The Sound of the Bell
“Old woman from the shrine… what is your name?”
“…It’s Lee Dohyun.”
“Dohyun.” The man set down the perfectly forged paring knife and looked at me. “You said you were a beginner earlier… have you ever learned blacksmithing somewhere? No, with this level of skill, you’re at the level of someone who’s been rolling under a master for decades.”
“No, sir. I really am doing this for the first time. I’m just… a student on leave.”
At my answer, the man wore an expression of disbelief, but he didn’t pry any further.
“…I see, a student on leave. Do you have any other work right now?”
“No.”
He grinned.
“Then wouldn’t you like to help out a bit? No, please, help me. I’m short-handed these days. This guy here hasn’t even been able to sharpen a knife properly for five years.”
“Master…!” Junho, who had been sitting on the floor with his legs drained of strength, groaned as if feeling wronged, but the man didn’t even glance at him.
“I’ll make sure your daily wage is decent. Just 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 at rock bottom. Above all… that thrilling sensation that had surged through my veins the moment I gripped the hammer earlier. I wanted to feel that insane dopamine rush again—the knowledge that all the skills I’d poured ten years into were actually applicable in reality.
“…I understand.”
At my answer, faint wrinkles formed on the man’s blunt face.
“Good. You can come in by 8 o’clock tomorrow.”
I bowed my head and stepped out of the smithy. As I walked out through the market alley, my steps felt light enough to fly. I looked down at my hands. The sensation of gripping the hammer handle and the recoil from striking the metal were still vivid on my palms. It was hundreds of times more real and overwhelming than anything I had felt in the game. My heart began to pound like crazy. Finally, I had a place to prove my ten years.
That was how my first day at the smithy began. 8 AM start, 6 PM finish. The work was simple: carrying charcoal, managing the furnace, organizing tools, and cleaning up metal shavings. Sometimes, I watched the man work from the side. His skill was incredible. There was no excess in the process of making a single knife. Heating, striking, folding, heating again. His movements weren’t anything special, but they were fast and precise. It was exactly the feeling I used to get from the max-level NPC blacksmiths in the game.
‘His quenching timing is… perfect, too.’
The color of the steel the moment he pulled it from the furnace, the angle at which he placed it in the water, the duration of the soak—though he made it look effortless, every single motion was something that could only come from decades of experience. Watching him made my hands itch. The impulse to stand there and strike the metal myself rose up. But I held it in. It would look arrogant for a part-timer who had just arrived to insist on standing in front of the anvil.
Junho still didn’t like me. If our eyes met, he would turn his head away, and if I spoke to him, he would only respond in short, clipped sentences.
“Excuse me, where is the charcoal?”
“Warehouse.”
That was how it went. Still, he didn’t pick a fight openly. I guess he’d lost his nerve after the paring knife incident.
As a few more days passed, I began to see the landscape of the smithy bit by bit. This place had more visitors than I’d thought. When I first came, seeing it tucked away in a dead-end alley at the edge of the market, I’d assumed it was a quiet shop. That wasn’t the case at all.
On Tuesday, a middle-aged man dressed in a crisp suit visited. Seeing him speak informally with the man, he seemed to be a long-time regular.
“Hey, check this new kitchen knife I’m using. The spine feels like it’s warping.”
I found out later that he was the owner-chef of a two-star Michelin restaurant. On Wednesday, an elderly woman with white hair came by and chatted with the man for a long time. She left behind a pair of scissors, and the man examined them for a while before beginning to sharpen them with great care.
“Who is that person?”
“A National Intangible Cultural Heritage. A Maedeupjang (knot master).”
Junho replied bluntly, as if it were nothing special. A knot master? I didn’t really know what that was, but hearing “National Intangible Cultural Heritage” made it sound impressive. This smithy was that kind of place. The sign was half-peeled and it was stuck at the end of an alley, but everyone who knew, knew.
“As expected, it’s different after you make it for me.”
The chef’s words as he came to pick up his knife before leaving remained in my ears. Even though the man had just handed him the knife with indifference.
It was Thursday morning. The man was finishing the kitchen knife he’d been entrusted with by the chef, and Junho was hauling charcoal from the warehouse. I was cleaning around the workbench as usual. That was when I felt a presence outside the shutter.
“Is the master in?”
I turned my head to see an old woman standing there. She wore a traditional hanbok jacket and skirt. Her hair was neatly tied in a bun, and she held something wrapped in a cloth in her hands.
The man looked up.
“Oh, Shindang-nim. How long has it been?”
He stood up to greet her.
“Oh my, Master Moo-hyeok. I’m sorry to bother you when you’re busy.”
“No, what are you saying? But what brings you here…”
The woman unwrapped the cloth. Inside was a brass bell. It was the size of a palm. Even at a glance, it was an old object. The surface was discolored black, and the ring at the top had become loose.
“It doesn’t make a sound. Even when I shake it, it just makes a dull, muffled noise, and there’s no resonance. Could you take a look at it?”
The man’s expression stiffened slightly. It was a very brief moment, but I saw it. He looked troubled. But it vanished immediately. The way he looked at the woman told me they were on terms where he couldn’t easily refuse. The man took the bell. He shook it here and there, then tilted his head.
“It looks like there’s a crack inside. It’ll take some time to examine it properly.”
“It’s not urgent. Do it whenever you’re comfortable.”
“Understood.”
After the woman left, the man placed the bell on the workbench.
“Dohyun.”
“Yes.”
“Clean this up. You need to remove the oxidized layer of rust on the surface to see the inside.”
“Understood.”
I picked up the bell. The moment it touched my hand, I felt a strange sensation. A subtle, mysterious feeling as if it were vibrating slightly.
‘…What is this?’
I focused on my fingertips. It felt like it was coming from inside the bell. A feeling I’d felt somewhere before. Yes, this feeling was similar to the ones in the game. The feeling of touching something that held a spirit.
‘I don’t know what’s what, but…’
I focused on the task of removing the oxidized layer. I wiped the surface with a cloth soaked in vinegar and polished it finely. As the black rust was removed, the original luster of the brass returned. However, while cleaning it, I felt something. The thickness of the bell’s inner wall was not uniform. One side was minutely thinner. This would cause a deviation in the resonance. One side would vibrate, while the other would produce a dead sound.
‘This… I need to fix it from the inside.’
The method I’d used to repair bell-type items in the game came to mind. A technique of tapping very lightly on the areas where the inner wall thickness was uneven to adjust the density. It was a process of aligning the metal structure evenly while channeling a minute amount of mana. Since there was no such thing as mana in reality, the result might be a bit different. But wouldn’t the principle be the same?
I chose a small hammer. I began to tap very lightly, following the thin part from the bell’s opening toward the inside.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
The sound of the hammer striking the inner wall of the bell echoed through the silent smithy. I read the thickness through the sensation transmitted to my fingertips. The thick part. The thin part. The point where the crack began. Just as I had done tens of thousands of times in the game, I read it by feel and matched it to the rhythm. Feeling the flow of the metal as I struck, and adjusting my strength to match that flow. In the game, I had channeled mana into this. In reality, that obviously wouldn’t work, but my hands were moving exactly as they had in the game.
Ding. Ding-ding. Ding.
My palm felt minutely warm. How much time had passed? I struck it one last time and stopped my hand. I shook the bell.
Clang—!
A clear sound rang out. A clean, transparent resonance, completely different from before.
‘Done.’
I was satisfied. I was about to set the bell down on the workbench when—
“Dohyun.”
I heard the man’s voice from behind. I turned around to see him standing in front of the workshop door, looking at me. How long had he been watching?
“I didn’t tell you to repair that bell, I told you to clean it.”
“Ah… I’m sorry. While cleaning it, the inside was a bit uneven, so I just…”
“Just?”
“I just… my hand moved on its own. I’m sorry.”
The man walked over without a word and picked up the bell. He shook it.
Clang—!
A clear sound spread through the smithy. The man’s hand stopped. He held the bell up to the light. He peered into the opening. He shook it again. He stayed like that for a long time.
“…It’s good.”
That was the only thing he said. Unexpectedly, he didn’t scold me for touching a customer’s item without permission, nor did he make a fuss about it being fixed well like last time. He had an expression of deep thought. Then, he set the bell down and walked inside.
The next morning, the Shindang grandmother came to pick up the bell. The man handed her the bell and said,
“The thickness of the inner wall was a bit off. I’ve fixed it.”
“Oh my, thank you.”
The woman took the bell. She shook it once.
Clang—!
The woman’s hand stopped. She lifted the bell, held it to her ear, and shook it again. Clang. Clang.
“……”
The woman slowly turned her head to look at the man.
“Did you do this, Master?”
“Yes.”
The man replied calmly. The woman stared at the bell for a long time. It seemed like she had something more to say, but in the end, she closed her mouth.
“…Thank you. How much should I pay?”
“Forget it. Between us, I’ll do this much as a service.”
“……”
The woman kept her mouth shut. She stared at the man’s face for a long time, then took a few bills from her wallet and placed them on the workbench.
“I feel uncomfortable, so just take it.”
Before the man could say anything, the woman turned away first. As she left, she looked back once at the door. The hand holding the bell was trembling minutely. I was hauling charcoal in the warehouse, watching them through the shutter. Since it was the bell I had worked on yesterday, I couldn’t help but be concerned.
After seeing the woman leave, I came out toward the workbench.
“The grandmother has left.”
“Yeah.”
The man was tidying up the workbench. Since his back was turned, I couldn’t see his expression. The image of the woman’s trembling hand holding the bell remained in my head. I wondered if it was really something to tremble over.
‘…Well, maybe she had an attachment to it since it was an old object.’
It bothered me a little that the man had claimed he did it when I was the one who had worked on it yesterday. If she thought the part-timer had done it, Shindang-nim might have been offended. I thought that was the extent of it. That matter ended there. At least, that’s what I thought.
That evening, the Shindang grandmother was standing at a ritual site. It was the house of a middle-aged couple whose business wasn’t going well. They said accidents happened with everything they did, and they heard noises from the ceiling every night. Coming here in person, it was true that evil spirits were clinging to the place. They weren’t particularly strong, but they were deeply embedded in every corner.
‘Tsk tsk, someone must have cast a curse.’
She set up the table and placed the fan down. She took out the bell. The bell she had retrieved from Moo-hyeok’s smithy earlier that day. As she gripped it, that strange, alien sensation she’d felt when she received it earlier rose up again. It was strangely warm.
‘Did the master do something to it?’
The grandmother dismissed it and steadied her breathing. Then, she chanted a spell. She shook the bell.
Clang—!
The grandmother’s eyes widened. The sound was different. The sound of the bell swept through the room. Along the walls. Along the ceiling. Along the floor. The resonance spread through the entire space.
Kugugugugu.
A dull sound came from the ceiling. Thud. Thud-thud.
“H-Honey!” The wife screamed and grabbed her husband’s arm. Something was thrashing wildly on the ceiling. The fluorescent light flickered. Dry dust poured down through the cracks in the wallpaper. The evil spirits embedded in every corner popped out all at once. The corner of the ceiling. Behind the sink. Under the entrance. Usually, this was where the real work began. You had to pressure them slowly with sound for about an hour and drive them out one by one.
Clang—!
The second time. The moment the sound of the bell touched an evil spirit embedded in the corner of the ceiling—
Pop—!
It vanished.
“……?”
The grandmother’s hand faltered. It hadn’t run away. It had burst. Clang. Clang—!
Pah! Pop—!
A black shadow jumped out from behind the sink and scattered on the spot. The one crouching under the entrance couldn’t even run away and was crushed right where it stood. Pabak—!
Something burst loudly in the middle of the ceiling. Black, dust-like debris scattered for a moment, then melted into the air and vanished.
Drip.
“……”
The grandmother stood frozen, clutching the bell. The evil spirits embedded in every corner. Not a single one remained. They had all burst. Even though she hadn’t properly started the ritual yet.
“……”
The couple knew nothing. “H-Honey…” the wife called her husband in a trembling voice. She was looking up at the ceiling. The sounds that had been thrashing wildly until just a moment ago had vanished as if it were a lie.
“…Yeah.” The husband swallowed hard. Silence flowed.
“Excuse me…” the husband opened his mouth cautiously. “Is it… already over?”
It hadn’t even been five minutes since they’d set the table and started.