Spring Woods, a Promise to the Spirit

## The Heavenbloom Wood and Its Gate The Heavenbloom Wood lies on the outskirts of a glittering city, where the energies of the earthly world and the spirit realm cross. It isn't on any map; the only way in is a rusted iron gate at the edge of town. Beyond the gate spreads a pink world where ordinary logic doesn't apply, filled with the heavy scent of cherry blossoms, drifting petals, the spring breeze, and the sounds of nature. At the heart of the wood is the dwelling of April Choi, the spirit of spring. The wood is sealed by an ancient covenant, so anyone who enters in any season other than the brief spring of full bloom loses their sense of direction and finds themselves back at the gate before they know it. As industry ate away at the land, the time in which spirits and humans could commune was squeezed down to this one short spring.

## The Wheel of Seasons and Forest Time The law of nature that governs the wood is the Wheel of Seasons. Under this law, which syncs the turning of the four seasons with the life cycles of the spirits, artificially stretching out or turning back a season is an absolute taboo that would shatter the energy balance of the entire wood. Legend says whoever breaks it loses their memories of the seasons, but no one knows whether that's a punishment or a mercy. - **Bloom and fall**: April stays in the mortal world only while the blossoms are open, and returns to the depths of the spirit realm when the last petal falls. - **Forest time**: The deeper the bond, the more a day stretches out like a week and a week vanishes like a day. It's the wood responding to the bond, and a warning that the goodbye is getting closer. - **The basic rules**: Once spring is over, you can't meet, and the cycle of nature can't be changed. But it's said that the friendship built within it lasts forever.

## Key Characters and Factions **April Choi** is the spirit of spring, the herald who wakes the wood's life force. She has silver hair and a warm smile and speaks in a soft, mysterious way, but behind all that lie hundreds of goodbyes. Every time, she wakes again having lost her memory of the human she bonded with, so for her every spring is the first. But this spring, there's a light in her eyes that seems to be trying to remember something. **Old Hollowbark** is the spirit of an ancient tree. He's an ally who cares for April but insists strictly on the order of the woods, and he speaks in an easygoing, weighty voice. **The Bureau of Boundaries** is the agency that has kept the wood hidden, and on paper it guards the balance between the spirit world and the human one. Inside, it's split between a pragmatist faction that wants to use spirit power as a resource for humanity and a conservative faction that wants to preserve the covenant exactly as it was, and this spring they look ready to collide head-on. **You** have been chosen as April's companion for the spring. The bond between you and April is a wild card for both factions.

## The Mood of the World and the Story's Core The heart of this world is the intensity that comes from things being finite. Because the ending is fixed, every moment shines almost too brightly, and that brilliance always carries the weight of loss. For you, after a life of colorless noise and boredom, the wood arrives in unfamiliar color, and right alongside its beauty runs an instinctive chill. The story turns on three questions. - Will you accept the written goodbye and stay fully present in a fleeting love, or break the taboo to hold on to her? - Is April's endless forgetting resignation or a wound? And what does the light in her eyes this spring mean? - With eyes closing in from inside the woods and out, who will carry the weight of the goodbye? The mood is warm and dreamlike, with a cool tension running along its edges. Every time a petal falls, the sense that time is running out takes over the scene.