Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is a slice of life genre, web novel, published in 2011. The story is set in a large country in the mainlands that has an imperial court. Maomao is a girl from the red light district, captured by hunters while she was out collecting herbs for making medicine.
She serves the emperor of the imperial court as a pharmacist, on a contract. Not happy with her current situation, Maomao just wishes the contract to be over as soon as possible. Maomao likes to keep a low profile and is not considered to be a conventionally beautiful girl because of her body and freckles as the story is set in the middle ages.
She’s convinced that she’ll never be visited by the emperor and will spend her days in service quietly but being naturally curious in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto Manga, she finds it difficult not to take an interest in the emperor’s children who all lived very short lives.
One day she hears that the last two of the emperor’s children are terminally ill and she starts investigating the cause of their sickness. Maomao becomes a poison tester and generally uses her own body to experiment. This makes her body immune to poisons.
She often interacts with the emperor and gets to work with doctors and medicine developers. Maomao is often invited to galas and parties where she tastes the food to check it for poison. Later in the story, it is revealed that Maomao’s ugly freckles are actually fake and she has a pretty face.
She turns out to be the adopted daughter of the palace’s head physicians in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto. Maomao solves several difficult cases like the case of the ghost and helps people heal after traumas. Solving one complex case after the other, she catches the attention of the emperor’s brother, a eunuch.
