Chapter Text
Midori stares, the beginnings of a gobsmacked email trailing to an end in the reply box. The cursor blinks back at her as her own eyes sop up the words again and again. She almost feels like laughing, but her jaw is too tight, teeth click click clicking in her skull against the din of keyboards and shuffling just beyond sad, grey-padded cubicle walls. She’s barely been able to move into it.
We will not be able to grant your bereavement request at this time.
Maybe she’ll open her eyes in a moment and wake in the cocoon of her bed with her cat snuggled into the bend of her knee. Grandpa won’t be dead, and her life won’t feel like it’s bearing down on her all at once like the trash compactor did Lance and Hal in Galaxy Battles.
We will not be able to grant your bereavement request at this time.
It peters on; some copy-paste, prewritten script about probationary periods and time-off allotments because, of course , Joja would be keen to deny a bereavement request. She wonders whether Kassy in Personnel is a real person or a generic sign-off by the system to make Joja feel less like a machine. Midori doesn’t really absorb the rest. Rather, she slumps back into the unforgiving planes of a company-issue desk chair, stamped with Joja and that stupid fucking smiley face, and drags her fingers through her hair.
This is it. This is some divine punishment for a crime she’s committed in a past iteration. Or penance is finally coming for her over squishing too many bugs as an easily frightened child. It has to be. There is truly no other explanation for what a terrible hand she’s been dealt these past weeks, from a tumultuous breakup to finally quitting her comfy bartending job at her parents’ insistence– think about your future, sweetheart! get a big-girl job! –and Grandpa’s passing a few days ago as the expired cherry on top, even though he was probably in better health than her .
“Midoriko?”
Her head snaps up to the maw of her cubicle, where her primly dressed supervisor stands, a little pinch in her brow. A corporate drone she may be, but she’s still more human than the other higher-ups she’s met so far.
“You haven’t moved your cursor in a few minutes.” A generic check-in, because they’re always listening. Then, a little softer, “Can I do anything for you?”
The rest of the day goes by in a blur. She hardly remembers getting off the train and walking home, a little referral card for mental health services tucked into the pocket of her slacks. Maybe if she has a meltdown, Joja will give her the bereavement. Or, more likely, they’ll have her carted off out of concern for self-endangerment and written off as unfit to fulfill the role , another faulty cog in the machine.
It’s as she’s toeing off her penny loafers at the door that she finally dials back into the world around her. The house is full of the scent of dinner and the faint waft of fresh-cut grass through the window, which has her chest going hot and tight. Dad, ever his father’s son, is outside chain-smoking and stress-tending the yard while Mom scowls over the stove and pretends like she’s keeping it together.
They still exchange the standard fare, a kiss on the cheek, and a welcome home . Up close, Midori sees how the crow’s feet at the corners of Mom’s eyes are less defined by how puffy she is. She pops her head out the back door to do the same with Dad, who brings a big, sad waft of mentholated tobacco with him.
Dinner is–
Uncomfortable.
Her older brother Daiki broods across the table, compartmentalizing, while the younger Hinata snuffles, pushing food around his plate.
The papery veneer of calm finally pops when Daiki jabs across the table, gesturing to Midori with a jerk of his chin, “Why does she get the farm?”
Midori’s mind skims over the statement. She knows that the anger is more than likely misdirected, but she’s raw, too, so it doesn’t stop her from bristling right back. A cold washes down her back as her mind struggles to digest yet another morsel of information just now reaching her plate. Right . They met with the lawyer today to begin settling the estate.
“ Me ?” she balks, wide green eyes sweeping the table as though the pieces would fall into place amid the surprised looks around it.
“The farm ?” echoes Mom, disbelieving. Cutlery scrapes against porcelain, clear and skin-prickling. The look she fixes him with is stern and disbelieving, and it’s evident that this was not news they were planning to break yet. “ Honey , Grandpa just died , and that’s what you’re worried about?”
“Of course I am! What has Midoriko done to deserve the farm handed over on a silver platter? Do you understand how much money is in that property? Fucking millions . We could sell it and be comfortable, all of us!”
“Daiki,” interjects Mom gravely.
“You want to sell the farm?” Midori balks, having hardly processed hearing her name in the same sentence. She, Midori. Get farm. What. It feels like her head is underwater, and her pulse thumps uncomfortably in her chest and throughout her entire body. “Why are you talking like this is my fault?”
Mom starts to speak, but Daiki projects over her. The room rises to a fever pitch as he stands from his chair, its legs scraping on the floor. The crease deepens between Dad’s brows.
“—But you’re going to keep struggling to pay the mortgage, so Midoriko can let the farm rot while she fucks off. I’ve worked for everything I have. I’ve got a career. I –” Her brother points at his chest, lip curled. “– I put in the hours, made the sacrifices. And here comes Midoriko —doing what , exactly? Wasting her degree, bartending with her tits out. Hops to some corporate job she doesn’t even care about, and now what?” Finally, he gestures at Midori, tone nothing short of disgusted . “She’s going to go play farmer?”
Tears burn behind Midori’s eyes nearly as sharply as her cheeks do with flush, lip quivering, and her mind reels harder, harder to stoop so low, to stop being good, passive little Midoriko. At home, that’s all she is, but out in the world—
“ Daiki , that is enough .” Dad raises his voice. Dad never raises his voice, and he seems angry and entirely unlike himself for a beat. His eyes are red-rimmed and glassy as they slide to Midori, expression softening minutely, and he exhales shakily. The sound is far too near a sob for her heart to take, and her lip quivers harder. “This is not about money, and I will not have you treating your sister like this. We need to respect dad’s– Grandpa’s wishes and, moreover, we need to take care of each other.”
Daiki pauses, brow drawn and lips parted as if to retort. Something about the look Dad wears must get through to him, though, as he deflates and sits back down in his chair.
The silence is short, punctuated by Hinata’s sniffles as they turn to full-blown hysterics, big tears running down rosy cheeks as he doubles over in his chair. He hiccups and chokes, sobbing into his little hands, and Mom’s expression crumples.
“Can we just–take a breath?” she pleads, finally dropping the strong face she’s tried so hard to maintain these past few days as she slides out of her chair and over to Hinata’s side. Urges him gently to his feet so she can usher him across the room. And, through her own sniffles, “We’re all grieving. Grandpa’s gone, and we’re still trying to understand why he made the decisions he did.”
Midori grimaces, tears rolling freely down her cheeks now because she knows what that means—choosing her to be his successor over even Dad , which—indubitably, she wonders the same herself.
Daiki scoffs as she leads Hinata down the hall, but that ends the conversation, for now, and dinner along with it.
The funeral takes place a week later, and the sleepy town of Stardew Valley stirs briefly to life. The turnout is expectedly full of sad but familiar faces. Dad grew up here in the bosom of the Valley. Thereby, it is only natural that the Kusanagi grandchildren spent many weekends and vacations there, playing and exploring nature on the farm with their grandparents while Mom and Dad took a break—at least, until Daiki and Midori got into high school and Hinata unexpectedly came into being, and the turmoil of the city swallowed up the greater of their time.
Spending time here, especially under such circumstances, leaves Midori feeling very much like the helpless child she once was, warbling for help when she climbed too high in a tree or came across a spider fat with eggs. Daunted and dwarfed by the looming farmhouse left behind for her , without Grandpa to rescue her.
Following the procession, she stands, solitary, on the farmhouse’s porch while her family and a few locals chat inside. Gazes across parts of the snow-powdered acreage now left cluttered up where Grandma’s flowers and bees once flourished, and the soil where winter sproutlings only just poke through the dry soil.
It would be so simple to cave and sell off the land and kiss this–this sublime pocket of her life, still hazy with early winter fog–goodbye. Or sign the deed to Dad, who may actually do something with it. Or shove it into a drawer and pretend it isn’t there until she can’t stand it anymore.
The choice is all hers, and she can’t decide. She hates it.