Thoughts of Shima - the sand and the crab

Thinking about that vibey summer vacation they shared, I keep coming back to this quiet, almost imperceptible shift in Shima’s development. It feels like everything truly begins to change after that simple picnic on the beach between him and Mitsumi. The change is not announced with any kind of dramatic flourish; it is a profound internal movement, a tectonic plate sliding into a new position deep beneath the surface. Mitsumi, in her characteristically honest and gentle way, manages to convey something essential to him without ever needing to spell it out:

“Whatever you are, whether you’re someone the world sees as important, or a person who feels like a little too much, or even an old soul weighed down by the ghosts of your past, I will still walk with you.”

In Mitsumi’s world, the prerequisites for friendship are startlingly simple. Any person, regardless of the life they have lived, the mistakes they have made, or the fractured way they see themselves, is worthy of being her friend. There is a purity to that unfiltered acceptance, a power that is both disarming and deeply healing. It’s so easy for us to overlook the simple, grounding value of a friendship that asks for nothing but your presence. We spend so much of our lives afraid of being truly discovered by the people we hold closest. We carry this deep-seated fear that once the carefully constructed facade is stripped away and our real selves are seen, the relationships we have built on shared laughter and memories might simply shatter. That specific, gnawing fear is the air that Shima has been breathing for most of his life.

You see it so clearly in the very first frame of that day at the beach, in the way Shima almost instinctively walks behind the others, a choice that speaks less of coincidence and more of a deliberate, quiet distance. He is hiding, even in a moment of communal joy, because he is so acutely aware of the mess within himself, of the hairline cracks spreading across the carefully composed surface of his persona. In his own mind, he has already failed to be the Shima he believes everyone expects: the confident, capable, effortlessly charming boy. But of course, no one is ever so perfectly composed. That kind of seamless perfection is not a state of being; it is a shell, a fortress we build around ourselves in a desperate attempt to feel safe from the judgment of the world.

Mika’s journey is a perfect illustration of this. For so long, she was convinced that she had to become the perfect girl, the kind of girl who could shine brightly enough to stand beside someone like Shima. But the real truth, the one that finally broke through during the Valentine’s arc, was that this performance of perfection was never really her. It was merely a layer of armor she wore to protect the vulnerable self underneath, a self that had been shaped and wounded by careless words spoken long ago. And when that armor finally fell away, she was not weaker for its absence; she was breathtakingly realer. More poignant. More completely and beautifully human. After that moment of collapse, you can see her begin a true process of progression, one where she starts to forgive herself and forget the sting of those old words, finally settling into a softness that allows her to feel like herself. It is telling that her conversations with Shima afterward become so much more natural, stripped of the burdensome need to be seen as ideal.

And that is the truth that most of us spend our lives avoiding: we are not fundamentally chasing perfection. We are chasing a place where we can finally be allowed to exist as we are. We are searching for a space where our most tender, uncertain, and unguarded selves can be met not with judgment, but with acceptance. This is the profound gift that Mitsumi offers Shima. Her steady, unwavering presence communicates a truth that cuts through all his defenses: he does not need to fix himself to be worthy of connection. His mistakes are not flaws that must be hidden away in shame, but are instead indelible parts of the human experience. His intense desire to walk beside Mitsumi is not just born of simple admiration; it is a soul-deep longing to be truly understood. For the very first time in his life, someone is seeing him in his rawest, most unpolished form and is still, without hesitation, choosing to stay. And perhaps that, in its purest form, is what love, or friendship at its most profound, truly is.

And then, there is the sand.

Sand is such a strange and evocative substance. It can be gentle and soft under your bare feet, yet abrasive and hard-packed. It is cool and damp in the morning, then scorching and unforgiving in the afternoon. It shifts and gives way beneath every single step. It clings to your skin, a gritty reminder of where you have been. It is in a constant state of flux. In this, it becomes the perfect metaphor for identity, especially for the volatile, uncertain process of growing up. Every step you take on it feels a little uneasy, a little itchy, a little unpredictable. And yet, despite all of that instability, you keep walking. You have no choice but to let the sand hold your weight, even as you feel it giving way beneath you.

Sinking into the sand with each step is a normal, expected thing, isn’t it? But what does that sensation of sinking truly represent? On a physical level, it is simply tiring, a constant cycle of stepping into the soft ground and pulling yourself out, over and over again. But on a deeper, more emotional level, it mirrors something profound. The pressure you exert on the ground actually makes it harder, more resistant. If you stand still for too long in one place, it requires a monumental effort to break free and move again. This is precisely how memories and trauma settle within us. They are compressed by the weight of time, by the pressure of unspoken emotion. The longer you linger in their grip, the more deeply embedded they become, and the harder they are to escape. The sand is not trying to cause you harm, and you are not trying to damage the sand. But friction is an inevitable consequence of contact. That is just how life is. That is how relationships are. The ground and your feet do not intend to bruise one another, but the imprint, the memory of the pressure, always remains.

This is the lesson that Shima is slowly, painstakingly learning: how to walk through the sand, not as a perfect being who glides over the surface, but as a real person. Someone who sinks, who struggles, who leaves a messy, imperfect trace of his journey, and who still, somehow, keeps walking.

Then comes the discovery of the crab hole. It may seem like a trivial, fleeting detail, but I feel an immense sensory weight concentrated in that small moment. It represents a sudden stillness, a quiet pause in the forward momentum of the day that allows something much deeper to settle and surface. It is never just about the act of looking for crabs; it is about what rises from within us during those unexpected pauses in life.

Did you notice what happens right after Mitsumi answers Shima's tentative question? The focus of the scene does not linger on their interaction. Instead, it quietly and deliberately shifts to Mika. She looks at Shima, her expression stunned and silent, before her eyes drift up toward the sky as she tells him to go with Mitsumi to catch the crabs. That single, fleeting second speaks absolute volumes. It tells us that even now, after all the personal growth and profound changes she has undergone, a part of her still lingers on him. This is not a loud, obsessive longing anymore, but something far more subtle: a quiet ache that hums almost inaudibly in the background of her thoughts. I imagine Mika was wondering something like:

How can someone speak to him with such ease?

That question is not born from bitterness, but from the painful ache of knowing that no matter how desperately she tried, she could never offer him that same kind of effortless presence. The jealousy is still there, but it is buried now, forgotten beneath layers of self-acceptance and forgiveness. It no longer guides her actions, but it has not entirely disappeared. And that is so often the reality of growth: even after we believe we have moved on, certain moments can stir the old dust. Not enough to send us spiraling, but just enough to make our hearts flinch with the memory of an old pain.

This is the same kind of hesitation that haunts Shima. When he watches Mitsumi from a distance, the thought can rise within him without any warning, a voice that is soft but sharp:

“She probably doesn’t like me anymore.”

He knows he was indecisive. This thought is not a fleeting insecurity; it is a belief system formed over years, through a thousand quiet moments of doubt. It has been shaped by a past where affection was always conditional, where love felt like something that had to be earned through performance. So many people in his life have seen him as a symbol, someone to admire, to use, or to mold, but never simply as a person to know.

And now, Mitsumi stands in stark contrast to all of that. She does not try to fix him. She does not try to use him for her own validation. She is simply… there. And perhaps that is what makes her presence so difficult for him to fully believe in. When someone stays with you without wanting anything in return, it has a way of activating all the parts of yourself that whisper you are not deserving of such a gift.

But what truly pushes him forward, what finally breaks the inertia, is the moment that follows: the handling of the crab.

Mukai once told Shima that what Mitsumi gave him was a "special, one-of-a-kind affection." For Shima, a boy who has hidden himself away so completely that he has almost forgotten what genuine affection even feels like, these words are a beautiful but incomprehensible mystery. What does that mean? What does it feel like?

“And so let me answer you this question,” the scene seems to whisper. A crab, held carefully in Mitsumi’s hands, is offered to Shima.

It brings to mind a poem, Pattiann Rogers’ "Eulogy for a Hermit Crab."

You were consistently brave

On those surf-drenched rocks, in and out of their salty

Slough holes around which the entire expanse

Of the glinting grey sea and the single spotlight

Of the sun went spinning and spinning and spinning

In a tangle of blinding spume and spray

And pistol-shot collisions your whole life long,

You stayed. Even with the wet icy wind of the moon

Circling your silver case night after night after night

You were here.

And by the gritty orange curve of your claws,

By the soft, wormlike grip

Of your hinter body, by the unrelieved wonder

Of your black-pea eyes, by the mystified swing

And swing and swing of your touching antennae,

You kept your name meticulously, you kept

Your name intact exactly, day after day after day.

No one could say you were less than perfect

In the hermitage of your crabness.

Now, beside the racing, incomprehensible racket

Of the sea stretching its great girth forever

Back and forth between this direction and another

Please let the words of this proper praise I speak

Become the identical and proper sound

Of my mourning.

Shima’s vulnerability was never a sudden development. It was shaped, layer by painstaking layer, by the fractures in his family, the miscommunication with a mother who was herself struggling, the disorienting changes of his childhood, and the weight of others' perceptions. All of it stacked on top of each other like layers of sediment, hardening over time to become his protective shell. The crab in this manga is not a hermit crab, but the poem resonates so deeply when I think of him.

Rogers writes, “You were consistently brave / On those surf-drenched rocks… You stayed.” That is Shima, isn't it? Enduring the chaotic, emotional surf of his early life, the constant collisions and blinding spray of expectations, he somehow just… stayed. He endured.

The poem continues, “By the gritty orange curve of your claws, / By the soft, wormlike grip / Of your hinter body… You kept your name meticulously, you kept / Your name intact exactly, day after day after day.” This is the perfect description of the shell he built, the “Shima Sousuke” persona that he maintained so flawlessly. All the while, the soft, vulnerable, true part of him, the “hinter body,” remained completely hidden from view. A crab runs when it is afraid. It hides in its shell because it is not ready to be seen. That is Shima, too, terrified of being seen in his messy, imperfect state. He does not want to bite, he does not want to cause pain, but he might, if he is held the wrong way.

Mitsumi, in that moment, intuitively knew how to hold it. And in doing so, she showed him that she knew how to hold him, too.

She offers him the crab, her voice calm as she explains how to hold it from the middle so it will not pinch. For someone who grew up in the sterile environment of the city, holding a living, wild creature is a strange and intimidating experience. But Mitsumi, who grew up with the rhythms of a different kind of life, has done this before. And Shima, uncertain but overwhelmingly curious, decides to try. He follows her lead and catches one himself. He mimics her actions, holding it the way she showed him. And it pinches him. He gets hurt.

But the profound truth of that moment is this: it is not about succeeding in catching the crab perfectly. It is about the attempt. It is about the willingness to be there, to be vulnerable, to try something new and risk getting hurt. And when Mitsumi turns to him and asks, “Are you okay?”, the question is imbued with so much more than simple, surface-level care. It is pure affection. It is unwavering presence. It is unconditional acceptance of his fumbling, imperfect effort.

It is more than that. It is more than anything he has ever truly felt before.

And in that moment of quiet, genuine concern, following a small, shared experience of trying and failing together, he finally understands. That is what a "one-of-a-kind affection" feels like. Because it was. And step by slow step, even through the sinking, uncertain sand, Shima keeps walking. He is not walking toward some impossible ideal of perfection anymore. He is finally, truly, walking toward something real.

My final thoughts

So, what has this beach chapter, with its shifting sands and skittering crabs, truly been trying to depict? On the surface, it is a simple, idyllic interlude—a classic summer getaway. But beneath that sunny veneer, it serves as a powerful microcosm of the entire series' central thesis: the quiet, revolutionary act of genuine acceptance. This chapter is not just about a day at the beach; it is a meticulously crafted emotional landscape where Shima’s carefully constructed inner world is finally met with a force gentle enough not to shatter it, but steady enough to begin changing its shape.

The setting itself, the beach, is a liminal space—a threshold between the solid, known world of the land and the vast, unpredictable depths of the sea. It is a place of exposure and impermanence, where footprints wash away and the ground itself is in constant motion. It is the perfect stage for Shima, a boy who has lived his life on the solid ground of a practiced persona, to take his first tentative steps into the uncertain emotional waters that Mitsumi represents. The sinking sand becomes the physical manifestation of his struggle, a tangible resistance that mirrors the internal effort it takes to move forward when weighed down by the past.

But the most profound symbolism is concentrated in the crab. The crab, with its hard, protective shell and its soft, vulnerable interior, is Shima himself. It is the “hermitage of his crabness,” as the poem so beautifully puts it—the state of being he has perfected to survive. He has learned that to be seen is to be judged, to be used, to be measured against an impossible standard. His claws are the defense mechanisms he uses to keep people at a distance, not out of malice, but out of a deep-seated fear of being mishandled and broken.

What this chapter so brilliantly depicts is that Mitsumi has no interest in breaking his shell. She is not trying to pry it open or force him to emerge. Instead, she does something far more radical: she shows him how to hold it. By offering him the crab and explaining how to handle it with care, she is offering him a blueprint for how to handle his own vulnerability. She is saying, I see this protected, fragile thing, and I am not afraid of it. I know how to be gentle with it.

The moment he gets pinched is not a failure; it is the climax of his growth in this scene. It is the necessary sting of real engagement. For his entire life, Shima has avoided this kind of unscripted, messy contact. He has existed behind a wall of charm where nothing can truly touch him. To be pinched is to confirm that he has stepped out from behind that wall. He has risked contact, and he has felt the consequence. It is real.

And Mitsumi’s reaction—that simple, unadorned question, “Are you okay?”—is the antidote to every conditional relationship he has ever known. There is no judgment, no disappointment, no praise for trying. There is only pure, uncomplicated care. This is the “one-of-a-kind affection” made manifest. It is an affection that does not demand perfection, that makes space for fumbling, and that meets a small moment of pain with immediate, gentle concern.

Ultimately, this chapter depicts the monumental difference between being seen and being held. Shima has always been seen. His looks, his talent, his past—they have all been objects of intense scrutiny. But he has never truly been held. He has never been in the presence of someone who could accept the entirety of him, shell and all, and simply offer a safe space to exist. This experience on the beach is the proof of concept. It is the quiet, foundational moment that gives him an answer to a question he was too afraid to even ask: What would it feel like if someone knew me and stayed anyway?

He walked onto that beach as a boy hiding behind the others, but he walks away from it carrying the memory of a small, profound moment of contact—a moment that proves to him, perhaps for the very first time, that he does not have to be perfect to be worthy of being cared for.