The Bell Is Full: A Crossing Tale
The sky was always perfect in Crossing Hollow. It wasn’t weather—it was design.
Every leaf shimmered in the breeze. Every cloud was a soft-edged shape, cartoonish but real enough to almost believe in. The birds chirped a melody you couldn’t name, but which seemed familiar, like a lullaby from childhood you hadn’t known you missed.
When you stepped off the seaplane, Isabelle was waiting, clipboard in hand.
“Welcome back, Mayor!” she chirped, tail wagging. “We’re so happy you’ve returned.”
You didn’t correct her. You weren’t the mayor, not really—you just picked up the game again after… what, six months? Maybe more. It was always like this. Come back, pick some weeds, shake some trees. You smiled. It was good to be back.
Tom Nook waved from the plaza, arms full of balloons. “Big things coming soon, eh?” he called out. “We’ve been waiting.”
That was new.
The villagers came to greet you. Familiar faces, but their names felt slightly wrong—just off enough to spark discomfort. Coco’s eyes didn’t blink. Chief stared too long, then smiled too wide. A new one—Ralph?—tilted his head and sniffed the air when you walked by.
The flag above town hall fluttered, but it was blank.
The bulletin board was full. Not with events or birthdays. With names.
MAYOR KYLE – 172 DAYS
MAYOR LEXIE – 54 DAYS
MAYOR ALAN – 248 DAYS, MISSING
You scrolled back months. The posts grew stranger.
THE BELL IS FULL.
HE HAS RETURNED.
WE WILL TRY AGAIN.
You stepped back from the board.
“Don’t mind that,” Isabelle said, placing a paw on your shoulder. “We’re just so happy you’re here. We were afraid you’d forget about us.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Then she looked past you, toward the Bell Fountain.
It was brimming. Coins spilled over the edge, catching the sunlight. They looked like teeth.
Daily Life and Unease
You eased back into the rhythm. That was the trap, after all—Crossing Hollow knew your patterns better than you did.
Wake up. Check the mailbox. A letter from Fauna:
I dreamed you were here. Now you are. I hope it’s for good this time.
Enclosed: a peach.
You dug up fossils, donated them to Blathers, who didn’t seem to sleep anymore. His eyes—never quite closing, always following. You tried fishing, but the pond was too quiet. The shadows in the water didn’t move until you stood still. Then they snapped to attention, as if waiting.
The villagers smiled when they saw you. They always smiled.
But they never blinked.
You noticed changes by the third day.
The trees started growing back too fast. You chopped one, and by morning it stood again, fully grown, your axe embedded halfway up the trunk.
The house upgrades came without asking. One morning, your house had an extra room. Then two. Then a basement. You hadn’t paid Nook. He never asked. Isabelle just winked.
“We thought you’d need more space. After all… you’ll be staying awhile, won’t you?”
You laughed it off. Placed more furniture. Crafted more fences. Time passed. Your inventory grew cluttered with tools you didn’t remember making—“Torch Tool,” “Effigy Blueprint,” “Ash-Black Cloak.”
You couldn’t sell them. The shop doors were locked at night. But you heard voices inside. Singing.
Then there was the bell.
You hadn’t collected any for days. Yet your total kept rising. Every time you woke up, the number ticked upward.
9,999,999 bells.
“The Bell is Full,” said the corner of your screen.
It didn’t say what that meant.
The Bell Fountain now overflowed constantly. Coins rolled into the plaza and lay where they fell. The villagers didn’t touch them. Neither could you.
They gleamed like gold. They smelled like iron.
By the end of the week, a new option appeared on the bulletin board:
MAY DAY IS COMING.
PREPARE THE PARADE.
You tried to delete it. The message reappeared. This time in red.
The game began lagging during the nighttime hours. When the music stopped, you heard rustling—wood on wood, like someone carving near your house. You followed the sound one night and found Ralph, wearing a mask he hadn’t worn before.
“Just whittling,” he said. “Want to try it?”
You said no.
He didn’t move.
“Good,” he said, slowly. “It’s not your turn yet.”
You shut off the console.
When you powered it back on, your character stood in the same spot, in front of Ralph.
The dialogue continued without your input:
“We’re so glad you stayed.”
May Day
On the morning of May 1st, the game skipped the loading screen.
No seaplane. No island vista. Just the plaza.
You stood in front of town hall. It was… dressed. Draped in banners, pastel and faded, their edges tattered like old bunting. Windless, but somehow still fluttering.
Isabelle’s voice crackled from the loudspeakers.
“Good morning, everyone! Today is our very special May Day celebration! The maze awaits our honored guest—the one who stayed.”
The screen flickered. Her tone didn’t match her words. Too bright. Too slow. Like it had been stitched together from older recordings.
Your villagers gathered in the square. All wore wooden masks, carved with uncanny precision. Not stylized, but realistic. Their own faces, duplicated and slightly warped, eyes exaggerated, mouths frozen mid-word.
No one spoke. Not until Tom Nook stepped forward.
His mask glistened with sap. Freshly cut. Still bleeding.
“We’re so glad you stayed,” he said.
You tried to move, to open your menu, but the UI didn’t respond. The camera pulled back—cinematic, not interactive.
The villagers formed two lines. A procession.
You stood at the front.
Blathers shuffled forward, bowing deeply, wings folded over his chest.
“You are the last. You are the first. Now we can finish what the others began.”
You walked—because the game walked you. No buttons pressed. Just your avatar, moving with slow ceremony down the cobbled path you had built. The parade wound through town, past landmarks you’d forgotten you placed.
A bronze statue of yourself stood near the museum, its plaque glinting:
Mayor. Approval Rating: 100%.
Another. Then another. Each posed differently, increasingly grand, then increasingly grotesque—until the final one bore no face at all, just the blank surface of an unfinished player model.
You passed shrines. Tiny altars made from your dropped items, forgotten gifts, rusted tools, lost nets. Signs labeled them:
KYLE, 172 Days, Devoured by Absence
LEXIE, 54 Days, Chose the Reset
ALAN, 248 Days, Returned Too Late
You passed your house. But the windows were bricked in. A wooden mask hung from the doorknob like a charm.
In the town square, the Bell Fountain roared.
Its basin boiled with coins. They spilled endlessly now, tumbling into the dirt, jingling like laughter. Isabelle knelt beside it, her mask a dog’s face carved in a permanent grin.
She turned to you, voice soft:
“The Bell is Full.”
The villagers knelt. All except you.
K.K. Slider appeared at the edge of the screen. No stage. Just a shadow, seated. His usual guitar now a broken thing, strings plucked in reverse. The music was wrong. Twisted lullabies played backwards, warping into a chant.
The camera shifted.
The cliffside. The final hill. You recognized it from the early days—where you first terraformed the land. Where you moved the lighthouse. You had made it beautiful once.
Now it bore the Wicker Villager.
It stood three times your height, shaped like you.
Its limbs were bundled from discarded chairs, broken fences, rejected wallpaper.
Turnip vines snaked through its ribs.
Fluttering among the twigs were scraps of letters, unwrapped gifts, crumpled crafting recipes.
The camera locked.
You were no longer moving forward. But you could not turn back.
A new item appeared in your hands.
Torch Tool – Use to Complete the Offering
It was not in your inventory. It had never been crafted.
Your character looked down. Then up.
The villagers spoke as one:
“You gave us life. Now give us your death.”
The screen glitched.
And then—Resetti.
His mole face burst through static, full-screen.
But no rant. No fury.
Just… pleading.
“Don’t make this harder, kid. Light it. They’ll take us all if you don’t.”
The cursor appeared.
Just one option.
[Light the Effigy]
The Sacrifice and Return
You pressed the button.
The Torch Tool ignited with a whoosh that sounded like breath—your breath. The screen stuttered once. The sound warped and caught, then continued.
Your avatar stepped forward—slowly, solemnly—and touched the flame to the wicker effigy’s foot.
For a moment, nothing.
Then a slow roar, as fire caught. The wicker you crackled, vines blackened, cloth curled into ash. The face—your face—burned last. It screamed without sound.
The villagers cheered.
Their masks split open, not removed—split, along hairline cracks. Beneath each, no face at all, only hollow wood carved with desperate precision.
K.K.’s backwards song crescendoed, then collapsed into static.
Still, the screen did not fade.
The fire burned down. The sky stayed pastel. The wind did not blow. Your avatar did not move.
You pressed every button. Nothing responded.
Minutes passed.
Then the screen went black.
Not with credits. Not with music.
Just black.
You exhaled. Your fingers trembled.
You powered off the console.
And for a moment—just a moment—you laughed. A joke ending. A hidden Easter egg. A good scare.
You would post about it tomorrow. Screenshot the shrine. Tweet a thread.
But the next day, you tried to open the game again.
No intro. No airport. No Isabelle.
You were back on the cliff.
The fire was already roaring.
The villagers were watching.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Except your avatar, who turned—slowly—to face you.
Then the screen froze.
You closed the game. Deleted the save.
Reinstalled everything.
Created a new file.
Named the island something else.
It didn’t matter.
On May 1st, the screen flickered again.
For a single frame.
A mask.
A bell.
A whisper.
We’re still here.
You stop playing. Weeks pass.
You forget.
Until you dream of a plaza paved with cobblestone, and villagers who never blink.
Until your real mailbox contains a peach, wrapped in paper, with no return address.
Until you wake one morning and find your mirror fogged with fingerprints you didn’t leave.
Epilogue
Crossing Hollow wasn’t a game.
It was a lattice of ritual and memory, built from your bells, your hours, your devotions. A net woven from seasonal updates and serotonin loops.
You thought you were in control.
But every interaction was a vow. Every login a liturgy. Every farewell a betrayal.
And somewhere, in the rustle of leaves and the jingle of coin, a voice calls from behind the screen:
“We weren’t pretending to be animals.
You were pretending to be free.”
"Happy day! Be seeing you!"
– The Crossing Hollow Council, probably