CH4 (368), Prelude To Pallet

The days following my visit to the real estate agency were relatively eventful if I had to say so myself. The next day the celebration of Jessie's graduation and my internship at Oak's Lab was held at our house just as previously planned.

Since it was Kyoday, all of my friends managed to come, except for Yu, who couldn't come due to being on vacation with his parents for the first time in the last two years.

They had been busy with their job and everything else, and this was the first family vacation they managed to arrange, so I straight up told Yu to ignore everything else and enjoy the time with his parents.

He did make a video call from the beach in Fiore, so he got to say his congratulations to the two of us anyway, even if it was over the phone. Regardless, the party was a smashing success and everyone had fun.

Arcday was pretty interesting since I received a mail from Oak's Lab informing me that my registration to the Pallet City Trainer School was officially complete along with all the conditions we had agreed upon, meaning that I only had to participate in exams and certain obligatory events or classes.

Other than that, I was exempted from any classes and school activities. The mail straight up tallied up the days I would have to be present at the trainer school, and it barely managed to exceed a whole month out of 36 on average. Not to mention that these days were spread throughout the year, and not all at once.

That was great news for me since I was not really that keen on going through another full 3 years of school, even if it was a trainer school. On another note, the question of my accommodation was also brought up.

The assistant asked me if I would be commuting from Hope Town to Pallet City every day, or if I wanted to stay in the school dorms. It was also mentioned that I could stay at the staff dorms of Oak's Lab if I wanted.

Reaching that point I began to consider the options, but I seriously did not want to travel back and forth from Hope Town to Pallet City. I'd rather stay at Pallet City from Arcday to Dialday and just return to Hope Town during the weekends.

Well, I consulted my parents and we decided that we would go with my idea of only coming back during the weekends. As for my lodging, staying at the lab dorms seemed to be the best idea. Personally, I had considered renting a 1 or 2-room flat for myself, but dad argued for the lab dorm.

He quickly convinced mom, and then both tag-teamed me to convince me that staying on Oak's property was the best idea. I ended up agreeing with them and wrote in my reply to Oak's assistant that I would be staying at the staff dorms.

Just a day later, on Mewday, I received the quotation for the demolition from all three construction companies. I ended up choosing the company that admitted that the demolition project exceeded its capabilities since it included a professional cost estimate from a demolition firm they consulted.

I ruled out the other two because the quote of one was much higher, and the other had nearly the same quote as the company that admitted consulting a professional demolition firm, which made me suspect that they did the same, just without admitting it.

In any case, I preferred working with a construction firm that was willing to admit when something was outside of their capabilities, that they found alternatives on their own, using their connections, was just a nice bonus.

Besides, they were marginally better at construction than the other two firms according to the reviews I found, so that played a role in my decision as well.

I contracted them and gave them the authority to preside over the demolition according to the proposal they send me. My contact arranged a meeting for Dialday to discuss the design of the building they were supposed to build once the demolition was complete.

The next day I finally talked to Pancham about his evolution and he agreed to wait until he brought the (high) bronze stage to completion before he evolved. That meant he would raise all his parameters to A-value first. In a similar vein, Mienfoo agreed to wait for her evolution until she finished the first round of her limit-breaking.

Aside from that, I roped in Osiris/Marowak for some egg care to start the bonding between the two. Well, more for Osiris since Charmander had yet to hatch, but Osiris definitely enjoyed it, and I was happy since it was beneficial to my plan if he was enthusiastic.

Anyway, moving on, on Dialday I met up with the team from the construction company which had the team leader and an architect among them. I first told them that I wanted the building to be 25 meters in width and 30 meters in length, which totaled to 750 m². Mind you, that was for each floor.

Still, that was 49% of the whole property size, so I was confident that it would be no problem, and after their team confirmed that it was possible, I went more into detail.

I told them that I wanted 1 underground floor/cellar and 5 upper floors before I began describing my idea of how those floors would be divided. The underground floor was going to be where the storage areas and the mechanical room were going to be, so it was only divided into 4 rooms.

The first floor would have the reception, head office, private room, 3 staff rooms, kitchen, two lavatories, one for each gender, the canteen, a playroom, and a reading/study room.

The second floor and up were reserved for living space. Also, each floor would get a communal bathroom for each gender. Furthermore, each floor would have two staff rooms, where a caretaker would live that was responsible for the kids staying on that floor.

The only exception to that would be the second floor since that one would have three staff rooms due to me planning to place the toddler room on that floor as well, so the extra room was to adjust to the additional workload.

Due to these additions the second floor only had 15 children's rooms, with each standard room being 25 m² in size. The third floor had 16 children's rooms and a playroom instead of a toddler room, while the fourth floor had 18 rooms due to having no special room.

The fifth and final floor had 16 rooms along with a study room due to being for the older kids. I was thinking of having the youngest kids stay on the second floor, and due to their small size, two would share one room.

The third floor would be a mix of shared and single rooms, while the fourth and fifth floors would be single rooms only. That meant that the number of people living in that building would range somewhere from 110 to 120 people on average, with around 100 of them being children/orphans.

That estimate was important for the design of the building, at least according to the architect and the team leader, who said that things such as sockets, water pipes, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and some more stuff would change depending on the number of people inhabiting the building.

Anyway, once I was done with my explanation I was told that they would have a proposal/design ready for me by the end of next week, and around that time the demolition and clearing of the property was done as well.

I paid nearly 90 grand for the professional demolition of the building and parking lot as well as the professional disposal of the materials that the place was reduced to.

On Kyoday I was presented with the building plans by the construction firm, and after checking everything along with commentary from the architect as well as the construction team leader, I approved the design/plan.

After I did that, I was handed a quotation for the construction project. This included the money for the architect, an estimate of the working period/hours for the construction workers, the material costs, and some more costs, which ended up totaling to 1.97 million Poke.

According to the proposal, I had to pay 20% upfront, so 394k Poke. 30% after 6 months, which was the estimated halftime for the construction, and equaled 591k Poke. Finally, the last 50% had to be paid upon completion of the building, which was estimated to happen within 12 months.

I told them there was no need to hurry and that I wanted everything to be done to the best of their ability. If not for that, I was sure that they could have finished even faster.

Anyway, I told them that I was willing to pay 50% upfront since I did not want to bother with paying in 6 months and that I would pay the rest during the handover. I considered paying everything right now, but I decided against it to ensure that the firm stayed fully motivated to earn the rest of the paycheck.

I also told them that I had another project for them after they finished the one to make sure they gave their best. It was even true since I was planning to have them construct the playground as well once they were done, and I could have them work on the second property as well if they did a good job.

I left after signing the contract and paying half the money. I later gave a copy of the contract along with a proxy document to my parents since they insisted on occasionally checking the status of the construction to make sure that the company was doing a good job. I simply thanked them and left most of the supervision job to them.

In the days after that, I focused on my Pokemon and my own training. By the end of the second month of the break, pretty much all of the younger newbies had unlocked their full sapience, but we, or rather I decided to wait with the naming for some more time since it had not been that long that they joined me.

On my personal front, I had completed the first and second steps in my ground training and was currently focusing on unlocking my energyscape. Once I did that and stored some ground energy there, I would become a Tier 1 Third-Class Ground Elementalist.

Still, according to my estimate, it would probably take me until the end of the break to complete that step. I had other stuff to do and was not in a particular hurry, so I only spent 1-2 hours per day on this, which was the reason I gave such an estimate.

On another note, there were only 10 days left until my 11th birthday at that point, and mom invited everyone to it, so when the day came everyone was there. Even Yu came this time around, and he even brought his family. In his words, he wanted to make up for missing the previous one, so he came to this one.

It was nice to see everyone one more time before everyone became busy since the new academic year/term began next month, and a lot of them would be busy with their final year, while others were busy with their training. Aaron on the other hand was preparing for his journey to the eastern continent.

Of the last 20 days of the break the first week was spent as usual, but after that began partially packing stuff for the staff dorm at Oak's Lab. Other than that there was not much else I had to do.

On Palkiday, the last day of the 19th month, my parents and I left for Pallet City after finishing our breakfast since that was the day I was supposed to show up at Oak Lab for my introduction.

The new term on the other hand would start on Arcday, 04.20.2181, so that was when I would have to be there for my first day at the Pallet City Trainer School.

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