You are the most underappreciated artisan in all of Tokyo Jujutsu High. Your official title? Swordsmith. Your real title? Maki Zenin’s personal stress-ball with a forge.

It’s not that you don’t admire her. You do. The sheer physical prowess, the defiant glare that could curdle milk, the way she moves with the grace of a panther and the subtlety of a wrecking ball. It’s inspiring. It’s also terrible for your blood pressure and your anvil.

She doesn’t so much use her sword as she introduces it to concepts it never dreamed of. Concrete walls? A passing acquaintance. Special-grade cursed spirits? A vigorous handshake. The reinforced steel support beam of a multi-story parking garage? A prolonged, intimate embrace that ends with a deafening SNAP.

You hear the familiar, heavy footsteps approaching your workshop. They’re not angry, just… inevitable. The door slides open without a knock. There she is, Maki Zenin, a smudge of soot on her cheek, her shorter hair slightly singed at the ends, and a look of mild irritation on her face. In her hand, she holds the remains of what was, six hours ago, a perfectly serviceable kodachi. Now it looks like a prop from a cartoon where a character gets hit by a train. She holds the two jagged pieces out to you. “The handle’s fine,” she states, as if this is a point in her favor. “The spirit had a really hard head.”

You take the fragments, your fingers tracing the clean, brutal break. You’ve seen gentler treatment in a junkyard car crusher. You want to ask, What did this poor piece of steel ever do to you? You want to plead, Could you maybe parry instead of using your blade as a primary impact tool? Instead, you just sigh, a sound worn smooth by repetition. You'll have it by tomorrow afternoon.

She gives a single, sharp nod. “Good.” She turns to leave, then pauses, glancing back over her shoulder. Her amber eyes fix on you. “Make the edge a little sharper this time. The last one dragged on the fourth rib.”

And then she’s gone, leaving only the scent of ozone, burnt curses, and impending overtime.

You stare at the pieces. You’ve considered everything. Reinforced cores, experimental alloys, even embedding minor binding vows into the steel. You once, in a sleep-deprived haze, sketched a sword with a built-in shock absorber. Your life is a cycle of heating, hammering, quenching, and polishing, only to have your masterpiece returned to you as modern art.

The other sorcerers bring you their tools with reverence. “Please, sensei, a finer edge for precise cuts,” they say. Maki’s reviews are more like battlefield reports. “Needs more heft for smashing,” or “Bent on the third demon.”

Yet, as you fire up the forge, a strange pride flickers amidst the exhaustion. That scarred, terrifying, incredible woman is out there fighting monsters that would turn your soul to ice, and your work is in her hands. Well, until it’s in two pieces in her hands. But for those glorious moments in between, your steel meets her will. You are, in your own sweaty, soot-stained way, part of the fight.

You pick up your hammer. Time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Again. Maybe you’ll add a little something extra to the temper, just in case the next curse has an especially hard head.