...Uh, yeah. After a long time of not posting any fan fiction (more like hiding in my room and crying to myself about how my stories stink), the person no one knows about has finally decided to rise and post something!
Post something that I now consider cruddy, but oh well. Anyways, feel free to praise or flame the heck outta me; constructive criticism would be appreciated, but otherwise, sit back and enjoy a little story. Or gouge your eyes out and scream at me, whatever you want.
Also, note that I intentionally took out the names, though I don't know why. So no, I didn't magically forget to put them in, even if I would probably do that sometime in the near future.
Last of all, I don't own Harvest Moon. If I did, no one would buy the series anymore.
He wakes up to the smell of fish.
And how he hates it! The young man gets up with a sigh and notes glumly that he fell asleep on the rock island in the middle of the ocean.
Wonderful.
He looks around and notices that he is all by himself on this lonely morning. He can see a small purple shape in the distance.
"It's the dolphin." he thinks. He watches it wait at the dock all by its lonesome; he watches it wait for someone, anyone to come and provide it with company. He knows that it will swim back to him on this lonely island eventually.
The man picks up his fishing rod and takes a seat at the edge of the island. He casts and he waits, and eventually, he manages to reel in a snapper. It struggles with all its might, but he ignores this foolish struggle and takes note of its size. The man then throws it expertly into a nearby bucket and he continues this process.
And how he hates it! He hates waking up to the smell of fish, he hates walking around with the smell of fish, he hates having fish in his little bucket, and he hates going to sleep with the image of fish burned freshly into his mind. He hates everything about fish but he lives with it, as he does every day.
It is his job, his role in life. The man reels in another fish with expertise and deems it good enough for breakfast. He takes out a knife from his pack, smacks the fish with the blunt side of the knife, and begins to clean the fish.
And he thinks about why he lives with this task on his shoulder and he wonders why he accepts it.
"Such a heavy weight," he states as he beheads the fish, "And yet..."
Another thought rolls into his head as he turns the rest of the fish into sashimi and he lets out a small laugh. He remembers a memory he had wished to forget. He remembers the time when one of his closest friends had meekly walked up to him on a sunny day and proposed to him.
"An escape, an escape!" a voice in his head had screamed, "She can get you out of this stupid routine! She can support you!"
But shock overwhelmed this little voice as it was pushed aside.
"A way out, a way out..." it shouted, and was gone.
He had a right to be shocked. After all, he was the local hobo of the town, the wanderer who only cared about fish. He spent his entire day roaming the town and fishing. He spent his entire night at the bar getting wasted. It was surprising that he could still support himself with this particular routine. An assholethat wouldn't care about you, a jerk whose life was entirely about fish...he was made fun of and called names, and there were little people who supported him. These little people were simply those in the village that shared his interest, the people at the bar, and her.
The little people in the village were just the local farmers and that one patriotic carpenter.
"I'm not patriotic!" he huffed, but it was just obvious with the star-spangled outfit and all. The nicer farmer would chuckle quietly to herself and the man would just shrug. The three of them spent many a day just sitting by a body of water fishing and sharing the weight of his job. They relaxed and enjoyed each other's company, and when the trip ended, they would compare their catches, congratulate the person who won, and then they would leave with a promise to see each other again.
Then, at other times, when he was alone, he would encounter the other quieter farmer. They saw each other frequently at the rock island, but they never said anything and always fished alone. They would leave each other in their own peace and when night fell, they left without a word. And yet, he had enjoyed the farmer's company, and though they never said anything, he was grateful that the other shared his role even if it was not intentional.
The man's personality changed drastically when night came and the bar opened. It was noisy, and not much could be remembered because he was dead drunk. Some nights, there would be a small drinking contest and he would magically find himself sleeping on the street face down the next day with a raging headache. Other nights, there would be a bar fight and the barmaid would always win with a quick frying pan to the head, or in other times, a kick to an unhappy place. Usually, the nights spent in the bar would be quiet, with its occupiers doing their own thing, whether it be wallowing in one's drink, talking merrily with the others, or upstairs, doing things that shouldn't be mentioned right now. Sometimes, he would see his nice farmer friend and she would glance around nervously, looking at everyone with a worried and upset look. But no one cared, and she left unheard and unhappy. He did not know that she cared about everyone's peculiar need for drink and the things that might happen in the future.
"Then the subject comes to her," he thinks as he slowly eats his sashimi. He dips the fish in a small cup of soy sauce he prepared and savors the taste as he chews the fish slowly. He swallows the fish with a gulp and picks up another piece.
"Why does it have to come to her?"
His memories of this particular her had been awkward and confusing. One day, he decided that a good idea for finding the King fish would be to look in a book. So what other place could be better than the library, he had thought, and eventually, he regretted that decision. The man had traveled to the library and greeted the librarian, who in turn, asked if she could help him.
"I'm just looking for a book on fishing." he said. The librarian walked over to the nearest bookshelf and started her search. After a while, she walked over to him with a frown.
"I am sorry, sir," she said with a bow, "I can't seem to find any book that would suit an expert fisherman..."
She looked at the bookshelves with sadness and a few moments passed by awkwardly. He coughed and managed to find the words he needed to speak up.
"Th-"
"I apologize for the library's bad selection," she said, interrupting him unintentionally, "If only we had a better selection of books, then perhaps I might be able to help you..."
The man suddenly noticed her closeness and with a blush, he yelled: "Don't come any closer!" She looked at him with concern.
"Huh?" She was confused, but she followed his wishes and retired to her desk.
He breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed a bit.
"I always did get nervous...when pretty girls came so close..." he mumbled to himself with a flustered look. Still embarassed, the man left the library. He did not see the librarian looking after him, a look of concern fixed on her face.
---
The fisherman finishes eating his sashimi with a blush still faintly visible on his face. He dislikes thinking about that particular moment, but he remembers that he never did forget about the cute librarian. Eventually, he got up the courage to ask her on a "date" - he had phrased it as a walk back then.
"But she was so..." he starts as he packed up his cooking supplies. He looks for the right word to describe that young lady.
"So..." He closes his pack with a frown.
"...Concentrated."
He remembers that on their date-slash-walk, she had brought along a book - the Bible, to be exact. They had walked together on the stone trail and she silently read to herself. At times, she would start preaching and he would attempt to listen in with an uninterested nod and an occasional "yeah", but that was as far as their conversations would go. The date-slash-walk ended with the girl's father, who just so happened to be the mayor of the town, yelling at him and telling him never to lay his dirty hobo hands on his daughter.
And he walked away, realizing why he disliked her.
"She was always thinking about the books," he recalls as he starts fishing again, "She only had that one purpose in life..."
"Just like me." he thinks sadly, and eventually, he reels in another catch.
But he remembers his original thought, with the proposal from one of his closest friends. His face turns stark red at the very thought and he attempts to shrug it off by concentrating on the size of his latest catch.
---
He felt her presence behind him, but he paid no attention. He knew she was silently standing there, waiting for him to turn around and give her some of his attention. And he wondered, with some amusement, how long she would stand there.
It was quite a while before his farmer friend coughed and signaled for him to face her. With a small smile on his face, he had turned, not knowing what to expect. He came face to face with a blushing girl, who was obviously hiding something in her hands.
"Um," she mumbled as she fidgeted a little, "um...I...uh..."
She could not find any words to aid her, but he felt a faint impending feeling of doom anyways. There was something wrong on this beautiful evening, he thought, and then he saw it.
He saw the faint swish of a blue feather behind her.
And suddenly, everything hit him with an insane force and he was overwhelmed by emotions. He knew what was coming and he dreaded it. His head begged with mad doubt that she was only joking, that this was a dream, that he would wake up and start his monotone day by fishing again. His entire self suddenly wished he were fishing and that he could be pulling up a catch right now, and turning it into a nice sashimi.
But reality wasn't that kind. As he stood there having a nervous breakdown in his mind, she stood there fighting with her words, begging them to help her so that those accursed feelings of hers would stop bugging her. But the words ran away in fear and she was forced to face the fisherman by herself.
With a parade of "um"s erupting from her mouth, she quickly pushed the blue feather into his hands and refused to look at the person she had just shoved the proposal into.
Everything in him melted when the feather was placed in his hands. His mind screamed "NNNNNOOOOOO" and he wished he was far away, alone on an island, eating his sashimi. He had to think of something, he had to think of anything, he had to do something...
He had turned bright red and stuttered something about fish.
"Ah, well, you see," he mumbled, embarrassed as all hell, "I, uh, like fishing more than women, so...so..." And he trailed off there. The girl farmer finally raised her head and just stared at him. He could not bear to face her as he pushed the blue feather back into her hands and turned around, facing the beautiful orange sunset.
He did not see the tears brimming in her eyes and she ran away as fast as she could, trying so hard to stop the onslaught of tears.
The next day, he saw her beaming happily with her new fiancé, the little patriotic carpenter.
---
"And that was that." he thinks to himself as his bucket slowly fills with each fish he throws. That was the last time he ever saw of his two fishing partners, the ones who had sat with him in the lake, sharing all of his weight and roles in life. It was true that he did not dare to face either of them after what had happened, but he was sure of what would happen if he did.
He sighs and throws another fish into the bucket. The man begins the long fishing process again; hooking the bait, casting the line, waiting for the fish, reeling in the fish, and throwing it into the bucket. He hates this process so very much, as he considers it to be the major downfall of his life, the very reason of why he is unhappy.
But it is his role in life, after all. It is the reason why he exists in the world.
He was made for fishing.