In the Mexican hospital interview, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba challenge Pi Patel’s account, starting with the claim that an orangutan floated in on bananas. Pi insists on testing it, and the officials verify in a sink that bananas float, though Mr. Okamoto argues they could not support an orangutan. The investigators then press Pi on the “impossible” algae island and the tiger, while Pi argues that disbelief is just limited experience and that “hard to believe” is part of life, love, and faith.

As the officials grow frustrated that nothing about the lifeboat story can be confirmed—especially the tiger and the blind Frenchman—Pi defends the plausibility of extraordinary events and mocks the demand for only tidy, familiar facts. Mr. Okamoto reminds Pi the goal is not to blame him but to understand why the Tsimtsum sank. When they ask for “straight facts,” Pi points out that any telling becomes a story, then offers to give them what they want: a version “without animals.”

Pi’s second story describes four human survivors: Pi, Pi’s mother, a Taiwanese sailor with a shattered leg, and a brutal French cook from the Tsimtsum. The cook steals food, urges extreme measures, and pushes an “amputation” of the sailor’s infected leg; the sailor dies soon after and the cook butchers the body for food. Pi’s mother resists, is horrified by the cook’s cannibalism, and finally slaps him—an act that escalates the hostility that has been building as conditions worsen.

As starvation deepens, the cook kills Pi’s mother during a fight, and Pi watches helplessly from the raft. The next day Pi returns to the lifeboat, and later kills the cook with a knife, admitting the violence and moral damage it leaves in him; afterward, solitude begins and Pi turns to God to endure and survive. The officials recognize correspondences between the two accounts: the sailor aligns with the zebra, Pi’s mother with the orangutan, the cook with the hyena, and Pi with the tiger who kills the hyena.

Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba confirm that neither version explains the Tsimtsum’s sinking, and Pi cannot offer mechanical causes beyond impressions of listing, an explosion, stormy seas, and a rapid sinking. Asked which story they prefer, both officials choose the story with animals, and Pi replies, “And so it goes with God,” linking narrative choice to faith. The interview ends with condolences, mention of insurance money, Pi’s intention to go to Canada, and a final exchange of cookies and farewells.