Would Be Even Better If Nana Is Killed By Someone She Trusted. Would Be Nicely Ironic

Nana is an evil little bitch

Chapter 9: Immortality and a Doomed Boy

Arthur’s grotesque and shocking presentation with Shinji’s severed head had undeniably sent profound shockwaves through the student body and the teaching staff. It had also, in its own horrific way, achieved one of his desperate objectives: Yūka Somezaki was broken, her necromantic Talent voluntarily renounced, and thus, she was no longer an immediate, practicing threat that Nana Hiiragi might feel compelled to eliminate. However, Arthur knew this act of desperate intervention wouldn’t stop Nana for long. She was a force of nature, a meticulously programmed killer, and she would simply recalibrate and move on to other names on her unseen list.

And so she did. Perhaps driven by a need to understand or neutralize one of the most overtly powerful Talents on the island, or maybe even by a flicker of genuine curiosity that occasionally surfaced beneath her assassin’s programming, Nana Hiiragi found herself accepting an unexpected invitation. Kyouya Onodera, the aloof, white-haired boy who had bluntly declared his immortality upon arrival, had invited her to his small, somewhat dilapidated house on the outskirts of the main school grounds. It was an unusual gesture from the solitary Kyouya, and Nana, ever watchful for an opportunity to assess a potential threat or gather intelligence, had agreed.

Arthur only learned of this visit later, through the island’s surprisingly efficient student rumour mill – whispers of Nana being seen heading towards Kyouya’s secluded cottage – and by his own grim piecing together of the explosive events that followed.

During Nana’s visit to Kyouya’s surprisingly cluttered and book-filled house, as she’d excused herself to use his small, old-fashioned bathroom, she was reportedly struck by an almost overwhelming olfactory assault – the cloying, combined scent of various strong, masculine toiletries: harsh antiseptic soaps, pine-scented shampoos, a bracingly powerful aftershave, all mingling in the small, poorly ventilated space. When she casually commented on the rather potent aroma, remarking that he must have a fondness for particularly fragrant products, Kyouya had merely looked blank, a slight frown of confusion on his face. He claimed, with apparent sincerity, that he didn’t smell anything particularly strong or out of the ordinary.

It was then, Arthur deduced, that Nana, with her razor-sharp observational skills and intuitive understanding of human tells, realized Kyouya Onodera suffered from anosmia – the partial or complete inability to smell. A critical weakness, hidden in plain sight.

This discovery, Arthur knew, would have immediately sparked a deadly, opportunistic idea in Nana’s cold, calculating mind. Kyouya’s older, somewhat neglected house, unlike the more modern dormitories, still utilized bottled gas for its heating and cooking appliances. Anosmia meant he wouldn’t detect a gas leak until it was far too late. It was a perfect, almost untraceable method of elimination for an otherwise unkillable target.

A day or two after Nana’s seemingly innocuous visit, a powerful, ground-shaking explosion ripped through the northern, more secluded part of the island, sending a roiling plume of black smoke billowing into the clear afternoon sky. Panic, a now familiar companion to the students, flared anew. Teachers, their faces pale with alarm, rushed towards the site of the blast. Arthur’s heart sank with a sickening thud; he knew immediately where it had occurred, what it signified. He could almost picture Nana, arriving at the scene with a carefully orchestrated display of shock and concern, perhaps even feigning an attempt to "rescue" Kyouya, all the while expecting to find his scattered, incinerated remains among the smouldering wreckage.

Instead, she would have witnessed the utterly impossible: Kyouya Onodera, emerging like a phantom from the smoking, demolished ruin of his home, his clothes scorched, his skin blackened, yet already regenerating before her very eyes. Cuts would have been sealing, burns fading to new pink skin, his white hair dishevelled but his body remaking itself with an unnerving, silent speed.

Later, Kyouya, with his characteristic, infuriating stoicism, would have calmly confirmed to a stunned, undoubtedly seething Nana that yes, he was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Her meticulously planned assassination, exploiting a cleverly deduced hidden weakness, had failed spectacularly against a Talent that trumped even her lethal precision. For Nana, it must have been a deeply frustrating, almost insulting setback, another name she couldn’t cross off her list. For Arthur, hearing the fragmented, awed accounts of the explosion and Kyouya’s miraculous survival, it was another grim confirmation of the established script, a small island of terrible predictability in the chaotic, churning sea of his new reality. Kyouya Onodera was a problem Nana couldn’t easily solve.

While Nana was grappling with the Kyouya problem and the aftershocks of Arthur’s classroom stunt, another, quieter tragedy was inexorably unfolding, one that Arthur felt with a particular, poignant helplessness: the fading life of Touichirou Hoshino. Arthur remembered Hoshino vividly from the anime – a frail, gentle-faced boy with a shy smile and a Talent for cryokinesis, who was, by his own quiet admission to a few trusted classmates, slowly, inexorably dying of an aggressive, untreatable form of cancer. His time was short, regardless of Nana Hiiragi’s murderous intervention.

Arthur felt a particular, unexpected pang of sympathy for Hoshino. He knew the boy didn’t have long, and the thought of Nana callously cutting that already tragically short life even shorter, purely to meet some unseen, monstrous quota, filled him with a quiet, impotent rage. It struck too close to home, perhaps – the specter of mortality, the unfairness of a life curtailed. He’d tried, in his awkward, phone-assisted way, to find Hoshino during breaks in the days following the Yūka incident, hoping to offer some small, stilted comfort, perhaps even a vague, reassuring “prediction” of a peaceful passing to ease the boy’s final days. But Hoshino, increasingly weak, was often secluded in his room, resting, or had simply wandered off to find a quiet spot to be alone with his thoughts and his pain. He was proving difficult to find.

And then, Arthur was too late.

News, carefully managed and somberly delivered, filtered through the school via a visibly grieving Mr. Saito: Hoshino Touichirou had been found dead. The official story, corroborated by a “traumatized” but “brave” Nana Hiiragi, was that Hoshino, in a bout of melancholic restlessness, had wandered off from the main school grounds, seeking solitude in one of the island’s many natural caves. Nana, ever the caring class representative, had noticed his absence and, filled with concern, had gone looking for him. She’d found him deep within a dark, damp cave, just as they were suddenly, inexplicably attacked by shadowy, indistinct figures – the ubiquitous “Enemies of Humanity.” Hoshino, in a final, heroic act of self-sacrifice, had apparently tried to protect Nana with his ice Talent, but had been fatally stabbed in the struggle. Nana herself, she tearfully recounted, had sustained a “defensive wound” to her forearm – a shallow, suspiciously neat cut – while “bravely” fighting off the attackers before fleeing to report the terrible tragedy.

It was a neat, almost plausible story, playing perfectly into the prevailing atmosphere of fear and paranoia that the school authorities seemed keen to cultivate. But Arthur knew the sickening truth. Nana had found Hoshino alone in that cave, likely in his final, pain-wracked hours, and had murdered him with her poisoned pen-knife, a quick, “merciful” elimination to tick another name off Tsuruoka’s list. The self-inflicted wound was merely a theatrical prop, a cynical flourish to solidify her alibi and paint herself as both a heroine and a fellow victim.

Kyouya Onodera, who had also been present among the group of students and teachers to whom Nana recounted her harrowing tale, had listened with his usual unnerving, impassive expression. But Arthur, watching from the periphery of the shocked gathering, saw the almost imperceptible narrowing of Kyouya’s eyes, the way his gaze lingered for a fraction too long on Nana’s artfully bandaged “wound.” Kyouya was suspicious. He didn’t buy Nana’s overly dramatic, conveniently vague story, not entirely. The pieces weren’t fitting together neatly enough for his sharply analytical mind.

For Arthur, Hoshino’s death, and the fabricated narrative surrounding it, was another heavy, suffocating blow. He hadn’t even been able to offer a single kind word, a moment of shared humanity. He was a man who supposedly held disruptive glimpses of the future, yet he was constantly, frustratingly outmanoeuvred by the brutal, unfolding present. He retreated to the relative anonymity of his dorm room that evening, the phone idle in his hand, the English words of frustration, grief, and self-recrimination dammed up inside him, untranslatable by any app, comprehensible only to the silent, judgmental ghosts of his own conscience. He was an unwilling passenger on a ship of fools, sailing straight into a maelstrom, able to see the waves crashing ahead but with his hands bound, unable to steer clear of the jagged, waiting rocks. The weight of his terrible knowledge, and his profound, repeated inability to act effectively on all fronts, was becoming a leaden cloak, threatening to drag him down into the depths of despair.

Chapter 11: The Time Traveler's End

The brutal, efficient murders of the two bullies, Etsuko and Marika, served as a chilling punctuation mark in the ongoing, silent reign of terror orchestrated by Nana Hiiragi. While those killings might have been, in part, opportunistic or driven by a cold, strategic desire to protect her new “project,” Michiru Inukai, Arthur knew that Nana was also methodically working her way through the list of Talents provided by her shadowy handler, Tsuruoka. She was identifying and neutralizing those individuals whose abilities were deemed a significant future threat to the Committee’s unseen agenda.

One such individual, whose very existence posed a direct and intolerable risk to Nana’s operational secrecy, was Yuusuke Tachibana. Tachibana was a boisterous, somewhat arrogant, and often loudmouthed boy whose Talent was one of the most potentially disruptive on the island: he could, with a visible shimmer and a slight dizzying effect on nearby observers, travel through time. His ability wasn’t precise or grand; he couldn’t leap years into the past or future. Rather, he experienced short, often uncontrolled, and disorienting bursts into the very near past, usually just a few seconds or, at most, a couple of minutes. He’d often use it in a showy, almost juvenile way – replaying a dropped catch in a ball game to make a spectacular save, or “predicting” the next card to be turned over in a casual game by having already seen it a moment before. But Nana, with her assassin’s mindset, would undoubtedly see the immense danger in such an ability. Someone who could potentially witness her committing a murder, or preparing a trap, and then rewind time, however briefly, to expose her or warn her victim, was an unacceptable variable.

Arthur watched with a growing sense of dread as Nana subtly began to engage Tachibana in conversation over several days. Her questions were always light, posed with an air of innocent, almost girlish curiosity, expertly probing the nature, range, and limitations of his unique Talent. Tachibana, clearly flattered by the attention from the pretty and popular class representative, boasted openly and carelessly about his abilities, demonstrating them with small, unnecessary temporal skips, entirely oblivious to the predatory intelligence gathering happening behind Nana’s bright, encouraging smile and wide violet eyes.

Knowing Tachibana’s grim fate from the anime – a lonely, silent death by drowning in the island’s picturesque, deceptively tranquil lake – Arthur felt a particular, gnawing urgency. Tachibana, for all his casual arrogance and showboating, wasn’t malicious. His Talent, while potentially problematic for a clandestine operative like Nana, hadn’t been used to harm anyone. He was simply a boy with an extraordinary, poorly understood gift, who was about to pay the ultimate price for it.

Arthur sought out Tachibana during a relatively quiet free period, finding him by the lake’s edge, cheerfully and rather inexpertly skipping flat stones across its placid, sun-dappled surface. The water was a deep, inviting blue, its stillness belying the cold darkness that lay beneath.

“Tachibana-san,” Arthur began, his phone held ready, the synthesized Japanese voice emerging into the peaceful lakeside air. He gestured vaguely towards the shimmering water. “A word of caution, if I may. From one wielder of a… perception-altering Talent to another.” He paused, trying to imbue his next words with a suitable gravity. “My own Talent… it sometimes shows me ripples, disturbances in the flow of things, especially around those with powerful or unusual abilities. Your ability, Tachibana-san… it creates such significant ripples. Be wary of still waters today. Very wary indeed. Still waters can be… deceptive.” He tried to inject a note of ominous foreboding into the translated warning, hoping to pierce through Tachibana’s characteristic self-assurance.

Tachibana laughed, a loud, confident, dismissive sound that sent a flock of small birds scattering from the nearby trees. “Ripples? Disturbances? Still waters? Don’t you worry your strange little head about me, Tanaka-kun,” he said, with an arrogant grin, not even bothering to look away from his stone-skipping. “If I see any hint of trouble, I’ll just pop back a few minutes and avoid it altogether! That’s the great thing about my Talent, isn’t it? I’m practically untouchable.” He selected another flat stone and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it skittering across the lake’s surface, supremely self-assured and clearly unconcerned by Arthur’s cryptic, unsolicited pronouncement.

Arthur sighed internally, a wave of helpless frustration washing over him. He’d tried. He’d delivered the warning as clearly and as ominously as he could without revealing his true knowledge. But Tachibana’s overconfidence in his own ability was an impenetrable shield against any form of caution.

A day later, Yuusuke Tachibana was officially reported missing by a “concerned” Mr. Saito after he failed to appear for morning classes.

Nana Hiiragi, naturally, was at the forefront of the students feigning distress and organizing impromptu search parties that, Arthur noted with a grim certainty, conspicuously and deliberately avoided any thorough search of the lake area or its immediate surroundings. He knew, with a chilling clarity, what had happened. Nana would have lured Tachibana to the lake, perhaps under the pretext of wanting to see his fascinating Talent in action in a “safe, open space where no one would be accidentally affected by his temporal shifts.” Then, at a moment when he was vulnerable, perhaps mid-skip, disoriented, or simply distracted by her deceptive charm, she would have incapacitated him – a swift blow to the head, perhaps, or a poisoned needle if she wanted to be certain – and then, with cold, brutal efficiency, drowned him in the cold, unforgiving waters of the lake. A silent, lonely end, leaving no immediate trace, no struggling victim to rewind time and raise an alarm.

The true, macabre horror of her plan, however, came a little later that same day. Arthur observed Nana in a quiet, intense conversation with Sorano Aijima, a timid, easily intimidated girl whose Talent was cryokinesis – the ability to freeze water and lower temperatures significantly in her immediate vicinity. He didn’t need to hear their hushed words, or see the fear in Sorano’s eyes as Nana spoke with that terrifyingly sweet smile, to understand the purpose of their interaction. Nana was coercing her, using a mixture of charm, subtle threats, and the authority of her position as class representative.

That evening, a sudden, unseasonable, and highly localized cold snap seemed to settle over the lake. By the next morning, a significant portion of its surface was frozen solid, a glittering, unnaturally smooth sheet of ice under the pale, indifferent winter sun.

Some of the more adventurous and less thoughtful students, thrilled by the unexpected novelty, somehow managed to procure a motley collection of old ice skates – where from, on this isolated island, Arthur couldn’t begin to imagine. Soon, they were gliding, laughing, and performing clumsy pirouettes across the frozen expanse, their cheerful shouts echoing across the water, entirely oblivious to the horrifying fact that they were dancing on Yuusuke Tachibana’s watery, icy grave. Nana Hiiragi watched them from the lake’s edge, a small, almost imperceptible, chillingly satisfied smile playing on her lips. The evidence of her crime was now sealed away, perfectly preserved, at least until the spring thaw, by which time she would likely be long gone, or other events would have overtaken this one.

Arthur felt a particular, visceral coldness towards this murder. Hoshino, at least, had been dying anyway, his life already tragically curtailed. The bullies had been actively cruel, inviting retribution in their own small way. Habu had been a blackmailer, practically signing his own death warrant with his foolish arrogance. But Tachibana… Tachibana had been guilty of nothing more than possessing a powerful, potentially disruptive Talent and a naive, boyish trust in a pretty, pink-haired girl. Nana hadn’t even allowed him the dignity of a swift, forgotten end, instead encasing him in an icy tomb, his final resting place a spectacle for the unknowing, a grotesque parody of winter fun.

He stood by the edge of the frozen lake, the cheerful, carefree shouts of the skaters grating on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. His phone felt heavy and useless in his pocket. What good were his warnings, his fragmented knowledge, if they were so easily dismissed, so effortlessly circumvented by arrogance or naivety? He was failing, again and again, in his self-appointed, impossible mission. Each death was another heavy stone added to the crushing weight on his conscience, another name on a list he was powerless to shorten. The vibrant, living world of the island, with its sunlit paths and whispering bamboo groves, felt increasingly like a meticulously crafted, beautiful stage for Nana Hiiragi’s deadly, unending performances, and he, one of the few who knew the horrifying script, could only watch in mute, impotent despair as the body count continued to rise.

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.

Chapter 2: The Lie and the Lifeline

The insistent, jarring clang of a bell dragged Arthur from a fitful, shallow sleep. He lay for a moment on the unfamiliar, unyielding mattress, the cheap fabric of the thin blanket rough against his cheek. The dormitory room was small, spartan, and already filled with the grey, pre-dawn light filtering through a single curtained window. His roommate, a lanky boy whose name Suzuki he’d managed to glean through a torturous, phone-assisted exchange the previous evening, was already up and rustling about, his movements brisk and efficient. Arthur felt a familiar ache in his back – this teenage body, while undoubtedly more resilient than his 51-year-old original, was not accustomed to sleeping on what felt like a thinly disguised board.

His phone. The thought jolted him fully awake. He reached for it on the small, battered nightstand. 98%. He’d managed to keep it plugged into the common room charger for most of the night, a small victory in a sea of overwhelming disorientation. It was his shield, his voice, his only tenuous connection to understanding in this utterly alien landscape.

Breakfast in the canteen was a cacophony of unfamiliar sounds, smells, and social rituals. The clatter of chopsticks against ceramic bowls, the rapid-fire Japanese chatter, the aroma of miso soup, grilled fish, and pickled vegetables – it was a sensory assault. Arthur, acutely aware of his own clumsy foreignness, navigated the serving line with a series of awkward bows, nods, and pointing gestures, managing to acquire a tray of food he wasn’t entirely sure how to eat. He found a relatively isolated table and ate mechanically, his gaze sweeping the room, a new, terrible kind of people-watching. Were any of these bright-eyed, chattering teenagers future corpses? Future killers? The rice stuck in his throat. He kept his phone hidden, reserving its precious battery for interactions more critical than ordering natto, which he’d mistakenly selected and was now eyeing with deep suspicion.

The first class of the day was in a classroom that could have been pulled from any number of nostalgic school dramas – worn wooden desks scarred with generations of graffiti, a large, dusty chalkboard, and tall windows that looked out onto a dense, almost suffocatingly lush greenery. The air smelled of chalk dust, old wood, and the faint, lingering scent of floor polish. The teacher, a man named Mr. Saito according to the timetable Arthur had painstakingly deciphered, was balding, with a kindly, slightly harassed smile and a suit that had seen better decades. He beamed at the assembled students, then his eyes, magnified by thick-lensed glasses, found Arthur, the conspicuous late arrival.

“Ah, class, good morning!” Mr. Saito began, his voice surprisingly warm and resonant. He beckoned Arthur towards the front. “We have a late arrival joining our happy group today. This is Tanaka Kenji-kun. Please, let’s all make him feel welcome.”

A smattering of polite, if somewhat curious, applause rippled through the room. Arthur walked to the front, each step feeling like a mile, the thirty pairs of young eyes boring into him. He felt like an imposter in a badly rehearsed school play, acutely aware of the ill-fitting uniform and the sheer absurdity of his presence. He managed a stiff, jerky bow, an approximation of what he’d seen others do.

“Tanaka-kun,” Mr. Saito continued, his smile unwavering, “perhaps you could introduce yourself to your new classmates? And, of course, this being an academy for the Talented, we’d all be very interested to hear about your special gift.”

This was it. The moment he’d been dreading since the horrifying realization of where he was had crashed down upon him. His stomach churned. He fumbled for his phone, the smooth plastic cool against his clammy palm. The slight delay as he typed, the almost imperceptible whir as the translation app processed his English words, felt like an eternity.

“Good morning,” he began, his voice, when it finally emerged from the phone’s small speaker, sounding unnervingly calm and even, a stark contrast to the frantic, terrified monologue screaming inside his own head. “My name is Tanaka Kenji. It is… an adjustment being here. I hope to learn much.” He kept it brief, hoping against hope they might just move on.

No such luck. A girl in the front row, her dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, her eyes sharp and inquisitive, asked the inevitable question, her Japanese clear and direct. “And your Talent, Tanaka-kun? What can you do?”

Arthur took a ragged, internal breath. He’d spent most of the night staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of the dorm room, his mind racing through a dozen half-baked lies, discarding each one as too outlandish or too easily disproved. He needed something plausible within the insane logic of this world, something difficult to verify, something that sounded vaguely impressive but was, in practical terms, utterly useless in a fight or for any kind of nefarious purpose. He typed furiously, his English words a desperate scramble on the small screen.

“My Talent,” the phone announced after a moment, its synthesized voice echoing slightly in the quiet classroom. He paused for dramatic effect he didn't feel, then continued his input. Right, a suitably grand name. Something that sounds… profound. “I call it… Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” He let that hang in the air, allowing the unfamiliar syllables to settle over the room. He could feel the weight of their expectant silence.

He continued dictating to his phone, carefully constructing the parameters of his fabricated ability. “If I make physical contact with someone…” Physical contact, yes, that’s a good limitation. Makes it less likely they’ll just demand a demonstration on a whim, and it gives me an out if I need one. “…I sometimes… see a brief, vivid moment from their future.” Vague. Good. Keep it vague. “Usually this moment is from twenty to fifty years ahead.” Far enough that no one here will ever be able to verify it. “It tends to be a moment of… significant emotional resonance for that person.” More vagueness. Could be joy, could be sorrow. Unpredictable.

Then came the crucial caveats, the built-in flaws. It can’t be reliable. It can’t be useful for fighting or predicting enemy movements. It must be a burden. “It’s… not always clear what I’m seeing,” the phone translated his carefully typed English. “The glimpses are often fragmented, deeply personal, and sometimes… quite unsettling.” That should deter casual requests. No one wants an unsettling glimpse into their private future. “And I have no control over what I see, or indeed, if I see anything at all when I make contact.” Perfect. Utterly unreliable, therefore, from their perspective, mostly useless. He finished with a touch of feigned weariness, allowing his shoulders to slump slightly, hoping he looked suitably burdened by this incredible, yet terribly inconvenient, “gift.” “It can be quite… draining, emotionally and physically.”

A low murmur rippled through the class. He couldn’t decipher the individual Japanese words, but the collective tone suggested a mixture of awe, curiosity, and perhaps a little trepidation. It sounded suitably esoteric, suitably… Talented. He’d bought himself a sliver of credibility, or at least, a plausible, if rather outlandish, explanation for his presence in this extraordinary institution.

Mr. Saito nodded thoughtfully, his brow furrowed in contemplation. “A most fascinating and unique ability, Tanaka-kun. A window into distant futures… remarkable.” He seemed to accept it without question.

Arthur decided to press his advantage, however slight. He needed to confirm his timeline, to know how long he had before Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera arrived. This was risky; it might draw undue attention. But not knowing was worse. “Sensei,” he addressed Mr. Saito, his phone dutifully translating, “to help… orient my Talent to this new… temporal-spatial location, sometimes it helps to focus on specific upcoming arrivals. It can stabilize the… glimpses, you see. Could you perhaps tell me if students by the names of Nana Hiiragi and Kyouya Onodera are expected to arrive in the coming days?” It was utter nonsense, a pseudo-scientific justification he’d concocted on the spot, but he delivered it with as much conviction as he could feign.

Mr. Saito blinked, then consulted a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Ah, yes, indeed!” he exclaimed, looking mildly impressed. “Hiiragi Nana-san and Onodera Kyouya-kun are both due to join our class in… let me see… approximately three days. Excellent foresight, Tanaka-kun! Perhaps your Talent is already beginning to acclimatize!”

Arthur managed a small, noncommittal nod, trying to keep the wave of mingled relief and dread from showing on his face. Three days. He was in the right place, the right horrifying time. The confirmation was a cold comfort, but a vital one. Nana was coming. The clock was ticking, louder now.

The rest of the school day passed in a blur of hyper-vigilance and linguistic confusion. He recognized a few faces from his fragmented memories of the anime – their youthful, innocent appearances a disturbing contrast to the bloody fates he knew awaited some of them. There was the lanky boy with the ever-present camera, Habu, already making some of the girls uncomfortable with his leering gaze. And there, sitting alone by the window, his shoulders hunched, radiating an aura of profound anxiety and loneliness, was Nanao Nakajima. Nana’s first intended victim. Arthur’s stomach clenched with a sickening lurch. He looked so small, so vulnerable.

Later that afternoon, during the final homeroom period, Mr. Saito cleared his throat, recapturing the students’ attention. “Now, onto another important matter for our class. As you know, we need to elect a class representative. This individual will act as a liaison with the teaching staff, help organize class activities, and generally be a voice for all of you. It’s a position of some responsibility.” He smiled. “We’ll hold the vote at the end of the school day tomorrow. Please give some thought to who you might like to nominate, or indeed, if you’d like to nominate yourselves.”

Immediately, a girl in the front row, Inori Tamaki, the one with the severe ponytail and sharp eyes, raised her hand with an air of quiet confidence. “Sensei, I would like to put my name forward for consideration.” Other, less confident murmurs of interest followed.

Arthur watched Nanao Nakajima, who seemed to shrink further into his seat at the mere mention of a leadership role, his face paling. He remembered Nana’s cruel manipulation from the anime, the way she would prey on Nanao’s shyness and insecurity. An idea, impulsive and probably foolhardy, sparked in Arthur’s mind. If he could somehow insert himself into this process, even in a minor way…

He raised a hesitant hand, the unfamiliar gesture feeling alien. All eyes in the classroom turned to him again, the strange new student who spoke through a machine. He fumbled for his phone, his heart pounding a nervous rhythm against his ribs. “I… Tanaka Kenji…” the phone translated his typed words, “I would also… like to be considered for the role of class representative.”

A ripple of surprise went through the room. Mr. Saito, however, beamed with encouragement. “Excellent, Tanaka-kun! Active participation in class life is always to be commended!”

Arthur didn’t particularly want the role. He knew he was a terrible candidate – his communication was severely hampered, his understanding of their school customs was non-existent, and he radiated an aura of awkward outsiderness. But it was a way to be seen, to perhaps disrupt the expected dynamics, to gauge reactions. And maybe, just maybe, it was a way to signal to Nanao, however obliquely, that not everyone was an overwhelming force of charisma or intimidation. Perhaps it was a desperate, subconscious desire to plant a flag, however small, signifying his intention to do something, anything, in this terrifying new world, rather than just be a passive victim of its unfolding horrors.

For the remainder of the day, he tried to melt into the background, to be a ghost observing the ecosystem of the classroom. Every interaction he witnessed, every snippet of conversation his phone managed to catch and translate, was another piece of a deadly, intricate puzzle he was only just beginning to comprehend. He was an unwilling anthropologist in a viper’s nest, his field notebook replaced by a faltering smartphone and a growing, bone-deep sense of dread. His mission, he realized with a clarity that was both terrifying and strangely galvanizing, was twofold: somehow, he had to survive. And somehow, against all odds, against all reason, he had to try and prevent the coming slaughter. The latter felt like trying to hold back a tsunami with a teacup. But he had to try. He owed it to… someone. Perhaps to the frightened, bewildered boy whose body he now inhabited. Or perhaps, more selfishly, to the terrified, fifty-one-year-old Englishman, Arthur Ainsworth, who was screaming silently inside.

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.

Grendel Jinx in Talentless Nana: A Tale of Talents and Deceptions (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/story/393719322-grendel-jinx-in-talentless-nana-a-tale-of-talents?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_myworks&wp_uname=MrTAToad 

The last thing Grendel Jinx remembered was a frying pan swinging toward her face in a Chichester warehouse, courtesy of some goon from a rival secret organization. Then, a flash of green light, a sensation like being sucked through a straw, and now-this. She blinked against the sterile white ceiling of what looked like a hospital room, the faint hum of fluorescent lights buzzing in her ears. Her head throbbed, but her limbs were intact, and her trademark leather jacket was neatly folded on a chair nearby. Not bad for a girl who'd just been yeeted across dimensions.

Heh