My brain had gone through a process when i came to this world. The shock of being hit by a truck (that old cliche from some very cheesy but decent fantasy anime) and finding out that isekai was actually REAL had forced a reboot on how i viewed reality.

First I froze in shock, only my eyes moving to look at the glowing mushrooms and curious fairies surrounding me in the forest I'd woken up in. Full deer in the headlights mode, my brain desperately trying to prevent my body from doing anything stupid while it reconciled with what was happening. After a few seconds I blinked a few times, then blinked really hard once more just to be sure it wasn't fake.

My sheer stupification in those moments before I'd started my adventure in this world had reached levels I had never experienced on Earth. Of all the things to inspire that exact same feeling in me a second time, a cheap sword in a blacksmith bargain bin would be at the bottom of the list. The language had been an absolute pain to learn in this place, but staring straight in my face was a language i thought I would never see again except for my journal. Plain English, "Made in China."

My party found me still frozen, staring at a trashy sword with (to them) some garbled nonsense stamped near the hilt. The questions in my own head were too loud for me to hear theirs. Had this sword been summoned? Did it fall through a wormhole? Was there, impossibly, another country named China in this world that made cheap stuff and used English? I ignored my party as i grabbed the sword and walked up to the smith to find answers.

"Where did this sword come from?" I asked, my voice sounding mildly curious instead of the whirlwind desperate for answers that it was.

"Ah, that's one of the apprentice swords." he said. "I dunno how it got into the bin over there since they aren't allowed to put 'em up for sale 'til they finish their apprenticeship. I'll take it off ya and put it with the rest in the forge."

"I don't want to buy it, I want to know about this mark," I said, pointing to the stamp. He looked closer at the sword, then looked at me with a cocked eyebrow.

"That mark doesn't mean anything unless you're a blacksmith, and it's more of a joke than anything else. Long time ago a legendary smith named Nii'naj Fortenite used that as a maker's mark, said it meant bad quality in his homeland and figured if his work broke he couldn't be blamed if the people who bought his weapons saw it was labelled as garbage. Sure enough, thousands of copycats made cheap replicas, so the mark became a sign of bad quality. Nowadays apprentices use it to show they're still learning the trade. Are you buying anything else?"

"No, I think I'm fine. You guys can keep browsing if you like, i'm going for a walk," I told my team, heading out the door and wondering what the hell was going on. Had that blacksmith really said that with a straight face? Maybe i was overreacting, some other reincarnator probably had a childish sense of humor. But as i walked by a potion stand that sold flasks of Pepis, I got the feeling it wasn't just one. Maybe I would leave my own insignificant and weird mark on this unknowing world later on as well, an inside joke that only people from my world would ever hope to get.

For now, i walked through the city that suddenly had a few more oddities about it than before I'd walked into the smithy, world view once again put on its head.