The chapter opens with a flashback to a time when a cruel evil spirit ate people and attached themselves to them, making them look like mermaids. The spirit was called the mermaid disease because if you separated the host from the mermaid, he or she would die. Some chose to kill themselves because they could not stand the pain of being separated. The chapter ends with a description of the basement where the mermaids were found. The narrator tells us that the basement was also used as a laboratory for research into mermaid diseases.