Can someone please explain to me why, in the actual fuck am I going through flashbacks that weren’t even my own?

  “…And for my very special grandson…” an old man spoke to me, lying on a really, like, genuinely the worst bed I had ever seen.

  I mean it. What even was that? The mattress was about an inch thick, and the bed legs looked like they would break under any pressure. Geez, grandpa. Your family sure didn’t love you much if they let you sleep in this.

  “I want you to have this sealed envelope,” Grandpa continued.

  No point in listening in too much, I already knew how this story went – after all, I already experienced it, in a video game called Stardew Valley. It was an amazing game, which I had over five hundred hours of game-play on. It was an escape from my otherwise dull and terrible life. One day, I was pulling an all-nighter, and after I went to sleep with a headache and heavy eyes, I woke up to this.

  Fast forward, “I” had then gone on to live my life, work in a soul-sucking corporation called Joja (they literally had people decompose into skeletons there), and then open up the envelope.

  It was a deed to a farm that belonged to Gramps. I moved in there, then, and this is where it all began.

  I stepped out of the bus to be greeted by a pretty redhead, who looked like she was in her late twenties or early thirties. She had a smile on her face as she walked up to me.

  “Hello! You must be John Doe. I’m Robin, the local carpenter,” she said.

  So that was Robin, huh?

  “Hi, nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Mayor Lewis sent me here to fetch you and show you around. Anyways, just follow me, I will lead you to your new farm.”

  I nodded and followed after her.

  All around me was a nice, green forest with a few trees on which pink leaves grew. The bus drove away, and on the other side of the road was a mine cart sitting on a rail. I already knew it led to a mine, and it would require magic-fuckery from literal ancient spirits of the forest to fix, which would be preceded by taking drugs from a shady man, who very likely had an affair with a married woman named Caroline.

  Not like it had anything to do with me, I guess.

  Soon after, just half a minute of walking, we reached the farm. A lone, small house with a red roof stood there. The whole area around it was a mess – trees, bushes, rocks, and dead logs lay around everywhere, and I just barely managed to see the small pond far away.

  I would have to clean it up later. Ugh…

  “Hey, don’t worry about how the farm looks.” Robin placed a hand on my shoulder. “There’s good soil underneath all of that.”

  I hoped that cleaning it up would be as easy as it was in the game. If it were like real life… I shuddered to imagine all of the labor I would have to go through.

  Just then, the door to the house opened, and an older man, in his sixties, I would say, with a large gray mustache, walked out of my house. I already knew it was Lewis, and only now did I realize just how weird it was that he was walking around in my own house.

  He had a warm smile as he looked over us, but I already knew he was a huge dick deep down.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Welcome! I’m Lewis, Mayor of Pelican Town. Everyone’s been talking about you nowadays. People rarely move in here,” he sighed. “You’re moving into your grandfather’s old house. It’s quite… rustic.”

  “’Crusty’ would be more apt,” Robin chimed in.

  “Rude!” Lewis shouted. “Don’t worry, John. She’s just trying to make you buy one of her house upgrades.”

  Which I will definitely buy.

  I had numerous playthroughs of the game, and so far, they talked just like in their dialogue in the game. A dirty chuckle came from my mouth as I thought to test something.

  “Lucky Shorts,” I said out of nowhere.

  Lewis’s face froze momentarily, while Robin looked confused.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  “Uh, honestly, I don’t know," I lied. "It came out of nowhere. I was just reminded of something that I heard-”

  Lewis coughed loudly to interrupt them. He was a bit nervous. “Well, Robin, we should leave already, don’t you think? Let’s give John some space to settle down. Oh, and John, you should go and greet everyone in the town tomorrow. The townspeople would appreciate that.”

  Lewis and Robin then left, and I was left to my own thoughts.

  Any normal person would be shocked out of their skull if anything like that had happened to them. Me? Of course, I was confused, but… was it really a bad thing? My life was really dull and depressing, and this could change everything.

  Of course, it could still be just a dream, to which I hoped I wouldn’t one day see a very odd lamp. Those who understand, heh.

  If it were some magical reincarnation bullshit, then I was full on board with it! Hell, who wouldn’t go and live out on a farm, with pretty much superpowers and become a trillionaire in a couple of years?

  It was time for me to go and enjoy this new life.

  I smiled as I looked over the farm and got ready to clean up.

  Lewis, the beloved mayor of the Pelican Town, mused as he thought about this new young man who had just come into town.

  John’s grandfather used to be a very close friend to Lewis, and to think that now his own grandson would come here and live out a farm life just like him… it was touching, to say the least.

  He frowned as he thought about what the young man had said. “Lucky Shorts”. Apparently, he heard it somewhere, but where? There were only two people who knew about those, and if his secret got found out? Catastrophic! He couldn’t let the townspeople know of his relationship. He was a mayor, somebody to look up to!

  Carefully, he would have to go and make sure that nobody was onto him. But first, he would go and do his duties as a mayor. He was surely busy!

  Robin, the carpenter, hummed as she worked on an addition to her new house.

  This new kid looks interesting… I hope he has enough to pay for construction; he definitely needs it. She chuckled and shook her head as she hammered down the wood.

  Interesting things might soon happen in this small town.

  People in here looked like… people. As in, like real-life humans, and not pixel, or 2d characters that I was used to.

  I had come over to a pond and checked myself out in the reflection. I still looked the same as in my old life, quite young, with dark hair and eyes, and what I hoped was a handsome face. I wondered what Haley would say about it… What did she even look like?

  Marriage was a thing, question was who I would choose?

  When playing the game, I chose just based on my whims, all of these people were just mere characters. I was just having fun. But now? If it was to be something serious, I would have to go make my decision carefully.

  I hit the hard rock on the ground with my pickaxe. It wasn’t just a couple of hits to destroy, to my displeasure. Long days of hard work stretched ahead of me.

  Yet, I wasn’t tired yet. In fact, my endurance was superhuman! Chopping trees, plowing the ground with a hoe, then watering the parsnip seeds I got as a present… they barely tired me. At least one good thing, huh.

  Energy was also different – there was just a slight difference in my exhaustion, compared to the game, where nothing happened until you hit zero energy. I couldn’t see any stats either.

  Well, whatever!

  I hit the rocks, the wood, the ground, the bushes whole day. Greeting the townspeople? Not today, I had to calm down my mind first.

  And so, the whole day passed, and I let the sweat and exhaustion accumulated throughout the day wash over me. My mind cleared up, and I was ready to go to bed. No shower. I didn’t even need one – I didn’t smell whatsoever, how convenient.

  I lay on the bed and smiled as I looked at the roof.

  This really wasn’t the dream. This feeling, the passage of time, and everything… it was real, without a doubt. No “it was all a dream!” sequences out of nowhere.

  Why did this all happen? I had absolutely no idea. Maybe some god transported me. Maybe I actually died in my sleep, and I’m hallucinating. Maybe some magic-fuckery happened, and something from this world transported me here? Maybe it was Qi; he broke the fourth wall sometimes.

  Whatever it was, I embraced it.

  And so, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.