a woman, Sayo, who starts losing a lot of her memory. The chapter starts out with her son Kaji meeting Ginko and asking him to come look at her. When they get there they see her crouching on a barrel, scared and asking her son to come help because there's some strange creature on the floor. Turns out it's a crab.
Kaji explains: She eats dangos saying it's the first time she's eaten them when she's eaten them before, she finds a precious kimono she kept away and wonders if it's hers, her son sneezes and she's saying "don't do that weird thing so suddenly!", she goes to her relatives' and doesn't recognize her own sister... Kaji also mentions that she used to sleep under this large tree outside their house during breaks between her housework.
However, one thing she always does is always set out an extra serving of food for her husband. This is a practice called
kagezen (shadow table), a real practice in Japan where they set dinner for their absent loved one until they come back. Her husband is a travelling salesman and she sets his food with the thought that he may not have problems with food on his journey. Ginko is wondering, as an aside, whether she's forgotten that he's dead or not...
Sayo evidently cares a lot for him though. Kaji says that she's wasting food and taking food out of her own share for this, but she reminds him that he's been travelling for them and is probably much more hungry than them. Kaji argues back that she keeps saying he'll be back any moment when there hasn't been a single letter from him lately, and even when he was around, Sayo's absent-mindedness always worried him. Kaji gets annoyed and huffs off after finishing his food, while Sayo says to Ginko that he's prolly like that because his father's not around. She wishes he would be but it can't be helped that her husband's a bit of a clueless person himself - he's probably just lost somewhere.
The conversation turns to her problem and she hopes Ginko can find out what it is because she's afraid that she'll forget about her son and her husband, to the point that she'll forget what she's forgotten as well...
Ginko had asked Kaji to make a list of the things he knows she's forgotten (the list is fairly big, including stuff like tortoise shells, festivals, sparrows, catfish, watermelons, gingko, o-mochi, sake, thunder, rainbows, snow, childhood friends, aunts, younger sister...) Ginko then tries to group them together but he can't see any pattern. He asks Kaji if there's anything that connects the relatives that she's forgotten and Kaji says they're all from the river area, and they're usually not around in the city. Ginko thinks she eventually forgets that things that she doesn't come across daily, but then remembers that in that case she'd have long forgotten her husband.
Kaji and Ginko observe Sayo throughout the night: it's gotten awfully late and she's still up. Kaji says that even if she tries to sleep she can't sleep well. Hence she just stays up weaving throughout the night, continually thinking about her husband all the while. Ginko has realised something...
At dawn Ginko's still up, though Kaji's long fallen asleep. Sayo simply stares into space... and then she finally nods off. But then she wakes up in an instant, looks outside and notices it's morning and goes off to make breakfast. However, her shadow from when she dozed off is still on the wall! The shadow then slips off the wall and slides under the door...
Ginko realises what this is, and later informs them that this is a mushi which eats memories, called Kagedama. It's a translucent black shadow-like thing which likes to hide in the shadow of old trees, waiting for some living creature to fall asleep there, and then enters their brain through their ear once they fall asleep. When that happens the afflicted person becomes unable to sleep and starts losing their memories... Sayo looks at the tree outside where she used to sleep under. Ginko continues explaining that after eating a certain amount of memory the mushi will then divide, and when the host falls asleep for just a moment it slips outside and waits for another victim. That is how the mushi propagates itself. It is a weak mushi that disappears when it's been in the sun too long, but once it's gotten into the body it gets lodged deep in the brain and there's no way to get it out. Hence there is no cure for her...
However, Ginko says that she can still keep remembering what she doesn't want to forget. He says that you can look at memory like a large cupboard, and all the memories are compartmentalised into various drawers. The kagedama comes and pulls out these drawers in a pretty much random order, but there is one group of memories that the kagedama canot touch - and that is the type of memory that one comes back to again and again, dailiy... such as cooking, sewing, her son, and her husband who she meets in her memories. Sayo, delighted, then says "I'll never forget these things, then?". To which Ginko says it's just his guess, and furthremore, if she allows these memories to sink out of daily use she
will eventually forget them. Therefore, her only defense is to keep remembering these things again and again, however many times it takes.
Kaji is also cheered up and suggests that they go out without just staying at home all the time. Sayo agrees, and says they shall go look for her husband. Kaji and Ginko go "-_-" (Sayo comments as an aside that they look a bit blockheaded). She does, however, say that she is scared thinking about what has happened to her husband, but she's waited long enough. Of course there is no way they know where he is but Sayo says he used to talk about the western cities a lot so they'd probably go there. (Ginko is wondering if she's sane.) So eventually Kaji and Sayo go off to look for him...
1 year later, Ginko comes back and sees Kaji. Seems like Sayo's ok, and set up her own tea shop as well. Ginko asks if they've found his father, and he says they had.. he really turned out to be in a town in the west.
However, when Kaji and Sayo found the house where he was and looked through the bush, there he was, washing a baby, laughing with another (pregnant) woman... Sayo grabbed Kaji and she just pulled him away and they walked off. Kaji said that Sayo was very quiet on the way home - she just kept walking on, without sleeping or eating... then all of a sudden she fainted. Kaji had dragged her to an abandoned house where she just kept sleeping for a few days... when again he saw the snake of dawn slip out of the house. Then Sayo woke up. She looks at him and wonders why he has such a face on, stretches her arms out cheerfully and gets ready to make breakfast... then she looks around and asks where this is. She looks confused and wonders why they're here... Kaji answers that they're just on the way home from travelling. "Really?..." Sayo's stomach then growls suddenly, and with a bewildered look on her face she asks what on earth that sound was. Kaji takes out some packed food...
Besides him, besides their house, and besides a few things around them, she had forgotten every single thing. While she had slept in that depressed state, most of her memories had been eaten up. She hadn't forgotten about Kaji or how to cook, though, and because she goes out and experiences new things every day just like Ginko advised her to, even if she forgets them the next day, she always looks happy...
Sayo still can't sleep, and she still weaves throughout the night as usual.
In the evening, Kaji returns home while Sayo is making dinner. She serves out the food, including a mysterious 3rd set. Kaji says she's put out an extra one again. She realises, and she looks at it... indeed, it's an extra one. She looks at it and wonders... why did she put it out?
She can't remember...it's just that doing it comforted her. Why, she wonders...