A young man, Tatsuya Mogi, receives a straw doll from Ai and later dies in a motorcycle crash. At the funeral, Tatsuya's mother blames her husband for buying Tatsuya the motorcycle. The husband denies it, saying the buying the motorcycle was her idea and Tatsuya had wanted one. Tatsuya's sister Emi breaks up the argument and asks them not to make a scene. Seven weeks later, Emi tells her mother that dinner is ready and finds her working on a website about Tatsuya's death. Emi and her father eat dinner without her and Emi says that Tatsuya is all that her mother can think of. That night, Emi's mother goes out to the section of road where Tatsuya died as she has every night despite it raining. Emi's father notes the oddity of her doing so and Emi manages to convince her to come back home. Emi goes to her room and finds the straw doll in her desk drawer. Ai appears and asks Emi what she plans to do with it. When Emi asks, Ai confirms that Tatsuya accessed the Hell Correspondence. Ai tells Emi the terms of the deal that the doll represents and says that the covenant has not yet been established. Emi asks Ai who Tatsuya was planning to banish with the doll and Ai says that she must know. That answer shocks Emi, but she asks Ai if she can use it as well only to find that Ai has vanished.
At city hall the next day, Emi's mother is swarmed by reporters trying to interview her about her son's death and the city's response to it. She insists that Tatsuya was not at fault and he was killed by something that was the city's responsibility. The reporters try to interview Emi while Ichimoku Ren looks on disguised as a reporter. Ren shows up at Emi's track and field practice in his disguise and Emi says that she doesn't want to talk to any reporters. Ren finally relents when Emi threatens to call the police on him as a news report on the site of the accident is show on several TV monitors in a shop display. Ren comments that people in Emi's mother's situation used to try to curse the people they thought were responsible and Emi says that Tatsuya was everything to her mother and walks away. Hone Onna shows up and says that they shouldn't have had Ren disguise himself as a reporter. Later, Emi watches her father make a kite, which is a hobby for him, and Emi reminisces about how they would go to the riverbank as a family and fly the kites he made. Emi's mother comes in and asks him to make copies of a flier she typed up. When he doesn't do so immediately, she destroys the kite he's working on and yells at him for being lazy. Emi's father says that he works on kites now because Tatsuya used to like them, but Emi's mother says that Tatsuya never liked that sort of thing and demands he throw it away. Emi's father defends her, saying that Emi's mother is in a lot of pain.
The next day, Emi's mother is overjoyed that road work is starting at the accident site and updates the website with the news. Outside, Hone Onna comments that Emi might not pull the thread, but Ren isn't so sure. At a city press conference, Emi tells her mother that she got them a reservation at a restaurant to celebrate. An official gives a speech stating that roads in the area will be improved with safety in mide, but says nothing about the city's responsibility in the matter, which enrages Emi's mother. The assembled reporters follow the official to ask about allegations of corruption. On the way to the restaurant, Emi tells her mother that all her hard work has paid off since the road where Tatsuya died is going to be worked on, but her mother ignores her in favor of ranting about how the city dodged its responsibility in the matter. Emi's mother demands to return home to update the website. Emi's father, who is drunk, tells Emi that the important thing to her mother is who is at fault. The next day at city hall, Emi's mother tries to talk to a reporter who is more interested in the mayor being caught in an affair. She follows him into the building to try to talk to an official about Tatsuya's death as Emi looks on. Ren shows up and says that the media has moved on to other stories and wonders why Emi quit the track and field team. Emi says that no matter how much she accomplished, her mother only ever took an interest in or even noticed Tatsuya. Emi's mother comes out of the building and breaks down crying and Emi takes her home. That evening, Emi finds a small bundle in the living room and is shocked to find that it is the head of a statue that was broken in Tatsuya's crash. Emi's mother walks in and reveals that she took out a loan for a large amount of money to self-publish a book about how great a person Tatsuya was. Emi goes to get the straw doll and Ai tells her that it belongs to her now. As Emi cooks dinner, her father comes home drunk. He says that he's tried of everything and the noise made by the television and Emi's parents distract her enough that she spills the soup she had been cooking. Emi goes back to her room, saying that she worked so hard to make her mother happy. She recalls the night Tatsuya died. Before he left, he told Emi that he deliberately drove on dangerous roads to make their mother, who smothered him about every little thing, worry and that he wished she would die. Emi pulls the thread.
Emi's mother awakens on the boat to Hell and asks where she is. When told that she is going to Hell, she asks if she'll see Tatsuya there. Ren says that Tatsuya probably isn't there, but she cuts him off and calls out for Tatsuya. Back in the world of the living, Emi's father has gone to look for her mother, but Emi sits down for dinner and says that everyone's already there. A candle with Emi's name is lit.
This episode contains examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Compared to other victims in the series, the mother's only crimes were being obsessed over her son to the point of insanity after his death and neglecting her daughter. Rather than being sent to Hell, getting her help from a mental health professional would have been a better solution.
- Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: The mother sports this look throughout the episode to highlight her dwindling sanity. At the end of the episode, Emi has them too.
- Downer Ending: Emi finally gives into the stress of her family falling apart and sends her mother to Hell. Even after doing so, her situation doesn't get any better, and it's implied that the father walked out on her, leaving her situation uncertain. It's also implied that she has also experienced Sanity Slippage, or at least is coping with her current situation in a poor way.
- Dragged Off to Hell: Emi takes the straw doll that her brother had received from Ai and uses it to send her mother to hell, unable to bear the stress of putting up with her anymore.
- Drowning My Sorrows: The father starts turning to this method to cope with the stress of his family falling apart.
- My Beloved Smother: Tatsuya saw his mother like this. He started riding his motorcycle late at night just to get the hell away from her, and he had previously accessed Hell Correspondence in order to have her banished.
- Never My Fault: The mother denies that buying the motorcycle was her idea.
- Parental Abandonment: The episode ending implies the father walked out on Emi after the mother was sent to Hell, leaving Emi to play house with a pictures of him, Tatsuya, and her mother.
- Sanity Slippage: The mother got hit hard with this trope after Tatsuya died. By the episode's end, Emi's showing signs of it herself.
- There Are No Therapists: After Tatsuya's death, his mother becomes obsessed with him to the point of insanity. The notion that she should be taken to a mental health professional is never brought up by anyone.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Invoked. The mother is trying to make Tatsuya out like this in order to shame the city into taking responsibility for his death.
- The Unfavorite: In stark contrast to Tatsuya, poor Emi could barely even get her mother to acknowledge her.
- Unnamed Parent: Neither of the parents are known by a given name.
