The Dialectic of Master and Slave

Yoo Jaha suddenly opened her eyes one day in an unfamiliar world.

There were no special signs – no accidents, no magical circles appearing beneath her feet, nor desperate voices asking her to come. She had simply gone to bed after doing homework at home as usual, but when she woke up, she was in a different world.

She wasn’t summoned to a temple as ‘the saint who would save the world’, nor to a royal palace as ‘the hero who would defeat the demon king’. When Jaha first came to her senses, she was abandoned in the forest without protection from anyone, and before she could properly grasp what had happened to her, she was captured by some men.

With her limbs bound to prevent escape, Jaha was thrown into a cage that seemed meant for containing animals. Only upon seeing women and children restrained just like herself did Jaha realize she had been captured by what appeared to be a human trafficking group.

To escape, Jaha attempted communication using everything at her disposal – Korean, English learned through formal education, basic German studied as a second language, and even elementary-level Chinese and Japanese that only covered greetings – but she couldn’t communicate with anyone.

When night fell, one man pulled Jaha out of the cage, scanning her body up and down with a filthy gaze while muttering something. Though she couldn’t understand the words coming from his mouth, his intentions were crystal clear.

Jaha trembled imagining what would happen to her. Though she tried to convince herself that whatever this man might do wouldn’t change anything, that such acts couldn’t damage the dignity of the human being named Yoo Jaha, she couldn’t remain composed.

As the man licked his lips watching the frightened Jaha, he pulled out an unknown object from his chest and brought it toward her. When the man mumbled incomprehensible words, a faint light soon flowed from that object.

While she stood frozen wondering what he was doing, the man suddenly wrinkled his face in displeasure for some reason, angrily said something, and roughly shoved Jaha back into the cage.

Though Jaha couldn’t understand why the man’s attitude changed so abruptly, she was relieved nothing had happened to her. Fortunately, after that, no situations of s****l exploitation by the men occurred.

Later, she learned that the object the man had used was a magical item, a kind of mystical tool imbued with magic to detect v*****s. The slave traders hadn’t touched her because v****n slaves sold for higher prices.

Around the time she realized she was in a strange world rather than Earth, Jaha was sold to an elderly man.

The man, over seventy, was impotent – in crude terms, unable to get it up – but still had s****l desires. His hobby was sleeping while embracing and fondling young women. That was the purpose for which he had bought Jaha too.

Resisting with all her might against the old man who tried to draw her into his bed, Jaha pleaded in broken speech that she would do any other work well if given the chance. This was possible because the slave trader had taught her minimal language skills, saying basic communication would fetch a better price.

Though he had only given her basic sentences to memorize – equivalent to “How are you? I’m fine, and you?” in English – Jaha was unusually well-educated in this world where most hadn’t even received elementary education.

She learned this world’s language, albeit clumsily, by carefully listening to and comparing the sentences the slave trader taught with words others used, finding common expressions, and inferring what they were roughly discussing through non-verbal expressions like facial expressions and attitudes, and situations.

With language skills worse than a five-year-old’s, Jaha desperately persuaded the old man, who, seemingly intrigued, gave her three days. He challenged her to prove that using her in ways other than as a s*x slave would be more beneficial.

During that time, Jaha tried to show everything she could offer.

All kinds of knowledge learned at school, common sense that was natural on Earth but unknown in this world, and she even tried telling interesting stories like Scheherazade from Arabian Nights. The problem was that her language ability was far too crude.

Not even a quarter of what Jaha wanted to say reached the other person, and time flowed relentlessly until finally, the third night came.

Just before being inevitably dragged to the old man’s bed, an incident occurred.

The old man’s youngest son, whom he had in his late years, had developed a problem.

Hearing that his beloved son, whom he cherished more than his own eyes, was suffering while clutching his throat, the old man rushed out of the bedroom in panic, and Jaha followed behind.