Disclaimer: I don't own Harvest Moon or Rune Factory…

Life on the Mist Farm

Fifth Week of Summer: Busy Times

"Hey Boys, how's the house coming along?" Sabrina asked.

"Huh? Well, you could say it's going nicely," Neumann said rather nervously.

"Well, we did just start on it so it's probably going to take a while," Raguna said hammering away.

Raguna decided to upgrade the house to make it bigger as well as fit bigger objects inside the house. Mist was fine with upgrading the house as she wanted to do it for a while now. Neumann was the only carpenter in town so naturally Raguna asked him to upgrade the house… for a relatively good price of course since he still needed the materials to do it.

"I guess I could envy you Raguna, I've never seen a boy at your age managing so many things in his life," Sabrina told the young boy.

"Yeah well…" He said scratching his head.

"You know Raguna, you can stop at any time you want, you're technically not even supposed to be refurbishing this house with me," Neuman jokingly said.

"Naw, I do want to make it nice."

"Yeah but what about Mist? She really does want you to work on the farm every once in a while."

"Well, it is almost the end of the season and some the crops I shipped away won't be able to grow back in time so in the meantime I guess I could help you out sometimes."

"But even you have to take breaks sometimes right?"

"Heh… I guess so…"

"Here, let's head back to my place real fast, I have to do something. We can talk on the way."

"So I guess you boys are heading out right?" Sabrina asked.

"Heh… well yeah, I suppose," Neumann said, "you can always join us since we're heading to the bar after to get a bite to eat. Maybe we can get a drink or two?"

"Jeez, you'll never change…" Sabrina said while walking away.

"Hey Neumann," Raguna said curiously, "What was that all about."

"Well you see," he started to say but after thinking about it, he said, "we have some, awkward history between us… I guess I can tell you at a later day."

"Oh okay," Raguna responded back sounding curious.

The both of them walked towards the house. The both of them were fairly sweaty since they've been working all day so far and it was still summer so it was blazing hot out there. When they opened the door they went inside still talking to each other when they found Felicity sleeping on the counter again.

"Hey Felicity, hey wake up!" Neumann said shaking Felicity a bit.

"Huh? Oh, Neumann… and Raguna too…"

"You fell asleep again didn't you?"

"I'm sorry Neumann…"

"Hey don't worry too much about it okay, just go the back and make sure we have enough materials okay?"

"O… okay…" Felicity said rather weakly.

"…Hey Neumann, what's up with Felicity?"

"Felicity? Well, the thing is, she's really sick right now."

"But when I came into this town she was like that back then… and up 'til now she hasn't seemed to get any better."

"Yeah well… this actually has been going on for about a year now…"

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah, before then she was perfectly fine. Then one day, poof, she just contracted some sort of illness."

"And she's still ill?"

"Yeah, Dr. Edwards says that for some reason all of the medicine doesn't work on her, and when she does an examination on her, he says it's perfectly fine. He believes that it doesn't put her life in jeopardy, but it isn't exactly healthy either."

"So isn't there anything we could do?"

"Well… not at the moment no…"

"Oh I see."

"It's a pity though, that girl works exceptionally hard. She says that one day, when her father retires, she wants to take over and watch over the city for him."

"I see…" Raguna felt a little worried as well as a bit sad. She's a hard working girl like most of the people here, but it's like she's suffering… I should do something about this… Raguna thought.

The next day, Raguna was working on his farm again shipping away what little crops he had left for the Summer. He was about to go help Neumann again until he saw Mist running towards him.

"Raguna!" She called to him.

"Mist? What's wrong, you look like you're in a hurry."

"Well… actually no… I wasn't in much of a hurry, I just wanted to run!"

"Oh… well… okay then…" He said with a bit of a sweatdrop.

"Anyways, I need to tell you something important."

"Okay… what is it?"

"Well, since next week…" Just then she got interrupted with Rosetta running towards them calling Mist's name.

"Hey Mist!"

"Huh? Rosetta?"

"Good… hey you're not busy are you?"

"Well I was going to tell…"

"Okay good," Rosetta said interrupting her again, "anyways I need you to help me with a shipping order, there was some sort of error in our shipping and we need your help."

"Couldn't you ask Raguna to help you?"

"You're more experienced with these kinds of situations, now c'mon, we have to hurry!" Rosetta then pulled Mist by the arm and started to pull her away, though through Raguna's point of view, it sort of looked like she was dragging her somewhat. But it didn't matter much to him so he decided to go help Neumann a little bit more.

"Hey Neumann, I'm coming up there!"

"Hold on there Raguna!" Neumann said.

"Huh? Why?"

"Well… not to sound like I don't appreciate your help but I just think that you should get some time off doing any sort of work."

"But what do you mean?"

"Go, you don't have too much to do now right? Just go live it up a little bit, you've been doing too much lately."

"But are you sure you can do this by yourself?"

"Hey, I built some of the houses around here, I think I'm going to be alright with a little house upgrade."

"Okay then…" Raguna sighed realizing he didn't really know what to do. But then he remembered the conversation yesterday about Felicity's illness and decided to go into the library to research.

"Oh, h-hey Raguna…" Tori timidly said as he walked in.

"Hey Tori."

"What brings you here?"

"Well, I wanted to help Felicity, so I want to see if there are any books about it…"

"Oh, I see, well if you want me to, I can help you if you want…"

"That would be great, thanks Tori."

"And when he gets back I'm sure Russell and the kids will help out too."

"That's great!"

While the two of them were starting their research, Rosetta brought Mist to the backroom of the store. To her amazement (or annoyance) there was an overabundance of materials.

"How did this happen?" Mist said.

"Well… you see my dad here forgot to check his numbers when he sent off for the order so now we have a surplus of… well this stuff…"

"But where is he now?"

"He's tending to the shop right now but now we have to sort these out before late afternoon."

"Why?"

"We sent word to the person that ships our material to come back and get some stuff and to refund our money and if we don't give him an accurate total, we'll end up with less than we started with."

"Okay fine… now what do you want me to do?" Mist asked Rosetta.

"This…" Rosetta handed her a bunch of papers to her and they started doing their work.

Back at the library, Russell and the kids finally returned.

"Oh hey Raguna, what brings you here?" Russell asked the young farmer.

"Oh Russell, hey well… I wanted to know more about Felicity's illness…"

"So you decided to research it… well I have been trying to read about something like that for a while now, but I guess with more people here, it would be more productive."

"Can we help too?" Nicholas asked.

"Yeah," Raguna said, "The more the merrier right?"

"Yep!" Cecilia said happily while walking over to pull a book off the bookshelf.

"Oh by the way Raguna, where's Mist?" Nicholas asked.

"Well… I think she's still with Rosetta, but why do you ask?"

"Well," Russell began saying, "the both of you are usually together all the time so, I just figured."

"What are you implying?" Raguna said, clearly a little bit irked.

"What? I'm just saying how the two of you are always together."

"…okay…" Raguna said now confused. But not I wonder what Mist is doing right now? Raguna thought.

After they sorted everything out Mist and Rosetta laid down on the ground tired.

"Somehow we were able to finish all that…" Rosetta said gasping.

"Yeah, just like before…" Mist said gasping as well.

"haha… remember when we used to do big jobs like this when we were younger?"

"Yeah, you used to force me to help you out a lot."

"What ever happened to those moments?"

"…I guess," Mist began, "we just started to grow up…"

"But what happened, we used to be so much closer than this."

"I don't know… I mean Lara left for a while to study and become a nurse, and Felicity is trying to be a stronger person…"

"And then all of a sudden, people started to come in and out of the town…"

"and the two of us started drifting apart…"

"Yet, you've never changed…" Rosetta joked.

"Yeah, neither have you…"

"So many things have changed though."

The both of them stood up and brushed off the debris off their clothes.

"We'll still be friends no matter what right?" Mist asked.

"Of course we will," Rosetta said, "But I'll still get married first."

"You're still stuck on that, eh?" Mist said, "You know we made that bet when we were still kids right?"

"You're just admitting that I'll get married before you and Raguna do."

"What? I…" an incredibly flustered Mist said.

"Oh by the way, isn't next week…"

"Yeah, it is."

"Did you tell Raguna yet?"

"Well I was going to until I got rudely interrupted."

"hehe, that's what you were talking to him about huh?"

Just then Raguna felt a weird sensation in his body and then…

"ACHOO!"

"Are you okay Raguna?" Cecilia asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You know, I read in books that if you sneeze, someone close to you is talking about you," Tori said to him.

"It probably isn't anything good though…" he sighed.

"I'm sure they're saying many good things about you!" Cecilia assured him while getting ready to read the next book.

"Yeah, yeah…" Raguna said beginning to read another book. As he read it he started to get interested in it a little more. It wasn't about anything to possibly help Felicity, but it was something that caught his eye. This book… it's about Earthmates… hmm… he began to read on until…

"AHHH!"

"Ceci, what's wrong?" her father asked her. All of them looked at her and then looked at the book that she dropped and went over to read what it was about.

"Let's see… the cursed stone… a stone that brings misfortune to those who acquired it…" they looked over at Cecilia, "hey Ceci, do you know anything about this?"

"y-yeah…"

"It's okay Ceci, we won't get mad, just tell us what you know about this?" Russell said in a calm voice.

"Well… I read it about a year ago… I read about the cursed stone and that it is supposed to bring misfortune to whoever owns it."

"Yeah, Cecilia likes to collect different types of things," Russell added

"When I read this I started giving all my stones away to people," and then something clicked inside Raguna, Russell and Tori's heads.

"You don't think that…"

"…Raguna, you too?"

"Same here Russell." The three of them ran out of the library as soon as they realized and started to look for Felicity.

Just outside the village Mist and Rosetta were outside sitting down.

"At least we got the money back…" Mist said to Rosetta.

"Yeah… but by the way the guy was acting… he didn't seem too happy about the fact that we over ordered something and now he's lugging it back… oh well that's life," Rosetta bluntly stated.

"I guess…" Mist said smiling back at Rosetta.

"Hey! Don't give me that look."

"Haha…"

"C'mon Mist, I'm not always like that!"

"But you usually are! Anyways, do you want to stop by my house?"

"Sure, why not?"

Meanwhile after much searching.

"Oh Raguna," Felicity said, "how are you doing? You look like you were looking for something."

"Yeah, well… do you have a second?"

"Yeah, but…"

"Good, cause we need to go to your house!"

"WHAT!?" She yelled blushing.

"uh… well, I'll explain on the way…" So the both of them got to her room .

"So basically you're saying that this stone Cecilia gave to me is cursed?"

"Well, if you tie everything together, it's not as farfetched a theory as it sounds, but asides from that stone there, I can't say that there's really any concrete evidence."

"But Raguna, you've told me before, you should always start with what you've got… and then take it one step at a time…"

"Yeah but you were trying to do too much at once."

"So then let's go." The both of them soon made it to Felicity's room.

"So this is the stone you're talking about." Felicity asked him

"Yeah, at least I think so… I'm still not sure how we can tell…"

"Let's see… well I think that Dr. Edward will be able to help us out. He's able to sense any supernatural spirits and such. If this really is the cursed stone, then he should know."

"Okay then." Eventually they got there and explained the situation to Dr. Edward.

"I see, so you think that stone is the cause for her illness."

"Yes but we wanted to have you check it out first."

"Okay let's see…" Dr. Edward checked out the stone for a little while and then reported his findings to the both of them. "I knew it!" he said loudly.

"What did you find?" the both of them said.

"This single stone is emitting some sort of weird aura, almost demonic."

"So is there any way of getting rid of it?"

"No… but at the very least I can seal it temporarily and then throw it away to prevent anyone here from getting affected by it."

"So will I be alright afterwards?" Felicity asked.

"Well, of course, cursed objects will only affect those whenever it's near them. Once it is removed, you should be able to return to the way you were before you got affected."

"That's a relief, isn't it Felicity?" Raguna asked.

"Yeah but, I don't feel any better…"

"You should be fine starting tomorrow, if not sooner."

"Thank you Dr. Edward." Felicity said as they were leaving.

Eventually the others found Raguna and Felicity together and he explained that everything's been taken care of, and the others were relieved.

"Hey Raguna!" yelled a voice from a distance.

"Huh? Mist, Rosetta, hey!" Felicity yelled back.

"So what have you two been doing?" Raguna asked.

"Busy work, But I see that it's the same with you guys."

"Yep… oh by the way, did you guys manage to see if Neumann was done with the house?"

"Well it looked like he was almost done, but it is getting late so he'll probably finish later."

"Actually, it is getting a little late for us too so…" Tori said, "I need to drag my brother out of the caves first."

"Yeah, your brother likes to do that a lot, makes me wonder why he hasn't gotten any of the other passes…" Felicity wondered even though it was obvious to the others. So everyone left to head home. But on the way back…

"Hey Mist…" Raguna said stopping her.

"Yeah, what's up Raguna?" Mist asked.

"I was just wondering… what was it that you wanted to tell me before?" Raguna asked.

"Oh right I almost forgot again. My birthday's coming up and I was wondering if you knew or not."

"Actually, this is the first time you've actually mentioned it haha…" Raguna said

"Oh really? Well now you know!" Mist said

"But you still haven't told me the date yet…"

"Oh right, duh… it's on the first day of Fall. Oh, I have to head home now so later!"

"Later!" he said waving back to the young girl. Though the date she said made him seem a little bit uneasy. Hmmm, why does that date make me worried?"

After heading inside, he took a quick glance at the calendar only to find…

"Oh… shoot… why'd she tell me now?"

…that Mist's birthday was less than 3 days from today.

The next day…

"Hey Raguna, I should almost be done with this house pretty soon, just hang tight there okay?" Neumann said.

"Okay, thanks!" Raguna said while continuing to plow his field.

"Hey you two!" Felicity said energetically.

"Hey Felicity, you're looking pretty energetic today," Raguna said.

"Well, I guess its thanks to all of you that I'm feeling better. I mean I don't feel weak anymore."

"That's great!"

"Oh by the way… I've been meaning to ask… are you and…" but then she got interrupted by Neumann calling for Raguna's help

"Sorry Felicity, I gotta help him for a sec."

"No that's okay."

Soon afterwards, Mist showed up.

"Oh Mist, how are you doing?"

"Felicity? You actually look alright."

"Yeah, Raguna and the others helped me."

"Oh is really? That's great, that means you're not sick anymore right?"

"Yeah! And because of that I owe them all so much, especially Raguna, everyone said he was the one who asked everyone to help me."

"Really?"

"Yeah… but hey Mist… you two aren't… you know, seeing each other right now?"

"What do you mean, I'm watching him right now."

"No I mean dating him."

"Well no but why is that important?"

"Well, it makes me a little bit relieved."

"Huh?" Mist said in a bit of a confused look.

"Well… I probably shouldn't say this but… I think I'm in love with him!"

"What?" Mist said with a blank stare in her eyes… "she… loves him?"