“Echika, you must go to Kakuriyo Island.”
Her father looked unusually tense one day when he suddenly declared that out of the blue. They were out on their small boat together. Echika looked up at her father with a pout.
“I don't get it.”
She'd been feeling down all morning, ever since she heard that this would be their last time sailing together.
Echika, who was only in the sixth grade, didn't understand what was happening.
Her father had kept it quiet right until the day he was hospitalized... By the time he'd received the diagnosis, his lung cancer had progressed to an advanced stage. He'd resigned from his job to focus on getting treated, and the boat he rented for work was due for return the following day.
Her father, who had been progressively losing weight, sighed deeply.
“We've talked about this so many times, haven't we? The religious rituals entrusted to the Mikumo family... and how special that island's Divine Land is.”
Echika glared at her father in the boat's wheelhouse.
“Do you really expect me to believe that childish story? A monster appears on that island and kills its prey by skewering them through the heart...”
He shook his head sadly and gazed at the horizon.
“I understand it's hard to believe... But you believed it just three years ago. What changed, Echika?”
Echika gave a somewhat mischievous laugh.
“Maybe it's 'cause my thinking's all grown up now. You still believe in vampires, aliens, and time travel, don't you, Dad?”
“I don't believe in those. I only believe in Visitors.”
Her father was usually a jolly old jokester, but today he looked so serious and determined that Echika began to feel a chill.
“...A creature that steals the flesh and blood of its prey to change its form?”
“Not only that, but they're also highly intelligent. That's what's so terrifying about them.”
“But whenever I ask you about the Visitors, you don't know anything about them. Isn't that proof you're lying?”
The first time she'd heard about Visitors, Echika had stared at the door of her room and trembled with fear every night for weeks afterwards. She was terrified that a Visitor would open the door and attack her... It didn't end until her father installed a small bolt on the door to her room.
It wasn't until she entered the upper grades of elementary school that she was freed of her childish fears.
Why had her father kept telling her things like this when he should have been celebrating her coming adulthood? No matter how many times she asked, she couldn't understand.
In the wheelhouse, her father looked down with a hurt expression.
“When I was in middle school, I thought the same way you do. I hated the island's customs, thought they were completely absurd. I even chose to go to boarding school so I could escape that place.”
“Wow, so you did used to be a decent man, Dad.”
Her father's voice trembled. Was he... crying?
“If I could go back in time, I'd do everything differently. ...The moment the police knocked on the door of my dorm and told me about the Beast of Kakuriyo Island incident, I knew the culprit was a Visitor.”
Echika sighed in exasperation.
“Will you please pull yourself together? It was a human that did it. There's no such things as Visitors.”
“No, it was a Visitor, which came from the Divine Land in 1974. Just thinking of how my mother must have felt, facing that monster all by herself... makes my heart ache.”
Her father suddenly stopped the boat's engine, nearly making her trip over the edge. She gasped, and Echika's father squeezed her shoulder with a feverish hand.
“I regret it. I didn't listen to anyone and left the island without learning anything about the Thunder Festival.”
“...That hurts.”
Echika brushed off her father's hand. But he continued to talk.
“But there is one thing I do know. I told you before that there are two kinds of Thunder Festival, the False Thunder Festival and the True Thunder Festival, didn't I?”
“Yeah. If I remember, the festivals that were usually held were False Thunder Festivals, and the True Thunder Festival was only held once every few decades.”
Her father's face relaxed, as though he was relieved Echika remembered. Then he hugged her tightly.
“I haven't told you properly yet, Echika. The True Thunder Festival is held every 45 years, and the next one must take place in 2019. That's when you need to go to Kakuriyo Island.”
Echika was shocked.
“Why me?”
Even if she didn't know the details of the True Thunder Festival, Echika knew enough to say it was dangerous. So she felt betrayed and didn't understand why her father would ask something so terrible of her.
“No father would ever want to put his daughter through this. I wish I could do it myself, like I planned.”
“Then do it! Don't talk to me about things like this!”
Echika screamed and cried. Her father slowly shook his head.
“I wanted to. Just as my mother once fought the Visitor, I, too, planned to lay down my life. But... I'm sorry. I don't think your old man has it in him anymore.”
Her father must have said that, knowing he didn't have long to live. But Echika, who didn't know anything, just resented her father's selfishness.
Just before they disembarked, her father spoke one last time.
“I know it's a cruel request. But someone who knows about the Visitors' existence must return to Kakuriyo Island. Otherwise...”
Echika didn't catch what he said afterwards.