Jane sighed thinking about one of the later conversations she had with Mira before they departed from the academy to their own homes, the discussion was about their future together. Mira’s family was pretty unique, she was part of a tribe of nomads that had started as one tribe long ago and had branched out into tens of tribes.
There was a tough decision to make if her family disapproved of her leaving the tribe and moving away to live with Jane. If they were okay with it, then everything was okay, but if they weren't, Mira would have to choose between Jane or her family.
According to what Mira told her, if she didn't have the approval of her family and she left anyway, then she was banished from her tribe— which wasn't a great outcome. But Mira had also told her that the odds her parents actually disapproved of her leaving was slim to none, but the chance was still there and stressed Jane out.
Mira was always going to come visit Redwood, but Jane was hoping it wasn’t going to be her last visit. If her parents didn't want her to leave her tribe and live with Jane, then she would fight them herself— fight was a metaphor for ‘convince’ in this specific case.
In Jane’s head, if Mira’s family disapproved then there was a 70% chance she left her tribe and stayed with Jane considering how much she knew about Mira. She crossed her fingers and prayed everyday that her family said yes, she didn't want that horrible decision to befall her loved one.
‘Mira wouldn't want me to get worked up over this, whatever happens, we will deal with it together.’ Jane thought and left it to rest in her brain.
In front of her stood a three story building made mostly of redwood with a vibrant white stone as its foundation. The building had lots of circular windows covering all its sides; some were large, some were small, but there had to be a few dozen after taking a brief glance up at it.
Above the double doors at the front entrance was a massive wooden signboard with a little symbol for a house and a title that read, “Redwood’s Realtor, the Evergreen’s.”
On both sides of the signboard were massive blue banners with a white flower emblem that had a feathery circle surrounding it. Jane could recognize the flower, it was called a trinium flower and it was the most famous flower in all of Trinium as it was named after the royal family. As one could guess, the banners held the royal crest of the Trinium royal family, cementing the fact this place was a kingdom run building.
And this was the place she was looking for.
‘Hopefully they have a nice place to purchase.’ Jane tapped her hips, feeling the pouch of coins hanging by her waist jingling as she walked into the building.
Something she hadn't told anyone yet— well there were a few things, but one of them was the money she got after graduating.
Besides getting an allowance every month for their own use, the academy gave every graduate fifteen gold coins to use for whatever they wanted. It could be used as an investment to start their own business like Jane was planning, to purchase items they needed, or they could spend it all on useful junk— it was up to the person.
The academy told them it was the kingdom's investment for the future. Hopefully by granting classholders a load of money, they could kick start some potential future businesses or ventures. Whatever the case, it was very generous of the academy to hand out free money and Jane wasn't complaining. To her it was a godsend that she had enough money to purchase a decent property so easily.
Without delay Jane walked into the Evergreen’s building and surveyed the sights of the interior, not too surprised at what she saw. Everything was clean, everything looked expensive and everything looked professional. Jane wondered if this was the aesthetic of the Evergreen’s or if all kingdom run buildings had some sort of code to follow so as to not diminish the reputation of the kingdom itself.
The floor was made of a dark wood not found in Redwood and it was perfectly polished as it gleamed with reflections from the elementalist installed lights overhead. The walls were a mix of white stone like the outside, and another type of wood also not found in Redwood— the woods were most likely expensive kinds imported from other towns.
Decorations plastered the walls but not in over access, only a few paintings or sculptures were around here and there. Jane wouldn't call them decorations per say but there were a lot of drawings of houses alongside gorgeous landscapes hung up on the walls. A clear advertisement for themselves. Lastly a long red rug that looked to be the only thing slightly crinkled and used was laid out on the floor, leading from the entrance to the front desk further in.
To Jane the whole place wasn't that impressive, at least compared to the academy, but she could tell that most normal folk who walked in here would feel a little uncomfortable at how lavish it looked.
She walked along the rug towards the front desk while scanning through the drawings of the houses hung up on the wall, looking at each one seeing if she could spot one that stood out to her. There were a few interesting ones she spotted like a tall magical looking tower probably catered towards an alchemist or a luxurious looking underground bungalow, but she doubted these places were in Redwood.
Then she arrived next to the front desk where a gorgeous young woman stood behind and greeted her. “Good afternoon, how can I help you?” Angeline Evergreen said with a fake sounding cheerful voice.
Jane looked at Angeline who tried her best to look and sound professional but she could see the boredom present in her eyes— it was something she knew all too well after looking at a mirror during some classes back in the academy.
Angeline had grassy green hair that hung past her kingdom assigned uniform that Jane could tell was a little uncomfortable for a young woman such as Angeline to wear. It was a bland gray and blue suit that had an excess amount of buttons, cuffs and other annoying flaps here and there.
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She couldn't imagine wearing such a thing during summer— you'd be roasting your ass off if you stood outside for a second. Luckily for Angeline, she wouldn't burn inside since Jane could feel cold air gently circulating in the building, meaning there were cooling runes installed in the building by an elementalist.
Beside her obviously ugly uniform— which you shouldn't say out loud in case the kingdom overheard you— Angeline was a nice looking, but slightly intimidating woman. She had yellow eyes that looked at Jane silently telling her to take as much time as possible so she doesn't have to go back to being bored, and thin sharp eyebrows that complemented her sleek look.
Jane had heard rumors of Angeline's mother before, she had looked like she wanted to beat you up for simply existing, and it seemed that trait had passed along to Angeline.
How did Jane know this? Her parents and the Frier’s parents had talked about it before. They said once you got to know the lady she was as kind as could be, but if you didn't know that, you'd think she hated you.
Hopefully her daughter was the same.
“Hello, I'm looking to purchase a property.” Jane replied and almost slapped herself after saying it, of course she was here to purchase property, what else would she be here for?
Angeline didn't seem to care. “Alright. What's your budget and what are you looking for?”
Jane plopped the pouch of coins on the desk. “Roughly fifteen gold. As for what I'm looking for… I don't really know yet, is there any way to look around?”
Angeline raised an eyebrow seeing the pouch of gold, a little surprised that someone so young looking had so much money on them, but it wasn't her place to question it.
“You can look over these.” After a minute, she handed Jane a stack of documents displaying pictures of houses and listed everything you needed to know about them. “Pick a few properties that you like and then if you want, I can take you over to them and show you around.”
“That’d be great, thanks!” Jane flashed her a smile and took a seat at a comfy brown chair off to the side in a little lounge the place had. She splayed out the document across a table in front of her and carefully went through each one.
‘There’s not too many to choose from, maybe fifteen gold isn't that much?.’ There were only eight documents that Angeline had given her. It looks like Redwood didn't have many properties in her price range being sold.
“Apologies, I forgot to show you this right here.” Angeline came over to the table and instead of handing her another document, she laid down a map of Redwood.
She used a pencil to draw a border around part of the outskirts of town and explained. “There's also the option of purchasing land without anything built onto it, but in this case you’d have to build your own place. Not everywhere around town is able to be purchased either, the redwood forest is an example since it's a protected area under the kingdom and you aren't able to purchase most areas of it.”
“Interesting. Thank you once again.” Jane thanked her and Angeline faked a smile in return saying if she needed anything to go find her, before walking back to the front desk.
She didn't know if she wanted to buy just land, it seemed like a little too much work to build a place from scratch. All she wanted was a place not too far from her parents, big enough that it wasn't cramped, and the one thing she really wanted was a larger back yard.
A large backyard gave her some flex room with what she could build out there; maybe a shed or a patio for campfires, she was even thinking it would be a nice place to work out. While Redwood did get cold in the winter, it wasn't like the more northern parts of Trinium that got covered in snow, they'd be lucky if they got even a centimeter of snow here. This allowed her to be more flexible in what she could build or do outside since she didn't need to worry too much about snow.
So for now she would ignore the map Angeline had given her and instead start to seriously look through the documents of the properties.
‘Nice house, everything looks great but it's a little far away from anything.’ She started a pile of rejected properties and already placed two in it. One was too far away while the other was a little too small.
Another one was rejected because it was slightly over her budget but then she found one that looked promising for the most part. It was quite large, bigger than the other houses on the list, it was also quite close to her parents, the only issue was that it was abandoned and needed some heavy renovations to become livable.
‘Wait isn't this perfect then?’ She looked at the price and saw it was seventeen gold, two over her budget but she still had leftover allowance from the academy she could burn— except that would leave her without any money. She put that document aside in a separate pile from the rejected ones.
It had to be known that gold was very rarely used in small towns like Redwood, even in major cities gold was uncommon. Most things you could buy, you could buy with bronze coins. Anything needing silver coins, which was worth 100 bronze coins each, was either a luxury item or you had bought a lot of items at once. Then each gold coin was worth 100 silver coins, the only real items sold in gold were properties, expensive art pieces, or certain items or services from classholders.
Without money for a while would be fine, she could work some odd jobs for people or even find a normal job, but she wasn't worried about money. There was one part of graduating that Jane hadn't told her parents— not because it was secret or special, but just because she hadn't brought it up yet. As an enigma, she was required to do five years of work with the kingdom as one of their class testers. She would spend a week visiting a set number of towns, testing the sixteen year old's to see if they were classholders themselves.
She was paid for this work, and quite a lot considering how much work was actually involved— which was very little. She made seven gold and all she had to do was sit there and scan every sixteen year old in a town one by one. If she detected they were a classholder using her enigma sense, she would notify the person in charge of handling it and voila, easy money.
For reference, an average citizen who worked everyday made roughly one gold coin worth of money a year. She would make seven gold in a week, then she was free for the rest of the year. While she knew it was a little unfair considering being born a classholder was all luck, she wasn't going to complain about making money.
If Jane wanted, she could continue past the five years of required work for as long as she wanted, making a solid amount of money for herself. Jane's plan was to work longer and make the extra money since there wasn't really any downside of doing so.
The kingdom would send her a letter sometime this year when she was required to work, but for now she was going to focus on her own thing. Since money wasn't an issue for her, her goal beside buying a house to live in was to start a business that was primarily intended to help the people of Redwood. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do right now, but hopefully in time she would find an answer.