Homeless in Sunset Valley (A Rags to Riches Story) (Chapter Two; Part One)
"Fresh Start"
“I can’t believe this…” River’s jaw dropped open as she surveyed the entrance way...There was a wide staircase leading to the upstairs and hallways heading towards other rooms in the house. She had seen from the outside that the house was three stories; with a brick facade and trim. When she came inside she saw that the walls were rock surrounded by grout. “That’s the dining room, right?” she said pointing to the right with walnut flooring and wall panels. Her fiancé nodded. They walked through the rest of the rooms in silence. River gazing around her. There was no furniture. It had just recently been completed and they really had no furniture to speak of, coming from the street.
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“The walls are still mostly undone since I figured we can decide on a finish together as we go along.” he said softly as he looked at her.
“Tell me we’re sleeping in a finished bedroom tonight.” River asked
“You’ll be sleeping in a finished bedroom tonight.” Haruo informed her.
“What do you mean?” River was confused.
Haruo looked at his watch, “We need to go if we don’t want to miss the party down at the park. It’d be rude for the guest of honour to be late to his own birthday party” he said as he ushered her down the stairs, out the door, locking it behind them and heading across the bridge to the taxi. He kept a silence a clam would be proud of. When they got to the park the music was loud and they figured that they should start dancing though no-one was on the dance floor yet. Guests were streaming in – friends and relatives who decided to take advantage of the spring-time activities in the park.
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“Well, at least we got the buffet table – we have a choice of food” Haruo remarked.
“That was a good idea.” River looked over at the guests lined up by the buffet table, “They must be hungry.”
“Yeah...then we got this dance floor, they can work it all off too.”
River shook her head, a wide grin on her face.
The guests lined up at the buffet table had their selection of vegetarian, turkey and for the terminally glucose-needy, there was also the enjoyment of having platefuls of cookies handy.
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She let out an impatient sigh as she took in her surroundings. As lively as the park was, she wanted her guy to herself. But she also didn’t want to seem ungrateful to the guests who came to celebrate her fiancé’s aging up day. After all, it’d been planned in advance and lots of people had shown up to the festive occasion. But it couldn’t be helped what the heart desired and she quelled her impatience for the festivities to be over.
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But it had been noticed by her fiancé and well, she had to be honest with him about it.
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“It sucks that I have two more days before aging up.” She said to him. “It means we can’t be together in the same room and…”
Haruo raised an eyebrow.
“…and it’s so unfair! It’s not like you’re twenty six and I’m fifteen!” She huffed waving her hand with the engagement ring on her finger. “We’re engaged for crying out loud. We’re both turning eighteen. You, just two days ahead of me.”
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Haruo only had one word. “Optics.” was all he said. He’d ended up broad-shouldered and muscular and he looked every inch a man. Whereas River still looked like a teenager. He was right about the possibility of people’s tongues wagging, the legality of a teen and a young adult living together in the same house alone together and it annoyed the living daylights out of her. He told her that he was stretching the limit by letting her sleep in the same house, he wasn’t going to have them wag their tongues about the possibility of them sleeping together in the same bedroom. “It just doesn’t look good from the outside looking in.”
Already Jamie Jolina was hovering about her man cooing that “my, oh, my, Haruo, you filled out nicely…”
...and frankly, that pissed River off immensely.
River had muttered something cutting, rather audibly about avoiding cougars, whilst stepping out during the next two days and it was certain the infamous Jamie Jolina got the message about latching onto men who were already spoken for. If that wasn’t clear enough, the fact that River flashed her diamond ring and a bold caress of her man’s arm sent a clear message to Jamie to back the eff off; that Haruo was River’s and Jamie should stop trying to put her grubby mitts on every man in a relationship.
It didn’t stop Jamie though from making an equally cutting remark about River trying to look older than her true age by utilizing make-up. “I guess they’re letting children play with warpaint now…”. She’d snidely commented risking a slashing verbal attack from River.
At least I don’t look like a reject from clown school…River thought acidly as she calmed herself from that blatant violation of her boundaries. Jamie did have a tendency to overstate her looks with garish makeup, utilizing red lipstick, blue eye shadow and eyeliner as well as using a purple hue of blush which combined for a sort Tammy Faye Bakker’ish appearance.
“Maybe you could get your husband to stop trying to sell condos in swampland!” River snapped as Jamie Jolina recoiled in surprise, “Oh, I’m sorry, wrong person…it’s just, I guess the makeup..,made me think of someone else. My bad.” She finished flippantly.
All of this repartée had contributed to her down mood as she stood contemplating the fountain (and perhaps the multitude of ways she could drown Jamie Jolina in it). On top of that, Morgana Wolffe was a friend even though she was ten or so years older than her and Jamie Jolina was trying to tryst with Morgana’s husband so she was not even in River’s good books to begin with. The only reason why River tolerated her being invited was because Jamie Jolina had been Haruo’s baby-sitter when he was a toddler and she was still in high-school.
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By this time, the sun had gone down and River was starting to feel fatigue coming on. The dance floor was going still but Haruo and River weren’t on there. Haruo was also showing signs that he was about ready to pack it in.
After taking their leave of the party goers who appeared to want to keep the party going until the late hours of the night, River and Haruo cleaned up the buffet table and got it out of the party area. It would be stored until the next time they threw a party which would be in two days time.
Coming home to what was simply put, a mansion but any stretch of the imagination was a jaw-dropping experience. According to the bank their net worth was just a hair’s breadth away from §1M. With a property Haruo picked up near the Falls as well as buying up the park and their home, their real estate holdings (unimproved lots and freehold estate) totaled almost §280,000 of that total. The rest of the valuation came from their liquidable assets such as cash.
Walking through the front door of their home; they finally had a place they could call home and truly it was nearly the equal of the Landgraab home; was still an exhilarating experience.
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But sleep was a lonely proposition as Haruo took the bedroom (unfinished) that was on the third floor and River took the massive finished bedroom which would be theirs once she aged up to young adult.
The fact that they couldn’t really sleep didn’t help matters much. Haruo was up at 3:15 AM cutting tiberium into spires.
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Then he went out to milk the cows in the rain. The chickens probably would not have eggs ready to collect until 5AM. By then he would be ready for breakfast leftovers. After coming back inside, he made the decision to head over to Aleister’s to drop off his latest results of his conjuring attempts: two tanzanites, a pair of diamonds, a rainbow gem and two luminescent gemstones all cut into spires which would bring in a significant haul of simoleons.
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River had two more days which meant that she would age up to young adult on Monday. It was debated whether or not she should go to school that day, but the simple fact that she needed to get her grades up meant that she should go to school and at least present her homework. Then they would throw a birthday party for her after-school. Then after that there was no more school unless, of course, she wanted to go to university.
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After 5AM rolled around, Haruo decided he was going to the grocery store then to Aleister’s as well as search Cemtral Park for seeds. He got about §815.00 for the haul of veggies, eggs and fish he sold.
He managed to find an orange tree seed and a few bean tree seeds of various types so his entire time at the park hadn’t been an entire waste of time. Then he caught a taxi to Aleister’s.
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The clerk used to be a paparazzi but gave it up when the Sunset Valley PD started cracking down on their illegal activities such as breaking into houses or stalking in order to “get the scoop”. That was just plain creepy. Haruo managed to negotiate a good amount for his gemstones as he was a young adult now and wasn’t about to be taken to the cleaners again.
Maybe he would start adding other cuts and eventually depending on the purity of the cut start dictating his own pricing. And that might probably start increasing the asking price of the gemstones. He wasn’t going to stay an impoverished farmer. He wanted to make sure that he had enough money for his kids when he and River got around to having them.
He decided to jog home from the elixir shop and that took a while.
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River on the other hand had breakfast and then headed back up to do some more painting. She planned to specialize in custom art when she became a young adult so thus she did what she thought was necessary in order to bring that goal to fruition. Currently she was working on an avant-garde piece that was large. It would bring in a tidy 4-figure amount when she finally finished and sold it.
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Considering the fact their property had two cow-pens and ten chicken coops, they had quite a few eggs and they were able to make cheese consistently. Of course getting 2 milk every twenty six minutes meant that Haruo would have to go out constantly. Perhaps they should look into robotics and start creating nanites so they could eventually get a plumbot to do those onerous tasks such as conjuring without exhaustion or going out every twenty-six minutes to milk the cows. And maybe a third to fish all afternoon before going off to charge themselves. At least that would help matters and free up humans to do what they did best.
What, you ask? Make more of thenselves…what do you think?
Sunday afternoon was more of the same. It was certainly interesting to speculate just how much the proceeds of the sale of the gemstones would be. Haruo hoped the sale of them would be well over §250,000. It would enable them to get two vehicles without hurting the principle amount too much. The goal here now went from mere survival to wealth accumulation. To go from nothing to the wealthiest person in Sunset Valley was a feat; from hereon in, the goal would be to maintain a comfortable standard of living for River and their family.
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Term investments were a way of doing so. But it wasn’t something that was doable by locking their money away for excessively long periods of time to earn 6-7% return. And stocks tended to fluctuate greatly from day to day on the trading market so, how to invest when the markets were so volatile.
It meant that Haruo had to invest in real estate and improve their valuation so that they could make more money on the flip-end than they did going in. Seeing what was available was going to be an interesting venture.
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Haruo could go see a realtor. Most did their open houses on a weekend to nab prospective buyers; not just on the subject property but for other potential sales as well. A buyer’s agent was good to have so that one could have an advocate. The seller’s agent is not obligated to look after the buyer’s rights. The seller’s agent has only one job and that’s to look after the rights of the seller. Which is why now, where the Watcher used to work, they now have a contractual obligation for both buyers and sellers and each agent protects the rights of their contractees - double-ending a real estate deal is now scrutinized for double-dealing and is pretty much frowned upon. It’s the old “Which side are you working for?” kind of thing.
Trying to diversify their investments so that they didn’t put all their eggs in one basket was also going to be a problem. It meant that they were going to have to find an investment broker and pay them a percentage of commission to find them a good mix of an investment portfolio that wouldn’t tank in hard economic times. All this did was evoke a state in which Haruo felt like his brain would explode.
Frankly one needed to negotiate the realm of investment carefully. One wrong selection could tank your entire portfolio. A frightening thought for those who were risk-averse.
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“What are you thinking about?” River asked. It was disconcerting to see how Haruo had grown up in other ways; not just physically but mentally too.
“Just thinking about how to grow our money so that we never get put in the position we were when I was a teenager.” That was the frightening thought. Investment was not something taught in schools. Bull and bear markets; and when was a good time to invest, sell or hold. A bull market being hot and a cooling bear market were the two extremes. School didn’t teach you what to do in either of those cases.
River could understand the feeling behind the simplistic emotions that governed needing to figure out investment: safety, security, the need to keep food in one’s belly and keeping a stable roof over one’s head. These four emotions drove humans to work, to toil for one’s supper and shelter, and for those who were more predatorily or desperation driven, motivated to commit crimes to satisfy those needs. Haruo, on the other hand, was more motivated to do things through legal channels as opposed to illegal.
“So…how are we going to do that?”
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“Real Estate Investment and Term GICs for long-range; short term high volatility stocks for the short term. 10% total net worth in stocks 20% in real estate. The other 70% is our operating budget. That means currently we hold §197,800 in real estate and we can hold §98,900 in stocks - we can get a return of about §22K annually.” Haruo looked at her.
“We can?”
“That’s compound interest for you?” Haruo grinned.
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“Somebody was listening in school…”. River commented wryly, “…because all this is going wayyy over my head.”
“First of all, we need to find an investment advisor…”
“…one that isn’t crooked, you mean..,” River interjected. She had a point. Frankly, one had to vet the advisors used when one had money to make sure they knew what they were doing, weren’t taking kickbacks to push a scam stock or were otherwise double-dealing. The best thing was to deal with an accredited investment house with a certification.
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Haruo looked over at her, “At least we now have a place to start from.” And that they did. Noticing his own stomach growling and how famished he felt he nodded towards the fridge with a look of concern in River’s direction, “Have you eaten?”
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“I had a breakfast calzone earlier but, I’m starting to get hungry again.” There was a slight touch of irritation that it felt as though he as a young adult was trying to parent her when they were only two days apart in age. It wasn’t like she couldn’t take care of herself. But she swept that irritation away.
He was only concerned for my well-being. People are already looking at us weird; him being young adult and me being teen even if it’s only for two more days so naturally he’s concerned for my well-being. But people being people will still talk about us.“Maybe you should eat again.” The idea was put out there casually and River’s stomach grumbled in agreement.
“I guess I’ll have another calzone.”
“…and I’ll make apple pie.” He paused a moment grinning, “…if only to get some of these apples out of my inventory.”
(Chapter Two; Part Four)
The day passed uneventfully as Haruo managed to conjure a pink diamond which could potentially be sold Monday and when the consignment selling deadline passed they were §215K richer with the gemstones he’d turned in early Sunday morning than they started
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Haruo decided to diversify that into real estate buying up the Alto’s estate at a whopping §325,000 which would set tongues wagging in Sunset Valley about the young and upcoming real estate tycoon. He went and did that on Monday morning as well as buying up the Sekemoto’s old home and Sunset Valley Park which he would be redeveloping into a lakefront so that it could be a kind of fishing resort.
Monday morning’s breakfast was waffles and Haruo was dressed to impress in a suit and tie as well as nice dress shoes.
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“Wow, looking snazzy there, honey…” River was bemused when she came into the kitchen to collect her plate of waffles. “Planning on doing some important stuff?”
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“Yeah, adult stuff. Going to see the investment advisor, then talking to the real estate agent. He says he’s got a line on the Alto property and I want to snap it up before it even goes on the market.” was her fiancé’s reply. “The Sekemotos just moved and they’ve got a develop-able property that I want to put some work into.”
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River looked sharply at him, one eyebrow raised. Haruo could notice a tone of pique when she replied, “If I wasn’t engaged to you, I’d be convinced, I just got insulted.”
“No, just extremely busy and trying to figure out how to best put our money and converting gemstones to use to better our financial situation, sweetheart. Did you get your homework done?”
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That was a shot., however…“Shut up, you.” He knew darned well she’d finished the homework Friday night - he was sitting right at the kitchen table while she was working on it; the louse, and enjoying every minute of her frustration at completing the assignment while he tossed his into the shredder since he was aging up Saturday and frankly didn’t give two hoots whether he finished his homework or not. Haruo’s smirk would have been infuriating if she didn’t love him so much. River, after eating headed back upstairs to do some painting before she had to leave to head to school, her last day of school before aging up to young adulthood.
Haruo, on the other hand, knew there were things to do before he had to set up for the party for his beloved wife-to-be so he got to the office to meet the investment advisor. Together they would make a plan to set up a real estate portfolio as well as a stock portfolio. And that would enrich him with rental income as well as investment dividends. So while his wife-to-be made a mad dash out the door to her final day of school, he got set doing the tasks that he had to do.
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Then there was time taken at the city hall to do all the necessary paperwork that needed to get done in order to have property transferred into his name and set up as an investment property. Paying the property purchase tax and what-not. It took well until after 10:30 before he could take a breather and contemplate what he’d just done which was reduce their total cash reserves from §928K to §328K but increased their total real estate holdings to §600,000. Then with the gemstones he was bringing up and recutting them to size and refining them, he would make their cash resources plenty again.
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When he got home he got on the phone and started inviting friends to a birthday party held for River. Renting stuff for a dance floor and setting up a karaoke and juice bar (let’s just call it what it was: alcohol) and he was quite certain there were probably a few who were going to get thoroughly plastered (staggering drunk) at this party. Namely a few party animals, Molly French being one of them. She was generally a blast at any party in town and she generally went to all of them.
It was mainly because River talked fondly of Sandi that Molly was being invited to River’s birthday party. And also because Sandi was at an age where she still really couldn’t be left at home alone. If she was left home alone, the social workers could get involved and no-one wanted that, even if it was de riguer for the 80s to let kids stay at home by themselves with strict instructions, “Don’t touch the whatever appliance that can kill you du jour…or you’re gonna get what for when mommy or daddy gets home”.
That wasn’t an empty threat back in those days. You wouldn’t be walking normal for at least six days when your dad got finished caning your behind.
(to be continued)
