This chapter opens with a flashback to a time before the novel was published. It's August of 2000 and Hiroyuki has not yet returned to the village to visit his grandmother. The narrator wonders why he hasn't come back to visit. He also wonders why his parents have gotten divorced and separated from their family. He wonders if his mother has taken custody of him, and he wonders what happened to his last name. He remembers how he first learned to use a smart phone when he was in high school, and how happy he was when he found him. He thinks he'll go see a movie with him someday, but then he wonders if he likes bath salts, which he thinks is the same thing that Hiroyuki likes. He imagines that he and his grandmother will go on a trip together someday, and then he thinks about how much he likes his social media, which seems to have become a daily thing. He asks if he should send a message to Hiroyuki, but he doesn't want to get into a fight with him, because he's not sure if he'd be able to block her from sending him a message. He looks at his phone and sees that it's Hiroyuki's, and wonders if it might be the same one he used to use as a kid. He feels like he understands him better than he did when they used to play with each other as kids, and thinks that maybe he should try to send an e-mail to him. But he never does anything, so he thinks that he might be suspicious and block her. Then she looks at her hair, which she's styled to look like her favorite actor, and she works hard to make herself even more attractive to him than she was in the previous scene. She wonders if she