Spring 8th of the first year

Fainting after two consecutive nights of staying up late makes you feel completely exhausted.

Drinking coffee won't work this time either; at most, it will make your slightly unsteady steps feel like they're floating on a maglev, giving you a sense of unreality, like you're rushing down a slope.

In this state, while swearing to yourself that you will definitely go to bed early tonight, you ignore the potatoes that haven't been dug up yet and the second batch of parsnips that still need to be watered, and head straight for the beach.

I didn't catch any sardines yesterday, I have to make up for it!

You walk to the beach and find oysters, clams, and mussels everywhere. Even though it's not the time to sacrifice these things yet, it still awakens your instinct to go beachcombing, and you walk around the beach picking up all of these things and putting them into your backpack.

Satisfied with filling your bag with fresh seafood and having successfully caught the sardines you missed yesterday, you're about to leave the beach when you see Elliot emerge from his seaside cabin.

His long hair was clearly styled carefully before he went out; every curve that gently spread out in the sea breeze was just right, making it impossible for you to look away.

"Good afternoon." Elliot greeted you politely, then walked to the extinguished campfire on the beach, gazing at the sea with a gentle expression, as if he were thinking about something that pleased him.

You walk over and give him the gift, and he smiles and thanks you. Amid the aroma of coffee, Elliott talks about his thoughts: "I moved to this small town a year ago. The environment here is conducive to literary creation, like colorful corals, rainbow shells, and nautiluses appearing from time to time among the grains of sand. Finding these inspirations is wonderful and makes me feel at home."

His tone of voice was like reciting poetry, and his emerald green eyes were filled with a passion for literary ideals.

Elliott was not a particularly talented writer, but he loved his work and could endure a simple dwelling, moss-covered floors, and spiders crawling in the shadows, sitting at his desk day after day polishing his words, always yearning to create a work that satisfied him.

You are deeply attracted to Elliot, and your initial perfect match is to marry him and reach the top of the mountain. Later, no matter who you are with, you will give him the duck feathers harvested from the farm to make quill pens.

If you were to travel to Stardew Valley and choose someone to marry, you would probably choose Elliot. He is romantic, considerate, and a great partner.

But remembering that he had succumbed to the player's inherent weakness and married all the other Stardew Valley characters in later saves, even installing a bizarre mod like marrying a pony... he suddenly felt embarrassed to pursue Elliot anymore. He was such a jerk, such a jerk.

You could only mumble, "That's good, I wish you a flow of inspiration," and then slunk away from the beach.

Did Elliot originally say this?

[It seems they installed Elliot's dialogue expansion pack.]

[For newcomers unfamiliar with Rabbit's Foot, this streamer is Elliot's favorite. If your spouse doesn't choose him, then he's a total scumbag, at least divorcing once to generate revenue for the mayor.]

[Original audio: First of all, I'm not in your contacts. A kiss is like clocking in for work; it's all about the ritual...]

[I knew what you were up to the moment you limped. You wanted to send Leah fish again, didn't you? Or tree sap?]

"No, I didn't!" you firmly denied, and took out the trash—no, driftwood—you had caught earlier to show to the malicious hater: "See this driftwood? It has a perfect grain, even color, and a very special shape. I'll give it to Lydia as a gift later, she'll definitely be happy."

As the saying goes, explanation is just a cover-up, and a cover-up means it actually happened.

[You'd better be. My wife Leah is so beautiful, I wouldn't even blame her for always dancing with Elliot.]

They even drank together last night; the green color made me feel safe.

[Get out of here, cuckold fetishists!]

【I'm different. Adding a multi-partner mod doesn't take much effort. The three of us living a good life is more important than anything else!】

How rude of me! My relationship with my wife, Leah, is purely platonic.

[To the guy in front of me who's all about pure love, please change your nickname before you speak. "Want to be Hailey's dog," tsk tsk.]

That was in the previous save file; in the current Forest Farm save file, I haven't even given Hailey a gift yet!

Ah, this.

[One player has one wife and they still dare to call it pure love? Unbelievable.]

Seeing that the live stream was about to erupt into another argument, you quickly pointed into the distance and asked, "Everyone, look who's that?"

On the lakeside in the woods, a woman dressed in a red and white shrine maiden's robes stood, the scene serene and beautiful, unless one looked closely and discovered that the shrine maiden was trying to skip stones with a paintbrush.

You walked over and greeted her: "Nice to meet you. I'm Iridium Rabbit Foot, who recently moved to the farm in the north."

Angege accidentally dropped her paintbrush into the lake. She turned around and pretended nothing had happened, gracefully clasped her hands together, and recited her lines: "Hello, it's nice to meet you. You've chosen a good time to move here; spring here is truly enchanting."

[Haha, you startled the songstress!]

[She's a cute and adorable songstress from my student days, yay!]

Does anyone listen to funeral hymns?

【？？】

[Eat everything, maintain a balanced diet]

No casual chatting or joking around!

[Prohibition is invalid!]

You peered into the water at the paintbrush that was still sliding down, thought for a moment, then took out your fishing rod and cast it over there.

"Dudu!" A golden exclamation mark appears on the water's surface, indicating that something has taken the bait.

You quickly reel in the rod, and sure enough, it was the pen that had just fallen.

After drying it, she returned it to Anka-hime, who then said with unusually respectful stubbornness, "Oh! This is exactly what I wanted! Thank you very much!"

【】

What's going on here? Why did they suddenly fish out "Leah's Lost Paintbrush"?

[I've remembered the spot, I want to go fishing too! What other conditions are needed? What are the best times to fish in sunny weather? Are there any route requirements?]

[Using the traditional screenshot method of Stardew Valley players—taking a picture with my phone! Luckily, I was watching the live stream on a tablet.]

If you hadn't noticed earlier that Ankagi was trying to skip stones, you would probably have thought she was just a replacement for the original Lia... Speaking of which, how could she so easily fish up a paintbrush? Does she just stand by the water and throw paintbrushes around for fun? There's a whole layer of paintbrushes at the bottom of the lake, isn't that something?

You try to remind her: "Actually, you don't need to read the original lines. Gojo Satoru and the others just speak according to their own ideas."

Anka immediately gave a "ha" look, silently threw away the paintbrush that symbolized her rebellion against the boring and fixed schedule, and turned to leave.

After doing a good deed each day, you walk around the lake and continue south; there should be a hat shop there.

They even sent promotional letters to players when the store opened.

Hi

I sell hats. Got it, Poker?

Bock, come to the broken house. Bring some gold.

—The Hat Mouse

The little mouse spirit, who isn't very good at using human writing, is quite cute. Feeling a bit sunburnt from running around outside all day, you decide to check its shabby little house to see if there's a suitable hat.

The hat-wearing mouse was quite handsome; although it was a mouse, it looked rather human. Upon seeing you, it happily pulled out a display board with a picture of a bright yellow round hat on it, and the description read:

Rain hat: to keep sailors dry in storms.

Regardless of how well a hat can protect you from a storm, you think this hat doesn't look very nice, so you ask, "Boss, do you have any other hats?"

"Hey, Poker. Did you bring your gold foil?"

"I sell hats."

No matter how you ask, the hat mouse will only say these two sentences.

"Fine, a hat shop with only one hat, no try-ons allowed, and no returns or exchanges once sold... I'd only buy it if I had so many gold coins I didn't know what to do with them," you complained, giving the hat rat 1000 gold coins.

You'll regret it the moment you get your hands on the actual product.

The hat that looks ordinary in the display picture turns out to be more abstract than you imagined once you put it on.

How to describe it? It's like a golden baseball cap with a long brim turned upside down. When you wear it, it looks like a gold ingot on your head when you look at it from the front, and a spoon hanging on your head when you look at it from the side. In short, it's ugly.

[It's amazing that they can instantly add hats worn in the game to the character art, but this hat is just too silly!]

[A bit too much for my eyes]

[Quickly, load the save file! We don't need this hat anymore, sweetie!]

[1000 gold coins, that's so expensive! Even the mice in this valley are swindlers. I'm so sad.]

"It's not expensive," you rationally analyzed, even though you seemed to have bought a hat but hadn't lost a single gold coin in your account. "A bolt of ordinary cloth costs close to 500 gold, and that's waterproof cloth. If you make it into a hat and then sell it, the profit isn't outrageous."

I don't believe it. I think that rat's hat was stolen.

[Hilarious, trying to negotiate costs with a business that has no initial investment!]

[After all, there isn't even a police officer in Pelican Town. Even the mayor had to secretly write to me for help finding his underwear.]

[Waaah, what if this really was a hat that the little mouse painstakingly made? Don't accuse animals without evidence!]

On your way back to the farm, you kept thinking about whether to take off this silly hat, but in the end you decided that since you'd already bought it and didn't have any other hats, you might as well wear it for now, just in case it actually keeps out the rain.

Irrigate the land and harvest potatoes.

After finishing your work, you feel like you can finally sleep after staying up for two nights, but then you seem to have forgotten something—oh right, the sardines you caught this morning are still in your backpack! You have to sacrifice them!

You suddenly change your mind and think it's too early to just go to sleep, so you stop walking towards the bed and instead go out and head towards the town, intending to go to the community center to offer sacrifices via the road next to the clinic.

Unexpectedly, as soon as you enter the town, you are teleported to the side of Alex's house, or more precisely, next to his trash can.

Meanwhile, Osamu Dazai, a well-known figure in the world of anime and manga who is popular with countless girls, is diligently rummaging through the trash can.

Hearing the noise, the homeowner thought it was a raccoon causing trouble and came out in his wheelchair to check.

Dazai Osamu nimbly slipped into the shadows on the side of the house, showing no sign of panic, and even had the leisure to imitate a raccoon's call.

Unaware of the situation, Itadori Yamasuke muttered, "Raccoons again... those filthy little rascals."

As per the Stardew Valley setting, the disabled old man, Dr. Itachi, was quite helpless. Just like in the original story, he asked you to help him go around the raccoon and scare it away before returning to his house.

You walk over and ask Dazai Osamu, "Why are you rummaging through other people's trash cans?"

Dazai Osamu looked at you with a somewhat melancholy expression and explained in a serious tone, "After all, you can't even find a 24-hour convenience store in this kind of rural area—do you think there's anything wrong with what I'm doing?"

You are presented with four options:

Of course, that's disgusting and out of character (OOC).

No, I also rummage through the trash cans frequently.

Of course, that's not right. If you want to eat something, you can buy it from Gus.

Even if you don't have any, you should learn to cook for yourself.

[Choose the longest out of three short options; if you're unsure, choose option C; two major rules will lock in one option; the third one is a sure thing.]

[Choosing the first one, deliberately rebelling, hmph.]

[How could I possibly admit to Dazai that I like rummaging through trash cans?!]

After a moment's thought, you decide to adopt the second option, because it is the correct option in the original game.

There's nothing shameful about rummaging through trash cans. If you were to start as a poor, struggling farmer and find something to eat in the trash, you'd be happy for a long time.

Unexpectedly, upon hearing your answer, Dazai suddenly smiled brightly and said in a smug tone, "So you really do rummage through his trash cans all the time~ But you only find burnt cookies, while I can find super delicious crab dishes!"

As expected of Dazai.

[Waaaaah, we poor savages have suffered! Mom will send you a box of canned crab meat right away.]

[Rabbit's Foot, please, once you have a kitchen, go to the mountains more often to bring him food; the child is getting too thin from hunger!]

How can a paper-thin character starve themselves to lose weight?

You were speechless, feeling like you should still choose the first option. How could you compare yourself to others just by rummaging through the trash? The point is, as a true Stardew Valley farmer, AKA the King of Trash, you were actually starting to feel a bit defensive.

So what if the cookies were burnt? A cookie that returns to its original state is a good cookie! Besides, even if you searched through Gus's trash can, you wouldn't find his crab cakes, right? It's not surprising that the farmer couldn't find them!

Wait a minute, is the purpose of this plot to hint that we can rummage through the trash for Dazai's favorite things?

Help! Help! Help! Help! What kind of weird setting is this? If a player dares to do this, won't they get killed by Akutagawa?!

Just when you're questioning your existence, Dazai Osamu suddenly says, "Just kidding, you don't really think I'm rummaging through the trash, do you?"

You begin to realize something is wrong: "What else?"

Dazai mysteriously held up a finger and lowered his voice, saying, "These trash cans conceal a passage to another world, which will only open under specific circumstances—"

You widen your eyes, thinking, "Why didn't they say something sooner? No, is it really okay to so casually reveal such a crucial clue in the 2 Hearts storyline?"

I wanted to ask more clearly what that so-called specific situation was, but I found that Dazai Osamu had disappeared.

It seems the only option is to actively work on increasing his favorability towards me in hopes of getting an answer.