Jiro, drawstring bag in hand, followed the strange footprints down the beach, away from the volleyball net and the old bathhouse on the hill. He knew where the footprints were headed. Only one thing was in that direction.

He had explored the rocky cliffs a few days earlier. The beach, he knew, ended abruptly in a sheer rock face. To the left was the sea, and to the right a steep slope, too steep to climb, above which ran the main road. In other words, there was nothing this way but ocean and rock.

So where were these tracks leading? Where had Aya and her friends gone? As he walked, he fantasized about the way Aya’s breasts bounced whenever she snapped off a serve. Would she send him another wink if he returned her bag?

When the trail passed a bend in the beach and the rocky cliff came into view, Jiro saw something he had not seen before. A shelf of wet rock winding along the edge of the cliff that disappeared around a corner. The rock was wet with sea water, and when Jiro got closer, he could see strips of kelp lying on its surface.

Jiro realized his mistake. On his last visit, it had been high tide. Now it was low tide. That was why he had missed it before. The footprints led up to the edge of the ledge and ended there.

Jiro climbed up onto the ledge and then stopped. The ledge was slippery. And the waves below him were quite rough. Who knew what kind of sharp rock awaited him if he fell. Not a good place to be hiking in flip-flops.

“Maybe this is none of my business,” he said out loud to comfort himself. “Maybe they just went this way to have a barbeque or something.” Then he thought about the woman in the weird swimming suit. What about the strange way she had swam? He had seen her come from this direction …

“Besides,” he said out loud again. “There’s no way that someone could carry four people on their shoulders. Especially not on a surface like this.” He kicked a strip of kelp off the ledge and watched it fall.

Surely it was all his imagination. The trails had probably been made by one of those park rangers who drove by to pick up trash. Did they have those in Japan? And he needed to be back soon. Kaori and the others would be wondering where he had gone. How would it look if their boss was caught shirking his duties?

Jiro turned and made his way back toward the bathhouse. This wasn’t called running away, he told himself. It was called being responsible.

He had only taken a few steps when something caught his eye. There was something tucked in the sand, just out of the ocean’s reach. Something Jiro had missed while he had been busy following the trail. He squatted down to take a look. Fabric. Red. Soft. He picked it up. Shook off the sand. Then he took a sniff. Ooh yea. It smelled of sweat. A bikini top. Very clearly a bikini top. He took another sniff.

“Achoo!” Jiro wiped his nose and looked around. Aya had been wearing this top. What was it doing off of her chest, hiding in the sand? But more importantly, where was Aya’s chest? Oh, the possibilities … He put the top in the drawstring bag. For safekeeping purposes only, of course. Curious now, he climbed back onto the ledge, moving slow to avoid any slips.

A little further along the ledge, tangled in a bit of root that stuck out from the rock face, he found the other half of Aya’s bikini.

Jiro looked around. Nothing but ledge, rock, sea, and wave. Somewhere out here, Aya was naked. He sniffed the panties. The smell of sweat, plus a hint of something coppery. He sneezed violently, and nearly tumbled off the ledge, onto the rocks below. Only the bit of root saved him. Bad idea, Sherlock. He put the bikini bottoms away in the bag, away from temptation.

What was going on? Was there a nude beach in that direction? A secret place where girls went to get their bras off and their tans on? Or maybe something had happened. Something that involved struggle, kidnap, being towed through the sand. Jiro swallowed.

As he followed the ledge, he found more discarded swimwear. White bikini top, white bikini bottom, and two pairs of men’s boardshorts. So that was everyone ... Except the blue swimsuit. He put the bikini in his bag and tossed the boardshorts into the sea, where they floated like paper napkins. Sorry guys, he thought. Aya’s bag is full.

The ledge thinned even further, and Jiro began to walk sideways. He hung the bag around his neck so that he grab hold of roots and rocks with both hands. What kind of mess had he gotten himself into? If he fell here, nobody would find his body for weeks. Ever, maybe.

When the ledge rounded the cliff, it thickened out again. Beyond, the ledge ended in a little sandy cove, where a smuggler or a pirate might hide a boat.

The perfect place for nude sunbathing, thought Jiro, as he stepped (with great relief) off the ledge and onto soft sand. He looked around. No naked Aya. No naked Aya’s girlfriend. Not even any naked men. Nothing but one Jiro, one drawstring bag, and four pieces of women’s swimwear.

At the far side of the cove, tucked behind a rock that arched the sand like some gate made by the gods, Jiro found a little cave set into the stone. The mouth was barely wide enough for his shoulders.

He had read about caves like this once. Monks, in the olden times, had spent their lives digging caves like this. It was a kind of meditation or something. Sometimes they dug without instruments. Using only their fingernails. They had dug on and on, until one day they died, leaving their bodies to decompose. Jiro gulped.

“Well, it’s too late to turn back now,” he whispered. And with those words said, he stepped into the dark.