The Scale Tips
The place I reached by following the address written on the note was near Hongjecheon in Mapo-gu.
When I slipped behind the row of buildings facing the road, the destination came into view at once.
Jae-i's Blacksmith.
The place looked like an ordinary small business building.
If it hadn’t been for the sign, I doubt I would have realized it was a blacksmith shop at all.
Under the sign, it read, “40 Years of Tradition.”
“....”
When I opened the sliding door and stepped inside, silence was all that greeted me.
There was no usual greeting you’d hear when a customer walked in.
I couldn’t see a single customer who had come to the blacksmith shop either.
So she really did have a rotten personality. Was that why there were no customers?
“Is anyone here?”
After asking, I waited for a moment.
No answer came back.
She must have stepped out.
I’d wait. She’d come back eventually.
I leaned against the counter and sat there.
There wasn’t even a proper customer chair.
While feeding mana to Sapling, I looked around the shop.
“The inventory looks like a kitchenware store.”
Whenever I ended up in a blacksmith shop or a weapon store, I usually had my hands full just looking around.
Even when I had no intention of buying anything, it was fun to browse through the goods.
But Jae-i's Blacksmith only had kitchen knives, tongs, and other cooking tools on display.
There was a door behind the counter, but with the owner absent, I felt uneasy about going in.
Clatter.
The blacksmith shop door opened.
The one who came in was a woman wearing a gray hoodie carelessly thrown over her clothes.
With long hair and a full tray of eggs held in both hands, she looked up.
“....”
“....”
She shut the door and walked into the shop.
Without even glancing at me, she went through the door behind the counter.
“I told you never to come back here. So what, are you ignoring me?”
Her voice came from inside the room.
It looked like she had mistaken me for someone else because of the mask.
I’d have to tell her she was mistaken.
I stood up and turned around, and then...
“!”
From inside the room, she was suddenly there, holding a pair of swords.
What happened to the eggs? Where’d the eggs go?
“You people aren’t worth even a single kitchen knife.”
As she said that, her eyes looked like they were ready to leap at me any second.
If I didn’t clear up this misunderstanding right away, things were going to get ugly.
To show I had no intention of fighting, I raised both hands.
Taking a few steps back, I said, “I don’t know who you’ve got a bone to pick with, but”
“What? Why are your hands like that?”
“I’m not one of them, I mean, huh? My hands?”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at my hands.
I looked down too, at the hands I’d raised.
My right hand was holding my smartphone, and my left one was showing my smooth, soft palm.
“You’re not one of those Crowd bastards?”
“Nope.”
“You’re not?”
“I said I’m not.”
“Then why are you wearing a white mask?”
Because once I put it on, taking it off felt like a hassle.
And because it had become kind of fun.
Instead of saying that, I only shrugged.
Experience had taught me that if I answered honestly, the other person would just sigh.
She did have a bad reputation as a blacksmith, and there was no point making a bad first impression worse.
She lowered her swords and walked over to the counter, where she sat down.
“If you’re desperate, you could at least buy the things over there. They’re better than D-rank weapons.”
Kitchen knives better than D-rank weapons?
What kind of food were people in this neighborhood eating?
If that was true, then maybe buying a kitchen knife really wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
I tucked my phone into my pocket and walked over to the glass display case holding the kitchen knives.
Inside were several kinds of knives, lined up in a row with different lengths and designs.
What they all had in common was the J.Y. initials engraved between the blade and the handle.
“...You’re really going to buy them?”
“You said they were better than D-rank weapons.”
“I did.”
After that brief exchange, she didn’t bother talking to me again, as though she had no intention of interfering.
Thanks to that consideration, I could take my time pulling out the kitchen knives and holding them in both hands to test the grip.
I wasn’t thinking about cutting power or durability.
Since they were all gathered together and each one had the same J.Y. engraving, I figured there wouldn’t be much difference anyway.
I repeated the process of gripping, swinging, and setting down the kitchen knives with both hands.
After trying every knife in the display case once, I managed to pick two.
One was the longest knife in the case, and the other had a black blade.
“Done choosing?”
The woman asked as I clenched the two kitchen knives in my hands.
When I looked back, she was still resting her chin on her hand.
The only difference from before was the slight smile at the corner of her mouth.
Well, I supposed it might have looked ridiculous, watching me diligently pick out knives as if I were shopping for dinnerware.
“Yeah. These feel the best in my hands.”
“What the hell are you?”
“Out of nowhere?”
I asked back, startled.
Instead of answering, she tapped the side of her own mask.
What kind of person asks for someone’s identity while they’re wearing a mask?
If I was planning to tell you, why would I be wearing one in the first place?
She made a gesture like she was holding a knife, then moved her hand slowly.
It was the same motion I’d just made while choosing my knives.
“The way you swung the blade wasn’t something a normal civilian would do.”
“...It’s just a habit.”
“A habit?”
Even if I’d quit being a hunter, those memories were still vivid.
So when my body felt stiff, I sometimes swung around a thirty-centimeter ruler or something similar to loosen up.
Like someone who’d learned golf and kept practicing their swing out of habit.
Like someone with baseball as a hobby who’d swing a bat whenever they were bored.
“The way you’re talking, I guess my swinging didn’t look too bad.”
“You were better than most hunters. Are you really a civilian?”
“Glad to hear it. It’s been a while since I held anything with a blade.”
The only thing I’d been holding lately was the dissection knife I used to cut apart monster corpses.
Other than that, at most, a utility knife for cutting paper at the office.
I suppose the thirty-centimeter ruler could count too, since it was long.
Still, the kitchen knife in my hand wasn’t that different from those things in the end.
“Ah... so you were a hunter?”
“Yeah. Until two years ago. I had the bad luck to run into an evolved monster, so I had to quit.”
An evolved monster.
A monster that had evolved into a higher species after appearing in a gate.
Usually, a large black horn would grow over its head, and if it already had horns, it would gain one more.
The one that forced me into retirement was the boss monster of a D-rank gate, a Minotauros.
By rank, it had been C-class, but after its horns grew and it evolved, it was measured as B-class.
Thinking about it now, the fact that none of us died that day and everyone made it out alive was nothing short of a miracle.
Even if my heart had broken and left me with a body that couldn’t use mana.
“You were looking for gear so you could come back?”
“Something like that.”
At her question, I nodded and walked back to the counter.
I set the two kitchen knives on top of it.
“You’re a vain idiot.”
“What’s with the sudden insult?”
“That’s what I thought. You were wearing a mask, and your hands didn’t have a single callus.”
Hearing that, I felt like her misunderstanding wasn’t exactly unreasonable.
In some ways, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
According to Do-woon and Taecheon’s honest assessments, I really was an idiot.
Not just any idiot either, but one of the world’s top contenders for first or second place.
Of course, the one I was competing with was my friend Taecheon.
“So that’s why you were looking for B-rank gear. Hm... all right. Wait there.”
With that, she vanished behind the door in the back.
It would’ve been nice if she’d at least given me a reason before telling me to wait.
Still, if she said to wait, I’d wait.
It’s not like I had anything else to do besides grow the World Tree.
I pulled my smartphone from my pocket and leaned against the counter.
In the screen, Sapling spread its leaves wide and shivered.
It seemed happy to be getting mana.
Watching that made my mood turn warm and easy.
So this was why people raised pets or plants?
“Is that game fun?”
While I was busy tapping the screen, she came back out from behind the door with a load slung over her shoulder.
The things she’d brought were a sword and armor, far larger than her own body.
So there really were hunter gear items inside.
“I thought you said you didn’t sell those.”
“Got a problem with that? Want me to take them back?”
“No, no. Don’t go to that trouble. I’ll apologize. That was my mistake.”
The moment she looked like she was about to turn back inside, I apologized right away.
Respectfully, even setting my smartphone down in my hand.
My sincerity must have gotten through, because she came out with the gear anyway.
Though she was still shaking her head.
“They’re new prototypes. Light armor. You look more like the type who darts in and out than someone who tanks head-on.”
“You read me exactly right.”
My fighting style was to dodge or deflect the opponent’s attack, then counterattack.
Blocking or bouncing back a blow with my own strength was beyond me.
Still, back when I was active, I had taken on the tank role.
I did it to reduce the wasted talent in our party members.
Taecheon was a swift swordsman faster than me, and Do-hee was a mage with real talent for magic.
Forcing those two into tank duties would have been absurd.
My style of fighting wasn’t a good fit for me, but I had no choice but to be the tank.
After that incident, Taecheon suddenly switched to tanking, and Do-hee became a healer around the same time.
The reason was...
Well, obvious.
It was because of me.
“They’re prototypes, so they’re a little rough around the edges and there are some things they lack.”
“That just makes me like them more.”
“You’re a left-handed ambidextrous fighter, right? So I picked out a long sword with the right length for you. You can use it with one hand or both.”
How on earth did she know that?
Only Do-hee and Taecheon knew I was ambidextrous.
No one else around me knew.
It wasn’t something I needed to broadcast.
“What, surprised? You held those kitchen knives with both hands. If you were right-handed, you wouldn’t have bothered trying the other side.”
“Your eye for detail is insane.”
“I’ll sell these to you. But there’s one condition.”
“A condition? What is it?”
“You buy the kitchen knives too.”
“If that’s the condition, it’s basically no condition at all.”
I said that and flashed a grin.
Ah, right. I was wearing a mask.
Then,
“Why do you sell to that bastard while refusing to trade with us?”
a man’s voice came from behind us.
Through the sliding door’s glass, I could see people gathered outside.
The door was shoved open roughly, and a crowd of people wearing white masks poured in.
The man who had asked the question wore a mask with a pattern on it, likely to indicate he was the leader.
Sure enough, they were all wearing white masks.
Looking at them, I could understand why she’d mistaken me for one of them.
The masked leader entered last after the others had come in, then asked again.
“Are we really beneath that ponytailed bastard, Yu Jae-i?”
“Crowd...”
Yu Jae-i glared at the white-masked group with the same ferocity she’d shown me.
She looked ready to leap at them on the spot.
She probably would have if I weren’t here.
The Yu Jae-i who had grabbed her swords when she mistook me for them was now only glaring fiercely.
The reason was easy to see.
She was holding back because she was afraid I’d get caught in the middle.
Haha. I’m really weak to this kind of thing.
“Listen up.”
I walked between Yu Jae-i and the white-masked group, who were glaring at each other like they were ready to kill one another.
Every pair of eyes in the blacksmith shop turned toward me.
I could feel surprise, confusion, and embarrassment in the air.
“Let’s make a deal.”
“What are you suddenly sayi—!”
The leader’s voice died in his throat, and his gaze shifted to my left shoulder.
The other masked figures around him also looked toward my left shoulder.
“The scale just tipped all the way to her side.”
Above my left shoulder floated a small balance scale.
It was something Seo Ji-hyeok had given me yesterday.
“So let’s do this. Let’s come to an agreement.”
Of course, I had no intention of making the scale level.