"Eh?! Is there something wrong with the boat?"
After arriving at the harbor, Sonoko Suzuki received an answer she had never expected. The mishap she had least wanted to happen had still occurred.
"I'm terribly sorry, Miss Suzuki." Wearing a life jacket, the driver and whale-watching guide helplessly pointed at the speedboat behind him. "It looks like something got tangled around the propeller or something. In any case, it can't sail properly right now..."
As he spoke, he was quietly wondering about it himself.
It was currently peak season on Hachijōjima Island. Combined with recent news mentioning nearby police facilities and such, the number of visitors could be considered at its highest point in recent times.
To handle the influx of tourists, the harbor's whale-watching boats had been undergoing frequent inspections lately. The sightseeing boat had only completed its routine inspection this morning and had not even been used yet, so why had it suddenly broken down...?
"Ah, then what do we do now? Do we postpone our reservation?" Ran Mouri, who had already handed out life jackets to the children and made sure they put them on, looked at the sea behind them. "But I checked before we came. Whale watching seems to follow certain patterns and time restrictions..."
Whales living in the ocean were not like the ones kept in aquariums. If people wanted to see whales breach the surface, they naturally had to adapt to the whales instead. Whale watching therefore had time and location restrictions; it was not something one could do whenever one wanted.
If they missed today's chance, the next opportunity might not come for quite a while.
"If it's next time, it might be two or three days from now," the driver said, giving exactly the answer they had expected.
"Are there no