I saw a couple—young, tourists, probably from Osaka—taking photos of their shadows. The girl said, "Look, we look like silhouettes."

I wanted to smash the surface of the water with my fist. To ruin the perfect reflection. But I didn't.

Ishigaki does this to you. It is a place of liminal spaces—where the jungle meets the concrete, where the Kuroshio Current brings tropical fish that look like living jewels, and where the Yaeyama dialect whispers words that have no direct translation into Tokyo-standard Japanese.