There is the world all around us, a world of people, tactile senstation, and culture. There is the wired world, inside the computer, of images, personalities, virtual experiences, and a culture of its own. The day after a classmate commits suicide, Lain, a thirteen year-old girl, discovers how closely the two worlds are linked when she receives an e-mail from the dead girl: "I just abandoned my body. I still live here..." Has the line between the real world and the wired begun to blur?