Stardew Valley |This Modern Love | F!Female Farmer x Sebastian

This Place is a Prison

A chilly rain hammers Zuzu City, and Sage is fucking miserable and soaked. Her thin t-shirt clings to her slight frame and her teeth chatter. Someone stole her umbrella during her shift, yet another fuck you from Joja. The storm drenched her as soon as she left the dingy mid-rise office building, another double-shift in the books.

So here she is, sodden and freezing. Her back aches from hunching over a computer all day. A car speeds by, honking and tossing a wave of dirty rainwater across her legs, soaking into her boots. Super cool.

The air stinks of exhaust fumes, piss, and wet dog. Skyscrapers tower around her, predators closing in, their lights like countless eyes staring her down.

"Hey baby! You wanna have a good time? That shirt would look better on the ground!" Two men call to her from a dark alley. They're much older, with guts that hang out of their stained shirts. They wear hard hats and safety vests. Construction workers, but they're not doing a lot of working.

Keep walking, she tells herself. Look like you're on a mission. Ignore them. The men jeer after her as she walks past, head held high. "Ehh, you're not worth it, anyway! Be that way, bitch!" Sage darts through a crosswalk, dodging cars. The voices fade.

It's payday, which should cheer her up. But her already skimpy paycheck doesn't stretch far. Rent's due, and so are bills. After that, she's left with roughly $100 to feed three people for the next couple weeks.

Sage's boots squelch against concrete as she steps into her apartment building. From one shoddy mid-rise to another. Chips cover the brick exterior, and the inside's no better. Old, stained wallpaper, probably from the 60s at the latest, peels in the corners of the mailroom. Stinks of dirty shoes and smoke.

Beneath her feet, the dark red carpet is stained and threadbare, so worn in places the wooden planks below peek through. She climbs the creaking stairs to her apartment, two floors up.

The front door's stuck again. Something the landlord promised to fix. Years ago. She slams her hip into it, forcing it open. Sage pries off her sodden boots. Her stomach's screaming at her, but there's nothing in the fridge but a container of baking soda and some expired soy sauce. Same story with the cupboards. She sighs. Does that a lot lately. Same shit, different day.

In the living room, the lights are dim. She glances in and scowls at the scene waiting for her. Like rag dolls, Sage's parents slump over the couch. Shattered bottles litter the scuffed wooden floor. A dark bruise blooms on her mother's eye, but she's too high on Yoba-knows-what to respond when Sage asks if she's okay.

She already knows what happened, anyway. It's the same old story. Her parents took too much of whatever their drug of the day is, and fought about something stupid. Her father always gets violent when he's drunk or high. She's been at the receiving end enough times to know by now.

Used needles lay on the rug under the couch. Plates of old food scraps litter the coffee table, flies buzzing around them, the stench of it pervading the room. Sage holds her wet shirt over her nose as her stomach roils. Nothing new at home. This is how it's been since Sage was fourteen, and her parents decided work was less important than drugs. She's supported them since then.

It was disgustingly easy, finding a corporation to hire an obvious fourteen-year-old lying about her age. And that's how the past eleven years have gone. Sage considers herself lucky - she at least graduated from high school. Not everyone who lives in her neighborhood, Bell Center, has that privilege. It got easier after that, after she didn't have to balance both work and studies. So, here she is again.

She tiptoes into her room, eases the door shut. She figures she'll mail the rent check when she leaves to find something to eat. Sage digs in the drawers of her desk, looking for spare bills and change. An envelope catches her eye. A forgotten birthday card? Maybe there's money inside. She opens it, and a letter falls out. The handwriting is flowery, meticulous in its tidiness.