家畜のなく頃に; or When The Livestock Cry
By Hasfusel~ [Note: For translation issues as well as avoiding confusion, although the story is set in Japan I will - with the exception of the protagonist - leave character names as they were in the English language versions of HM:DS, the game on which the story is based. Rated M for Mature.]
Chapter One: In which a farm is inherited, and fateful events are set into motion
Shōwa Year 58 (Gregorian calendar 1983)
Forget-me-not Valley, unnamed island off the Japanese archipelago
New Year's Day
The morning sky was a pale blue, and the sun was rising, bathing the clouds and the fields in an orange glow. The sound of cicadas, crickets and grasshoppers resonated through the cool air, and the light reflected off the dew drops clinging to the foliage on the side of the path, giving them the appearance of tiny glimmering crystals.
The young man took a long drink from the bottle of water in his hand, and sat down on a large boulder on the side of the dirt track he had been following since last night. He had always preferred to begin a journey under the light of the moon, and the full moon of the new year had provided a beautiful, clearly illuminated night for travelling.
It had been an almost magical experience since getting off the fishing boat he had hired in Kushiro that evening. The little road he had followed from the tiny fishing village on the island coast had been lit by glowing fireflies as it passed through the uncultivated fields and rolling hills. While he had walked through the late evening, he had plenty of time to reflect on his life and imagine what the future held for him.
Since the age of one he had spent his childhood in the care of his aunt and uncle in a small town on the southern coast of Hokkaidō, after his parents had died in a fire. As a growing adolescent, he grew restless with his education and the restrictive, conservative attitude of his relatives, who were both frequently busy with important careers in the nearby city, and spent as much time as he could hiking around the surrounding countryside. He had longed for a free existence away from all ties and obligations to the remnants of his miserable childhood, and spent afternoons daydreaming about living on his own somewhere isolated from the rigours of mainstream society, as he sought desperately to avoid the fate of living his life in an office somewhere in a dusty city.
The opportunity had come on his sixteenth birthday, when his grandfather, who had been keeping a farm on a small island a little ways into the North Pacific ocean, had disappeared under unknown circumstances; he was thought to have had a heart attack whilst out fishing on his small boat or walking in the woods.
Apparently, he had some time before prepared a will that left all his land and possessions to his only grandson, with the seeming intent of having his grandson carry on in his footsteps, as a condition of the will was that his grandson would move to the island and take the farm over. There were some oddities in the will, which appeared to have been written partially as a letter to his grandson - it mentioned a witch, fairies, monsters and other various local legends - but lawyers found the will to be valid, and with no relatives to give trouble (the aunt and uncle that the grandson had been living with were on the other side of the family and had no claim to the inheritance), the young man became the owner of his grandfather's farm promptly.
It was like the wonderful gift from the gods he had been waiting for. Leaving his aunt and uncle with as little ceremony as possible, the young man packed his few possessions and set off as soon as he could towards his new residence. With a small stipend provided by his aunt and uncle, he hired a fishing boat to take him from the port town of Kushiro to the island where his farm was located next to a settlement in a valley called Forget-me-not (忘れな草) after the small, fragrant blue flowers that bloomed in the surrounding woods.
The island also had a slightly larger village called Mineral Town, a tiny fishing harbour near the windmill and the remains of another small hamlet, Flowerbud Village, which had become abandoned some sixty years ago for largely forgotten reasons and had not been reclaimed. The inhabitants of the valley interacted closely with Mineral Town, sharing a mayor and various services. The island was almost entirely self-dependant, with the occasional shipment of luxury goods such as special cooking ingredients coming from the mainland and the majority of food grown on local farms. The tiny amount of electricity used by the islanders (there were perhaps three televisions on the island, the town was lit at night by gas lamps, and all farming was done via traditional methods) was provided by small, inexpensive wind turbines installed a few years back.
The young man smiled, and got up, replacing his water bottle in his rucksack alongside his possessions and remaining provisions. He was almost at the farm now, having nearly arrived at the intersection where one road lead to the valley and the other to Mineral Town. The terrain was getting more wild, with fields giving way to sparse woodlands. As he walked along, he noticed a number of bright yellow and orange grasses (the fisherman who had ferryed him to the island knew a little local lore, and said they were edible and quite nutritious) growing in small clumps away from the path, standing out quite clearly amongst the green foliage. He had never seen such plant-life before on the mainland, and, uprooting a handful of the yellow variety, sniffed tentatively at the herbs before tearing off a few leaves and chewing them. The herbs had a distinct bitter taste of lemon that was not unpalatable, and after sampling several similar grasses he began to feel a little relaxed.
The hills on the side of the path began to slope upwards as he entered Forget-me-not Valley. The sweet, fresh air was filled with sound of the leaves of the trees rustling gently in the morning breeze, and the pleasant noises of various insects, out of sight but certainly not out of hearing. Hiro Nakagawa (not the name he was born with, but the name he had given himself for his fresh start to disassociate himself with his childhood; he had begun thinking of himself as this already) breathed deeply and contently as he walked along the now paved path, towards his new life as a farmer.
There was certainly nothing ominous about the scene; nothing at all to indicate how fate would unfold. Indeed, there never is - and certainly, nobody could have ever predicted the events that were about to follow.