The house, nearly ready.

By the end of summer vacation we were all getting pretty nervous for obvious reasons. We’d been happy to ignore what was coming in favor of enjoying our holidays and our free time as high school graduates. We made sure to waste as little time as possible, and I mean that in the sense that we were satisfied with every day of our vacation, even those spent lazing around. But there was no more delaying it. Our summer was coming to an end and we’d soon be starting a whole new stage of our lives. We were every bit as excited as we were afraid.

No, scratch that. We were all more scared than anything else, though Grace, Sarah and Alice tried to hide it, for their own sake if nothing else.

All of us were going to the same university, at least, save for Mila who’d be going to modeling school and taking some acting classes while she continued and got a little more serious about her influencer work.

A little something that added more bad feelings to it all was that we wouldn’t be moving in together just yet. We couldn’t. Construction work on the house had only started a little under two months ago. The crew was working day and night, but there was no way they could finish it in time for that.

Right?

Well… When I went to check on progress that Saturday, I found the house… complete. Or very nearly so. The outside, at least, looked finished. I remember it still looking rough last time I was here, but now…

A stone path led to the three-floors tall building. A gorgeous front of white, polished stone. A porch at the entrance with a balcony above it on the second floor. Symmetrically placed, black frame windows. A roof of orange clay tiles. Black double doors with a tiny window just above it and a small wall lamp at each side.

Beside the house… could I really call it that? It was too big for my definition of houses, but… Well, beside it was the garage, matching the house’s facade and large enough to fit about 4 cars, not counting the stone flooring outside it.

All of this in a quiet outskirts of the city with the green pastures and the mountains in the background. It was hard to believe how quickly they worked, and even harder to believe that this was… mine.

“Ah, Oliver, lad! Come here!” Mr. Moore waved at me from between the house and the garage. I could hear more construction work from the backyard and from inside. “There are some things I want to talk about, so follow me while I give you the usual tour,” He said, tossing me a white helmet.

“You’re working way faster than I expected,” I told him.

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Mr. Moore said, nodding. “We got offered another job for next month. I always give the boys two weeks off in between jobs at a minimum, so we’ve been working faster during this last phase. The house should be ready in a few days.”

“DAYS!?” My jaw dropped. “How? How do you work so fast?”

Mr. Moore chuckled. “Trade secrets, but let’s just say a lot of time is wasted in the transportation of materials. Also, each one of my boys can do in a few hours what it would take five men a whole day.”

I followed him towards the back and saw a couple of guys inside the empty pool, putting on tiles along the upper edges of the walls.

“Even the pool is nearly finished…” I said.

“And it will be by tomorrow. Normally you need to let concrete cure for a long time, but you know…”

Ah. I started to get a better picture of how they were so fast. Even with something simple as greater strength, moving heavy things without machinery was easier. Processes that needed to be waited out could be hastened. Hell, if I could keep things in place with the ‘stillness’ runes, then even that would work as scaffolding or temporary support. Honestly, my imagination was probably limiting my ideas. These people likely had very complex, very specific spells to get things done quickly and efficiently and I just don’t know enough about construction to even start getting ideas.

Mr. Moore showed me the inside of the house. The wooden floors were finished, too. Some guys were painting walls and others finishing with the installation of electric outlets.

All three floors were done, with only the finishing touches and the placing of the furniture being left.

“The furniture should start arriving tomorrow, and if it doesn’t I’ll raise hell, don’t you worry. But there’s something I wanted to show you now. Well, two things, actually. Your special requests.”

The first floor would have all the common spaces. Living room, kitchen, library, the bar and a couple of bathrooms. Then the second floor would have all our bedrooms and two larger bathrooms. The third floor would have other facilities for more personal use. The gym, the game room and the music room would be here, along with another, more… pleasure-oriented bathroom and a balcony view of the back yard.

We checked them out, of course, and I was happy to see the music room was fairly austere. Black carpet floor, cream-colored walls. Just big enough to fit a variety of instruments, including things like drums and a keyboard with enough space left over. What called my attention, however, were the shelves at the back of the room. Black wood and empty.

“Um… Is that…?”

Mr. Moore walked over to the shelves and opened one of the lower drawers. “Look for it here, at the top. You will find a little hole here. Pull the trigger inside and…”

Click.

The shelves opened up like doors towards us, revealing a secret room on the other side.

Red carpet and red walls, empty except for two metal poles close to one of the corners. I couldn’t help but chuckle.

This would be where we’d put the special room Mila requested. Our own little love hotel room.

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[Link to a picture of Oliver's house from outside that I tried to recreate using The Sims 4: Link. The picture is for general reference and does not fully represent what is described in text.]