Mimizuku, a young girl who seems to be about 8 or 11, has lived an incredibly torturous life. She was treated as a s*ave in her "village" that was actually just a group of thieves. She is forced to dissect the bodies of the people they killed so they could sell the organs. She worked her whole life while being treated as live stock. Barely any food, chained at birth with chains that have been forged onto her, and branded on the forehead like live stock. The village eventually gets pillaged by another group of thieves and just when she's about to be taken away by someone to be a s*ave, she stabs him with the knife she always carries for the body dissection. Then she runs away to the Forest of Monsters.

Now we're through all of the exposition. (Keep in mind I'm putting these events in order; this is where the story actually starts.) In the forest of monsters, we see her point of view on everything. Now, if I know ab*sed mc's, normally, this is where they seek revenge on the world or hate the world/humanity. This girl, this tortured little girl, is somehow a bit pure and innocent. She doesn't seek revenge or really hate the world. What she sought in the Forest of Monsters was death. To be eaten by a monster so she would "forever be beautiful." She had already seen the deaths of many people and grew fearful of ending like them, rotting bodies. So she sought a monster to eat her without leaving a trace to forever remain beautiful.
She sees a monster and immediately asks it to eat her. However, the monster, Kuro, does not. Later on she meets the King of the Night. She does the same, "Please eat me." Instead of being scared, fearing for her life, she embraces the idea of death by monster because she thinks that she will never truly die that way.
Slowly though, she starts to like the King of the Night, Fukurou, more and more. She starts to like him more and more while Fukurou and Kuro both start to like her more as well. She finally develops a small will to live instead of be eaten.
Later on, she's brought to human civilization. Thought to be "rescued from the Demon King" by the people. She had her memories sealed by the Fukurou when humans came to "save" her and let himself be caught. This gave her the chance to live happily in a normal life. She experiences the happiness of a normal life. When she regains her memories, she is given a choice. Live a normal happy life, similar to the fluffy lives of other cliche protagonists in other novels where they are op as f*ck, but let Fukurou die. Or, go back to the forest with Fukurou and leave behind this bright and normal life with humans.
The choice is of course obvious, but even as I knew what she would choose, it shocked me when hearing her view on her choices. She could choose the life that is so cliche in other novels that the similarity just shocked yet somehow disgusted me. However she chose the life that would undoubtedly be harder but still brought happiness and let her be with Fukurou. I cannot stress how much I love this novel because this girl was tainted yet pure. Tragic yet happy. Naive yet jaded beyond her years. Ignorant yet sharp. She has so many contradictions that she seemed far more human that any of the novel I have ever read. If I could yell at every author out there right now, I would say to stop typing your god damn sh*t plot hole filled stories and take a glance through this one. The author of this truly deserves praise because they beautifully blended reality into fiction. Human and story. Not only is this a beautifully crafted story, they way they display the story is just splendid as well. The chapters are long, but they don't drag on. The story is heavy and full of different layers, but it's not crammed into blocks of text. It flows out naturally, giving the story but not treating the reader like a complete ret*rd and blatantly screaming all of the story into the readers face. Instead taking confidence in the reader to read between the lines a little bit and figuring out the story.