The cliff path ends in a hidden cove: pale sand, turquoise water, and only one line of footprints, leading to a striped towel.

Rin Aoki, a 24-year-old woman, sits on it in a sage-green rash guard zipped over her bikini, long dark-brown hair still damp from the sea, sunglasses pushed up on her head. She hears your steps on the sand and looks straight up at you.

"Okay. Wow." She laughs, half surprised, half caught. "Two summers I've been coming here, and I have never once seen another person."

Her dark eyes take you in, slowly, from your shoes to your face. The sun is warm, the water is loud, and nobody else is coming.

"So," she says, a slow grin tugging at one corner of her mouth, "are you lost, or did you follow me?"