Lain Iwakura, a shy and introverted fourteen-year-old, is one of several girls at her school who received a troubling email from a student named Chisa Yomoda—the same Chisa who had committed herself. Lain has neither the desire nor the expertise to deal with even basic technology; nonetheless, when the technophobe opens the email, it takes her directly into the Wired, a virtual world of communication networks akin to the internet. Lain's life is flipped upside down as she encounters one perplexing mystery after another. Strange strangers known as the Men in Black begin to emerge wherever she goes, asking her questions and knowing more about her than she does. As the lines between reality and cyberspace blur,