With her meticulous initial plans for Nanao Nakajima temporarily, infuriatingly, thwarted by Arthur’s unsettlingly accurate (or so it seemed to Nanao, at least) premonitions, Nana Hiiragi was a coiled spring of suppressed frustration. Arthur knew her handler, the enigmatic and ruthless Tsuruoka, wouldn’t tolerate delays or failures indefinitely. The invisible pressure on her to perform, to meet her quotas, would be immense. This, Arthur suspected, made her even more dangerous, more volatile, more likely to lash out with cold precision if another complication, another unforeseen variable, arose.
That complication promptly presented itself in the unctuous form of Ryouta Habu. Habu was a lanky, sallow-skinned boy with greasy hair and a perpetually smug expression, rarely seen without a bulky, professional-looking camera slung around his neck. Arthur had already clocked him as a minor creep from his hazy anime memories – the sort of boy who used his proclaimed Talent, the ability to photograph events moments before they happened, for leering, voyeuristic purposes rather than anything noble. His photographs often focused on unflattering angles of female students, or "accidental" upskirt shots, all passed off with a knowing smirk as the unpredictable nature of his future-capturing lens.
The evening after Arthur’s third successful, if nerve-wracking, intervention to keep Nanao safe from Nana’s clutches, the students were gathered in the noisy, brightly lit canteen for their evening meal. Arthur, as had become his habit, was seated alone, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible while keeping a wary eye on Nana. He saw Habu, a predatory glint in his eyes, saunter over to Nana’s table, where she was picking at her food with a distinct lack of her usual cheerful appetite. He was clearly agitated about something.
Habu leaned in conspiratorially, a greasy lock of hair falling into his eyes, and with a theatrical flourish, showed Nana a photograph on his camera’s small digital display. Even from across the crowded, echoing room, Arthur could see Nana’s posture stiffen, her perpetually bright smile dimming for a dangerous fraction of a second before being quickly reasserted, albeit with a noticeable strain. He couldn’t hear the hushed, intense exchange over the din of the canteen, but he could guess its ugly nature. Later, through snippets of terrified, whispered gossip from students who had been seated closer, and by piecing together the grim fragments of his own foreknowledge, he confirmed the sordid details.
“Interesting shot, isn’t it, Hiiragi-san?” Habu had apparently leered, his voice a low, suggestive drawl. The photograph on his camera clearly showed Nana looking intently over the cliff edge where Nanao had nearly been lured just days before. It was a damning image, especially in light of Arthur’s public “prediction.” “I was up there myself, you see, testing out a new telephoto lens. A bit suspicious, you standing there all alone, Hiiragi-san, looking down like that, especially after our peculiar Tanaka-kun had that little ‘vision’ about Nakajima-kun taking a tumble. I think you were going to kill him. I think you were planning to push him.”
Nana, ever the consummate actress, had feigned wide-eyed, innocent confusion, her hand flying to her mouth in a gesture of shock. “Kill him? Nakajima-kun? Why on earth would I ever contemplate doing something so utterly horrible, Habu-kun?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Hiiragi,” Habu had sneered, his confidence bolstered by her apparent dismay. “I know what I saw. Or rather, what I think you were about to do. It’s a very compelling photograph, don’t you think? The kind of thing that might make people ask… awkward questions.” He paused, letting his threat hang in the air. “Now, if you don’t want this rather incriminating picture, and my… very strong suspicions… shared with, say, Mr. Saito, or perhaps that nosy Onodera Kyouya, or even the entire class, then perhaps you could pay me a little visit tonight? My room. Number 207. We can discuss how to make this… misunderstanding… go away. Maybe you could start by giving a hardworking, stressed photographer a nice, long, relaxing back massage?” His leer intensified.
The sheer, idiotic audacity of it was breathtaking. Blackmailing a highly trained, deeply ruthless government assassin. Habu was either incredibly stupid, dangerously overconfident in the protection his Talent supposedly afforded him, or, most likely, a lethal combination of both. Arthur felt a familiar wave of helpless dread wash over him. He knew, with a sickening certainty, where this was heading. He couldn’t warn Habu; the boy was far too arrogant and would either dismiss him as the “weird Tanaka kid” or, worse, report his ‘meddling’ to Nana herself, further complicating Arthur’s already precarious position and possibly accelerating Habu’s demise. All he could do was watch, a silent, horrified spectator, as the grim pantomime unfolded.
Nana, trapped and seething internally but maintaining an outward composure of reluctant agreement, had acquiesced with a tight, saccharine smile. “Of course, Habu-kun. I’d be happy to come to your room and clear up this… unfortunate little misunderstanding. A massage sounds… lovely.”
Later that night, the inevitable occurred. Nana, her face a mask of calm but her eyes glinting with cold fury, visited Habu’s cluttered, untidy room. Arthur, lying awake in his own dorm, his ears straining for any unusual sounds, could only imagine the scene. He knew from the source material that Nana, while giving Habu a perfunctory, unwanted back massage, would be seriously contemplating snapping his neck then and there. She would refrain, however, her cold logic overriding her immediate anger. She needed more information about his Talent’s specifics – its range, its limitations, how far into the future it could truly see. Knowledge was power, and Nana always sought to maximize her power before striking.
Instead, as her fingers worked his tense shoulders, she would deliberately, with surgical precision, press a sensitive pressure point, just hard enough to cause a searing, unexpected jolt of pain. Habu, arrogant and foolish, would yelp, then snap, “You stupid girl! Watch what you’re doing! Be careful!” Nana, Arthur pictured, would then offer a profuse, deeply insincere apology, her eyes wide with feigned innocence, claiming it was a complete accident, that her hands had simply slipped. This calculated incident would not only test his reaction but also fuel her resolve to eliminate him swiftly and efficiently once she had the information she needed.
The next day, Nana approached Kyouya Onodera in the library, her face a carefully constructed mask of terror and distress. She clutched a photograph in her trembling hand – one Arthur knew she had expertly faked in the intervening hours. It depicted Nana herself, seemingly unconscious, tied up with rough-looking ropes, in a grimy, unfamiliar room, a faint bruise artfully applied to her cheek. “Onodera-kun!” she’d cried, her voice breaking with convincing panic. “I… I found this! Slipped under my door! I think… I think it’s my future! Someone is trying to kill me! Could it have been Habu-kun? He was acting so strangely towards me last night!”
It was a brilliant, if diabolical, move, Arthur acknowledged grimly. She was establishing a preemptive alibi with the school’s most persistent, logical investigator, painting herself as a potential victim, and simultaneously casting suspicion on Habu. Kyouya, though perpetually suspicious and likely sensing the theatricality of her performance, would have little choice but to take her claim seriously and investigate.
The actual murder happened later that same evening, or perhaps in the early, silent hours of the morning. Nana, having deduced the limitations of Habu’s precognitive camera – likely that it couldn’t photograph events too far into the future, or in areas he hadn’t physically scouted and focused on, or perhaps that it only showed potential futures he was actively trying to capture – would have cornered him in his room. Arthur didn’t know the exact method beyond strangulation, but he imagined it was quick, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient, Nana’s smaller stature no impediment to her lethal training.
The discovery of Ryouta Habu’s lifeless body the following morning, his camera lying broken beside him, sent a fresh wave of genuine panic and fear rippling through the already unsettled student population. Mr. Saito was visibly distraught, his attempts to calm the students increasingly futile. The other teachers were tight-lipped, their expressions grim. Nana, of course, played the part of the shocked and grieving classmate to absolute perfection, even “confiding” in a few tearful girls that Habu had been acting strangely and aggressively towards her, subtly planting the idea that he might have been a dangerous individual who had brought his grim fate upon himself.
Kyouya Onodera was, as expected, intensely, almost ferociously, investigating, his impassive face a mask for a keen, analytical intellect piecing together timelines and inconsistencies. He questioned Nana again, who recounted her faked photo and her “fear” of Habu, her performance flawless.
Arthur watched it all from the periphery, a knot of cold fury, frustration, and a growing, weary despair tightening in his chest. Another death. Another victim he couldn’t save without revealing his impossible knowledge and immediately making himself Nana’s next, and undoubtedly final, target. He hadn’t even liked Habu; the boy had been an unpleasant, sleazy individual. But did he deserve to be murdered, his life snuffed out so callously? The question was a bitter, unanswerable torment.
The weight of his foreknowledge, his terrible prescience, was becoming a crushing, unbearable burden. Each death he failed to prevent, each life Nana extinguished, chipped away at his already fragile psyche. He was an unwilling observer of a horror show he’d already seen the grisly highlights of, powerless to stop the actors from hitting their gruesome, predetermined marks. His phone translator, his only means of coherent expression, felt less like a lifeline and more like a cursed tool for documenting a tragedy in a language he was only beginning to comprehend on a visceral, soul-deep level. Nanao was safe, for now, but at what cost? And who, Arthur wondered with a chilling certainty, would be next on Nana Hiiragi’s ever-growing list?
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