The Landlady welcomed Shu Yan affectionately once they have stepped inside. She brought Shu Yan tea and fruits.
“Ah. That’s alright. I am quite busy, so…” Shu Yan felt that she should just go ahead with what she wanted to say.
“You know that I have a daughter, right? She didn’t study hard back in school and didn’t get into the university. Her dad and I pulled many strings in order to get her a job at the factory. Welp, you see, the factory went out of business. I figured there’s no reason for a girl her age to stay home and do nothing all day long so we want to help her open up her own shop. As such…” The landlady elbowed her husband.
“Exactly, we only have this one daughter and want her to have a future.” The landlord added quickly.
“So you want to take your store front back?” asked Shu Yan with a smile.
She had taken that into consideration when they signed the contract. Shu Yan had purposefully included in the terms that if the contract was breached, the penalty would be three times the rent. Monthly rent is 800 yuan. That was 9,600 yuan for the first year, 11,040 for the second, and 12,696 for the third, totaling over 30,000 yuan. Three times of that would be over 90,000 yuan.
“Well, I can’t help it. We can’t just let our daughter sit at home like this. We have a store front. It doesn’t make sense for us to go and rent one from someone else,” said the landlady with a smile.
“Sure,” said Shu Yan, her face dropped.
Naturally, neither the landlord or the landlady noticed Shu Yan’s look and said happily, “Really? Don’t you worry. We will refund you the rent for the remaining months.”
“Are you kidding me? We signed a contract. You can breach it, but you will have to compensate me per our agreed-upon terms.”
Now it was the landlord and the landlady’s turn to look displeased. They had studied the contract carefully and even spoke with a lawyer. The lawyer had informed them that the contract was done very professionally and very detailed. If they wanted to sue, their odds were very low.
“This is our place. It only makes sense for us to take it back. What are you trying to pull here? You want to take over our property?” The landlady was no longer putting up with her friendly front and straight up started shouting at Shu Yan.
“We’ve signed a contract. I will have to pay if I am the one to breach the contract. But now you are the one who’s breaching it. It would only make sense for you to compensate me.” Shu Yan smiled. “Alternatively, we can just call the cops and have them come and sort it out? We can see who’s at fault here? If the cops can’t resolve it, there’s always the court. I might be poor but I can at least afford a lawyer. Worse case scenario, I will throw money at it to lie you up in a lawsuit. I don’t care how much it will cost. I just have a point to make here.”
“No, no, don’t be mad. That’s not what we meant.” The landlord stepped up to smooth things out. “We really just want to open up a shop for our daughter because she has been staying home with nothing to do. It’s alright if you don’t want to end the contract. We will just look for a different location then.”
Seeing that Shu Yan had left, the landlady smacked the landlord. “Didn’t we agree on taking our shop back? Why did you back off?”
“What choices do we have? Compensate her? We are talking about over 90,000 yuan. Do we have that much money?” The landlord gave his wife a stare.
“So that’s it?” asked the landlady, feeling unreconciled. She knew about Shu Yan’s shop. She could do several thousands worth of business in a day and 30,000 ~ 40,000 yuan a month minimum. Probably even upwards of 50,000 ~ 60,000 yuan sometimes. She had been monitoring it for a while now and her daughter said that she had those matching of clothes figured out already. She was certain that she could do that. “Perhaps we can talk to her and offer her 50,000 yuan. Have you seen the business at her shop? We will be able to make that back in 2 ~ 3 months.”
“Oh, you make that sounds so simple. Hand over 50,000 yuan to someone just like that?” The landlord couldn’t bring himself to do that. “Let me see what other options we have.”
