Katsumi, a young man who is a neighbor and former colleague of Tatsugoro, feels sorry for the Ishiguro family and negotiates with the president of the new company through the labor union, succeeding in getting the equivalent of several months' worth of injury and sickness benefits paid, but Tatsugoro, ashamed of having been "indebted to the Reds," spends all the money on alcohol and motorcycle racing.

Tatsugoro gets a job at a new foundry through the introduction by Jun's classmate Nobuko's father, Tougo, but there is no place for an old craftsman who relies on intuition and experience in an automated factory, so he quits without telling his family.

Jun, in order not to see Nobuko, does not go to the meeting place at Kawaguchi Station, but kills time on the riverbank (there is a scene that makes viewers infer she has her first period), and takes a local train to Urawa where her desired school is.

Peeking into the high school ground through the fence, Jun is disillusioned when she sees the physical education class that looks like a childish dance.

Meanwhile, Takayuki, who has also skipped school and come to Urawa, sets free a pigeon he has raised there and succeeds in returning it to its cage at home.

There, Jun meets a female student who has dropped out of school, nicknamed "Squirrel," and is invited to a bar, where she drinks alcohol for the first time in her life.

One day, Yoshie's family decides to leave their Japanese mother behind and return to North Korea as part of a major program to repatriate Koreans living in Japan.

The group stays in Ueno, Tokyo that night, and plans to head to Niigata Port, where the repatriation ship departs, the next day.

Takayuki leaves Sankichi with the family of Choi who lives nearby until the next return ship departs in the new year, and the two start working part-time delivering newspapers, vowing to "stop relying on others."