Ella, a young‑white girl, ventures into Beast‑Market, an endlessly‑open outdoor bazaar on the outskirts of town to hunt for a rare herb that can cure her family member’s fatal illness. The marketplace is run by highly anthropomorphized wild animals, and human visitors must abide by cross‑species trading rules to make purchases. Moving cautiously through the stalls, Ella witnesses horrific fates of patrons who break the regulations. After repeated run‑ins with a crafty fox vendor and an overbearing feral‑cat stall‑keeper, she slowly learns how to survive. Yet she stumbles upon the bazaar’s brutal truth: fairness never exists here. Every rule is designed to siphon humans’ vitality, speech and sanity. Rule‑breakers are arrested by beast‑guards and dragged underground to serve as nourishment that sustains the animals’ intelligence.
Shortly after she obtains the herb, the closing bell rings, trapping Ella inside the market and plunging her into grave danger. Through quick‑witted schemes, she narrowly escapes at the very last moment and saves her relative. However, she finds herself permanently marked by the bazaar, doomed to suffer unseen depletion for the rest of her life.
