Chapter 3
"Hey... what's your name?"
"...I'm Dohyun Lee."
Dohyun.
The man looked at me as he set down the perfectly forged paring knife.
"Earlier you said it was your first time... Have you ever learned smithing somewhere? No, at this level, you'd be someone who's spent decades under a master smith."
"I'm not. It's really my first time. I'm just... on leave from college."
At my answer, the man looked unconvinced, but didn't pry any further.
"...Right, you're on leave from college. So do you have any other work?"
"None."
Grin.
The man laughed.
"Then could you help me out a bit? No, please, help me. We're short-handed these days. This bastard hasn't even been able to sharpen a knife properly for five years."
"Master...!"
Junho let out an aggrieved groan as he sat there with his legs giving out beneath him, but the man didn't even look at him.
I’ll make sure the pay is decent. Think of it as a part-time job.
There was no reason to refuse.
I had nothing to do, no money, and my bank account was empty. More than anything... that electric thrill I felt just now when I gripped the hammer.
I wanted to feel that insane dopamine rush again—the one from proving that everything I'd spent ten years learning actually worked in reality.
"...All right."
At my answer, a faint crease formed on the man's otherwise rough face.
"Good. Come by by eight tomorrow."
I bowed and left the smithy. As I walked out through the market alley, my steps felt light as air.
I looked down at my hands. The feeling of gripping the hammer handle, the rebound when striking the iron, still lingered vividly in my palms. It was hundreds of times more real and overwhelming than what I'd felt in the game.
My heart started pounding like crazy. At last, I had somewhere to prove what my ten years had been for.
***
And so my first day at the smithy began.
Clock in at 8 a.m., clock out at 6 p.m.
The work was simple: hauling charcoal, tending the furnace, organizing tools, and cleaning up metal scraps.
Sometimes I stood nearby and watched the man work.
His craftsmanship was incredible.
There was no waste in the process of making a single knife.
Heat it, hammer it, fold it, heat it again.
The motions themselves weren't anything special, but they were fast and precise.
It was exactly the same feeling as the max-level smith NPCs in the game.
'The quench timing too... perfect.'
The color of the metal the instant it came out of the furnace, the angle at which it was dunked into the water, the amount of time it stayed in.
He made it look effortless, but every single motion was something only decades of experience could produce.
Watching made my hands start itching.
An urge rose up to go stand there and start hammering away.
But I held back.
No matter how you looked at it, a brand-new part-timer stepping up in front of the anvil would seem cocky.
Junho was still displeased with me.
Whenever our eyes met, he would jerk his head away, and if I spoke to him, he'd answer only in short replies.
"Hey, where's the charcoal?"
"Storage room."
It was like that.
Still, he didn't openly pick a fight.
He must have lost some of his nerve after the paring-knife incident.
***
A few more days passed, and the smithy’s scenery started to come into focus.
This smithy got more customers than I expected.
When I first got here, it looked like a quiet shop wedged into a dead-end alley at the edge of the market.
But that wasn't the case at all.
On Tuesday, a middle-aged man in a sharply tailored suit came by.
The way he casually mixed informal speech with the man told me he was an old regular.
"Hey, could you take a look at this new kitchen knife for me? The spine keeps feeling off."
I later found out he was the owner-chef of a Michelin two-star restaurant.
On Wednesday, a white-haired grandmother came in and chatted with the man for ages before leaving.
She left her scissors there, and the man spent a long time inspecting them before carefully polishing them.
"Who is she?"
"National Intangible Cultural Heritage. A knot master."
Junho answered curtly, as if it were nothing.
A knot master?
I wasn't really sure what that was, but a National Intangible Cultural Heritage holder.
It sounded impressive just from the name.
This smithy was that kind of place.
The sign was half peeled off and the shop was tucked away at the very end of the alley, but it was one of those places everyone in the know knew about.
"It really is different once you've had him make it."
The chef's words when he came to pick up the knife before leaving work stayed with me.
The man just handed the knife over without a care.
*
It was a Thursday morning when that happened.
The man was finishing up the kitchen knife he'd been commissioned to make for the chef, and Junho was hauling charcoal from the storage room.
I was tidying around the workbench as usual.
Then I sensed someone outside the shutter.
"Is the master here?"
When I turned, an old lady was standing there.
She wore a hanbok jacket and skirt. Her hair was neatly done up in a bun, and she was holding something wrapped in a cloth bundle.
The man looked up.
"Oh, Madam Shaman. It's been ages."
He stood up and greeted the old lady.
"Aigoo, Mr. Muhyuk. Sorry to bother you when you're busy."
"No, not at all. But what brings you here..."
The old lady unwrapped the cloth bundle.
Inside was a single brass bell.
Palm-sized. At a glance, it was an old piece.
The surface had blackened with tarnish, and the ring at the top had loosened.
"It won't make a sound. Even when I shake it, it just makes a dull noise and has no resonance. Could you take a quick look?"
The man's expression stiffened slightly.
It was only for a split second, but I saw it.
A face that looked troubled.
But it loosened right away.
The way the man looked at the old lady told me she was someone he couldn't casually refuse.
The man took the bell and shook it this way and that, then tilted his head.
"It looks like there's a crack on the inside. It'll take some time to inspect properly."
"It's not urgent. Do it whenever it's convenient for you."
"Understood."
After the old lady left, the man placed the bell on the workbench.
"Dohyun."
"Yes."
"Wipe this down for me. We need to remove the rusty oxidation layer on the surface before we can see the inside."
"Understood."
I picked up the bell.
The moment I touched it, I felt something strange.
A strange sensation, as though something were faintly trembling.
'...What is this?'
I focused on the tips of my fingers.
It seemed to be coming from inside the bell.
Something I'd felt somewhere before.
Yeah, this was a feeling similar to the one in the game.
The feeling you got when you touched something that had a spirit in it.
‘I don't know what it is, but…….’
For now, I focused on stripping away the oxidized layer.
I wiped the surface with a cloth soaked in vinegar and polished it smooth.
Once the black rust came off, the brass's original shine returned.
But while I was cleaning it, I noticed something.
The thickness of the bell's inner wall wasn't uniform.
One side was microscopically thinner.
That would create differences in the resonance.
One side would vibrate, and the other would sound dead.
This... needed to be fixed from the inside.
I remembered the method I'd used when repairing bell-type items in the game.
A technique of lightly tapping the uneven spots on the inner wall to even out the density.
It was a process of letting mana flow through in tiny amounts and evenly aligning the metal's structure.
Of course, there was no such thing as mana in reality, so the result would be a little different.
Still, the principle should be the same, right?
I chose a small hammer. From the bell's opening inward, along the thin section, I started tapping very lightly.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
The sound of tapping the bell's inner wall rang through the quiet smithy.
I read the thickness from the sensations in my fingertips.
Thick section. Thin section. The point where the crack began.
Just like I'd done tens of thousands of times in the game, I read it by feel and matched the rhythm.
Feeling the flow of the metal as I tapped, and adjusting my strength to match it.
In the game, I'd carried mana into it here.
Of course, I couldn't do that in reality, but my hands were moving just like they had in the game.
Ding. Ding-ding. Ding.
My palm felt faintly warm.
How long had it been?
I gave it one final tap and stopped.
I tried shaking the bell.
Jingle—
A clear sound rang out.
A clean, transparent resonance completely different from before.
'It worked.'
I was satisfied. Just as I was about to set the bell down on the workbench.
"Dohyun."
I heard the man's voice from behind me.
When I turned around, he was standing in front of the workshop door, looking at me.
How long had he been watching?
"I told you to clean that bell, not repair it."
"Ah... sorry. While I was cleaning it, I noticed the inside was a bit uneven, so I just..."
"Just?"
"I just... found my hand moving on its own. Sorry."
The man walked over without saying a word and picked up the bell.
He shook it.
Jingle—
A clear ring spread through the smithy.
The man's hand stopped.
He held the bell up to the light. Looked into the opening. Shook it again.
He kept at it for a while.
"...Nice."
That was all he said.
Surprisingly, he didn't scold me for touching a customer's property on my own, nor did he make a fuss like last time, praising how well it had been fixed.
He looked as if he were deep in thought about something.
Then he set the bell down and went back inside.
*
The next morning.
The shaman grandma came to pick up the bell.
The man handed her the bell and said,
"The inner wall thickness was a little off. I fixed it."
"Oh, thank you."
The old lady took the bell and gave it a shake.
Jingle—
The old lady's hand stopped.
She lifted the bell, held it beside her ear, and shook it again.
Jingle. Jingle.
......
The old lady slowly turned her head to look at the man.
"Did you do this, sir?"
"Yes."
The man answered calmly.
The old lady stared at the bell for a long while.
It seemed like she wanted to say more, but in the end she kept her mouth shut.
"...Thank you. How much should I pay?"
"No need. Between us, this one's on the house."
"......"
The old lady fell silent.
She stared at the man for a long while, then took several bills from her wallet and placed them on the workbench.
"I feel bad about it, so just take it."
Before the man could say anything, the old lady turned away first.
She glanced back once from the doorway as she left.
The hand holding the bell was trembling faintly.
While hauling charcoal from the storage room, I kept sneaking glances that way through the shutter.
It was the bell I'd worked on yesterday. I couldn't help being curious.
After seeing the old lady leave, I came over to the workbench.
"She's gone, huh."
"Yeah."
The man was tidying the workbench. I couldn't see his face because his back was turned.
The old lady's trembling hand clutching the bell stayed in my head.
I wondered if it really was something to shake that much over.
‘...Well, maybe she was attached to it because it was old.’
It had definitely been me who fixed it yesterday, so it bothered me a little that the man said he had done it himself.
If she thought a part-timer had done it, the shaman grandma might feel bad. I figured that was about it.
That was the end of it.
At least, that's what I thought.
*
That evening.
The shaman grandma was performing a gut ritual.
It was the home of a middle-aged couple whose business wasn't going well.
They said everything they did went wrong, and they heard noises from the ceiling every night.
When she went there in person, it turned out petty spirits really were clinging to the place.
They weren't that strong, but they were wedged deep into every corner.
‘Tsk, tsk. Looks like somebody sent a curse.’
She prepared the ritual table and set down a fan.
She took out the bell.
The bell that had come from Muhyuk's smithy that afternoon.
As soon as she took it in hand, that alien sensation from earlier came back.
It felt strangely warm.
‘Did the master work on this?’
The old lady didn't think much of it and steadied her breathing.
Then she chanted the spell. She shook the bell.
Jingle—
The old lady's eyes widened.
The sound was different.
The bell's chime swept through the room.
Across the walls. Across the ceiling. Across the floor.
The resonance spread throughout the entire space.
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
A dull sound came from the ceiling.
Thud. Thuuud.
"H-honey!"
The wife screamed and grabbed her husband's arm.
Something was thrashing madly on the ceiling.
The fluorescent light shook. Dry dust poured down in a shower from gaps in the wallpaper.
The petty spirits lodged in every corner all burst out at once.
The corner of the ceiling. Behind the sink. Under the entryway.
Normally, that's when it starts.
You have to slowly pressure them with sound for about an hour and drive them out one by one.
Jingle—
Second.
One petty spirit lodged in the corner of the ceiling, the instant the bell's sound reached it.
Pop—!
It vanished.
......?
The old lady's hand faltered.
It wasn't running away.
It burst.
Jingle. Jingle—
Fwoosh. Pop—!
A black wisp shot out from behind the sink and scattered apart.
The one crouched under the entryway didn't even get away before crumpling right there.
Crack—!
Something exploded hard in the middle of the ceiling.
Black dust-like debris scattered for an instant, then dissolved away into the air.
And then, it stopped.
"......"
The old lady had frozen in place, still clutching the bell.
The petty spirits lodged in every corner.
Not a single one remained.
They'd all burst apart.
Even though she hadn't even properly started the gut ritual yet.
"......"
The couple didn't know a thing.
"H-honey..."
The wife called to her husband in a trembling voice.
They were looking up at the ceiling. The noise that had been thrashing like mad just moments ago had vanished as if it were a lie.
"...Uh."
The husband swallowed hard.
Silence stretched out.
"Um..."
The husband opened his mouth cautiously.
"Is it... already over?"
It had been less than five minutes since they set up the ritual table and began.