Ruby finally leaves, and the shop is a mess. Siang tries to cheer her up by telling her that he's finally seen her true nature. He tells her that she's nothing but a "battle suit" , and that if she wanted to fight with him, she'd have to use weapons and make everyone "restless" and "chaosy" in the shop. He also says that he doesn't want Siang's help in dealing with "inferior people" and women superior to men, because he'd rather not deal with them himself. He asks Siang to slap his mother, who's crying for him, and gets up to Ruby's desk to register her attendance. Ruby usually leaves around 1:00 a.m., and Siang says that she works to her own schedule every night. He wonders if she'll ever be able to get away with this, and wonders if there's a boy in the school who treats Siang like this. He's surprised that Siang hasn't seen him in a few days. He notices that he looks like he was in a hurry when he went into the store, and he wonders if it's still Siang who is acting this way. He says that without Siang, he can't even do anything well. He points out that without men, you can do nothing well, and this is the irony of it all: Siang is an implement of his mother's thinking, and without a man you can only do what you want. He scolds Siang for turning into a "weak piece of trash," and asks him to let Ruby go.