For Rent

Chapter 6: Plan Iznogoud

After the contract is signed, which lies outside of the HCP's scope, Billerica puts a job listing for a property manager because he feels like Wonderlic's rental property portfolio is going to expand. Meanwhile, Karine appears to be wondering how she's going to finance the construction of all five buildings in the contract, and the number of duplexes required to get all five buildings built, notwithstanding the final duplex, which is one of the buildings covered.

Given that the whole neighborhood has been devastated over the explosion at the power plant, I think the priority is the eco-center, Karine starts thinking while she double-checks the costs of building it. And, of course, whether the HCP's blueprint supplier even have one. But she suspects that other communities with ongoing HCP projects would need similar amenities, and certainly eco-centers and police stations. No, wait! No police force worth its salt would lease its stations! Maybe, if I sold the police station, some of the money would go towards repaying our debts and the rest would be used to build the neighborhood!

And yet, after spending the rest of the day interviewing unemployed locals that might have a clue as to how to manage properties, he ends up hiring a local female that might have been overqualified for most jobs available locally.

"I'm Yenaleda, and I will be responsible for dealing with the tenants from now on"

"I'm Karine, I deal with the construction aspect. For a while, we'll be working out of the boss' cabin in the swamp"

When the 3 return to the boss' cabin in the swamp, Karine realizes that she will need to sell a duplex just to get the necessary money to get the police station built, and that's just the blueprint and materials. She realizes there are other needs to fulfill.

But before they go to sleep, Yenaleda cooks them some soup that reminds Karine of her own cooking of soup.

As they start eating the soup, Karine feels like one of the key ingredients of the soup has the consistency of sticky rice cake. The soup also contains other seasonings and ingredients in thin stripes. One of these ingredients feel like meat, another one like seaweed.

"Is that... tteokguk?" Karine asks the two Taladuans at the table.

"What exactly is tteokguk?" Yenaleda asks her, rolling her black eyes.

"Tteokguk is a soup that's prepared more or less like what we are eating right now" Karine answers her coworker, while she eats the Taladuan equivalent of tteokguk.

Maybe I should cook myself some Korean stuff upon returning here, just not tteokguk. I ate jeyuk bokkeum a while ago, so maybe I could eat it again. But who am I kidding? I might not return home for a while, Karine seems to have some suggestions for eating. However, she seems to treat the Taladuan version of tteokguk as a meal like any other.

"Just a bit of caution about Karine: sometimes she makes me feel like she wants to become caliph instead of the caliph, but she's the kind of person who will look beyond the project itself" Billerica, facing Yenaleda, tells her before taking a call from Xerrid.

"Hi Billerica, this is Xerrid from the employment agency. Are things going well with Karine?"

"Karine's intellectual disposition made her very vulnerable to wanting to become caliph instead of the caliph! She had the gall to even suggest building homeless refuges, thinking that more housing starts won't be enough to solve homelessness, and that a mayor's official residence would be better used as a homeless refuge, if it was to remain town-funded!"

"Billerica, don't be too harsh on her! She probably has a deep understanding of the social dynamics of housing, which is a breath of fresh air in our construction industry! But does she get the job done?" Xerrid asks him.