A Tenant's Sorrow
The day I treated Greg and Maria to dinner.
After serving salmon steaks and potato salad, I brought out the Earl Grey chiffon cake I had baked the day before for dessert.
"Wait—you made this cake yourself? It looks store-bought!"
Greg asked, eyes wide with genuine surprise.
The truth was I'd only just started baking, and even I had been shocked by how good my first cake turned out. But of course I couldn't say that out loud.
"I've been baking as a hobby for a while," I lied poorly, slicing the cake and serving our guests. Maria took a bite and let out a soft sound of delight.
"Wow, this is really delicious! Not too sweet either…"
"Man, looking at you now, you're a total multi-talent. Cooking, baking—you do it all."
"Haha."
Over sweet cake and warm tea, the real chatter with my coworkers finally got going. It felt strange how much the company talk already sounded like someone else's business after only a short leave. If I keep this up, going back is going to be rough.
We talked about everything happening at the studio and the whole story of how I'd adopted Luca, who was sleeping soundly in his crib. That was when Greg asked, a little enviously,
"Is it nice, being off work?"
"It is. I've been thinking about taking up woodworking as a hobby."
That opened the floodgates. Before I knew it I was bragging shamelessly about my first real project—the baby crib. Luckily Maria and Greg reacted with real enthusiasm, which was a relief.
"Speaking of hobbies, my mom has been knitting so much lately that I'm starting to worry," Maria said, pointing at her own sweater. The cozy-looking piece turned out to be handmade.
"Your mother's skills are incredible!"
I meant it, then asked if she knitted well herself. Maria laughed and shook her head.
"I've tried a few times, but I have zero talent for it. When I was little I preferred clothes that looked a bit more put-together, even in the middle of winter, over thick yarn sweaters…"
"It seriously looks store-bought. So your mom can make winter clothes as long as she has needles and yarn?"
Greg examined the sweater with open admiration.
"From fall clothes all the way through spring, actually. You just adjust the yarn thickness. And scarves, hats, gloves—she knits everything she can. Her finger joints must hurt, but she's always knitting something because she gets bored otherwise."
Maria answered with genuine, mild concern.
We kept talking like that, and the evening turned out surprisingly warm and pleasant. After Maria and Greg left, I left the dishes and immediately started searching for the basics of knitting.
Fall, winter, and spring clothes covered? Of course it would take serious skill, but once again I decided to trust the Manito App that had been buffing me.
The internet was full of free knitting patterns—beginner to advanced. If you searched carefully, you could even find clever designs that looked good and weren't too hard to make. But this felt completely unfair.
"…I can just look at it and make it?"
A sweater a famous celebrity had worn looked nice, so I casually recreated it by eye—and it came out perfectly wearable. I stood in front of the mirror for a long time wearing the sweater I'd just finished. The cuffs, the neckline, the pattern running through the middle, the cleanly finished hem—everything. Layering a shirt underneath made it look neat and high-end. You could have told me it came from a department store and I would have believed it.
After a few more days of internet research on clothing DIY, I naturally ordered a home sewing machine.
Whirr, whirr…
Whirr, whirr…
"…Baaah."
"Yeah, our Luca's awake."
"Ungh…!"
I stopped the furiously spinning sewing machine and scooped Luca up. Buried in the oversized white cotton pajamas, he wriggled his little arms and legs and smiled.
"These pajamas are way too big, huh, Luca?"
"Ungh…!"
He babbled as if he understood every word. I kissed him and whispered,
"But you're going to grow so fast, so it can't be helped."
"Ungh…!"
"Want some milk?"
"Ababa…!"
So cute. I planted another loud kiss on his cheek, then carefully stepped around the things on the floor and headed to the kitchen to give him his bottle.
"Is it good? You're drinking well."
Even while sucking on the bottle he kept flashing little smiles, and I smiled right back. After the usual burping, I laid him down again and played with him until he drifted off. He didn't seem ready to sleep—eyes closed but still smiling and babbling to the end—so only when he was fully out did I stretch my back and look around the house.
"Man… it's tight in here."
For nearly a month now, every free moment had gone into making furniture, baby toys, and clothes. The result: a place with only one small extra room was bursting at the seams. The tools I'd bought with points—power tools, cooking gear, the sewing machine—had produced several times their own volume in finished goods that now filled every corner.
Making everything myself was not only cheaper but higher quality, so I'd wanted to stockpile as much as possible before returning to work. I just hadn't expected to run out of places to put it all. Luca still spent his days in the crib, but once he started crawling the house would feel even smaller. Most babies start around six months. It was a real worry.
By the date on the birth registration Luca was only just approaching three months, but kids grow in the blink of an eye. And no matter how I looked at him, Luca seemed to be growing faster than a typical three-month-old. Then again, he might have been born earlier than the registration date…
"…This is a real dilemma."
The bigger the baby got, the more space he would need—that much was certain. On top of that, I still hadn't found any solid way to invest or grow money. For now I covered living expenses with the occasional building-manager side job and stretched the foster subsidy carefully. I was trying to save the points rather than spend them on daily costs; the buffs that came with them were too valuable to waste.
Money was a little tight and worries piled up, but there were more encouraging things than not, and I felt I was filling my days pretty well.
At least, that was what I thought—until the landlord called and told me to move out.
As voices rose I stepped outside so Luca wouldn't wake and continued the call there.
"How can you just spring this on me like that? 'Move out as soon as possible'?"
"My in-laws were the original owners. They moved into a senior living facility and transferred the apartment to us. Our situation isn't great either, so we're selling our place and moving into that one."
"Even so…!"
No matter how rough their circumstances were, could a landlord's situation really be as bad as a tenant's?
"Look, we're telling you this as a courtesy. Technically we only have to give thirty or sixty days' notice—whatever the rule is—and that's it."
Since the two-year lease had ended and the contract renewed monthly after that, they weren't completely wrong. Still, I couldn't just be thrown out like this.
It would have been different before. The apartment was nearly thirty years old, so I'd vaguely assumed redevelopment would come someday. Back then I was alone and barely had any furniture, so I figured I could leave anytime and never worried about where I'd go. But not now.
I had no money, and it was the dead of winter—where was I supposed to take a baby? And I wasn't exaggerating: I truly had nowhere to go.
This was a neighborhood full of people pushed out of the city center. The farther the city expanded, the farther out they were forced. Even if I moved one more ring outward, those places already had long-time residents—family farms or large factories owned by companies. Without local roots, finding work was hard.
In the city you could at least pick up odd jobs here and there to put food on the table when you needed to. Out there, that wasn't possible. Of course part-time work alone never covered city living costs, which was why most people here traded long commute times for a roof and a paycheck. In the end they couldn't fully settle anywhere, yet weren't poor enough to qualify for meaningful support.
One of those people stuck with nowhere to go was me.
"…Hoo."
I took a deep breath and gripped the phone tighter. There had to be tenant protection laws. If a landlord was dead set on kicking someone out they might not help much, but if I just quietly left I might not even secure the minimum rights I was owed. I couldn't stay silent.
"Even so, throwing someone out like this—especially in the middle of winter—is too much. There's a three-month-old baby in the house. At least until the weather warms up…"
"…We've already got a buyer, so waiting that long is hard for us. Hold on a second."
The couple talked on the other end of the line. Money came up. Something about hotel costs—probably calculating what they'd spend if they had to stay in a hotel. I also caught the word "lawyer."
I sighed without meaning to. Why had I never even considered that a tenant could be put through something like this?
"Hello? You still there?"
"Yes."
"Here's what we can offer. This seems like the least painful way for both of us to wrap this up."
If I moved out by the middle of February, they would give me ninety days' rent—three months' worth—as moving money. They made it sound generous, but the math was obvious. Hotel costs if they couldn't move in right away, lawyer fees to get me out cleanly, time and hassle… After running the numbers, three months' rent was simply cheaper for them.
After a short moment of thought, I accepted the landlord's offer.