 Noriko Shimubara lives in Toyokawa with her father, mother and younger sister. To escape from her unhappy relationship with her parents, Noriko constantly logs on to Haikyo.com, a BBS where she meets other high school girls like her. One of these girls, Ueno54, induces Noriko to run away from her house. Noriko does so and in Tokyo she meets a young woman called Kumiko, her BBS friend, who runs a "family circle program", where she takes in young girls who are unhappy with their lives and gives them new personalities and families - Noriko joins it and her younger sister Yuka does so eventually. But the circle grows darker after the mass suicide of 54 high school girls, and it spreads larger and larger under the unfeeling control of Kumiko.