tle="Maebara Keiichi" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Maebara Keiichi, recently moved to the rural village, tle="Hinamizawa" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Hinamizawa. Keiichi becomes a member of a club where his new friends, tle="Sonozaki Mion" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Sonozaki Mion, tle="Ryūgū Rena" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Ryūgū Rena, tle="Hojo Satoko" class="mw-redirect" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Hōjō Satoko and tle="Furude Rika" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Furude Rika are playing games after tle="Hinamizawa School" class="mw-redirect" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">school. However, Keiichi's happy days are coming to the end as he learns from tle="Tomitake Jirou" class="mw-redirect" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Tomitake Jirō, a mysterious photographer, that there was a bloody murder in Hinamizawa. Keiichi questions his friends about the incident but they're just denying it. Keiichi's doubt in his friends is rising.

Keiichi tries to ignore Hinamizawa's past and enjoy his peaceful life in Hinamizawa, but as the Watanagashi festival comes he learns more about tle="Oyashiro-sama" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Oyashiro-sama's curse from Tomitake's friend,tle="Takano Miyo" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Takano Miyo. On the next day Keiichi learns from tle="Ōishi Kuraudo" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Ōishi Kuraudo, a local detective, that Tomitake Jirō was killed on the night of yesterday's festival. Keiichi decides to cooperate with the detective in order to find out the truth.

Fearing from his friends, Keiichi skips school and finds out from Oishi that all of his friends are connected with the previous years victims. At the evening Mion and Rena visit Keiichi and give him a get-well gift, some Ohagi. At Keiichi's surprise, Rena and Mion know about his talk with Oishi and the Ohagi they gave him contains a needle. (But it was actually hot sause) On the next day Keiichi takes the disappeared student's, Satoshi's old baseball bat for self-defense. However, as Keiichi finds out that Satoshi did the same things a year ago and yet, he disappeared his suspicion and fear start to turn into insanity.

As Keiichi's insanity is growing he becomes more and more violent toward his friends and realizes that the whole village is out to kill him. At the end, Mion and Rena were beaten to death by Keiichi. He believed that Mion was holding a syringe and that he was going to meet the same fate as Tomitake, but she was actually holding a marker to write on his shirt "I hope you get better soon"

Keiichi wins a game tournament, and gives his prize to Ryūgū Rena. He goes, alone, to eat at Angel Mort, where he meets a girl he thinks is Mion, but who is actually her twin sister Shion. The Watanagashi Festival is discussed, and sister's relationships with each other and with Keiichi are the main focus of this chapter.

The group attends the Festival, where Tomitake Jirō and Takano Miyo are introduced, and the curse discussed. Shion and Keiichi join them in breaking into the ritual tool shed of the temple, and make some disturbing discoveries. Tomitake and Shion are unnerved by the increasing noise that sounds like a girl jumping on the wooden floor, which Keiichi and Takano are unable to hear. Tomitake and Takano are found dead soon after, presumably for having trespassed on Oyashiro-sama's sacred ground, and Shion wonders if the two of them are meant to "disappear."

Tensions rise as more people in the village mysteriously go missing. Mion has been behaving strangely, and the Shion that Keiichi has been talking to on the phone the past few days may not be Shion at all.

Mion is officially the primary suspect in the disappearances. Keiichi confides in Rena, and both are approached by Oishi with the intent to gain entry to the Sonozaki house. They go to the house of their own accord, where Keiichi confesses his misdeed on the night of the Festival and Rena lays out their evidence and theories as to what Mion has done. Revelations about the Sonozaki family and old village legends are made, after which she gets Keiichi to talk to her privately so that she can confess her misdeeds. She reveals that Shion is still alive, and takes him to her before incapacitating him with a taser shot. The truth of how things ended up this way is revealed in a hidden torture chamber, and his "last wish" may be the only thing that can save any of them.