How Much Did You Shop Around Before Coming?

“P-please...! Please repair my sword, Master!”

‘......What is this now.’

Dohyun looked down at the woman, taken aback.

By day she'd hugged the sword to her chest and sworn she'd rather die than lend it out, and now she was showing up in pajamas, begging him.

"Money... I'll pay however much you want! No, whatever you ask for... I'll give you anything, anything!"

'......Anything.'

She'd knocked on a stranger's door in the middle of the night and suddenly said she'd give him anything.

Dohyun stared at her for a moment.

It was the kind of remark anyone who overheard would easily misunderstand.

First things first, there was no point standing in the hallway like this.

"......Please come in."

"Y-yes!"

The woman hugged the sword tightly to her chest and hurried into the room.

Then she perched on the very edge of the sofa and fidgeted with her fingers in silence for quite a while.

"W-well... the thing is... how this happened is..."

*

To sum it up, this was how it went.

Her family was a clan that had produced famous Japanese sorcerers for generations.

Among them, her maternal grandfather was said to be a legendary figure who left his mark on the history of Japanese sorcery.

"My grandfather's family, the Ishihara clan—if you mention them, there's nobody in Japan who doesn't know them."

Ishihara.

"......But what was your name again?"

"Kim Yuha."

"......?"

"Oh, that's my Korean name. My father is Korean, so my Japanese name is Ishihara Yua."

Ah.

Come to think of it, the butler had introduced her under her Korean name during the day, so she was Japanese after all.

"So, this sword is......"

"Yes. It's the one my grandfather used. It's been passed down through the generations. A cursed tool."

She gently stroked the Japanese sword cradled in her arms.

Although her mother had inherited that incredible bloodline, her spiritual sight never opened in the end.

She waited and waited, hoping it would open someday.

In the end, after marrying a Korean man, she gave up the path of sorcery entirely.

But Yuha's spiritual sight had opened when she was little.

"Ever since I was a kid, I kept seeing weird things. Things other people couldn't see......"

It seemed her spiritual sight had opened early.

Her mother reportedly jumped for joy when she heard that.

[Our Yua is definitely going to become a great sorcerer. Someone wonderful who protects people from ghosts!]

If only she could learn to handle her grandfather's sword.

You would surely become the best sorcerer, just like your grandfather.

That was proof of it.

"......So I took it."

The problem started after she received that sword.

"The sword...... wouldn't work."

Whether it had sat too long or there was some other reason.

No matter how much spiritual power she poured into it, the Japanese sword didn't budge, as if dead.

"Originally, there was a close blacksmith family that had maintained this sword through the generations."

But apparently that family had gone under around her mother's generation.

'......Looks like once that family went under, there was nobody left to maintain it.'

More or less, I could guess what happened.

By then, I could already picture the rest without even hearing it.

Still, she must have thought she could do it.

Because she had that inherited bloodline.

So she boldly entered the Japanese sorcery scene.

Everywhere she went, she introduced herself as 'the granddaughter of the Ishihara family'.

At first, everyone welcomed her.

"Oh, you came! Great!" they said, scrambling to take her in from office to office.

......But that was it.

Once the sword wouldn't work, the granddaughter was just a granddaughter.

A kid with a fancy bloodline but no real ability, someone who couldn't back up the name.

That initial welcome had, before long, turned into cold indifference.

"......That's when I realized it. Ah, without my grandfather's sword, I can't do it."

So I went everywhere I could.

Whether famous workshops or hidden masters living in seclusion.

I searched every place in Japan that said they could repair swords.

"But no one...... could fix it."

Some places even took a pretty hefty sum under the pretense of an inspection fee.

Then they'd just talk in vague circles about this being the problem and that being the problem.

Nobody ever gave me a straight answer.

Even when I begged them to fix it and said I'd pay whatever it took.

"......That......"

They all trailed off and kept telling me to go ask someone else.

By then, the amount they'd bled me dry for was enormous.

"......I felt like I was going to die of shame."

Yuha bit her lip tightly.

Before long, she was gradually edged out of the Japanese sorcerer rankings after that brief flash of brilliance.

In the end, she sank all the way to the bottom without ever really getting a proper heyday.

Then, unable to endure the Japanese sorcery world, she ran away to Korea, her father's homeland.

But Korea wasn't likely to be any easier.

"Here, too, it's all famous family workshops...... as if they have some sort of rule among themselves."

They all said they wouldn't repair anything that wasn't made by their own hands.

Or if they did, they'd quote an absurd repair fee.

She even showed the sword to a third-rank artisan at a workshop reputed to be famous in the industry.

"......He just said he didn't know and told me to go back."

The woman lowered her head, looking dejected.

"My mother clearly said that with this sword, I could become like my grandfather!"

"She said it had always been that way through the generations!"

There was no one who could repair the sword.

And after being shoved over here to Korea, she didn't seem to have achieved much here either.

'......What a miserable story.'

But even while she looked downcast, there was something oddly bright in her eyes.

'If only this sword gets repaired, I can be acknowledged someday, just like my grandfather.'

She seemed to have clung to the sorcery world like a madwoman on that one thought alone.

Well, I could see why.

"You don't need to worry about the repair fee."

The woman added in a hurry.

Her grandfather's inheritance was plenty, and once the sword came back to life she'd make far more money herself anyway.

She said that small a repair fee was nothing.

"I-I'll give you anything you want!! So please......!"

'Anything, huh.'

But the world doesn't work that easily.

Well, that's a problem for later.

"......For now, let's take a look at the sword."

After all, I'd been curious about the structure of that Japanese sword for a while.

***

I took the Japanese sword from the woman.

First, I inspected the outside.

At a glance, it was obvious that many different hands had worked on it.

There were even signs of sloppy reinforcement with odd materials here and there.

'......Looks like they didn't care whether anyone was skilled or not.'

They must have taken it everywhere and let just about anyone work on it.

Probably a bunch of unskilled hacks in both Japan and Korea had done all sorts of useless things just to squeeze money out of her.

'......Well, things like this are easy enough to strip off.'

The real important part is the inside.

All right, let's see.

I closed my eyes and rested a hand on the sword's hilt.

Then I sent out [Mana Wave].

Vwoong―

......Now look at this.

The outer surface had been coated with a special material that made the mana circuit impossible to read.

It was set up so spiritual power would bounce off it completely.

'Oh...... So this kind of thing exists in the real world too.'

It was a trick I'd sometimes used in the game myself to keep others from copying the circuit I made.

Well, even if they saw it, they probably couldn't have copied it anyway.

They'd probably mixed in several materials that repelled spiritual power, making only a specific wavelength pass through.

'Mm-hmm, this kind of thing takes three seconds to break through.'

I sent a sliver of spiritual power into the surface material.

I read the wavelength of the spiritual power that bounced back.

I worked backward to see how that flow changed.

Then, again, adjusting little by little.

I searched for the wavelength where the reflected force gradually weakened, and sent spiritual power in to match it.

Think of it as a kind of lock-picking minigame.

Send out one wavelength.

Read the changed flow.

Adjust, then send the next wavelength.

Mm-hmm. That was around the third time I changed the wave.

Whoosh―

'It went in.'

There we go.

Heh. Three times, huh. Pretty standard.

Still not rusty, I see.

Haha.

As the spiritual power spreading from my fingertips seeped into the sword.

The circuit engraved in this Japanese sword flowed into my head, every last bit of it.

At that moment.

'Ha......'

'Haha!'

Something like this is engraved in it?

Heh.

My mouth curved up on its own.

Interesting.

This is fun.

***

That handsome young artisan was standing there with his hand on my sword, eyes closed.

Yuha watched him anxiously.

......Honestly, she hadn't expected much.

She'd been to countless places in Japan and Korea with this sword in hand.

The answer she'd gotten back was always the same.

They didn't know, so they told her to go somewhere else.

After being turned away over and over like that, before long even hope would crumble away.

'......So even here, maybe it's no good.'

And yet the reason she'd swallowed her pride and knocked on his door in the middle of the night was simple.

During the day, she'd seen him engraving something onto a dagger in the painting.

If she hadn't seen wrong, that was definitely spellwork engraving.

And with his bare hands, no less.

She'd gone in and out of countless blacksmith shops in her life.

Bare-handed engraving was something she'd never even heard of, let alone seen.

That was why.

Maybe... if it was this man.

With that one sliver of hope, she'd come all this way.

And while she was worrying herself sick.

......Did he just smile?

The corners of his mouth had lifted slightly.

And then, soon after, he opened his eyes.

'......What? That fast?'

Yuha's heart sank.

Ugh... I knew it.

Most of them were like this.

They'd make a face like something was suspicious, then give up right away, saying they couldn't even read the spellwork.

This time would probably be the same.

"The inspection is done."

"......Ah, so it really is hard to fix―"

"It can be done."

"......Huh?"

*

"R-really?!"

Yuha's eyes widened.

It was a sword that no one had been able to fix for years.

And yet, he said it could be done.

Yuha sprang to her feet from the sofa.

Before she knew it, she was leaning toward Dohyun.

"Before that, hold on a second."

Dohyun said, holding up one hand to stop her.

Then he started calling someone.

'......What does he mean, a call all of a sudden?'

Yuha blinked, utterly lost.

"For now, please take this."

Dohyun held out his phone.

Yuha took it in a daze and cautiously spoke.

"H-hello......?"

「Hello! I'm Seo Jian, the broker for Master Artisan Do!」

A thunderous voice burst from the other end of the line.

「I hear you're bringing a repair request to Master Artisan Do? I've already checked the details from the text messages earlier. Now then―」

「How much did you shop around before coming?!」