 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 then be forced to be with a stranger. Only when she returns to her childhood home it is abandoned. Ichiume decides to go back to the geisha house. It is the decision that makes her a woman and a geisha.