Chapter Five: Separation of Main Island and Divine Land (1)
Wednesday, October 16, 2019, 5:45 P.M.
For a long while, there was no response from the mainland.
Saijou stared at the transceiver, completely transfixed, but Kikyo gave an exaggerated sigh and clearly communicated that he had no intention of listening to whatever they had to say.
Eventually, Mikumo's voice came out of the transceiver.
“What is it you want me to admit?”
Surprisingly, her voice was calm. Yuki could almost see the dark, bitter smile on her face. Yuki pressed the call button.
“Ms. Mikumo, your father told you some bizarre, frightening stories about Kakuriyo Island, didn't he?”
The kitten meowed from inside his bag, but Yuki ignored it and kept talking.
“You said he was a liar, but it would appear you were wrong.”
Mikumo was silent, neither confirming nor denying it. After another period of waiting, Yuki spoke into the transceiver again.
“You don't have to tell me anything right now. But instead, please tell me how much of what I'm about to say matches your father's stories.”
With that, Yuki continued without hesitation.
“What I'm going to do now is the first step of solving 'The Mystery of the Ambush', as Professor Motegi dubbed it. ...That professor might be a pain, but what he said was true.”
“Mew, meow.”
“Because unless we deduce what sort of creature that black cat is and how it works, there's no way we'll be able to protect ourselves.”
As soon as Yuki let go of the call button, Shigaraki's voice immediately cut in.
“Hey, Mr. Ryuuzen, I've been hearing a cat meowing near you this whole time!”
Apparently, the kitten's voice had reached them on the other side of the transceiver. Yuki stroked the squirming mass through the top of his bag.
“Relax, it's a different cat. I just picked up an injured kitten.”
Yuki looked down at the skinned remains of the cat as he held down the call button.
“I found a pile of dead animals in the Divine Land. Most of them are field mice, there's gotta be almost fifty of them. Most likely, they were all killed by the black cat.”
As Yuki paused for breath, Mikumo's voice came from the transceiver.
“Could it be they were stabbed in the chest?”
It was hard to hear through the static, but it sounded like she'd been breathing hard.
“Yes, stabbed in the chest, exactly like Director Unno. What I'm curious about is one particularly gruesome carcass we found. What animal do you think it was?”
After a few seconds of silence, Mikumo replied quietly.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because I thought you'd know, Ms. Mikumo... Incidentally, it's a cat. A dead cat. We think it's the mother of the kitten I have with me, but it's been skinned and most of its flesh has been eaten.”
Kikyo, who'd been acting like their story wasn't worth listening to, seemed to become interested here. Before long, he was also staring seriously at the transceiver. Saijou opened his mouth as though he'd forgotten that Yuki was calling the main island.
“I don't understand. What's so interesting about that one cat?”
Once again, Yuki pressed the call button on the transceiver.
“Among all those animals, only the mother cat, which was black, was eaten. And a black cat is also the form the creature has assumed. I don't think that's a coincidence.”
Saijou let out a gasp.
“You don't mean the creature eats the things it copies before transforming into them?”
He'd left the call button pressed, so that voice must have reached the main island. Yuki nodded and continued.
“The texture of the creature's fur as the black cat was incredibly realistic. Perhaps the substances it eats are absorbed and cover its body's surface, allowing it to have such a perfect appearance... Call it a sort of mimicry.”
Saijou fell silent. Yuki turned back to the transceiver.
“So what do you think? Is my hypothesis correct, Ms. Mikumo?”
He let go of the call button and waited for the main island's response.
“I don't want to believe it, but your hypothesis exactly matches what my father told me... But if Visitors are real, then horrendous things will happen here.”
Mikumo stopped as though her voice had failed her, so Yuki took over.
“So the creature is called the Visitor, is it? To be honest, I'd underestimated its abilities. I'd assumed that no matter how good it was at mimicry, it wouldn't be able to transform into anything larger than a cat.”
Looking at the pile of animal corpses, Yuki continued his explanation.
“But when I found the carcass of the black cat, I remembered something. 45 years ago, a body was devoured the exact same way.”
That was something everyone who'd participated in the filming should have known.
It was noted in all the newspapers of the time and the issue of Unsolved Mysteries. Only Professor Sasakura, the alleged culprit of the Beast of Kakuriyo Island incident, was found in a horrible state as though the beast had eaten his flesh.
“If we assume the culprit of the incident 45 years ago was a Visitor, then it was the Visitor that attacked Professor Sasakura and ate his flesh. If the assumption that 'Visitors eat creatures in order to mimic their appearances' is correct... then wouldn't that mean that Visitors have the ability to mimic humans?”
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