Finding Our Way Home (Jungho)
Sept 12, 2024 23:27:44 GMT -8
Post by Iskander Anwar on Sept 12, 2024 23:27:44 GMT -8
[This thread is backdated to start Monday, June 24, 2024, two days before the end of the school year in Cedar Beach. The bulk of this first post takes place over Monday-Wednesday as Iskander is touring apartments.]
Iskander had been tentative when he'd first suggested looking for an apartment together as soon as they could save up enough for a deposit to Jungho. As they'd discussed it more, and done their math, it had become right after Jungho graduated high school: the start of July. Iskander was mostly excited, but with Jungho finishing up a busy school year, and him taking a fairly small load of classes at CBCC to keep them affordable, even with work, he'd volunteered to do a lot of the legwork of finding them the apartment.
He'd managed to arrange with Jesse to work openings before his classes that entire week, and all his classes were in the late morning. The semester was also wrapping up at CBCC, coordinated to the high school, but he didn't have finals since everything he'd signed up for was project based and he'd pretty much finished everything. That meant he spent the afternoons touring apartments in Cedar Beach and texting Jungho the outcomes and his thoughts, waiting for replies between Jungho's classes.
The first three places he toured on Monday were absolute disasters. After the first one, where it was really a glorified studio, he texted Jungho, "New rule, real one bedrooms only, the bedroom needs a door."
The next place, he hesitated to call a disaster at first, but looking at the bathroom, he took a picture of the only a bathtub, clearly pretty old, and said, "I suspect we're at least sort of in agreement, but opinions on shower/tub, just shower, just tub?" Iskander himself was in no way going to not have a shower, tub at all was optional to him, but shower/tub combos were fine.
The next place didn't have laundry in the building, and with a little bit of searching as he looked around the apartment, he determined that the nearest (and only) laundromat in Cedar Beach was clear on the other side of town. He texted Jungho, "If there isn't laundry in the building, the building needs to be within a block of the Cedar Beach Laundromat." He included the yelp listing for the laundromat.
He was getting a little bit sad about it, worried they wouldn't find anything, but the fourth place, and final place he toured Monday was OK. There was laundry in the unit, it wasn't big, but he wasn't worried that they'd be able to walk around with stuff in it. The problem was of course, it was the very very upper end of their price range, like a dollar less a month than the very upper limit they'd set themselves. He spent a little longer chatting with the manager, who even lived on site, and sent Jungho a bunch of pictures. At the end, he texted, "This place is really solid as an option, but it's definitely the most expensive. I hope that tomorrow's tours are better."
Tuesday started out rough, with a place that clearly hadn't properly been deep cleaned in decades, he sent Jungho a single picture with "absolutely not" as the caption, cut that tour short and moved on.
The next place generated the new rule, "The kitchen cannot be shared by the whole floor, it must be in the apartment itself. Thought this kitchen looked too nice to be true." He figured that it might be an OK place for people who were looking for a nicer dorm basically, but that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to pick the people who would be in his kitchen. Plus, there had been a drunk CBCC student in the kitchen before noon. Not really his scene.
The next place generated the rule, "The bathroom needs to be accessible from the living room, not just the bedroom."
The final place he toured was awesome as an apartment. He sent Jungho a bunch of pictures. Then he had to walk back to the bus stop. The hill that hadn't really registered when he'd been going down it became a sudden, very obvious problem. He texted Jungho a series of frowny faces, and took a picture of the way back to the apartment he'd just come from and said, "So the trip to the nearest bus is half a mile up that, half of it doesn't even have a sidewalk. I wasn't paying enough attention on my way there."
He was feeling like they were going to have to settle for the thing at the very top of their price range and he hated the idea. The Rochanas had been cooking his favorite foods all week, and they didn't pry, but they could clearly tell he was worried. Wednesday morning, he had two more places to see, and then he'd be meeting up with Jongho at the end of his school day, and they'd try to go see the best options. The expensive place and the place with the hill were the only options he was even considering at this point, and the hill was a very very tentative consideration.
He started out his tours for the day with a little place on Cedar Beach Road, less than a ten minute walk from where he worked at Urban Cafe downtown. The location seemed too good to be true, and he was tentative. The building was older but looked well taken care of, and there was someone doing some upkeep on the green space in front of the building as he waited for the property manager to let him in for his tour. The available apartment was on the second floor, and there were only stairs, no elevator, and the laundry was in the basement, but everything was clean and well maintained. Iskander was feeling a little bit more hopeful. The apartment itself was small, and the kitchen was right in the entry along one wall. There wasn't a dishwasher, but it did have a nice double sink. Everything was clean and well taken care of. The bathroom opened on the entry area as well. There was a decent sized living and dining area, and the bedroom was small but workable as a space, especially since they were going to be bringing the bunk beds that were currently in Joey's room (and Joey was going to get a nicer bed, so Iskander didn't feel too bad).
He sent Jungho a huge set of pictures with everything he noticed and said, "I think that we may have a winner. This is even near the bottom of the prices."
The second place he saw was the opposite, despite being nicer on paper. It was dark and dingy, and he saw constant maintenance requests in the future of anyone who lived there. Plus it got no natural light pretty much. He texted Jungho a picture of the window into the main space, staring out at the side of a taller building and its dumpsters and said, "New rule, the windows need to actually let in light."
He went to wait for Jungho near the entrance to the high school, waving at people he knew as they were leaving for the last day of school. He was itching to have Jungho see the best places, mostly the one he'd seen that morning, and for them to apply for their very first apartment. He was pretty sure which one they were going to go for, but Jungho had to agree with that choice.
