The chapter opens with a flashback to the night of the fire. The narrator tells us that his daughter survived the fire with only minor injuries, and that she's lucky that she didn't burn down the house. She's also lucky that the fire wasn't a total catastrophe, because she'd have lost everything in it. She tells her mom to take her back to her room, where she can rest and recover. She asks her mom why she blames her for everything, and her mom tells her that it's because he's been pestering her about using a certain rhizome to heal her wound. The rhizome doesn't get caught in the fire, and the narrator says that he'd been avoiding him ever since. He says that his mom has asked him to take good care of him, but that he has been thinking about it, too, because he was the one who was cured and saved. He blames himself for all of this, and says that if he had been nicer to him, maybe he would have understood his wishes before. He admits that he hates himself too, and he says that this guilt will never bring him back.