Marisa and Komei.

Wednesday night, Marisa and Komei showed up at the home venue together.

Although, because Marisa was now trying to become a Doctor of Nutrition, Derek saw her at the hospital frequently, Yulia hadn’t talked to her former employee in several days. And then Yulia realized she hadn’t even seen Komei in several days.

The couple was still there the next morning, and Yulia went over to catch up after Derek and the teens had left for the day. “Komei, where’ve you been?,” she inquired.

“I opened that kitchen appliance store I was telling you about,” he explained. “’Komei’s Kitchen Stuff’—catchy, huh?”

“So, I’ve spent the last few days doing nothing but selling appliances to customers.”

“Because I was already Level 10 in Charisma,” he continued, “it didn’t take me very long to get my Bronze badge in Sales,”

“then my Silver,”

“then my Gold,”

“at which point I could ‘Dazzle,’ and sales just took off from there! Of course,” he confessed ruefully, “my register skills still aren’t very good,”

“but my restocking ability makes up for it—I can restock an item immediately after I sell it, and STILL beat the customer to the cash register!”

“I DID finally get a Bronze in register, but that’s all so far,” he admitted.

He went on. “By the time my store reached Rank 5, I had sold enough appliances to make $100K!—which was my LTW!”

“Wow!,” said Yulia, impressed with her former employee. “So, what’s next for you?”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “the NEXT part has actually already happened!”

“With the money I earned from sales, PLUS the $83,000 I got from community grants for getting my store to Rank 5, I bought the old Aubrey Manor!”

“AND,” he continued, almost without taking a breath, “I got Marisa over to my new house this morning under the pretext of advising me how to redo the kitchen—since she’s such an experienced cook and all. She’d had an overnight shift at the hospital, and I knew she was exhausted and needed to sleep. But I begged her to come over on her way home to her apartment, and I promised her it would take only a few minutes.”

He related the rest of the story to Yulia:

************************

“Komei!,” Marisa had gasped. “This is a LOT of house!”

“Yeah, and it needs a LOT of work!,” he responded. “Come on—let me show you the kitchen. I’m really going to need some help figuring out what the heck to do with it!”

“I see your point,” Marisa commented, after examining the space. “It almost doesn’t make any sense for the kitchen to be here in the front of the house—that nice bay window kind of encourages a dining room, don’t you think? Maybe the kitchen would be better in the back of the house. I bet you can re-use these cabinets, though.”

The two walked through the rest of the mostly empty first floor.

“There sure IS a lot to do here,” Marisa mused.

“Yes, but I already did a couple of the upstairs rooms,” said Komei, excited. “Wanna see?” He sprinted upstairs without waiting for her answer.

“What do you think?,” Komei asked excitedly, as he showed her a beautiful, airy bedroom,

with a luxurious ensuite bath.

“This is gorgeous!,” Marisa said. “Whose room is this?”

“Yours, if you want it!,” Komei told her.

************************

“So then she hugged me,” Komei told Yulia. “And then I left her alone so that she could decompress from work,” Komei explained. “I was feeling pretty confident, though. I mean, we’re both Fortune Sims, so I’m pretty sure I know what makes Marisa happy.”

“That’s great!,” Yulia enthused. She was very happy to think that two of her former employees might be building a life together.

Komei got up and walked away to talk to one of his customers who was waiting on a cooktop delivery, and Yulia took that opportunity to talk to Marisa.

“I hear you have NEWS!,” Yulia teased her.

“Yeah,” Marisa said, blushing a bit.

“I’m really lucky Komei’s such a gentleman—I was so out of things earlier this morning that someone could really have taken advantage of me! After he left, I took a shower in that incredible bathroom—probably the best shower of my life!”

“Then I put on a robe that Komei had told me he’d left for me in the armoire,”

“and crawled into that wonderful bed. My head was spinning, quite frankly, and I figured I’d better get some sleep in order to think clearly..’

“And when I woke up from my nap, I realized I wanted to be married to Komei….”

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NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

A compressed “how to make money from a retail store” post! (As well as another illustration why $100K is the easiest/fastest LTW.)

As Wen had sagely figured out (from the earlier post in which Yed had to move in with Komei briefly in order to buy Genya’s dance/fitness studio), I WAS background playing Komei and Marisa.

In the first couple of days in Belle Townhouses, Komei got his Charisma to Level 10, bought the kitchen appliance store, developed some rudimentary cooking skills in order to impress the talented and pretty sous-chef he fancies (!), invited her over for dinner (okay—slightly burnt grilled cheese!) a couple times and, starting from Rank 0 at 10:28 Thursday morning and no sales badges, he had his Gold badge in Sales by 6:48 that evening: < 8 and 1/2 hours! (Yes, he used the Energizer.) He stayed at the store continuously till Saturday evening at 5:02 p.m. He was doing well, and could have stayed there ad infinitum (even with NO employees, which you may have noticed!), but left because: he’d reached Rank 5, so had gotten all the community cash awards, he was at $200K plus of available cash, and he wanted to buy a snazzy house so he could convince Marisa to move in with him. Remember, keep your eyes on the prize!

Ah, the wonderfulness of a man who knows that real estate is the best gift….