Chapter Text
The best thing about the Valley was that it never changed.
These long, hot summers were the exact same as the gilded ones from my youth, running barefoot around the same farm I now walked day in and day out. Every December, the Winter Star shined just as bright over Stardew Valley as it had twenty years ago, just as it would for another twenty. Even the people of Pelican Town were a constant, unchanging presence, shaken up by my arrival some eight years ago, but long since having settled back into every day tedium and toil.
Because the best thing about the Valley was also the worst.
The schedules stayed the same. The seasons stayed the same. The harvests and the planting and the fishing and the mining, same same same same. Like a cycle stuck endlessly on repeat, the same tired lines sounding like clockwork. Every time it snowed for the first time, each year when the strange summer rains came, even when the town hosted its fairs and events and vendors, they were the same visitors, the same saleswomen, the same games and the same prizes and the same mind numbing monotony.
As much as I hate to admit it, I'd started avoiding the town all together. The sorcery and magic that I had at the tips of my fingers rendered Pelican Town next to useless anyway. Warp totems and obelisks and more gold than I knew what to do with. A greenhouse full of curling vines bearing an ancient, forgotten fruit that made the sweetest wine, a farm full of endless money makers. Kegs and oil presses and a fish pond housing the most gnarly fish I'd ever seen, the one that had threatened to drag me right into the Mountain Lake with it five springs ago.
But in avoiding the town and avoiding my fourth wife and avoiding the fact that I felt less and less human by the day, what was I left with?
A mountain of gold. A second farmhouse in what was, by all accounts, a tropical paradise. A list of weekly chores that took three hours maximum to complete, leaving the rest of my days eternally empty and devoid of anything that might be considered exciting or new.
The only thing that even still had something resembling a shine was that room tucked into the cliff on the far side of Ginger Island.
I'd been there plenty, of course, but it had been empty every time. It didn't take a genius to figure out who had put the place together: the dark blue color scheme, the blatant disregard for my bodily safety in some of the challenges he set, it could be no one but Qi.
Qi, who hadn't once shown his face out in the light of day. Qi, who I had only seen just that one time on level one hundred of the desert mines, when he'd given me something that made my head spin and my stomach churn and my bones feel like steel beams, stronger than any human should be.
But I wasn't very human, anymore.
And, if I had to guess, neither was Qi.
He was something new, something unknown. Maybe that was why I'd been stuck on the idea of him for so long, taking unnecessary trips out to his desert casino, glancing in to see if he was there this time, or diving down deep into the Skull Caverns, checking if he was waiting for me at level two hundred, or maybe three.
But he was never there, and eventually I stopped looking all together.
So it was completely unexpected when I opened the door to the Walnut Room that Monday morning, ready to see what challenge was up next, only to find that I was suddenly not alone.
Qi was clearly waiting for me, leaning back with his hands braced on the console. He grinned wolfishly as I closed the door, canines sharp in the corners of his smile.
"Punctual, as always," he drawled.
"It's not like I have anything else going on," I said carefully. As much as the mere presence of Qi sent a thrill down my spine, it was still unexpected, unusual.
And in a Valley where nothing changed, that was simultaneously both the most interesting and the most dangerous thing of them all.
"No, I suppose you do not," Qi agreed, tilting his head. "It has been, what, seven years since you arrived now? Eight? And you have surpassed every single expectation. Remarkable, truly, you should be proud of yourself."
I bit my lip. I didn't feel very proud.
I felt…
Bored.
Qi grinned again, like he could see it on my face. He pushed himself off the console to saunter towards me, circling like a shark.
"Truly, you must know," he purred, stopping to my left, "you're like a god to them now, the people of Pelican Town. And they don't even know it, do they? Does your wife, Haley-"
"Maru," I corrected him, my voice choked. "My wife is Maru."
"Ah, please accept my apologies. I must have missed the wedding. Well, second time's the charm! Or, rather, fourth…" He trailed off, laughing at the angry flush that I could feel heating my cheeks. "Regardless, does your wife even know the scale of the operation? Or do you keep it from her, too? Does she know of the flock of doves that roost in the trees of Cindersap Forest? Does she know of your home here, where you isolate yourself from the rest of those lesser beings?"
I could feel my breath catch in my throat, though it was not from shame.
He continued with his rhetoricals when I gave no answer.
For what answer could I give?
We both knew the truth.
"Tell me, does it bring you satisfaction? To hold the entire Valley in your palm, every life in Pelican Town owing their entire existences to you, a population at your beck and call? I've been watching you, young one, did you know that? Marrying half the town, divorcing them the next day. Tell me, in your revolving door of bed warmers, do any of them truly make you feel alive anymore? Or are they just another tool to get you through the nights?"
He leaned closer until his lips were just at the edge of my ear. I held back a shiver, tingles racing down my spine and pooling low in my gut.
"Or perhaps, you're like me," he continued. The sharp graze of teeth against my skin punctuated each word. "Searching for something more. Cut from a different cloth, destined to rise above the masses, meant for something bigger than an ordinary life."
Qi stepped away as fast as he'd come, hands clasped behind his back: the picture of nonchalance. But he didn't go far, circling to stand so that I could see myself reflected in those purple sunglasses. Eyes wide, cheeks flushed, I tried to slow the racing of my heart and the sweat on my palms.
"I'd been searching for some… entertainment, let's say, for years. The decades all tend to blend together after a couple dozen of them, after all. That is, until you came along. You handled my challenges so well, you took everything in stride… you solved my puzzles and completed my quests and kept the entirely of Pelican Town in the dark about it the whole while. Did you like keeping it a secret? Did it make you excited, knowing something that they did not about the world and your place in it?"
"Do you know how to ask anything that actually has an answer?"
Qi threw his head back and laughed, loud and boisterous, echoing off the too-close walls. He lowered his sunglasses down his nose to wipe his eyes once his laughter died: it was the first time I'd seen his face without them. His pupils weren't quite the right shape, the whites of his eyes an eerie blue hue, matching the rest of his skin. They were much like the rest of him: too bright, too foreign, too predatory.
"And you did it all while keeping that spunk. You're one of a kind, kid," he chuckled, shaking his head. "Normally, I'd incinerate someone on the spot for that, but I like you, so you can have this one pass. Besides, I have an… offer, for you."
"An offer?" I repeated. "Another one of your challenges, you mean."
Qi grinned, teeth flashing. "Think of it more so like a game, dear farmer."
"A game," I said flatly.
For the first time, the expression on Qi's face tipped towards irritated. "Is there an echo in here? Yes, a game. One that I do not invite just anyone to play, at that."
It shouldn't have been so thrilling to hear that the treatment, the offer that I was receiving from Qi was exclusive. But it was, and swallowed around the tightness of anticipation in my throat.
"What kind of game?"
Irritation gone in an instant, Qi whirled back around to his console. A wall of monitors rose behind it, showing various shots of Pelican Town, hazy and flickering from cameras that I'd never been able to find, despite spending the better half of last year's winter looking for them. He tapped a few of the buttons and sent the surveillance cameras away, replacing the feeds with a series of maps.
There, in the top left, was the only familiar map: it was my farm, imaged from above by a satellite view that I was nearly certain was live, my pigs and cows little pixels wandering around in their fields.
The rest of the maps were also farms, but just ever so slightly off, and all in states of disrepair. I could see the ruined greenhouses and the tiny farmhouses, all hidden between towering trees and spreading weeds. But the ponds were all in different places: some of them didn't have any ponds at all, instead cut through with winding rivers and or choppy hills. One was little more than a beach, sandy soil covering the entire farm.
"What is this?" I asked, hesitantly moving to stand beside Qi.
He glanced sideways at me, the edge of a grin visible on his lips. "A game," he repeated. "A game in which your goal is to get exactly back to where you are now, starting fully from scratch. No upgrades, no cheats, no shortcuts. I can rewrite your history however you would like: if you would like to change the farm, change yourself, I can make that happen, but you will retain all your memories from this life."
I knew that Qi had some kind of magical ability. But this… this seemed beyond reason.
He must have seen the doubt on my face, because he continued.
"It is not so much a change as it is a rewriting," he explained. "If you go, you will write over the entire history you have in this life. It will be as if it never happened for everyone else: rather, it will be like it has yet to happen. But every different choice you make will snowball tenfold, and hence the world will rapidly become unrecognizable from this one. This means that this world and all you have built here will be lost the moment, should you choose to play."
"You keep saying play," I said slowly. "But it's my life, isn't it? It's not a game."
Qi shrugged, turning back to study the farm maps. "Maybe it is, maybe it is not. You cannot tell me that the people of Pelican Town do not simply say their lines and play their parts in an endlessly repeating loop. Who are they, if not characters in a game? Non-playable pieces on a chessboard, moving on their own predetermined tracks, deviating only if you force them to."
It was so close to putting words to the budding feeling I'd had in my chest since my second marriage — with Penny — that it gave me pause. It made me think of every path I'd mapped in my head for every member of town, their schedules and likes and dislikes and their clinic visits and their birthdays and their favorite movies and the days they got their groceries. An unchanging list for the unchanging town full of people that never changed.
If Pelican Town would not change, then the only thing that could was me.
"I need to think about it for a few days," I said, turning away from the screens.
"Of course," Qi nodded. "You know where to find me. Don't take too long, though, farmer. I won't wait forever."
And so I left the Walnut Room and stepped back out into the humid heat of the tropical island, head spinning the whole way home. Maru greeted me with a sweet smile, dinner already on the stove. I recited the lines she said over our meal in my head as she spoke them, correctly predicting every word before she said it. When we laid in bed and she ran her hand over my chest, fingers dancing lower, I knew exactly how to touch her back to end it as soon as possible. I hardly even took any satisfaction in the way she sighed so prettily anymore, feeling nothing but a sense of obligation and duty where there once had been desire.
I couldn't remember when it had become such a chore, such an automatic, mindless thing. Not done because I wanted to do it, but done because it needed to be done. Another item on my to-do list, another check mark in a sea of monotony.
Two days later, I went back to the island.
Qi was waiting, right where he said he'd be.
"Well, farmer?" he drawled. "What do you say? Would you like to play my game?"
I took a deep breath.
Last chance to back out.
"Yes."
Qi grinned wickedly.
"Excellent. Now, there are some terms that you'll have to follow, of course. Nothing major: no cheats, no hacks, no help… just three years and a fresh start."
"Woah, hold on," I said quickly. "Three years? To get back to this? It's taken me eight to get this far in the first place."
"Ah, but you're so much more clever now than you were before. Three years will be a walk in the park. And besides, if you don't succeed, you may simply start over again until you do."
It didn't sound simple at all.
But, I couldn't lie and pretend that a plan wasn't already taking shape in my head. A list of things to do, items to collect, preparation that would need to be done.
So I picked a new farm — the one with the dense woods closed in on all sides — and kept everything else the same. I sent one more apology to Maru and the other girls I'd married and divorced, to the children that hadn't lived to see me to this point — at least, not in their original forms.
When I wavered again, second doubting my choice, I once again circled back around to the same thought I'd landed on every few hours over the past two days.
I'd already done everything there was to do in the Valley, in this life.
What more was there to endure?
"Okay," I breathed. "Okay. I'm ready."
"Hold out your hand."
I laid my right hand in Qi's. His skin was cool to the touch.
He covered it with both of his own, squeezing his eyes shut behind his glasses. As his face screwed up in concentration, a low hum began at the base of my skull, then migrated down to the pit of my stomach, where it continued to grow.
By the time the hum reached my hands, my eyes had slipped closed too. I forced them open, only to find Qi's face but a breath away from mine.
"Best of luck, my dear farmer. You'll need it. Come find me in a few seasons and we can have some real fun."
And with that, Qi surged forward, crushing his lips to mine in a bruising kiss. It felt like an electric shock, like the hum of energy was suddenly concentrated between our lips, transferred from his body to mine with the swipe of his tongue, the clash of our teeth.
The world condensed to the single point where our lips met, then faded all together.
When my eyes blinked open again, gasping as I came into my body once more, Qi was nowhere to be found. I was no longer in the Walnut Room, but rather lying on my back in a too-small bed, staring up at a wooden ceiling in a too-small room.
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, waiting for my head to stop spinning, I finally blinked the world into full focus.
There was a pack of parsnip seeds in the center of the room.