In feudal Japan, two sisters, Toyoshiga Hitomi Kuroki and Osono Taeko Nishino, endure a brutal turning point when their father is killed by the debt-driven samurai Shinzaemon Fukami Takaaki Enoki. The injustice leaves a lasting scar, and the sisters’ father vows revenge for the wrongful murder. The tale darkens as Shinzaemon himself takes his wife’s life and then ends his own, leaving behind a baby named Shinkichi, who is raised under the care of his uncle. The child’s fate becomes entwined with the siblings’ own destinies, as rumors of a cursed lake—haunted by a woman wronged in life—linger over the hillside village.
Years pass, and Toyoshiga grows into a respected teacher who runs a school for young girls in Edo. She falls deeply in love with Shinkichi Kikunosuke Onoe V, a young tobacco vendor who lives with his uncle, and the two decide to cohabit as husband and wife. Yet their relationship is strained from the start: Shinkichi begins to flirt with the school’s students, especially Ohisa Mao Inoue. The students drift away, disheartened by Toyoshiga’s cold, punitive mood, and the friction even drives Osono to flee from the family’s circle.
Shinkichi’s defiance reaches a breaking point when he tells Toyoshiga that he wants out. In the heat of their quarrel, he injures her with the shamisen’s bachi along her left brow. The wound heals, but it leaves a lasting ache that snowballs into Toyoshiga’s worsening illness. At a festival, Ohisa encounters Shinkichi again while he’s seeking medicine for Toyoshiga, and a plan to run away together takes shape as they rent a hotel room. Yet the moment surfaces a haunting question: can love survive when vengeance and ambition mingle with fear?
Toyoshiga’s death sets the stage for a grim reckoning. Shinkichi discovers a letter she left—warning that if he remarries, she will haunt his new wife until the latter dies. He and Ohisa flee Edo, eloping into the night, but a rainstorm strands them, and the vengeful spirit of Toyoshiga confronts them on the road. In a panic, Shinkichi strikes, only to realize he has fatally wounded Ohisa. He collapses, and the world seems to crumble around him.
When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in the house of a wealthy man and learns that Ohisa is dead. He escapes to Hanyo and reunites with Osono. The two mourn Toyoshiga together, and Osono soon helps Shinkichi find a new place in life. He is drawn into the household of the wealthy family that asks him to marry their daughter Orui Kumiko Aso. Shinkichi hesitates at first, but a fateful accident—Orui being burned by a blue snake that leaves a scar on her brow—mirrors Toyoshiga’s own mark, and he agrees to wed Orui.
The couple welcomes a daughter, a pale child with a distinguishing scar on her left brow. As the child grows, she begins to display unsettling traits, casting a shadow over the family and hinting at a troubling lineage that binds Toyoshiga’s memory to the new generation. The story culminates in a quiet, uncanny tension: the living carry forward the weight of old wounds, while a rumored curse continues to blur the line between love, guilt, and vengeance.
