Chapter Text
This is not a story I wanted to tell.
Seven months ago, my friends and I solved the murder of Mayor Lewis of Pelican Town. You can read about that in the account filed alongside this one. I left instructions with Gunther that these archives should never be unsealed until everyone involved is dead. If you've read it already, then it's either the distant future or somebody's made a huge mistake.
After what happened the week I moved to Stardew Valley, my appetite for another murder mystery was pretty low. Even my friend Abigail, who still mainlines true crime podcasts in every quiet moment, never went so far as hoping it happened again.
For seven months, Yoba obliged. I lived the rural life I'd dreamt of through all my long years at Joja Corp. The farm flourished, my friendships strengthened, the beauty of each season revealed itself to me in a slow but urgently lovely dance, and my girlfriend Leah and I did a lot of stuff that's none of your damn business. Elliott, the writer living on the beach, found a publisher for his gothic thriller novel. Shane from next door got sober and stayed that way. We even made some progress on fixing up the old community center, which no longer looked like a place you'd go to get stabbed, and had graduated to a place where you could go to peacefully inhale black mold.
Seven lovely months. More than I'd had in a row since I was a kid. Just long enough for me to convince myself that good months would follow good months forever. That's exactly what I was thinking when I boarded the bus that day.
This is the story of the deaths in Calico Desert. It's a story I imagine a lot of people will be interested in hearing, at least in our little corner of the world. It's a story where I once again lie through my teeth to the Ferngill Investigative Division. A story where I get a lot of things wrong, realize a lot of things too late, and nearly get myself killed more than once.
Like the last one, it started long before I got involved. Up to a thousand years before, if you believe some people. But for me, it started with another ride on that same damn trouble magnet of a bus.