“Young lady, you’re not here to play a prank, are you?”
“Pardon?”
His words snapped me wide awake.
I was a little startled by how openly hostile he was, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t understand.
If someone showed up out of the blue without contacting you beforehand and said, “I’m here to buy an Allstate apartment~,” who would take that seriously?
Especially like this.
‘I really did come dressed way too casually.’
A young woman had shown up wearing nothing but a tracksuit thrown on without much thought.
I wasn’t sure how to clear up the misunderstanding.
I couldn’t show him my ID, and I couldn’t exactly show him my bank account either.
I could point to the compact car I’d driven here in and say I was someone with enough money to buy a place like this, but…
‘That wouldn’t be nearly enough.’
A car and an apartment had nothing to do with each other.
Besides, there were people who drove imported cars bought entirely on loans, so it would be even more meaningless.
Honestly, even buying one compact car had been hard, but buying an apartment was even harder.
It really was one mountain after another.
As I was worrying over it for a moment, the agent began slowly looking me up and down.
The feeling was a little strange, so I glanced at his eyes.
“Ahem.”
He gave an awkward cough and opened his mouth again.
The way his hair wobbled when he coughed was a little memorable.
“Well… these days, there have been some students who come in with no intention of signing a contract and just go around looking at expensive homes. And then there are those so-called property-viewing crews who swarm in…”
“Property-viewing crews?”
“…People who come just to look at homes with no intention of moving in, so they can speculate later. They check every little thing—the market price, what’s nearby—and then just leave.”
‘That’s definitely suspicious enough.’
Still, I had just come here purely to buy a house. I felt a little wronged.
I hadn’t expected to have to do the whole, ‘I’m different from those people. I’ll prove I’m not like that,’ thing again.
But what could I do?
The person in need had to prove herself.
“I’m not a college student, and I didn’t come here to mess around.”
Of course, there was nothing I could actually prove. My kind and earnest gaze was the evidence.
I spoke seriously and stared straight at the agent with desperate eyes.
“…Understood. Please sit and wait for a moment.”
He looked at my face for a while, then let out a short sigh and rose from his seat.
He went over to a table piled with documents and began searching diligently for something.
It seemed my sincerity had gotten through to him.
‘What a relief.’
After a short while, he returned to his seat and set down a floor plan and a diagram of the apartment buildings on the table.
“The Allstate you mentioned is right by the station, so almost all the units are gone. Only Building 1102 is left.”
I was briefly flustered when I heard him say almost all the units were gone because it was near the station, but as expected, you really had to listen to Korean all the way to the end.
Letting out a sigh of relief inwardly, I focused on the agent’s explanation as he eagerly pointed at the floor plan with a capped pen.
“The remaining sizes in Building 1102 are 32 pyeong and 41 pyeong. For the 41-pyeong units, there’s the 3rd floor and the 8th floor. For the 32-pyeong units, there’s the 21st floor and the 25th floor. That’s what’s left. The layouts for the 41-pyeong and 32-pyeong units are here, so please take a look.”
I nodded at the agent’s explanation and looked at the floor plan.
Even looking at the floor plan, I couldn’t really tell much about the structure or anything else. To my eyes, both of them just looked like they had a lot of rooms.
On top of that, the 41-pyeong unit had one more room than the 32-pyeong unit.
It looked like a room that could be used as a utility room, but would I really need it?
‘Wouldn’t smaller be better than too big?’
I’d heard that if a house was too spacious, cleaning it was difficult.
Even if I had a robot vacuum, it wasn’t like a person could live without cleaning at all.
Should I hire a housekeeper or something?
After thinking it over for a moment, I still felt that a larger home would be better, so I chose the 41-pyeong unit inwardly.
‘If I’m buying one anyway, I should live somewhere spacious.’
As I stared intently at the plans and compared them for a while, the agent continued speaking.
“Brand-name apartments usually have very similar layouts, so you can assume it’s hard to find a different structure. The ones with completely different layouts also jump up in price, and there aren’t any nearby, so all the Allstate apartments in this area feel about like this.”
Then the Allstate apartments around here must all have this sort of feel.
In that case, the surrounding facilities and scenery were definitely more important.
‘Then I’ll have to go see it in person.’
“There were also people who came to see the 21st and 25th floors last week, so if you’re thinking of buying, you should choose quickly.”
“Hmm…”
I was a little conflicted.
If possible, I wanted somewhere with an open view, but weren’t the 21st and 25th floors too high?
On top of that, the floor area was smaller.
I’d be living alone, so the size wasn’t that important, but this was a personal desire.
I pondered for a moment while looking at the floor plan.
The structure did seem better for the 32-pyeong unit, though.
No.
A wider place still seemed better.
“Can I see the 3rd floor and the 8th floor today?”
“Yes, let’s go right away.”
####
The intuition Park Onam had developed over more than twenty years as a licensed real estate agent was telling him something.
‘She has no intention of signing a contract…’
The girl in front of him didn’t have the assets to buy an Allstate unit, let alone live there on a jeonse lease.
In fact, unless a customer was solid enough to have contacted him in advance, he was notorious for not properly consulting with them, much less showing them properties.
Even so, there was one reason he was taking her to see the unit.
‘…’
It was purely because she was pretty.
‘Is she actually a celebrity…?’
He trusted his own instincts, but just in case, he considered one hypothesis.
Her outstanding appearance and young age.
If a customer like this came alone, dressed casually, and asked to buy an Allstate apartment, perhaps she was an idol or an actress. In other words, someone in the entertainment industry.
Onam looked at Yeonbi’s face and tried to recall the faces of similar celebrities, but no one came to mind.
So he simply decided to fill his eyes with her appearance and figure.
From the start, that had been Onam’s goal.
His mindset was, ‘I’ll specially show you a house you won’t even buy, so you keep me company too.’
With that mindset, he decided to move his heavy body.
If Choi Yeonbi had been able to read those sinister thoughts of his, she would have immediately scraped together every bit of money she had to bury him, but unfortunately, a person could not read another’s inner thoughts.
“Get in.”
And so, unable to read Onam’s thoughts, Yeonbi got into the imported car.
Yeonbi naturally sat in the passenger seat.
Seeing her sit in the passenger seat, he at least thought she had basic manners and stealthily looked at her profile.
Her face didn’t seem particularly made up.
Her hair also looked like she had roughly brushed it before coming out, messy here and there.
Even so, she looked more perfect than most women.
Some might say she wasn’t that exceptional, but at least to Park Onam’s eyes, that was how she appeared.
‘…If only I were about five years younger, I might have had a chance.’
The agent let out a small sigh inwardly as he recalled himself from five years ago, when his hair had still been fully intact.
For a woman, her behavior was easygoing, and she didn’t put on airs.
On top of that, she was a beautiful woman who could maintain this kind of appearance without particularly dressing up.
She was truly close to Onam’s ideal type.
While he was busily observing Yeonbi with such lecherous intentions…
‘…It looked like a compact sedan, but the interior is really narrow. Maybe a midsize would be better than a compact after all. I can’t drive a supercar around all the time, so I should probably buy two cars, right?’
Yeonbi herself was busy inspecting the inside of the imported car.
Compared to its exterior, the interior was narrow, and the ride comfort somehow wasn’t to her liking. As she crossed this car off the list in her head, the agent slowly began driving forward.
“You said you’re not a student, correct? Then…”
“…”
Onam saw that even when he spoke to her, Yeonbi didn’t give him so much as a glance and was busily observing the car.
Seeing that, he looked at Yeonbi and slightly raised the corners of his mouth.
‘Is this her first time riding in an imported car? Well, it’s a rare car to see in Korea, so I guess that’s understandable.’
Yeonbi was thinking something entirely different, but Onam had no way of knowing that, and he became intoxicated all by himself as he turned the steering wheel with flair.
####
“…So since the initial sale period has already ended, the construction company won’t remove the wall for you. You’ll have to call in a separate contractor to take care of it.”
Listening to the agent, I diligently made notes on my phone.
When I said I was a little concerned because there were too many rooms, he kindly explained that there were walls that could be torn down.
‘So you can choose apartment options during the initial sale period too…’
Thinking that I should definitely check that if I wanted to move later, I trotted into the living room.
With no furniture at all, it looked much more spacious.
‘Wow…’
This was the 8th floor.
It wasn’t an especially high floor, but there were no buildings blocking the front, so the view was wide open.
The sunlight was good too, so it was incredibly bright even without turning on the living room lights.
A place where I could lie in the living room and watch the clouds drift by, and also bask in warm sunlight.
It felt a little awkward that there was no veranda. Wouldn’t it be cold?
Ah. Even if it was cold, I could just crank up the boiler, so it wouldn’t matter.
“This is the place I mentioned earlier where the balcony expansion construction has been completed. The usable area definitely feels larger, doesn’t it? The 3rd floor hasn’t had the balcony work done, so it’s still as is. Would you like to go compare them?”
As I stood alone looking out the window, the agent slowly approached and brought it up.
As he came closer, I could sense him subtly looking at my butt.
Did he think I wouldn’t know?
Honestly, it was a bit unpleasant, but I couldn’t exactly snap at him, “You just looked at my butt, didn’t you?”
So, wanting to finish as quickly as possible, I shook my head.
“No, I don’t need to see it. How much did you say this place was?”
“It’s… 930 million won.”
He gave a short sigh as he stated the price.
He had somehow brought me here, but it seemed he really wasn’t pleased.
Maybe he was thinking he’d wasted only his gas money.
When that thought occurred to me, I let out a small laugh.
A house this nice was only 930 million?
With the money in my account right now, I could buy this entire building.
Hearing the amount somehow put me in a better mood.
So I smiled and looked at him.
“This place. I’ll take this one.”
“Then we’ll go back and… No, pardon?”
“I said I’ll sign the contract for this one.”
At my firm answer, his face visibly stiffened.