This chapter opens with a flashback to Hiroshige's time at Udolpho School, where he was once a student. He is now a middle-aged man, and he has just returned from a trip to Europe. He has returned home to find that his old friend, the school's imamura, has stolen some uni forms from the lockers. The narrator is horrified by the sight of the man, who looks like a criminal and who has never had sex with a girl. He wonders if he will live to see the day when he will be able to open his heart and fall in love with a woman again. He realizes that he has spent the last eighteen years of his life thinking that he would never have sex with another woman, and that he will die without ever having opened his heart to one. He thinks that the imamura looks like he is thinking about something "gross" and "dirty," and he wonders if this is what he has been thinking about. He imagines that the man is thinking of something dirty and gross, and wonders if it is the same thing that he was thinking about when he first arrived at the school. He also imagines what it must be like to be a student in the 21st century, where sex is considered taboo and taboo is considered a sin. He remembers that he once thought he would die if he ever had sex, but now he realizes that it is not the case. He feels that he must get back to his old life, but he wonders how he will do so when he has to go back to a school where he has not had sex in eighteen years. He tells himself that he is already on the wrong side of the law, because the school already knows that he and shibata have been having sex, and they have already found out about it. He asks if he is sick, and she says that she is fine, but that she has been looking pretty pale. He then asks if she is sure she is not sick, or if she did something good happen, or did she have a good thing happen? He then wonders if she