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In the year 2022, the gaming industry has reached a new height after the development of the NerveGear, a helmet-like controller that allows the user to fully dive their senses into the world of virtual reality. After a closed beta with only 1,000 testers, the Virtual Reality MMORPG Sword Art Online is launched.

In an alternate version of the present day, we have computers known as Persocoms that can be designed to look like toy figures, animals, and even people. Our story focuses on one such Persocom named Chi and her new owner, Hideki Motosuwa, who is too broke to buy one and yet is lucky enough to have found Chi in the trash.

Sora and Shiro are a pair of siblings, brother and sister, who are well known as brilliant. Yet they are NEETs - useless to society, and (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) - and even worse they are completely house-locked shut-ins (hikikomori!

Yukiteru "Yuki" Amano is a loner who spends most of his time writing a diary on his cell phone or talking with his imaginary friends Deus Ex Machina, the God of Time and Space; and Murmur, Deus' servant. One day, Deus gives Yuki a special diary, mentioning something about a game.