Kirito wakes inside a vast unfamiliar forest and meets Eugeo, a boy who looks like an NPC but reacts with startlingly human emotion. As they search the woods together, fragments of Kirito's own childhood resurface, memories tangled up with Eugeo and a golden-haired girl named Alice that Kirito thought he'd long forgotten. This manga adapts the first half of Sword Art Online's Alicization arc from the light novels.