Oh Cecilia!

Chapter Two

Thankfully there was an old broom propped up in the kitchen area and after setting down my bag, I immediately got to work. The old Cecilia probably never held a cleaning tool in her life. I am however, a woman who has lived alone since after high school. Granted, a vacuum cleaner would be very useful.

It took me a few hours to sweep and wipe clean the whole house. Fortunately, the place wasn't very big. The area downstairs had a small open space that I assume can be a sitting area or store front. Behind it was the dining room with a door leading to the kitchen and toilet. On one side of the dining room was a staircase that led upstairs to another open area and two bedrooms. One bedroom was a bigger than the other.

While trying to decide which room to take a sudden idea sparked. I quickly decided to take the smaller room. Obviously, I can't live off from the money I received from my late husband. So why don't I rent out the bigger room? The more I thought about it the better it sounds. I'm such a genius!

Patting myself on the back, my mind whirled as I started to plan things out. First things first, the bigger room needed to be refurbished. Although it was clean now, I still needed to wipe the windows and add some decorations. It had a bedframe that looked stable enough, but the mattress had to go. I needed clean sheets and daily essentials too.

The next day I immediately went out to find the market. It was thankfully easy to get directions and wasn't very far either. There was even a flea market right next to it. Most of the items at the flea market were old furniture and second-hand items.

Now if I was confident at one thing, it would be to make anything cheap look expensive. Growing up, my family never had much, so we had to make a lot of compensations. However, as a teenager I still wanted to look cool and had pretty things. So, I'm always on the lookout for quality items in bundle shops, online, garage sales, you name it.

After walking the whole market front and back I decided to buy two mattresses, some simple white sheets and an old tea set that I was confident can be cleaned and shined to look beautiful again. These were all essential items, but to make the apartment more appealing I needed a centre piece.

After walking a little more, I noticed a foreign peddler selling a variety of items. A dull rug caught my eye. It was old and dusty, but I could see that it had an interesting pattern. This was it. I bought the rug after a few words of haggling. Seeing that the peddler had a wagon, I asked if I could hire him to send all the items back to the shoplot. The peddler agreed happily.

Back at the apartment, I spent the whole day decorating the rooms and arranging the furniture available around the house. Somehow watching all those home makeover shows were worth it. It was a busy day and I only managed to eat some apples and cheese for lunch. By dinner time I wanted to try fire up the stove to cook a simple meal, but it took me awhile to figure out how cast iron stoves work. By the time it was dark, I was both hungry and exhausted.

I managed to cook some eggs and ate it with more apples and cheese. Gosh, living in this age sucks. I fell asleep dreaming about dancing apples singing pen pineapple apple pen. When I woke up my stomach was begging for food. So, I went out to buy groceries.

I stared at the meat section for a long minute wondering how to preserve it without a fridge when I felt like someone was staring at me. When I finally looked up, there were sharp gazes everywhere. People kept looking at me curiously, from the passers-by, other customers and even the store owner.

It didn't bother me too much. It was only natural. I am afterall a new face in the neighbourhood. My clothes were also more lavish than the common folk. Being a low-ranking noble who had taken up the corner shoplot, of course I stood out like a sore thumb.