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.