Repair Request
The smartphone was ringing.
I stared at it, hesitating.
That boot sequence that had felt somehow off.
That woman from the video call who had seemed a little awkward.
It was a thoroughly strange smartphone.
Vrrr~
It showed no intention of stopping until I answered.
Caller: Illys Rodriguez
I brushed the answer button and the screen lit up.
Just like the last video, a woman was praying at something that looked like an altar.
She had no idea the screen had come on and was still deep in prayer.
Having done it once before, I pressed the [Talk] button with practiced ease.
“Hello?”
[Ah! My Constellation!]
The corners of her mouth were tilted up a little, and her cheeks were faintly flushed.
Last time she had looked tense yet desperately earnest; now she seemed considerably brighter.
[My Constellation! Thank you so much for answering our prayers like this.]
The woman prostrated herself flat again in gratitude.
“Um.”
[Yes. Please command me.]
This was only the second call.
I still had almost no idea who I was talking to.
“First, could you tell me where you are and who you are?”
[Ah! Thank you!]
I had no idea why simply asking her to talk was worth that much gratitude.
[I am Countess Illys Rodriguez, who bears responsibility for the Rodriguez county.]
The woman who called herself Countess Illys Rodriguez pinched the wide white fabric of her gown lightly and offered a formal bow.
“Illys Rodriguez… a countess?”
[Yes. That is correct.]
A countess? A countess?
Come to think of it, she had said something like that last time.
But a countess, in this day and age.
Was that even possible…
“Illys. Are you British, by any chance?”
She spoke Korean perfectly well, but her face was clearly foreign, her hair was blonde, and she was calling herself a countess, so England seemed like the natural guess.
If any country still used the rank of countess, England was the only one that came to mind.
[Ah, I belong to the Jeron Kingdom.]
Not Britain, then.
And where on earth was the Jeron Kingdom?
If she had said Britain I might have shrugged it off, but “Jeron Kingdom” only made everything stranger.
Hmm… In that moment I stood at a fork of two roads.
One: keep fact-checking. “Where is the Jeron Kingdom? Is this real?”
Two: fire off a joke like “Ah, I see. I myself come from Andromeda!” Or, if not quite a joke, simply roll with it and play along.
Maybe “countess” was her way of inviting me into a role-play.
Whether she was actually British or just playing a part, having a pretty woman on a video call after so long was not an unpleasant feeling.
I was twenty-four.
If the accident had never happened I would still have been a college student.
Group blind dates, introductions, even real relationships—I probably would have done all of it.
I might even have been cursing whoever had flipped their rubber shoes on me while I was in the army.
In any case, I was a lifelong virgin.
Asking a woman personal questions one-on-one like this was something I had not done in a very long time.
So I chose the second path.
“The Jeron Kingdom… I see.”
I was still a man, after all.
I was not about to start nitpicking facts at a beautiful woman and hang up the call.
[My Constellation! Might I ask the name of your star?]
“The name of my star?”
[Yes. I wondered if I might learn your epithet, my Constellation.]
An epithet…
“You mean a nickname?”
[Yes.]
The nicknames I had used often floated up in my mind.
Room-dwelling clicker…
Nicknames so embarrassing I would never say them out loud flashed past.
Still, there was one decent nickname I used now and then.
“My nickname is Creator.”
I was the smartphone specialist at Lucky Repair Shop.
Because of that, when I played games I tended to pick craftsman-type characters.
I simply liked making things.
[Ahh… so you are the Constellation of the Creator. That is most fortunate.]
“Why?”
[Our territory still has many skilled blacksmiths and craftsmen. There is a dwarf guild as well, and I myself am a 4-Circle mage. I am certain you will find them to your liking, my Constellation.]
“I see.”
[Because you are the star of creation, it must be that you have been drawn to our territory. My Constellation, everyone is still overwhelmed with gratitude for the sponsorship you sent last time.]
“Sponsorship?”
[Yes. Everyone is thankful.]
Sponsorship? What sponsorship?
“Hmm…….”
When in doubt, staying quiet was the best policy.
I simply listened to whatever she wanted to say.
[My Constellation. We have prepared something.]
Her face was brimming with energy.
“Go ahead.”
[Then I shall change from my prayer vestments into inspection attire.]
Change clothes? She was going to change?
In the brief moment I was taken aback, the woman stroked her hair and spun once in a full circle.
“Huh?”
She had transformed.
After one turn her clothes had changed.
Before the spin it had been a white dress… after it she wore tall leather boots, black leggings, short black puffy shorts, and a brown leather coat that looked like a spicy rice-cake-sauce-colored coat.
Oh, that was cool.
I had seen it in short videos online.
Clothes-changing magic tricks.
“Is that a magic trick?”
Illys smiled softly.
[It is magic. I am 4-Circle, after all. In our kingdom it is noble etiquette to wear attire suited to the place. If I go to the training grounds in prayer vestments, someone is sure to scold me.]
Illys carefully lifted the mirror she had set before her while praying and began to move.
“Illys. What is that mirror?”
[Ah, it is our family’s Holy Relic. Thanks to it I have been able to converse with you like this, my Constellation. The letters that appear upon this mirror allow me to communicate with you.]
It looked like a tablet shaped like a mirror.
As Illys walked somewhere, I could see the surroundings.
An antique corridor, portraits hanging on the walls.
Women who looked like attendants flanked her path.
Then more people joined one by one.
Even people in armor with swords at their waists fell in behind.
It was exactly like a medieval film.
[I shall head toward the training grounds where the knights practice.]
“Ah, okay.”
A moment later something enormous filled the smartphone screen.
What is that? I was still thinking when Illys’s voice broke, thick with emotion.
[Khh… my Constellation.]
“Yes?”
[Seeing it again, I am astonished once more. I truly thank you.]
“For what?”
[To bestow such an enormous amount of food and still act as though it is nothing… I can only be grateful for your boundless generosity, my Constellation.]
“Enormous food? Me?”
[Yes. And not mere provisions—such luxurious fare… No territory I know has ever received such high-quality food in such quantity. Soft and moist, with a sweetness that carries a faint bitter note when it melts on the tongue. Food fit for a noble banquet.]
I had given them that?
[My Constellation! Can you see the people of the territory?]
I looked where Illys pointed and saw thousands of people.
Countless figures lined up behind a vast black-and-white structure.
“Ah, yes. I can see them clearly.”
[We have prepared a prayer gathering in your honor.]
“A prayer gathering?”
[Indeed. The people of the territory who received the food will gather and offer prayers of thanks.]
Thousands of people praying for me?
But that black-and-white structure……
It looked familiar.
It looked exactly like a chocolate pie.
No way.
A sudden thought made me check the smartphone.
The message history from before was still sitting in the UI.
I scrolled back through the texts and read them again.
[Transferable: Chocolate pie 0.01 g] → [Initiating transfer.]
[At identical scale, disaster will befall the Rodriguez territory.]
[Adjusting scale.]
[Reducing scale.]
[Transfer complete.]
Was this it?
Could that thing possibly be 0.01 g of chocolate pie?
It should have been a tiny crumb, yet it was enormous.
And it said the scale had been reduced.
If it was that huge, hadn’t the scale actually been increased?
While I was still thinking, Illys called out to the people of the territory.
[Everyone! This vast food was bestowed upon our territory by the Constellation of the Creator, who looks upon us with favor! All who have received the food, let us offer prayers to the Constellation of the Creator!]
Men who looked like sword-bearing knights kept order; both those distributing and those receiving maintained perfect discipline.
Even at a glance the food was so massive that there was no danger of shortage.
Those who received their share stepped aside and found places to sit.
Then they ate, marveled, wept, and prayed.
Illys approached one woman who was praying.
The woman held a child in her arms.
[Did you not, a few days ago, consider offering up the child?]
[Y-yes… I did.]
[Now that there is food, cast aside such thoughts and raise the child well.]
[Hic… thank you.]
I thought for a moment about what the exchange between Illys and that woman meant.
Now that there was food, don’t think about offering the child?
So hungry she would offer up her child?
It took a while for an ordinary South Korean mind to process that.
I even wondered if North Korea was like that.
“Is the situation so bad that people are ready to offer their children because they’re starving?”
Illys looked at the screen and nodded.
[Yes. Not everyone, but a few seem to have been driven that far. In truth I only recently inherited the territory, so I have little political experience. That has made securing food even harder. It is entirely my failing.]
Illys apologized.
In short, a piece of chocolate pie had crossed over and become building-sized food.
And even that was the reduced version.
0.01 g of chocolate pie would have been a catastrophe if it crossed at full scale.
But was it real?
I had planned to skip fact-checking and just joke around, but that was no longer an option.
It was far too astonishing.
I needed to run a test.
I pulled a chocolate pie from the snack drawer.
Then I broke off one piece and used tweezers to shape it into a pyramid.
I was a smartphone repair technician.
Rolling a tiny bit of pie into a lump and leaving a mark with tweezers was nothing difficult.
Looking through a magnifier, I carved a heart shape into the chocolate-pie lump.
“Illys?”
[Yes.]
“I’ll send a sponsorship.”
[Ah! Thank you!]
I worked the smartphone UI and pressed sponsor.
Sponsor a piece of chocolate pie?
[Yes]
On the other side of the screen Illys’s lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears.
[Hic…]
She sniffled softly, then finally broke.
[Boo-hoo! My Constellation! Thank you!]
“Boo-hoo,” of all things—her impression was a little different from the first time.
Kind of cute.
“Take it out.”
[Sniff. Yes.]
Let’s see.
The pyramid-shaped chocolate-pie lump with the heart I had just carved.
Whoosh!
Illys withdrew the pie piece I had just sent onto one side of the training grounds.
A gigantic chocolate pyramid. And on one face, a carved heart.
Exactly the shape I had fiddled into existence with the tweezers moments ago.
“Whoa.”
It worked?
If this was real, then their side was small and I was large.
Extremely large.
[My Constellation! I am beyond grateful. If there is anything you require, please give us your command. We will do our utmost.]
Illys looked desperate.
She clearly wanted to be of some use to me.
Hmm……
If the chocolate-pie pyramid on the screen was real, that reaction made perfect sense.
I had essentially given them a mountain of food.
What goes around comes around—that was only human nature.
A one-sided relationship where only one party kept giving was hard to sustain for long.
My eyes fell on the piles of discarded smartphones stacked around me.
Suddenly an idea sparked.
“You said metalworking is advanced over there, and that you have magic engineering as well?”
Illys’s face brightened.
[Yes! Exactly! We pride ourselves on metalworking and craftsmanship!]
Ordinarily, semiconductors could not be repaired.
Sure, if you insisted for research purposes you could try, but the cost-effectiveness was terrible.
Semiconductors were manufactured at nanometer scales.
Simply put, they were electrical circuits connected by lines so fine that ordinary microscopes could not even see them.
And at that size, neither hands nor machines could reconnect them.
Trying to fix something that small cost far more than simply making a new one.
So at semiconductor factories, defects meant scrap.
Even if only a tiny portion was bad, it could not be fixed, so the whole thing was discarded.
That was why the hardest problem in semiconductor production was raising the yield—the ratio of good product after subtracting the defect rate.
“I’m going to send you something. It’s a broken item.”
[Yes.]
But if they truly were people of a very small world… wouldn’t semiconductor-scale circuits be visible to them?
“I have a lot of broken things, but they’re so small that repairing them is difficult. You’re small compared to me, though. Want to try fixing them? From your side it should be doable.”
[Yes! Upon the honor of the Rodriguez territory, we will give it our all!]
I brought over a stick of desktop RAM.
A green PCB with four black square memory chips mounted on it.
The sort of thing people commonly called a 4-gig RAM stick.
The scale adjusted automatically when something crossed into their world through the smartphone, so it should work.
“Want to try fixing this?”
[Yes! We will definitely repair it!]
The figure on the other side of the screen looked almost too eager.
“Ah, you don’t have to fix it no matter what, so don’t feel pressured. It’s fine if you fix it, fine if you can’t.”
On the screen Illys’s eyes narrowed into a sly little look.
[So… fix it or don’t—is that what you’re saying?]
“Yeah. Exactly. Fix it or don’t.”
[Pfft.]
Illys covered her mouth and was laughing.
Why was she doing that?