A Perfect Replica
"A mouse, you say..."
There was something a little uncertain about the request. A mouse was, at the end of the day, a digital device. Simpler than a smartphone, certainly — but it sat a little outside the kind of work I usually did.
When I let that hesitation show on my face, Rake's expression fell.
"So it would be difficult after all..."
I unplugged the mouse from the computer I'd set up inside the workshop and held it up as I explained.
"I can make the housing. The buttons and the rest of it, too. The problem, however..."
I peeled the top shell off the mouse and pointed to the circuit board inside.
"The internal board and the sensor aren't something I can easily make myself. Repairing them, yes. But this board and this sensor are closer to factory electronics work than anything we do in a workshop. So even if I did make them, the result might not be perfect."
Whatever I built, perfection and a personal fit were the two values I put above everything else. And with a mouse, that first one was always going to slip a little out of reach.
Well. Compared to a smartphone, it's still pretty simple...
Rake's face sank even further.
"Hah... I see..."
Did he come here with high hopes...?
Then something Se-hyeon had said at the last drinking party floated back to me.
Come to think of it...
"Well, according to him, it's because the mouse he used to use got discontinued."
Discontinued? I should ask about that first.
When someone commissioned a piece, you gathered as much information from them as you possibly could. That was how you learned exactly what they wanted, and how a good result came out the other side. It was a virtue any decent blacksmith had to have.
"Rake. Are you commissioning a mouse because the one you used to use was discontinued?"
"Ah — yes. That's right. Actually..."
Rake nodded and laid out everything that had happened. Put together, the story was this: he wanted to use a mouse called the X348, couldn't find one anywhere, and had come to have a new mouse made instead.
Must not have sold well at all.
Ordinarily, if you hunted that hard, you'd turn up at least one. The fact that even this much searching had produced nothing meant the X348 really hadn't moved many units.
When he finished, Rake looked at me again with that same defeated expression.
"It would be difficult after all, wouldn't it."
I thought for a moment, then shook my head.
"No. I'll give it a try. However — as I said, for the circuitry and the sensor, I'll have no choice but to go with off-the-shelf parts. Would that be all right?"
"R-really!? That's fine. Come to think of it, other custom mouse makers did something similar."
"Then would you come over here and put your hand in this for a moment?"
I poured alginate — which I'd bought thinking it might come in handy for exactly this kind of work — into a bucket sitting on one side of the workshop. Rake eyed the stuff warily. Fair enough. It was a strange-looking liquid he'd never seen before.
I smiled and eased him down.
"You don't need to worry. It's a material they use all the time in dentistry. I need to take a mold of your hand."
"Ah. I see..."
Still a little wary, Rake lowered his hand into the bucket. A moment later, the alginate set.
"You can take it out now."
The bucket now held a negative impression of his hand. Fill that hollow with resin, and I would have the exact shape of it.
"Is that everything?"
Rake asked, wiping his hand with a wet wipe.
"One more thing. Rake — would you sit here and handle the mouse for a bit? The way you normally play."
"Ah. Yes. Of course."
He sat in the chair in front of the computer, took the mouse, and clicked and swept it around the way he would in a match.
Hmm. Nothing particularly unusual...
There was a slight sense that his reactions ran a little slow overall, but it wasn't anything remarkable. If anything, for someone they called a pro gamer, it felt ordinary.
"That's enough. It won't take long to make. It should be done around the day after tomorrow. Once the mouse is finished, shall I send it by courier?"
He thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"No. It doesn't take that long anyway. Just let me know and I'll come pick it up."
I looked at him with a confident expression one last time.
"Understood. I'll make you the best mouse there is."
After that, I built the housing from the resin cast of his hand, the photographs, and the video. I studied his hand, the weight of a mouse, even his usual habits at the game, and made a shell that belonged to him and no one else. The materials were a light alloy and plastic, used together.
Here — a little more range of motion for the index finger...
It was delicate work, but a mouse was small, so it didn't take as long as one might think. Even working down to the micrometer, the object itself was so compact that the actual hours stayed relatively short.
If making a single mouse took days, that would be a problem in its own right.
For the internal sensor and board, I extracted them from the mouse Rake had been using recently. A full day later, the custom mouse made for him was finally finished. And the moment I sent word that it was done, Rake came straight to the workshop.
"Go ahead and try it."
Rake took the finished mouse and started moving it around. A moment later, he looked at me with a faintly startled expression.
"Oh. It feels like it wraps around my hand."
Of course it does. Look who made it.
I told him, still wearing that confident look,
"Want to put it through a real test?"
Rake nodded.
"Yes. Sir — would it be all right if I used it on that computer for a bit?"
"Of course."
A moment later he connected the mouse, installed Legend of Valhalla, and queued into a match.
Cheol-woo was confident — confident to the point of arrogance, even. He had never once failed, so he was certain this time would be no different.
And yet.
About thirty minutes later, Rake finished the game and stood up with a bitter smile.
"Ahaha... it's nice."
It's... nice?
That was absurd. From the mid-game on, his focus had started slipping, the match had tilted hard, and in the end he had lost. And most critically of all, I could still feel that the mouse sat wrong in his hand.
......
I asked him honestly.
"The mouse isn't quite right for you, is it."
Rake shook his head in a panic.
"N-no, that's not it. This is genuinely a great mouse. I've tried all kinds of other mice since the X348, and this one was the best of them. But still — something feels off, and I can't get back to how I used to play. I guess my skill really has dropped that much."
"......"
"I think it's time I stopped blaming the mouse and admitted that I've gotten worse."
It was the first time since I had come back to Korea. Of course, even on Mount Olympus, not every piece I had made had satisfied the gods. A few months before I returned, Poseidon had complained that a chair I'd made was uncomfortable.
Though that was just because the bastard didn't know how to use it...
I had always known something like this would happen someday. But this time — maybe because I had been arrogant — the shock hit much harder. I bowed my head and apologized to Rake.
"I'm sorry. I have no excuse."
When I apologized, Rake panicked all over again.
"N-no, sir, your mouse is incredible. I just... I guess it's time I admitted my skill has fallen. Hah..."
He smiled bitterly. Even if he retired right now, the salary he had already earned would easily clear ten billion won — more than enough to enjoy the rest of his life. And yet the fact that he was smiling like that meant he still loved the game, and still had some unfinished business with competing as an active player.
And seeing that look on his face, something stubborn rose up in me.
......Should I try one more time?
Honestly, when you remade something for a customer who hadn't been satisfied, the odds of them being satisfied the second time were not particularly high. Even so, I wanted to try again. I caught him as he was about to turn away.
"Rake. I'm sorry — but would you give me one more chance?"
"Huh...? No, you don't have to. This really is a great mouse."
"There's still one method I haven't tried."
"A method you haven't tried?"
It's something I used a lot on Mount Olympus...
"Would you send me that X348 you said is too broken to use?"
He shook his head.
"It'll be hard to repair. It's a product that's already reached the end of its life. I've already tried to get it fixed several times."
"I'm not trying to repair it. I can repair something that's still working — but I can't bring something back to life that's already dead."
I was someone who repaired and made things, not someone who resurrected them. There was, however, one thing I could do. I smiled and told him,
"I'll make a perfect replica of that mouse that's reached the end of its life."
"A replica...?"
"Yes. I'll perfectly clone the X348."
"......"
Rake hesitated. Just a moment ago, he had been thinking it was time to prepare for retirement. But this wasn't some other mouse — this was a promise to perfectly reproduce the one he had been searching for so desperately. Of course his heart would waver.
A moment later, Rake nodded as if he had made up his mind.
"All right, sir. I'll send it as soon as I get back to the dorm."
I looked at him with a confident expression once more.
"Thank you for trusting me again. I'll reproduce the X348 — the mouse you've been searching for all this time — exactly as it was."
A perfect copy.
In the early days on Mount Olympus, when I hadn't yet had the skill to design my own pieces, I used to copy existing objects exactly as they were. Of course, once I had become capable of designing things myself, I had barely done it anymore — but the memory of those days was still vivid.
It's strange. Every memory from Mount Olympus is crystal clear, all hundred years of it...
I felt like I was beginning to understand what it meant that time flowed differently in the divine realm and the human world.
"Let's see."
I opened the box that had just arrived, and the X348 Rake had used for years revealed itself.
It's a wreck, all right.
It was, quite literally, a rag. The housing was scratched all over, the paint peeling off. The cable was worn and fraying in places. And that wasn't all. The buttons were dropping clicks, and when I plugged it into the computer, not a single light came on.
Yeah. This thing's lifespan is long over.
This was, quite literally, an object whose life had already ended a long time ago. The fortunate thing was that even though the housing was scratched all over, it had somehow held onto its basic original form. Also fortunate: there was at least one article online with photographs of what the X348 had originally looked like. If I referenced those photos along with this dead mouse, copying the housing and the buttons didn't look like it would be too much of a problem.
The problem is the internal board and the sensor...
Even if they had used off-the-shelf parts, if those parts had been discontinued, they might not be easy to find. I started searching the internet for the X348, looking for information on its sensor and circuit board.
But no matter how long I searched, nothing on the X348's internal board or sensor came up. It had been sold in such tiny quantities, offline only, that there wasn't even a product page — and even the article I had seen earlier had nothing but a few exterior shots.
I'll have to take it apart.
I disassembled the mouse as carefully as I possibly could, to check the board and the sensor inside. And at last, the circuit board and the sensor revealed themselves.
"The board isn't particularly difficult... the sensor should have a model number somewhere."
Fortunately, the PCB was a simpler structure than I had expected. This much, I could replicate without any trouble. Now the problem was the sensor. There would definitely be a model number somewhere on it.
Let's see...
There it was. Small, but printed clearly.
I should order the sensor first.
I would probably just need to order a mouse with the same sensor and extract it. I turned the computer back on and typed PAV 2933 into the search bar.
But.
"Well, now...?"
Something about this was off.