Orphaned at a young age, Alice has lived with her aunt for most of her childhood. But her uncle is abusive and resentful, and at fifteen years old, Alice decides to return home to Kyoto and train as a maiko, eventually hoping to become a geisha.

But when she arrives back to the city where she was born, she finds that Kyoto has changed quite a bit in the eight years since she left it. Almost as if it's a completely different world...

 

Mai Mochizuki was born and raised in Hokkaido and now lives in Kyoto, and originally wrote Alice in Kyouraku Forest as a series of novels. She's written numerous other titles, including 4th Kyoto Book Award winner Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes which was turned into a manga and anime series.

Haruki Niwa is a prolific fantasy and manga artist in Japan who brought Alice in Kyouraku Forest's manga adaptation to life.