If You Bleed, I'll Buy the Pads
If I had become a woman, what the hell was I supposed to do about periods and everything that came with them?
To protect Im Harin’s dignity, I ended up running a sanitary pad errand. As I rode the elevator, I did a quick search on my phone.
“...So ‘leaking’ meant this? Isn’t this kind of serious?”
I thought the story sounded familiar, and now I understood why Harin had been on the verge of tears when she told me.
Her period had started suddenly. And since it was impossible to wear a pad three hundred and sixty-five days a year, the blood had gone straight through and stained her panties.
Just thinking about it was genuinely horrifying…
I was so glad I didn’t get periods.
—Jingle jingle!
Anyway, I shoved my smartphone into my windbreaker pocket and squeezed into the convenience store.
Luckily, the part-timer behind the counter was a woman.
“Hmm…”
Whenever I came to a convenience store I always buried my head in the triangle kimbap, sandwich, or lunchbox section. But where on earth did they keep the pads?
Did they even sell them? I had no memory of ever seeing any.
What if they were out? Harin had even asked me to buy panties if—
“Ah, there they are. This is it.”
The brands looked familiar from those strange old commercials where they poured ink all over the pads.
The pads came sealed in square vinyl packages, and the variety was…
“What is this, an energy drink aisle? Why are there so many? Can I seriously just grab any of them?”
No, was that really okay?
There had to be a reason so many brands existed, right?
Even with ramen, we call them all “ramen,” but the taste is completely different depending on the product.
To me they might all look like the same pad, but from Harin’s perspective my choice could end up being some stupid, brain-dead decision that wasn’t even worth discussing…
You know that famous story. The senior in the army tells the junior to buy something, the junior thinks he means coffee mix, buys that instead, and gets treated like absolute trash.
“I really don’t want that… Even when I touch them I can’t tell what’s different…”
I did not want to hear a high school girl say “Sis, are you insane?!” again.
If I tore one open I could at least see what it looked like… No, no. Even if I opened it, what would I know?
The only thing I knew about the appearance of pads was what I’d seen during sex education class back in school.
“…Tsk.”
Harin had told me to buy anything, so should I really just buy anything?
But no matter how I looked at it, that didn’t feel right. They had sizes written on them!!!
Call it a gamer’s intuition, but there had to be an actual reason they distinguished sizes.
Let’s think logically, Jeong Hana… Why divide them into small, medium, and large?
There must be a reason for the distinction. That’s why Korean convenience stores put the same brand of pads on the shelf separated by size!
“I have no idea…”
Small is small, medium is bigger than small, large is really big.
…No matter how long I stared at the pads displayed in front of me, I couldn’t feel anything beyond that simple observation.
What was the actual standard for buying these? Was it like bra or panty sizing based on body measurements?
That… made sense. They stuck to your panties, after all. Maybe it was like panty size?
Then Harin has a big butt, so… wait, does she? I don’t know? Her chest seemed a little big, but I had no idea about her hips or pelvis??
“Jeez…”
How the hell was I supposed to know a high school girl’s butt size and panty size!
Kids these days developed early. Maybe for someone Harin’s size it was small…?
But what was this “super absorbency” thing? It was more expensive—did that mean it was better?
“This is going to drive me insane… Why are there so many kinds… What’s super cool? Why is there a one-hit version……”
What was pure cotton? It wasn’t zero cola, so why was there a zero version?
“…And why are there stickers?”
There were even pads with cute characters drawn on them.
…If I were a woman I would never buy those. Did those actually sell?
“Ah, forget it. I’ll just buy anything.”
Spending more than ten minutes agonizing in front of the pad shelf was ridiculous too.
I roughly grabbed a brand I remembered seeing on TV back in the day.
For size, I was worried that picking large might make Harin think I was calling her fat, so I went with medium…
“Panties… they sell them. Wait, they sell women’s panties here? Why?”
Did situations like Harin’s happen often enough that they stocked them?
After staring for a while I picked up a seamless pure-cotton panty labeled 85.
“Why is one pair of panties ten thousand won… Korea’s economy is finished, this is insane…”
The panties Harin had bought me last time were at least sexy-looking.
These were plain black cotton panties that couldn’t even be used for dirty pictures, and they cost ten thousand won?
Between the pads and this, being a woman had some surprisingly expensive hidden costs.
“I’ll pay for these.”
Anyway, I handed the panties and pads to the part-timer and set them on the counter.
……Ah, but why did I feel like I was committing some kind of massive perverted act?
I was Jeong Hana now. I had been living as a woman for over a month.
Buying sanitary pads was absolutely not a bad thing, yet cold sweat broke out across my skin, my face burned red, and my breathing grew tight.
—Beep! Beep!
Maybe it was because the part-timer standing in front of me was a rather pretty girl with slightly sharp eyes…
Or maybe it was the way she kept sneaking glances at me.
“These.”
“Y-yes?!”
“It’s one-plus-one.”
“Ah… right.”
No! You should have said that from the beginning!
Not wanting to take a loss, I went back to the shelf, grabbed an identical pack of pads, and returned to the counter.
“Your total is fourteen thousand won.”
“Please give me a bag too.”
I said while roughly inserting the card into the reader.
“Um, excuse me…”
“Yes?”
What now? Why? Did I do something wrong?
Buying pads was already the most awkward and embarrassing moment of my entire life—couldn’t she just let me leave?!
“…Please have these.”
“Huh?”
The rather cool-looking part-timer placed a small chocolate and a disposable wet tissue on top of my pads.
“Uh, these… you’re giving them for free?”
“Yes. Hang in there.”
“Huh?”
Hang in there?
“…Ah, yes. Thank you.”
The part-timer gave me a small smile.
I see. After watching me buy both panties and pads… she thought I was the one who had leaked.
There was no need to correct her by saying no, I’m actually buying them for Im Harin.
I gave a quick bow, gathered everything on the counter, stuffed it all into the black plastic bag, and got on the elevator.
“……Ha.”
That entire time had been mortifying enough to kill me.
I didn’t even know why, but it was so embarrassing that my toes kept curling.
Anyway, the elevator doors opened and I returned to Im Harin, who had been left pitifully abandoned in the bathroom for nearly twenty minutes.
“Harin, sis is back.”
“Ha, sis… I thought you died.”
“What do you mean, died? Open the door. There’s no one behind me.”
I turned my face to the side and pushed the black bag through the narrow gap of the opened door.
“Wow, sis… You actually bought the right ones? If you’d brought overnight pads just to tease me again I was ready to scream.”
What the hell was an overnight pad? I had no idea.
“Sis, thank you so much, seriously. Wow… I didn’t think you’d even get the wet wipes and chocolate.”
“R-really? No… I just figured you might need them.”
“Seriously, sis, sometimes you’re really…”
Rustle rustle.
The sounds coming from beyond the partition were so vivid and embarrassing that I felt like I was doing something wrong, so I pressed myself against the sink area.
“You’re really good at taking care of people.”
“Enough… What woman doesn’t take care of this stuff?”
“Even so, these days at school if someone leaks and asks to borrow one, the health teacher narrows her eyes and starts giving judgmental advice first.”
I didn’t want to know that TMI, so I simply stared at the sink.
“Sis, thank you so much. You know that, right? I really mean it!”
I still couldn’t respond to the playful voice coming from inside the stall. That wasn’t something I could do yet.
“What’s that? You said you were going to the bathroom, so what’s with the bag…”
“Don’t look! You pervert!”
“???”
Lee Siwoo, who had suddenly been cursed at, wore a dumbfounded expression, but I didn’t bother explaining.
No, it was better if he didn’t know either.
It wasn’t for nothing that Harin had tied the bag shut so no one could see inside.
“Anyway, I’m back. So about the Four Major Dungeons…”
I spoke as I sat down in my chair, then unconsciously glanced at Im Harin.
“Can you still go?”
“Of course I can. Why, sis?”
…Well, they said even students taking the college entrance exam went to school during their periods, so playing a game probably wasn’t a big deal.
“Nothing. I was just going to avoid pushing you if you weren’t feeling well.”
“Eh, this much is fine.”
Lee Siwoo looked at Harin silently for a moment before simply turning his head away.
“Noona, while you were in the bathroom I checked a few things.”
“What did you see?”
“I looked to see if anyone was forming parties, but almost no one is going to this place. Even when there are groups, they’re all friends, so they’re only looking to fill one tank or healer spot.”
As expected, unlike Moonlight Spire Upper and Lower or Undead Academia, it seemed people still didn’t feel like going to Gemstratholme.
Well, there were no known strategies yet, and the dungeon itself was enormously large once you entered, so it was hard to get motivated.
They probably didn’t even know about the back-gate quest.
“Then we need to recruit one tank and one DPS.”
“That’s why I looked that far.”
“Oh, look at you, Siwoo. You’re actually being helpful today?”
Harin, this guy isn’t even max level yet, you know?
“There’s Irea, right? Irea.”
“He’s a streamer who made the pitiful choice of raising a Protection Paladin.”
It really was unfortunate for Protection Paladins. To be treated like a proper tank, it took an incredibly long time.
In Lost of Fantasy, all hybrid classes were like that. The day when each specialization could finally function properly was still far and treacherous.
“But why Irea?”
“I was bored earlier so I checked the community and Pzizik for a bit. Irea was doing build-up to run Gemstratholme today.”
“Oh… nice. Then we’ll naturally put up a party recruitment and bring him in if he applies to us.”
Just as Siwoo had said, every party listed in region chat was unappealing.
Three DPS looking for tank and healer, or one DPS looking for four people…
Even the decent-looking parties had set their combat power requirement at 960, so normal players couldn’t even dream of applying.
“But Noona, is it okay since he’s a streamer?”
“Doesn’t matter. Gemstratholme is originally a dungeon that can show pretty good potential…”
While answering, I typed into chat that we were recruiting for Gemstratholme.
“Irea seemed pretty serious about the game when I saw him last time. I like people who analyze like that—researching skills, theorycrafting builds, all of it.”
The streamer Irea.
Even though he had raised his class with the wrong choice, he researched Lost of Fantasy more seriously than anyone else.
It would have been perfect if he just hadn’t gone with Protection Paladin.