Why should a woman hold a more inferior status compared with men? Why should a woman stay out of the spotlight while she assists a man to become a king, and she could only submit to the king's majesty as a listener? Why, when a wealthy man enjoys a higher social status, is being deemed by the society as owing it to his capability, while women with a similar social standing could only rise to the top by "getting down on her knees and spreading their legs for the men"? Why are the women, after being divorced by their magnate husbands, always portrayed as a weak, submissive, and starry-eyed female archetype who are more than willing to take back their ex-husbands at the drop of a hat?
What has gone wrong with this world? This is not how it was supposed to be.
The story follows Helena Winslet, a girl with an ability to transport herself to different worlds with the help of a System/friend, to edify the men in their times. "Women are not the stepping stones for your success." "Women are not the chips for your trade." "Women are not your sex toys." They have their own names. They have their own glorious lives. You do not have the right to reduce their entire personhood to their pronouns—she, her, them—and domestic roles. They are our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. They are the people we should respect the most in the world.
Helena has completed a plethora of missions in the various worlds in which she will take on the role of a woman who is being treated unfairly and change their miserable lives. All dogmas and gender norms that have been based on nothing but unfounded myths should be set right.
Readers, keep in mind: Every woman has the right to live their life for no one but themselves.
For readers' better comprehension, the former owner's name of each world will be capitalized, and the author will use the same name of female protagonist. Again, enjoy reading this novel.
Chapter 1: The First World: I'm Sending the Business Magnate to Prison!
I
"Well, I must admit, I did enjoy sleeping with you. Here, I'm leaving you a check of a hundred grand." In a blur, Helena Winslet heard the man's voice. This was another world, and she still needed three minutes to completely receive all the information via the System. And the three minutes passed quickly.
At the moment when Helena regained her senses, she was made aware of the pain in her body and her sore lower body. She couldn't help but curse "Godd*mn it" after receiving the information of this world.
The original owner of the body was, coincidentally, also named HELENA WINSLET. What differentiated them was that the HELENA of this particular world was a typical woman with a hard life who had been dealt a bad hand.
HELENA's adoptive mother, Maria Louis, used to be a cleaner in a private hospital. Later, she got married and temporarily quit her job when she was about to give birth. But fate had a twisted sense of humor, and she learned that firsthand when her daughter had been born with a congenital heart disease. With her and her husband's meager income, it was impossible for them to pay the treatment fee.
Feeling helpless, Maria thought of the private hospital she had used to work in. She sneaked in, found a baby girl who had just been born, and replaced her with her own. As for how she, as a cleaner, had avoided the security guards and the strict security of the hospital, and how she had exchanged the two children, the System left it to Helena Winslet's own imagination.
Maria left her own daughter in the hospital and took the baby girl back home. She took the baby girl as her own daughter and named her HELENA, a name to which she had pinned her infinite hopes and yearning for her own daughter. Unfortunately, she had withheld her tenderness toward HELENA, for every time she saw HELENA, she would think of her own daughter who was not by her side. When she thought that her own daughter was calling some strange woman by "Mother", she couldn't help but start to resent this child whose fate she had altered.
Maria's husband was a typical doormat man—honest to the point of being wimpy, which meant that he could not help his daughter much in front of his strong wife. Two years later Maria was pregnant again, and the birth of her son, Melvin Winslet, marked the beginning of HELENA's mistreatment. Without a doubt, the house chores were her responsibilities. If Maria ever caught her moving slower or catching a breather, her scolding would reverberate throughout the whole building. For HELENA, Saturdays and Sundays were for work—handing out flyers.
She was about to enter the third year of high school. During the summer vacation, Maria got her a temporary job as a hotel housekeeper. Instead of giving HELENA a chance to further her studies, she would rather wait for her to graduate from high school and put her in a factory to rake in an income. Then, she would use Helena's beautiful face as a cachet to attract a rich son-in-law and make him buy a house for her son, Melvin.
After an onslaught of information from the System, Helena felt her head splitting with pain. "God, what kind of crappy life is this?"
As if resonating with her, the System said, "A really crappy life."
Struggling to sit up from the bed, Helena felt that soreness spreading from her lower body, and her eyebrows couldn't help twitching when the thought "For f*ck's sake, this world is a complete living hell" popped into her mind.
Well, as a female protagonist with a hard life, how could there not be a young business magnate around her?
There was no doubt that Alex Fisher, the male protagonist of this world, came from money and had an outstanding family background. He had a habit of drinking more alcohol than he could tolerate and a propensity to unleash the animal in him when he did so. It just so happened that when he was partying and getting drunk with his buddies in a hotel where Helena was working, he had pulled her, who had just been passing by, into the suite and sexually assaulted her. He woke up the next day, not thinking much of his action from the night before. He just thought that Helena was a vain woman whose body he could buy for the right price. He left the suite after slapping the check on the nightstand, but that didn't end there for Helena. It was the beginning of an endless nightmare.
A girl who was still in high school had been sexually assaulted, a traumatic experience beyond her worst imagination. She wasn't equipped to deal with it.
If Maria's hair-trigger temper was any indication at all, she would clobber her to death once she found out about this. Besides, if this matter was spread out, what would the teachers and classmates think of her? Would she still be able to continue to study?
Fear and dread swallowed HELENA. She cried helplessly for a long time, but she didn't take the check. Putting on her clothes, she ran away in a panic. She didn't call the police, nor did she mention it to anyone. She could only pray that it would all fade away with the passage of time. Until she found out that she was… pregnant.
Having found out that HELENA's belly was getting bigger with each day, Maria was enraged. She felt both mortification and fear that the news would spread and blight HELENA's reputation, ruining the latter's marriage prospects. Thinking that she would need to make money off HELENA, Maria concealed the news, applied for HELENA to drop out of school, and secretly took her to a backstreet clinic to terminate the pregnancy.
But HELENA's belly was starting to show, and after four months of nurturing itself in her womb, the fetus had taken shape and could move now. Her maternal instincts were surging. She couldn't bear to get rid of the child and ran away with the money she had secretly saved up.
It was a boy, the spitting image of Alex Fisher, who had an IQ of 180. God only knows how HELENA had registered his birth and gotten him a birth certificate. Long story short, the two of them depended on each other and lived a peaceful life for a few years. Time passed in the same uneventful fashion until HELENA, unknowingly, went to Alex's company for a job interview. She recognized the man who had sexually assaulted her, and he also recognized her after a short pause. "I remember you," was what his face was saying. The woman had left without taking the check. That was the first time he, a man who had never not gotten his way, had seen someone who had flouted his expectations. And with that, she had snagged his interest and had had a place in the forefront of his mind all this while.
Helena closed her eyes quietly. A minute later, she opened them again, saying, "I don't think I like this world."
To which the System comforted her, "No normal person would like it."
"What Alex Fisher did is called sexual assault, a non-concensual sex. It's not a one-night stand or a booty call," she said, "and this is not an ancient society where he could just force himself on a woman and suffer no consequences."
The System sighed and said, "Most of the business magnates have sick, sociopathic tendencies. They are usually not right in the head. Their first meeting with the women always happens on the bed."
"He's beyond salvation, I'm telling you," said Helena calmly, "which is why I'm going to send this sc*mbag to prison."
The System said, "Hell, yeah. That's Helena Winselt for you."
"But there's one thing that I'm very curious about." She continued, "As a mother, will she really look forward to a child who has been conceived in rape?"
The System fell into a moment of silence. "Hmm, you got me there. You can't count on an artificial intelligence to answer this question."
"If you ask me, I don't think so. There is no normal woman who will be happy to be subjected to a forced sex, let alone fall in love with the product that comes from the violent act." She continued, "Straight up, I'm not a fan of this world. Because since day one, hidden underneath the so-called romance are the twisted moral values. This is not some psychological thriller or Stockholm syndrome, for God's sake."
"It's not shameful to be sexually assaulted, and the victim is never in the wrong, however fine spin you put on it. Society should not teach girls to cry after being abused. And they should not 'cleanse' their bodies by scrubbing it clean or let the hot water burn their skin and the traces it bears. This doesn't help. This is just destroying the evidence." She added, "They should retain the evidence, report it to the police and protect themselves by legal means. They should make the perpetrator pay the price."
"Sexual assault is sexual assault. There is no glossing over it or downplaying the impact it has on the victims. It has nothing to do with age, appearance, and family background. Money can't erase my shame, nor can it distort my values."
"My dignity is priceless."
