Kirie Goshima, a schoolgirl in the town of Kurouzu-cho, becomes concerned with her best friend Shuichi Saito's father who has become obsessed with collecting and staring at spiral patterns to the ignorance of all else. After Shuichi's father kills himself inside a washing machine, his cremated remains hang over the town in a giant cloud. The obsessive behavior starts to spread to Kirie's father and others, while all around the town people start bodily mutating into spiral creatures.