Thunderbond

After I finished touching up everything besides the shield and listened to her go on about Sejong Academy for a good long while, the place finally settled into something resembling order.

"Anyway, congrats! Our Woon's an Awakener now~"

Lee Rin hooked her arm through mine, beaming as if she had never been sulking at all. Was this really the same girl who'd gone bright red and yanked her hand free just a minute ago? Her mood swings were genuinely beyond me.

"Uh... thanks. But what am I supposed to do first? There's a whole process for Hunter registration, right?"

"Just go to the Association and register. It's not hard. You get your class and rank measured on a machine, fill out a few forms. That's what I did when I first awakened."

"A machine?"

"Yeah. It's at the Association. They say measuring with that is the most accurate. Other than that, you don't really need to prep anything. Just your ID, maybe?"

Simpler than I'd expected. Then again, in this world Awakeners weren't exactly rare — if the process were complicated, that would be a problem of its own.

"Want me to go with you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the day after tomorrow? I can stop by on my way back from school anyway."

"Uh... I've got some things I want to sort out today first. I'll take you up on that next time."

"Tch, fine. Then I'm heading out? If I'm late for my plans, I'm dead."

Lee Rin waved and left. The little bell over the door jingled, and then it shut behind her.

Alone in the workshop, the itch that had been crawling under my skin all this time finally surged up in full.

Exclusive Weapon.

Could I really make Exclusive Weapons?

I pulled up the status window again. I'd blown past the line in the chaos earlier, but looking closer, a small note was tucked under the skills section.

...There it was. That was what it wanted me to see.

My heart started pounding. In G.O.G, Exclusive Weapons were things only the top-tier heroines ever got. And I was supposed to make them myself? Just imagining it made me grin.

I still had no idea what I actually needed, so I just started grabbing materials on instinct. Lightning-attribute ore, thunderstruck wood, steel a grade ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠purer than what I usually used. I picked them by the feel I'd built up making things for customers over the years.

I laid everything out on the workbench and set my hands on top.

"Hoo."

I let out a long breath and moved the way I always did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠when I forged. Pour the molten metal, hammer, quench, hammer again. Years of the same motions — my body knew the rhythm on its own.

But something felt off.

When I made shields or consumables, a sharp tingle would rise through my fingertips and things would just... click into place on their own. Right now it was just... the same as always. Nothing special about it.

After a long stretch of hammering, a single hammer ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sat finished in front of me. The handle was a little rough, the head plain without a single distinctive mark. Just a hammer that looked a bit sturdier than average.

Hoping against hope, I ran an appraisal on it.

...What?

I read it twice, three times. Maybe I'd misread it. No matter how many times I checked, it was the same.

"What is this..."

A hollow laugh slipped out. Unique-rank class, they said. Exclusive Weapon Blacksmith, they said. And this was the result? "Some promise"? I'd just knocked out a plain D-rank hammer.

I dropped into a chair and turned the hammer over in my hands. When I'd remade the shield, something had clearly been different. My hands had moved on their own then — a natural flow, like something had taken hold of me. This time I'd just hammered the way I already knew how.

"Ha... what's the problem?"

I propped my chin on my hand and glared at the hammer. No answers came.

Maybe the materials weren't enough. Or the order was wrong. Or maybe my whole approach had been off from the start — that lazy assumption that something would just come out if I roughly put it together.

I shot up from the chair. I wasn't going to sit here and stew.

"Right. Maybe it was the materials."

This time I pulled out ore a full grade better than before. Stuff I'd been saving for customer commissions — but this wasn't the time to be precious about it. I threw it all in without hesitation.

Pour, hammer, quench. I worked with more care than last time, even holding my breath as I struck.

"Oh, come on — is this thing roasting me?"

I laughed, empty. So it wasn't the materials. Then what?

I changed my approach. Like when I'd remade the shield — not forcing anything, just letting my hands go where they wanted. But this time I kept Lee Rin in my head the whole way through. The wish to make her something impressive.

"The direction's wrong? Then what's the right direction..."

I was talking to myself more and more. By this point, a stubborn edge had started to kick in. If it wouldn't work, I'd just keep going until it did.

This time I cleared my head completely and worked with nothing but my body. I didn't even decide what I was making — just followed my hands.

"...Are you serious."

I pressed my forehead with three failures lined up in front of me. Not the materials, not thinking of someone else, not thinking of nothing — then what the hell was the right answer?

Thinking it over carefully, when I'd remodeled the shield I hadn't been conscious of anything special. I'd just made it the way I always did, and the result had come out good. Maybe this time I'd been forcing it too hard under the thought of I have to make an Exclusive Weapon.

"Ah, whatever."

I shoved the failures to one side and looked out the window. The sunset was already settling in. I'd hammered all day, and all I had to show for it was a handful of rejects.

It was deflating. But strangely, I didn't want to quit. A feeling kept lingering — like if I just pushed a little further, something would give.

I turned over everything that had happened today, one piece at a time. The awakening. The status window. Affinity. Keen Eye. And these failed hammers.

Something felt missing, but I couldn't get a grip on what it was.

Then a strange thought surfaced. I was living two lives right now. The Kim Woon who'd scraped by under garbage parents on the other side, and the Kim Woon who'd grown up under good ones here.

And only now did I realize I'd been quietly keeping those two apart in my head.

That other me had lived like he'd been thrown away. This me had grown up loved. Completely different lives. So of course I'd drawn a quiet line between them and treated them as separate.

But was that really true?

The one who'd been burned by his parents over there and still spent years trying not to let the relationship go — that was me. The one who walked out the door at the end without looking back even once — that was me too. The one who'd breathed through those miserable studio nights flipping through his favorite characters — also me.

And the one sitting in this workshop right now, stacking failures and still not giving up — that was me as well.

Something else came back to me. During the job hunt, after getting rejected a hundred times on paper, I'd still fixed my resume and sent it out again the next day. Back then I'd only thought of it as stubborn stupidity. But these hands still gripping a hammer after three failures in a row — that was the same kind of stubbornness.

The "me" from over there.

The "me" from here.

All of it was me.

Crossing into this world had felt like being born completely new, but that wasn't true. The wounded me, the loved me, the me hammering out of pure spite right now — they were all one continuous person.

Exclusive Weapon.

Not the weapons those gacha girls carried. My own Exclusive Weapon.

Maybe an Exclusive Weapon of my own was something that only came into being the moment I acknowledged and accepted both of them — the me from there and the me from here.

The instant that truth landed, something flashed through my head.

The message floated up in front of me, but I had no room to care. My whole mind was locked on the hammer in my hands.

Once. Twice. Dozens of times. Hundreds. I brought it down and brought it down again. By count alone it might have looked like simple repetition, but every single strike carried everything I had. Until my fingertips went numb. Until my arms shook. I hammered while calling up, one by one, every piece of smithing I'd learned just to survive — the work I'd picked up getting burned and hurt in the past.

The moment my whole body felt it — this is the last one —

Crackle—

and then

Kang!

A clear, ringing note sealed the final strike.

When I finished the heat treatment and drew it out at last, I knew without even looking at the status window. This one was mine.

A hammer glowing with a luminous light.

Night had long since fallen, and still this hammer shone brighter than the world outside the window.

With trembling hands, I focused on the appraisal.

"...Thunderbond."

The name settled on my tongue on its own. Thunder for the lightning, bond for the connection. It fit perfectly.

B-rank. The guy who'd been churning out D-rank failures until a moment ago had suddenly made a B-rank. The human heart really was shameless — the frustration from just earlier might as well have never happened, the way a grin kept leaking out of me. And growth-type, too. That meant this thing still had room to climb.

No attack options at all didn't bother me right now. In this moment, this single hammer was worth more to me than any sword in the world.

And finally—

With those notifications as the last thing I saw, I collapsed right where I stood.

Growl.