Jan put the hilt on the counter.
Jin looked at it.
Then he sat down.
There was a stool behind the counter, and he sat down on it slowly, the way old men sit when they've decided their legs are a variable, and he did not take his eyes off the thing on the cloth.
"...Where did you get this."
"It was a reward," Jan said.
"For — from a fight. The system called it a soul."
"The system called it a soul," Jin repeated.
"Yes, sir."
"And you've had it how long?"
"About three weeks."
Jin reached out one finger and stopped short of touching it.
"Boy. Do you know what I have said, in this shop, to every customer who has come through that door for sixty years?"
"...That every blade forged has a soul in it," Jan said.
"..." Jin's eyes came up, sharp.
"Who told you that?"
"He did."
"Of course he did."
Jin looked at me with something that wasn't quite suspicion and wasn't quite anything else.
