This chapter opens with a description of a company's secret laboratory. It's here that they're supposed to be experimenting with regeneration, which involves killing prisoners and soldiers and then using a liquid to restore their appearance. The narrator notes that this is evil, and that the company should be using this laboratory to kill the prisoners and then use the liquid to "regeneration" the dead. He also notes that the narrator is about to turn sixty years old, and he wonders how she's able to maintain her beauty when she looks like this. He tells the narrator that he's going to give her an "unexpected gift" when he turns eighteen next month: he'll give her "an unexpected gift of becoming an adult." The narrator asks the eldest sister why the company hasn't been able to find the flower and diamond. The eldest sister says that the generals have been searching for them, but they haven't yet found them. She asks why they didn't contact them directly, and the narrator says that they have been away so long that there's no way to contact them from outside. He wonders if they should just "make up a reason" for killing the prisoners, since the company doesn't have a signal to send them out. He's worried that the women kicked him in the face, and now he can't even get his nose back to where it was before they kicked him. He decides to try the potion to restore his appearance. He says