Gyeong Se-in of Class 2, Year 2 at Gogogo High School doesn’t wear light-colored pants.

It was because of her uncontrollably heavy period.

There was the time she wore white pants and her period leaked, forcing her to tie a friend’s jacket around her waist and rush home.

There was the time she tried to ignore that ominous feeling in class (since not many teachers let you go to the bathroom during a lesson!), only to stand up after the bell and find a catastrophe had occurred.

There was the time she bled through onto her bed despite wearing the largest overnight pad she could find at the store, and got scolded by her mom (“Do you know how much this mattress costs!”).

Se-in had experienced it all.

That day was another one of those murderously awful days.

About 10 months ago.

Se-in, not long after becoming a high school student, was gathering her things for a class in a different room on a lower floor.

“…”

This feeling.

It can’t be. That feeling that, if she tried to ignore it, would surely lead to a classroom disaster.

Checking the clock on the wall, Se-in whispered to the friend who came with her.

“Soo-ah, do you have a pad by any chance?”

They had already used six minutes of the break just moving classrooms. Even if she grabbed a pad and sprinted to the bathroom right now, time was tight.

Her friend, hearing Se-in’s whisper, shook her head with a troubled expression.

“It’s in the classroom. Did your period start?”

“Yeah…”

“What do we do? …Hey, do you have a pad?”

“Whoa. I don’t.”

“What about you?”

“Me neither.”

The friends who moved with her, and the friends who were originally in this class, all shook their heads. In the meantime, another minute slipped by.

“Can’t you just run to the snack bar and buy one now?”

“Do they sell them there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hey, let’s just go out. We’ll figure it out outside.”

“Excuse me.”

A voice cut in then.

A girl who had been reading a book in the next row, almost unnoticed, looked up at Se-in.

She had a pale face and distinct eyes. She was wearing a school cardigan that was much too big for her and had several textbooks stacked on her desk. The long, slender neck visible outside her cardigan was noticeable.

The girl spoke.

“I have one.”

“Huh?”

Funnily enough, Se-in’s first thought wasn’t ‘Who is she?’ or ‘She has a pad?’, but ‘She looks like a girl from a fairytale.’

Her eyes sparkle so much. Is she wearing contacts?

But her appearance—her casually undone hair and a face that seemed to be without even a trace of common lip tint—was simple.

Below her dark, staring eyes and slender chin, the name on her name tag was visible.

Kang Da-hye.

Kang Da-hye rummaged through her bag and handed over two pads from between the large cardigan sleeves that covered the back of her hands.

“Here.”

“Oh, uh… thank you.”

“If you need more, you can get some from the nurse’s office later.”

“They give out pads at the nurse’s office?”

“Yeah.”

Nodding, Kang Da-hye lowered her gaze back to her book.

Her loose black hair fell softly beside her downy ears.

“Thank you…!”

Se-in said. Kang Da-hye simply looked up at her one more time and smiled.

However, Se-in’s murderously awful day didn’t end there.

About halfway through the class, Se-in realized she had put the pad on wrong.

Either it was too far back, or it had folded over.

• I think I leaked fml

• fml

• Gotta sprint to the bathroom as soon as this ends

• k I’ll handle the chair and ur stuff here

She was exchanging written notes with the friend sitting next to her.

“Gyeong Se-in, come up and solve this.”

“What? Me?”

I can’t stand up right now.

Her whole body radiated distress, but the indifferent teacher just hurried her along.

“Sir… can’t I solve it next time?”

“What are you talking about, hurry up.”

“Ah… Sir, I really can’t…”

“Hurry!”

“The answer is 13.”

It was Kang Da-hye who saved Se-in this time as well.

Kang Da-hye’s clear and assertive voice echoed through the classroom. The teacher let out a scoff.

“Kang Da-hye, I wasn’t asking you.”

“I know. But I already solved the problem in the meantime.”

“Well, well, someone’s confident. Then you come up and solve this one too.”

“Kay.”

Kang Da-hye answered casually and stood up from her seat.

As she walked to the front, her hand tapped lightly on Se-in’s desk. Se-in looked at Da-hye, but Da-hye didn’t look back at her.

After that, they didn’t really have any contact.

Se-in’s class was on the third floor, Da-hye’s on the second, and after the midterm exams, Se-in’s level-based learning class had changed.

They ran into each other a few times in places like the cafeteria, but Da-hye didn’t seem to remember her.

Only Se-in would hesitate every time she saw Da-hye, wondering, ‘Can I say hi? Should I pay her back for the pad?’

And this year.

“Awesome. We’re in the same class as Seo Jae-gyeom.”

“Ugh, I’m so jealous. Did you save the country in a past life? We have Song Yeo-reum in our class.”

“Maybe you sold the country.”

“Go back. To your classroom with Song Yeo-reum.”

Amidst the noisy friends, Se-in saw Da-hye sitting alone in the distance.

Kang Da-hye, flipping through the literature textbook, pre-reading the works in the book. And Kang Da-hye, who would occasionally lift her head to steal a glance at Seo Jae-gyeom.

She rolled her eyes and thought.

I want to be her friend.

Can I?

“I don’t feel like studying. Do you want my books?”

I was stunned by Jeong Eun-seong’s bombshell announcement.

Can you really live your life that coolly?

I don’t wanna study, should I just toss my textbooks~♪
I don’t wanna test, should I just kidnap the teacher~♪
I don’t wanna work, should I just blow up the company~♪

‘Kidnapping the teacher is a bit tempting.’

No, that’s not what’s important right now.

“If you give me your books, what about you?”

“I don’t need books. I’m not going to look at them anyway.”

“So cool…”

I jabbed Se-in in the side with my elbow as she was admiring him. Snap out of it.

“Then what are you going to do during class?”

“Sleep.”

“You’re not going to study?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to study even if you don’t want to. What we’re learning in school right now isn’t just knowledge, it’s common sense. If you go out into the real world later and don’t know this stuff, people will call you ignorant.”

I gave him advice born from experience, but Jeong Eun-seong’s expression remained indifferent.

I tried to persuade Jeong Eun-seong, who seemed to only be thinking about handing over his textbooks to me and going home.

“Why don’t you like studying?”

“Because it’s not fun.”

“Try thinking of it as fun.”

“How can I think it’s fun when it’s not?”

“Me or studying? You have to like one of them.”

“I have no choice then. I’ll study.”

“…”

That’s strangely upsetting…

Jeong Eun-seong, with a very arrogant expression, nodded and wiped the floor once more with the mop he was holding.

“Wipe your feet here.”

He even instructed me to wipe the strawberry milk off my indoor shoes, then gathered the scattered clumps of toilet paper.

He then left the classroom without so much as a goodbye.

A silence fell.

“…Da-hye, are you sure you’re not close with Jeong Eun-seong?”

“…Yeah.”

I have no idea why he’s acting like that.

I shook my head.

To make a long story short, the homeroom teacher gave me new textbooks.

“What do we do? You must have had a lot of notes written down.”

“Ah, it’s okay, they were written so long ago I don’t remember any of it anyway! And the workbooks… well, I can just buy new ones.”

I told the truth, but she patted my cheek with a pitying expression.

“I’ll look around at home and see if I have any spare workbooks for you.”

“Really? Oh. I was short on money, actually.”

After getting plenty of affection from the teacher who was younger than me, I dragged the kids to our store.

“So what happens to Bang Eun-ji?”

“She’s totally screwed.”

“I love that.”

“Kya-ha-ha… Hello, Mother!”

“Ugh, but my face has been so oily lately. It’s like my face is absorbing all the oil in the world.”

“Are you a kitchen towel?”

“Wow. This tteokbokki is delicious AF.”

Did you know? It’s delicious if you cut up a pizza-flavored bread with scissors, put it on top of spicy tteokbokki, and then microwave it.

“But why hasn’t Seo Jae-gyeom been coming to school lately?”

“I heard he went somewhere with his family.”

“His family seems well-off.”

“Hey, didn’t you see his Chasebook? There was a picture of him on some yacht.”

“That yacht is his family’s?!”

“Do you think the homeroom teacher would like it if we gave her our boys’ album?”

“Do you think she even knows who our boys are?”

“Probably not, right? She didn’t even know B2ST or INFINITE.”

“She was probably just pretending not to know.”

Adults like idols more.

The 19+ fanfiction you’re reading by using your sister’s ID for age verification might have been written by your homeroom teacher, so be careful.

“Do-yeon, are you good with spicy food?”

“I can’t eat it. Because I don’t have it.” (A play on words; “못 먹어. 없어서” can mean “I can’t eat it because I don’t have any” or “I can’t eat it. Period.”)

“Oh.”

“So Da-hye, are you watching the online lectures with Do-yeon?”

“I’m just freeloading.”

“You’re not going to an academy separately?”

“Nope. Ah, wait a minute. I’ll get you some cola.”

Seeing Do-yeon and Soo-ah’s faces turn red from the spicy food, I got up from my seat. As I was getting cola from the outside refrigerator, Se-in came over and spoke to me.

“Um, Da-hye.”

“Yeah?”

“About what you said earlier about being short on allowance.”

“Ah, yeah.”

She must have overheard me telling the teacher I was broke.

Se-in looked around and then brought her face close to my ear.

After hearing Jeong Eun-seong’s absurd remarks earlier, I felt a sense of tension.

‘What is she going to say?’

I’m scared of the radical way teenagers think now.

Is she going to suggest we rob a bank together or something?

I’m short on allowance, should I just rob a bank~♪