This chapter opens with a soliloquy about a year of a person's life. It's like a tree that's been dying for a year, and it's also like a person who's just lost one year of his or her life. The protagonist is like this tree. He's a year older than the protagonist, and he's sad because he lost one of his years of life when the protagonist's friend went to buy some food for the stove-room. He wants to get back his year of life, so he decides to find a way to do so. He finds a mission to exchange a life-extension pill for some herbs that will help him live a year longer. The herbs are expensive, and the only way to get them is to sell them. The problem is that the person who stole the herbs from the stove room hasn't been caught yet. So the protagonist decides to sell the herbs himself.