly bruised apple he’d saved from lunch. “Thank you. I… I don’t know what I would do without your… your warnings. You’ve… you’ve really helped me. More than you know.”

Arthur had simply nodded, accepting the apple with a mumbled thanks of his own (via phone, of course), a complicated mixture of profound relief and gnawing guilt churning within him. He’d saved Nanao, for now. He’d bought him precious time. But in doing so, he had also firmly painted an even larger, brighter target on his own back as far as Nana Hiiragi was concerned. She wouldn’t give up on her mission to eliminate Nanao, and she certainly wouldn’t forget the inconvenient, unpredictable new student with the troublesome, embarrassing, and infuriatingly timed glimpses into the future. The game had just become significantly more dangerous. And Arthur knew, with a certainty that made his blood run cold, that Nana was already recalculating, already planning her next move.

Chapter 1: The Unwanted Journey

The absolute, unequivocal last sensation Arthur Ainsworth, fifty-one years, three months, and a dreary Tuesday into a life he often felt was on loan from a particularly uninspired mail-order catalogue, registered with any degree of certainty was the gritty, slightly abrasive texture of overly toasted wholemeal bread lodging uncomfortably between his teeth. The sharp, familiar, and frankly unwelcome tang of too-bitter, cheap chunky marmalade still coated his tongue. He’d been staring blankly out of his perpetually damp Crawley kitchen window, past the condensation fogging the lower pane, at the aggressively, almost offensively cheerful fuschia in Mrs. Henderson’s meticulously manicured, gnome-infested garden. He was contemplating, with a familiar sense of existential dread, the yawning, featureless abyss of another interminable Tuesday morning meeting about synergistic resource allocation and departmental overheads, when the very fabric of his mundane reality had simply… dissolved.

Not in a gentle, cinematic fade to black, but with a violent, nauseating, wrenching compression, as if he were being forcibly, painfully squeezed through the eye of a cosmic needle that was far too small for his middle-aged, slightly paunchy frame. A silent scream, a pure rictus of terror and disbelief, tore from lungs that, a horrifying microsecond later, felt alarmingly… undersized, tight, and distressingly inefficient.

He blinked. Once. Twice. His vision swam, a nauseating, disorienting blur like looking through a disturbed goldfish bowl that had been filled with murky water. The comforting, slightly musty, entirely familiar aroma of his own small kitchen – old tea towels needing a boil wash, the faint, lingering ghost of last night’s overcooked shepherd’s pie, the metallic tang of the ancient gas hob – was gone, brutally, inexplicably supplanted. Now, his nostrils flared against an aggressive, unwelcome olfactory assault: the sharp, briny sting of sea air, the unmistakable, oily reek of diesel fumes, and beneath it all, a cloying, faintly sweetish, almost chemical perfume he couldn’t quite identify – cheap cherry blossom air freshener, perhaps? It made his stomach roil with a sudden, violent wave of nausea.

He wasn’t standing, a half-eaten piece of toast clutched in his rapidly cooling hand. He was seated, or rather, vibrating, perched precariously on a ridiculously hard, unforgivingly cold plastic bench that thrummed with the powerful, rhythmic, almost hypnotic beat of a massive engine. The vibration resonated through his slight, unfamiliar frame, up his spine, and into his teeth, making them ache. His entire field of vision still swam, a nauseating blur that slowly, reluctantly, resolved into... a boat? No, this was larger, more substantial. A ferry, judging by its considerable size and the churning, slate-grey-green water visible through a salt-streaked, grimy window.

His hands. He stared down at his hands, which were resting, almost formally, on knees that felt strangely knobbly, pointed, and alarmingly close to his face. They were small, slender, the skin unnervingly smooth and pale, entirely unblemished. Gone were the familiar, comforting liver spots, the intricate network of fine wrinkles he’d painstakingly earned over fifty-one years of worry and indifferent skincare. Gone, most shockingly, was the faded, silvery-white scar on his left thumb, a cherished, almost nostalgic memento from a foolish, boyish attempt to whittle a stick with his father’s intimidatingly sharp penknife when he was barely ten. These were the hands of a boy, a complete stranger. A wave of pure, unadulterated vertigo, cold and terrifying, washed over him, making the already unsteady deck beneath his feet seem to tilt and sway even more alarmingly.

Panic, sharp, icy, and visceral as a shard of glass plunged into his chest, clawed its way up his throat, a silent, suffocating, desperate scream. He looked down further, a strangled, wheezing gasp escaping lips that felt thin, unfamiliar, and strangely unresponsive to his mental commands. A pristine, almost unnaturally dark-blue school uniform – a tailored blazer with an unfamiliar, elaborate embroidered crest on the breast pocket, a stark white, slightly stiff shirt, a neatly, tightly knotted tie that felt like a miniature noose around his suddenly slender neck, and sharply creased, unfamiliar trousers – encased a frame so lean, so light, it felt like inhabiting a fragile, empty birdcage. His comfortable, tea-stained cardigan, his worn, beloved corduroys, his trusty, down-at-heel slippers – all relegated to a life, a world, a self, that felt galaxies, lifetimes, away.

This isn't happening, the thought was a frantic, desperate, looping denial against the overwhelming, irrefutable sensory evidence. This is a stroke. A brain aneurysm. A complete psychotic breakdown. A ridiculously vivid, cheese-induced dream brought on by that questionable Stilton I had before bed. But the insistent, bone-jarring thrum of the powerful engine beneath him, the penetrating chill of the damp sea air seeping through the thin, unfamiliar fabric of the school uniform, the too-tight, starched collar chafing uncomfortably against his strangely youthful skin – it was all terrifyingly, undeniably, horribly concrete.

He was on a ferry. A modern, somewhat utilitarian vessel, judging by the functional, uncomfortable plastic seating and the smeary, salt-streaked windows that offered a bleak, uninviting view of the turbulent, grey-green water churning past under a bruised, weeping, overcast sky. In the middle distance, wreathed in a swirling, clinging mist that seemed to swallow the light, an island rose steeply, almost menacingly, from the restless sea, its slopes a dense, unbroken, unwelcoming carpet of dark green. It reminded him, vaguely, unsettlingly, of some of the starker, more dramatic parts of the south coast back home, but… wrong. Utterly, fundamentally wrong. The light was wrong, the air felt wrong, the very angle of the sun, when it briefly, weakly, pierced the oppressive cloud cover, seemed alien. What a dreadful, dreadful May this was turning out to be, he thought with a sudden, bizarrely specific pang of dislocated misery, before shaking his head to dispel the irrelevant, nonsensical thought.

Around him, other teenagers – actual, living, breathing teenagers, their faces a sea of youthful energy and incomprehensible expressions – chattered and laughed and scrolled through their phones, their voices a bewildering, overwhelming cacophony in a language that flowed around him like fast-moving water, every sibilant hiss, every sharp vowel, every lilting intonation entirely, utterly alien and incomprehensible. They all wore the same dark blue uniform, a depressing ocean of conformity. They were all, he noted with a fresh, sinking wave of despair, Japanese.

“Excuse me,” he tried, the English words feeling thick, clumsy, unnaturally foreign, and obscenely loud in this new, higher-pitched, unfamiliar voice. A few heads turned, their expressions ranging from mild curiosity to outright, disdainful indifference. Blank, uncomprehending eyes stared back at him for a moment before dismissively turning away. One girl, her hair an impossible, almost aggressive shade of bubblegum pink tied into ridiculously perky pigtails, giggled openly into her hand, then whispered something clearly amusing to her smirking friend, who also giggled. The isolation was immediate, profound, absolute. He was a foreigner in a land he didn’t recognize, in a body that wasn’t his own, speaking a language no one here apparently understood. He was, he realized with a sudden, sickening lurch of his stomach, utterly, terrifyingly alone.

His heart, this new, unfamiliar heart, hammered a frantic, panicked rhythm against ribs that felt alarmingly close to the surface of his skin. He patted the pockets of the unfamiliar school blazer, a desperate, fumbling, almost spastic search for something, anything, familiar, an anchor in this maelstrom of unreality. His worn leather wallet, with its comforting, familiar collection of well-thumbed loyalty cards, a few emergency pound coins, and that faded, creased photograph of his late, beloved spaniel, Buster? Gone. His house keys, his car keys, the comforting jingle they usually made in his pocket? Vanished. But then, his fingers, these new, slender, unnervingly smooth fingers, brushed against a familiar, solid rectangular outline in the blazer’s inside pocket.

His mobile phone. An older, slightly battered, but entirely reliable smartphone. His lifeline. With trembling, uncoordinated hands, he pulled it out, its familiar weight a small, almost insignificant comfort in this ocean of terrifying unfamiliarity. The screen flickered to life, displaying its usual, incongruously cheerful background of a slightly out-of-focus bluebell wood he’d photographed on a long-forgotten bank holiday walk. 27% battery. A fresh, sharp spike of pure, undiluted panic lanced through him, colder and more terrifying than the sea wind. Twenty-seven percent. How long would that last? Hours? Minutes? It was his only link to potential understanding, his only tool for navigating this waking nightmare.

He fumbled with the touchscreen, his larger, older man’s muscle memory struggling, fighting against the delicate, precise coordination required by these smaller, younger, entirely unfamiliar teenage hands. He found the voice translation app – a half-forgotten relic from a disastrous, sunburnt package holiday to Majorca with his ex-wife nearly a decade ago, an app he’d kept on his phone for reasons he couldn’t now fathom but was, in this moment, profoundly, desperately grateful for. He jabbed clumsily at the English-to-Japanese setting, his finger slipping twice on the smooth glass.

Clutching the phone like a drowning man grasping a flimsy piece of driftwood, he turned to a boy slumped apathetically beside him on the hard plastic bench. The boy was entirely, almost aggressively, engrossed in a sleek, brightly coloured handheld gaming device that emitted a series of tinny, irritatingly cheerful bleeps and bloops. “Excuse me,” Arthur said again, his voice shaking slightly as he spoke clearly and slowly into the phone’s microphone. The device chirped once, a small, tinny, almost hopeful sound, then emitted a short, polite, perfectly synthesized Japanese phrase.

The boy jumped as if he’d been poked with a sharp stick, startled, his game momentarily forgotten. He looked up, his eyes wide with surprise, then narrowed with suspicion as he took in Arthur’s clearly foreign, distressed appearance. He pointed a questioning finger at himself, then at Arthur. “Watashi? Anata?” (Me? You?)

Arthur nodded vigorously, a ridiculous, almost hysterical wave of relief washing over him at this tiny, fragile, almost insignificant flicker of basic human comprehension. He spoke urgently into the phone again, the question feeling utterly absurd, almost laughably inadequate, even as he voiced it. “Where are we going? Please, can you tell me where this ferry is going?”

The phone chirped. The boy listened, his expression still wary, then replied in a rapid, almost unintelligible stream of Japanese, gesturing vaguely with his free hand towards the misty, forbidding island looming ever closer on the grey horizon. The phone dutifully, if somewhat tinnily, translated back: “To the island. We are all going to the island. For the special school.”

“School?” Arthur croaked, the word catching in his throat like a fishbone. He repeated it into the phone, needing confirmation, needing something, anything, to make sense.

“Yes. The academy. For those with Talents.”

Talents? A sliver of icy, unwelcome unease, sharp as a shard of freshly broken glass, pierced through the thick fog of Arthur’s confusion and terror. The word echoed with a dark, half-forgotten, deeply unpleasant familiarity. The island. The special school. For the Talented. His mind, sluggish with shock, began to churn, to sift through old, discarded memories, searching for a connection, a terrifying, almost unthinkable recognition beginning to dawn.

The ferry docked with a gentle, almost anticlimactic bump against a solid, seaweed-stained concrete pier. The previously chattering students began to gather their bags, a river of dark blue uniforms flowing with a surprising, almost disciplined orderliness towards the disembarkation ramp. Arthur, feeling like a man walking to his own execution, followed them woodenly, his legs like leaden stilts, his mind a maelstrom of fear and dawning, horrifying comprehension. The island air, when he finally stepped onto solid, unmoving ground, was humid, heavy, carrying the cloying scent of pine needles, damp earth, and something else, something faintly metallic, like old blood. A few stern-faced adults, presumably teachers, their expressions uniformly unwelcoming, were directing the arriving students with curt, impatient gestures towards a narrow, winding path leading steeply upwards, into the island’s dense, shadowy, and deeply foreboding interior.

He walked as if in a trance, the phone clutched in his hand like a talisman against the encroaching darkness. This new, young body, this ‘Kenji Tanaka’ as his hastily discovered student ID card (found in another pocket of the unfamiliar blazer) proclaimed him to be, was a reluctant, terrified automaton, and he, Arthur Ainsworth, was its bewildered, unwilling, and increasingly horrified pilot.

Evening found him in a small, stark, sparsely furnished dormitory room, shared with another silent, sullen boy – his roommate, Suzuki, who had grunted a minimal, almost resentful greeting earlier before burying himself completely in a brightly coloured manga volume, effectively vanishing from Arthur’s immediate reality. The overwhelming, unrelenting newness of it all – the constant, bewildering barrage of the unfamiliar Japanese language assaulting his ears, the strange, unappetizing food he’d barely been able to touch at dinner (a slimy, unidentifiable fish and a bowl of disturbingly grey rice), the constant, terrifying, almost schizophrenic disconnect between his fifty-one-year-old mind and this unfamiliar, unwieldy teenage body – was crushing, suffocating.

He sat heavily on the edge of the narrow, unyielding bed, the phone’s battery indicator now a glaring, accusatory, terrifying red 15%. He needed to charge it. Urgently. Desperately. It was his only link to comprehension, his only tool for navigating this bewildering, hostile new reality. But the power sockets in the dorm room wall were a different, unfamiliar shape, and he hadn’t seen his own trusty charger since… well, since his own familiar, comforting kitchen in Crawley, a lifetime, an eternity, ago.

He had to think. He forced his panicked, reeling mind to focus. Talented. Island academy for the Talented. Snippets of disjointed conversation, hazy, half-recalled images from a garishly coloured, excessively violent animation his teenage nephew had been briefly, inexplicably obsessed with some years ago, flickered like faulty neon signs at the frayed edges of his memory. A pretty, innocent-looking girl with bright pink hair and an unnervingly sweet, almost predatory smile. A sullen, white-haired boy with an obsession with immortality and a penchant for asking inconvenient questions. Gruesome, inventive deaths, casually, almost gleefully, inflicted. Dark secrets. Government conspiracies.

Talentless Nana.

The name, the title, hit him with the force of a physical blow, knocking the last vestiges of air from his already constricted lungs. No. It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t. That was fiction, a dark, twisted, nihilistic little piece of entertainment his sister had tutted disapprovingly about. He wasn’t in an anime. Such things didn’t happen. They couldn’t happen.

But the evidence, the terrible, mounting, undeniable evidence, was all around him. The isolated island, miles from any recognizable mainland. The special school, exclusively for "Talented" youth. The subtle, pervasive undercurrent of something… predatory, something dangerous, he’d sensed beneath the thin, fragile veneer of enforced institutional normalcy.

If this was true, if this waking nightmare was indeed his new reality, then he was in unimaginable, immediate, and quite possibly terminal danger. Everyone here was. And he, Arthur Ainsworth, a mild-mannered, unremarkable, fifty-one-year-old former accounts clerk from the peaceful, predictable suburbs of Crawley, was trapped, helpless and horrified, in the unfamiliar, ill-fitting body of a Japanese schoolboy named Kenji Tanaka, days, perhaps mere hours, from the inevitable arrival of a ruthless, highly trained, government-sanctioned teenage assassin.

The phone’s screen flickered ominously, then dimmed. 10%.

The raw, animalistic panic gave way, momentarily, to a desperate, pragmatic, almost cold urgency. He had to find a charger. A compatible one. And a socket that would accept it. Now. Without the phone, without his translator, without his only tenuous link to the world around him, he was deaf, dumb, defenceless, and almost certainly, irrecoverably, dead.

He scrambled to his feet, his earlier exhaustion forgotten, replaced by a surge of pure, undiluted adrenaline. He left his silent, manga-absorbed roommate without a word and ventured cautiously out into the dimly lit, echoing corridor. The dorm was quieting down for the night, most of the other students presumably already in their rooms. He found a common room at the end of the corridor, its lights still on, though it was deserted. It smelled faintly of stale noodles and cheap cleaning fluid. A few students were chatting quietly within, others were hunched over textbooks, already studying. His eyes, wild and desperate, scanned the walls, searching. There. A grimy, overloaded power strip, with a couple of tantalizingly vacant sockets. And discarded carelessly on a low, battered coffee table, amidst a scattering of empty snack wrappers, discarded manga volumes, and students’ textbooks, was a tangled, spaghetti-like mess of assorted charging cables. One of them, a generic-looking black one, looked promising, its micro-USB connector seemingly, blessedly, similar to his own phone’s charging port.

His heart pounding in his throat like a trapped bird, he darted forward and snatched it up. It was a cheap, no-name brand, but the connector looked right. He hurried back to the precious, vacant sockets in the power strip, his hands shaking so badly he could barely insert the plug. He then, with a silent, fervent prayer to any deity, any force, any cosmic entity that might conceivably be listening in this godforsaken corner of reality, connected the other end of the cable to his phone.

The charging icon appeared on the screen. 10%. Then, after an agonizing, heart-stopping pause, 11%.

A tiny, almost hysterical, choked laugh escaped him, a sound perilously close to a sob. One problem, at least, one immediate, life-threatening crisis, was temporarily, blessedly, solved. But as he slumped weakly against the cool, indifferent wall, watching the battery percentage slowly, painstakingly, begin to climb, the larger, more terrifying, more inescapable reality of his utterly impossible situation settled upon him with a crushing, suffocating, and unyielding weight. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, on Murder Island. And the deadly, bloody games, he knew with a certainty that chilled him to the very marrow of his new, young bones, were about to begin.

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.