Chapter Text
The hum of the fluorescent lights seemed to vibrate directly inside Anastasia's skull. Mixed with it, the incessant noise of dozens of keyboards and the murmur of voices created the official soundtrack of her apathy.
Ana stared at the computer screen, her eyes fixed on an Excel spreadsheet that seemed endless. The bluish reflection of the monitor illuminated her face, highlighting an expression of pure boredom and unhappiness. She moved the mouse three pixels to the right. Then, three pixels to the left. Anything to make the system register activity, anything to pretend that her soul was still there.
"Live better. Buy more Joja."
The corporate slogan painted on the gray wall just above her cubicle looked like a bad joke.
Beside her, the thin plastic partition did absolutely nothing to muffle her desk mate's voice. Ana didn't even need to strain to hear; in fact, she was so used to that exact spiel that she could anticipate every pause to breathe.
“Yes, absolutely, Mr. Henderson!” her colleague said, with that artificial, rehearsed tone of enthusiasm that Joja demanded of its employees. “I perfectly understand your concern about the budget, but what you need to understand is that the Joja-Cola Premium Pack isn’t just a soft drink, it’s an investment in the well-being of your franchise! If we close the quarterly plan today, I can include an exclusive discount on the JojaGlow fertilizer line for your garden. What do you say?”
Ana rested her chin on her hand, letting out a long sigh that was lost in the icy air conditioning. She knew the script by heart. She knew the exact moment her colleague would smile at the client—even if he couldn't see it—and she knew how empty that insistence was. It was all a cold, cog in a machine. And she, Anastasia, was just another screw about to strip.
On the other side of the partition, the silence lasted only a few seconds before her colleague let out a victorious, albeit restrained, exclamation.
"Excellent choice, Mr. Henderson! The digital contract is already on its way to your email. Joja thanks you for your preference and have a great day."
The dry click of the phone on the hook ended the feigned friendliness. Immediately, her colleague's upright posture crumbled. She let out a heavy sigh, the kind that carries the weight of someone who has spent hours begging for corporate targets, and massaged her temples. The artificial enthusiasm had completely vanished from her face.
Without wasting any time, she grabbed a snack packet that had been forgotten in a corner of the table, preparing herself for the precious minutes of truce. With the packet in one hand, she walked around the partition and made her way to Anastasia's cubicle.
Stopping right in front of the desk, she leaned slightly, forcing Ana to look up from the spreadsheet. Her colleague stared into Anastasia's eyes for a moment and, with a grimace of genuine concern mixed with exhaustion, blurted out:
"Wow, Ana... You look terrible."
Anastasia didn't argue. Her face was visibly dejected, the deep dark circles under her eyes seemed to weigh her down, and the lack of sparkle in her gaze betrayed that her energy had been completely drained by that place. She just gave a weak smile, one of those that doesn't reach the eyes, and pushed her chair back.
"Yeah, I know," Ana replied, her voice as low as her own mood.
Leaning on the desk, Anastasia stood up, feeling her body stiff from hours in the same position. Together, the two walked side by side down the narrow corridor of faded carpets toward the gray wall where the time clock was located. The sequential sound of two electronic beeps confirmed that, at least for the next one hour, they were free.
Putting away their name tags, they pushed open the heavy glass doors of the reception area and left the Joja building behind, heading out in search of a place to have lunch and get some fresh air.
The park near the Joja complex was the only green refuge amidst the gray of the business district, although the noise of distant traffic still reminded them where they were. The two walked in silence until they found a wooden bench under the shade of a tree.
As soon as they sat side by side, Ana's friend let out a sigh of relief and opened the lunch bag, biting into the sandwich with the hunger of someone who had spent all their morning energy feigning friendliness on the phone. Anastasia, however, simply rested her elbows on her knees, staring into space. Her fingers distractedly played with the strap of her bag.
Her friend chewed, glanced sideways at Ana's empty lap, and frowned.
"Aren't you going to eat anything?" she asked, her voice muffled by the food. "Your lunch break will pass and you'll be too tired to handle the second shift."
“I’m not hungry right now,” Ana replied, her voice low, almost fading away in the light park breeze.
Her friend swallowed her food and wiped the corner of her mouth, looking at Anastasia with a weary seriousness.
“Ana, you need to eat. This place already sucks our souls dry; if you don’t feed your body, you’ll faint at your desk.”
“And what’s the difference?” Ana finally turned her face, looking at her colleague. Her eyes held a deep melancholy, a weariness that wouldn’t go away with a night’s sleep. “Looking at that spreadsheet, hearing the same script every day… Sometimes I feel like I’m already a ghost in there. I just… wanted a different life. I can’t see myself doing this for the next thirty years. There has to be something more than Joja’s blue.”
Her friend paused with the sandwich halfway to her mouth. Her gaze softened, losing the harshness of the corporate environment, but when she answered, her voice carried the weight of an unchanging reality.
“Everyone wants a different life, Ana. But what can we do? Pay the rent with dreams?” She shrugged, looking at her own feet. “Joja is a hell, yes. The job is stressful, the bosses don’t care about us, and the salary barely lasts the month. But it is what it is. It’s safe. I closed a great sale today, I’ll get a commission. That’s how I console myself. We accept what we have and try to survive on weekends. You can’t fight the system.”
Anastasia lowered her head again, her hair falling forward, partially hiding her expressive and sad face.
Her friend’s words hurt because they were real, but it hurt even more to accept that this conformity was her destiny. While her colleague saw Joja as an inescapable prison that she had to get used to, Ana felt that this conformity was slowly erasing who she really was. Silence settled between the two again, but now heavy with a suffocating intensity.
Anastasia's friend looked at the untouched sandwich in its packaging and then at Ana's dejected face. Without asking permission, she reached into the package, pulled out the food, and placed it firmly in Anastasia's lap.
"No excuses. You're going to eat it, even if it's just half," decreed the friend, in a tone that mixed authority and affection. "I'm not going to let you have a drop in blood pressure in front of me."
Anastasia looked at the sandwich in her lap and gave a resigned sigh. She knew her friend was just trying to take care of her. Disheartened, she unwrapped the sandwich and began to eat slowly, forcing herself to swallow each bite.
Realizing that the atmosphere had become too heavy, the friend deliberately changed the subject to try to improve Ana's mood. She started talking about silly gossip from the building, a new series she had started watching, and the simple plans she had for the following weekend. She avoided mentioning Joja's name or sales targets for the rest of the time. The effort worked in part: the weight on Ana's chest didn't disappear, but the slight distraction brought some relief.
When the sandwiches were finished, the two threw the wrappers in the trash and, with full stomachs and resigned spirits once more, walked back to the large gray office block.
The second shift dragged on with the typical slowness of an afternoon at Joja. The hours seemed frozen on the system's digital clock. The sound of keyboards and the murmur of calls around them turned into a suffocating background noise. Anastasia felt her back stiff and her mind exhausted from staring at the same numbers on the screen for so long.
At one point, needing to fill out a physical report, Ana stretched out her arm and pulled out the side drawer of her desk to get a pen.
As she pushed aside some old notepads and papers, her eyes landed on something different. Hidden at the bottom of the drawer was a textured paper envelope, yellowed with age and sealed with purple wax. It was the letter her grandfather had given her years ago, before he passed away, promising that she should only open it when she felt completely overwhelmed by modern life.
Ana stopped her hand in mid-air. Her heart skipped a beat. With Joja's grueling routine, she had almost forgotten that she had left the envelope there, kept like a lucky charm she was afraid to use.
Glacing sideways to make sure the supervisor wasn't around, and driven by a weariness that seemed to have reached the limit of her soul, Anastasia pulled out the envelope. Her fingers slid across the rough paper. She didn't want to wait any longer. With her heart racing and her hands trembling slightly, she broke the wax seal and opened the letter.
Ana carefully unfolded the aged paper. Her grandfather's handwriting, shaky but firm in its purpose, filled the page. She began to read it mentally:
Dear Anastasia,
If you're reading this, you must be in dire need of a change.
The same thing happened to me, long ago. I'd lost sight of what mattered most in life... real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong.
I've enclosed the deed to that place... my pride and joy: Bluewhale farm. It's located in Stardew Valley, on the southern coast. It's the perfect place to start your new life.
This was my most precious gift of all, and now it's yours. I Know you'll honor the family name, my dear. Good luck.
Love, Grandpa
P.S. If Lewis is still alive say hi to the old guy for me, will ya?
Anastasia finished reading and kept her eyes fixed on the paper for a long time. The world around her seemed to fall silent. Her grandfather's words echoed in her mind like a beacon in the middle of that blue and gray fog of Joja. Bluewhale Farm. Dew Valley. It was real. There was a way out. But doubt and fear of the unknown kept her paralyzed, sitting in the cubicle, staring at his handwriting.
Suddenly, a sharp sound cut through her thoughts.
Beep! Beep!
The alarm on Joja's productivity software beeped on the screen, flashing in red letters: WARNING: INACTIVITY DETECTED. RETURN TO WORK.
Ana jumped in her chair, her heart racing with fright. She looked at the flashing warning on the screen and then at the letter in her hand. Something inside her finally broke, but not from sadness, but from a deep and liberating irritation. She was fed up. Fed up with the beeps, the spreadsheets, the demands for every second of her existence.
With quick, decisive movements, driven by a sudden surge of adrenaline, Anastasia stood up. She carefully tucked the letter into her bag, grabbed the coat hanging on the back of her chair, and slung the bag strap over her shoulder. She didn't turn off her computer. She didn't save the spreadsheet. She simply turned her back to the cubicle and began walking firmly toward the exit.
"Ana?" her desk mate's voice echoed, confused, as she saw her pass by in her coat. "Ana, where are you going? Your shift isn't over!"
Anastasia continued marching down the carpeted corridor.
"Ana! Wait, have you gone mad? What happened?" her friend called again, her tone rising, now mixed with genuine concern.
Ana's steps quickened. She felt an overwhelming urge to look back, to give an explanation to the only person who had been kind to her in there, but she knew the risk. If she looked back, if she saw her friend's worried face, perhaps fear would overcome her. Perhaps she would be convinced to stay, to conform for another day, another month, another thirty years.
Ignoring the calls that grew more distant, Anastasia pushed open the glass doors of Joja forcefully. She passed through the reception without looking to the sides, crossed the electronic turnstile, and went out onto the street. For the first time in years, the air outside that building seemed truly pure. She was leaving. Forever.