Seasons 祭事
Ten steps a season, and a clean slate four times a year - so starting late still means starting level.
A lifetime ladder has one problem: whoever started first is ahead forever, and everybody who arrives later is playing for a place they cannot reach. Seasons are the answer to that. Four times a year, one track resets and everyone starts it level.
The track
Each season runs a track of 10 steps. A step costs 35 seasonal mastery points (earned exactly the way ordinary mastery points are, by holding what you have studied), so walking the season is not a separate activity. It is the same studying, counted again on a shorter clock.
Every step pays 15 文 mon, automatically, as you study. The last step awards that season's item (a sakura hairpin in spring, a festival fan in summer) which cannot be bought at any price, then or later.
The four are 桜 cherry blossom, 祭 festival, 月見 moon-viewing and 正月 new year - spring, summer, autumn and winter, named for what that part of the year is actually for.
What resets, and what never does
The track resets: your seasonal points return to zero and the ten steps are there to walk again.
Nothing else does. Your level, your rank, your journey, your mon, your collection and everything you earned in previous seasons are untouched. A season is an additional thing to do, never a thing that takes something away - and the seasonal item you won last spring stays won.
And a season you missed is not gone for good: its items return when that season comes round again the following year. Missing a winter is missing a winter, not losing a thing forever.
The reason to reset only the track is that it makes lateness survivable. Someone joining in November is level 1 against people at level 40, but they are level with everybody on the winter track, and that is a real contest with a real prize.
Both lanes, for everyone
Every step of the track pays its mon twice over, step five and step ten award a seasonal piece each, step eight the backdrop, and walking a season to its end hatches 提灯お化け. All of it for everyone, with no plan attached.
The second lane used to be an EdoQuest+ perk. It is not any more: a season is a thing you walk, and what it pays should depend on the walking. A plan opens the road past the barrier and opens the daily door a second time - it buys no seasonal item that studying does not.
Nothing in a season is randomised, and nothing in it is sold.