It's been awhile since Hirokazu has spoken to his mother, and now he wants to know why she hasn't been answering his questions about her past. He tells her that the place where she was born used to belong to a family that wanted her dead for her ugliness. A midwife named Chigusa Hirosaka saved the girl, but she grew up in a hut and lived a secret life. When she was a teenager, she looked at him from a place that hated her, rejected her, and cursed the world. She called him "Hibeni," which means "devil" in Japanese, and she painted her lips with red powder to make herself ugly. Now that she's grown up, she looks at him with hatred, rejection, and "the dark ness" and curses the whole world. He asks her to play the part of Hibeni in a play he's written. He also wants her to direct the play, because he knows that she would want him to do so.