For Rent

Chapter 10: Evergrande Hell and Back

But until the homeless refuge construction's ends, Karine is kept up at night because of her inspiration for writing a jumbled mess she calls a horror movie script on her phone. Which she used mostly as a notebook because she knew the telephony services wouldn't work.

She reports to work, a little tired, and lets her phone recharge. She then overhears Yenaleda pleading with the boss to buy her numbered company out since its loans are repaid in full. As are the dividends.

"Karine, we already sold all sixty units in these two condo towers. Start building the towers!" Billerica yells at Karine.

"What does that imply for your debts?" Karine asks her boss at the onset of the condo towers' construction. "I didn't tell you this before, because you regularly told me that I wanted to become caliph instead of the caliph, but you might need to get debt counseling to prevent an Evergrande kind of situation from happening! No opportunity lasts forever, nor is every opportunity worth pursuing!"

Evergrande was way over-leveraged, and pursued opportunities it had no transferrable expertise in. Like food, healthcare, automotive and entertainment industries, Karine ruminates while awaiting an answer from her boss.

"Yeah, you should be able to pay the payroll out of rental revenue going forward" Yenaleda comments after Billerica buys out her shell company for about a year of salary.

"Now that the initial debts are fully repaid, Karine, the debts incurred for you will be repaid, too" Billerica uses the proceeds from the sale of condos to repay all outstanding debts.

Thank heavens for this! I can hire another employment agency to get me another project manager to replace Karine. She was, simply put, unpleasant to work with. She might have known what she was doing, but she asked too many questions, she always seemed like she knew better when it came to housing and society, or business strategy, Billerica ruminates, then puts a job posting for Karine's replacement.

He starts daydreaming about moving into one of the luxury homes Karine's predecessor built but was unable to sell, as well as the price of one such house. So, while the luxury home market might have crashed, condos and rental homes, on the other hand, appear to skyrocket.

"In a day or two, we'll move into a new home. I'll check against the list of homes Karine's predecessor built and got subsequently foreclosed before her predecessor was fired" Billerica then shows the contents of that list to his two employees.

The two are shown an eclectic selection of homes. Some of these appear built as if carved out of molten metal, while others were clearly designed by non-Taladuans. Each of the styles appear to reflect the race of damned, or demons, that designed home blueprints with it.

"For some reason, my predecessor seems to have built McMansions reminding me far too much of the McMansions in my neighborhood on my home world!" Karine has come to realize what her predecessor built.

Some of these homes, across a variety of styles, remind me of horror movies, while others remind me of my days of playing MAA. And even of why I even started playing MAA back then: I initially looked at MAA as I had a horror RPG at the time. About stuff being out to get me, and sometimes questing inside haunted houses, she starts thinking about what got her through the leveling stages of the game. Good thing the damned don't seem to mind abrupt changes in architecture within the same neighborhood.

But because Karine knows they can't build more than two condo towers at a time, and the lead time to get the materials is far shorter than their construction time, she decides to leave the two Taladuans to their own devices when they are shopping among a selection of high-end homes. And to continue writing her horror movie script while watching the real estate market for more properties to tear down. Ideally two more properties.