The scene opens on a street in Yokohama. It's boom time, and everyone's excited to see who's going to win the race. Everyone's feeling a little cheated, because the horse that won the race is an underdog. The horse that lost is disqualified, because he's fighting in his "element" . This is the guy who lost everything else in life, and who is now fighting in the "second generation sleeping forest" , as the narrator puts it. He's the one who gave up everything else, and now he has to fight in his own way . The narrator doesn't know what to make of this, but he knows it's not going to go well. He can't figure out how to stop the guy from winning, and he knows that the guy is just a few years older than him, so he'll probably lose to him in the future. He wants to protect his feelings, he says, and this is the moment to do it.