I was mortified to wake up in my own damn bed that morning. I knew perfectly well where I had ended up here from.

The beach.

With Sam.

I died more and more within when I tried to piece together what must have happened. Or, pretty much, what Sam must have gone through. He'd never seen me crash before, I figured. He probably panicked and called 911 or something. Yeah, I really would just have fallen asleep, but it'd be such a deep sleep that nothing would have awoken me but the clock striking 6. At this point, the "medical team" probably just knew what to do and had grown tired of my shit. Grown tired of my growing too tired.

Poor Sam, though. Ugh… he was the one face in this town that had made me feel welcome so far, and now I could potentially never face him again.

…Speaking of which, the previous night was something only daydreams were made out of, or at least I figured. I lied in bed for a while, going over that marvelous exchange repeatedly in my head.

He seemed… happy to spend time with me. I mean, he had to be! What peer pressure could have driven him to spend time with me in those circumstances? If it was the daytime, I would argue that maybe his mother pushed him to talk to me or something.

But it was really the dead of night. Who goes to sit beside someone in the dead of night without the true desire to?

This felt too good to be true. I… couldn't really think of much to do about it, though. Maybe I'd drop by the saloon tonight.

I went outside and made a beeline to my mailbox to get the standard "we found you outside and took your money, yada yada" letter out of it and into the trash. Something struck me as I touched it, though.

Sam said he worked at JojaMart, right?

I opened the letter. Sure enough, once again, it said that a JojaMart representative had found me. Considering Sam was probably the one that called the medical team last night, that was true as fuck.

It was also instinct for me to look at my G count whenever this happened, just to make sure the bill hadn't made me completely broke.

…Something seemed off. I could have sworn I ended the day with 5296G the previous day. I still had 5296G. Several possibilities raced through my head, but I shrugged them off and assumed I misremembered something.

I then spotted some fully-grown crops on my property. One of them was some garlic. I looked at it, marveling at this complete freakin' vegetable I'd cultivated. I then took it inside and put it in the fridge, then headed into town.

I stood for a moment, trying to decide what my first move would be. To buy more seeds, to go fishing, or to investigate that abandoned building over there? I don't think I'd ever been given so many immediate options before in my life.

"Oh, hello!" came a cheery voice from somewhere behind me.

Took a second for my brain to register that said voice could have been talking to me. Once it did, I turned around to see a woman with her hair in a braid.

"Ah, hi," I replied. "How are you today?"

"Good, good," she replied. "Are you the new farmer… Rachael, is it?"

"Yes, that's me," I nodded.

"We're glad you're okay," she said. "My son says you passed out."

"Your… son…" I said. "Would you happen to be Sam's mother?"

"Yes, I am," she nodded. "So you've met Sam!"

"Yeah, I have," I nodded. "He's been a great friend so far." I sorta spoke before I thought with that last line, but at least it was coherent.

"I'm so glad to hear that!" the woman smiled. "Come to us if you ever need help settling into our little town!"

"Certainly!" I smiled.

We then said our goodbyes, and the woman went on her way, and I went on mine, which was toward the beach. I decided I'd fish until the sun went down , then go to the saloon to see if Sam's posse was there. So I did so, not managing to reel in very much by the time the stars came out. It was 10pm by the time I got to the saloon.

Nobody was in the game room yet, so I took to Junimo Kart while I waited.

A couple of hours later, not only was I starting to yawn, but the music had stopped and everyone was leaving.

Unless they'd played and dashed while I was unaware, nobody had shown up behind me. I sighed a confused and defeated sigh and headed for home.