In 1952, a woman is kidnapped and held captive in a suburban house in Nerima, Tokyo, where she is repeatedly assaulted and eventually dies after giving birth. This violent death, steeped in rage and despair, creates a powerful supernatural curse known as a ju-on that infects the location itself. Anyone who enters the cursed house or comes into contact with someone already affected becomes a carrier of this vengeful spirit, which manifests as a Woman in White and a dark, destructive force. The story jumps between multiple time periods, primarily following paranormal researcher Yasuo Odajima in 1988 when a young actress named Haruka reports hearing the sounds of children running in her otherwise empty apartment. Harukas boyfriend, Tetsuya, confesses that he recently entered a haunted house and believes the curse followed him to her home. After Tetsuya dies, Yasuo, Haruka, and Tetsuyas mother commit to finding this mysterious house, which Yasuo eventually realizes is the very place where he lived as a child in 1960. In that year, Yasuo and his sister discovered a hidden attic containing the Woman in White, who handed them a spectral baby just before a dark spirit broke through the glass doors and caused their father to vanish.

Parallel to Yasuo investigation, a high school student named Kiyomi Kawai is lured to the same abandoned house in 1988 by classmates under the pretense of exploring a cat mansion, where she is sexually assaulted by a young man. Hiding in a closet, Kiyomi becomes possessed by the Woman in White and carries the curse for nearly a decade, eventually having a child with her attacker while both are infected. In 1997, the timelines converge when Yasuo, Haruka, and Tetsuyas mother visit the house where a new family resides. Yasuo witnesses Kiyomi as a blackened, supernatural figure breaking through the glass doors from his childhood memory, revealing her as the dark spirit who took the Woman in White baby. The pregnant wife living in the house is attacked by the spirit of the original male killer but escapes, while her husband vanishes like Yasuo father. Convinced that burying cursed objects on the property can end the hauntings, Haruka buries the cassette tape recording of the supernatural events from her apartment. The crying of a ghost child briefly stops, but the spirit of the original male killer appears behind Haruka and drags her toward the house, proving that the grudge continues. The series presents its events in a fractured, nonlinear structure that emphasizes how the curse traps victims across decades, with Yasuo serving as the sole known survivor who lived in the house without immediate death, though he carries the psychological weight of having witnessed its horrors as a child.