The chapter opens with a flashback to a time before the narrator's parents sent him away to school. The narrator tells us that his parents didn't want him to go back to school because they thought he was working night and day, and that they would pay for his tuition. He says his parents thought they were friends, but now that he's gone to school, they realize that they can be friends with him on the days he has a funny face. He explains that he belongs to a unit called "901," which means "clean." He says that the one who is killing people is in that unit, and he has never said that he does not want to kill. He's sorry, he says, but he doesn't mean to be a hypocrite. He just wants to make sure that he isn't killing people. He thinks that the chief is a saint, even though he knows that she's trying to keep him from killing himself. Even though the chief knows that he wants to kill himself, he still wants to live. He has the best doctor in the world at his side, and it's not fair that he puts himself in danger by trying to live one way or the other. He wonders if he should talk to the chief when he gets a blow to the head with one of his dynamites. He wants to open up the brain of the man once he dies.