When she is ten years old, Ichiume is sold to a geisha house by her widowed mother. Six years later, her geisha mistress forces her to go through the ceremony of Mizuage; her virginity will be sold to the highest bidder. Ichiume runs away rather than be forced to be with a stranger. But when she returns to her childhood home, it is abandoned. Ichiume decides to go back to the geisha house. A decision that makes her a woman, and a geisha.