"Your breakfast."
"Carl, did you go out?"
Still groggy after Carl woke him, Oliver shoved Jack aside, whose foot was stretched across his stomach. Then he immediately spotted the large bag in Carl's hand.
"What are we eating?"
"A sushi set. Both are large portions."
"Sushi, huh."
Jack rubbed his eyes and woke up as well. He yawned, then caught a strange smell with his nose.
He followed the scent.
"Carl, why do you smell like blood?"
"It's on the TV."
Carl pointed at the television. An NCPD live broadcast was playing, and its content was—
Thanks to the brave efforts of NCPD officers, a Cyberpsychosis suspect had been killed. And the location was downstairs?
"You ran into a Cyberpsychosis suspect!?"
That completely woke Oliver up. He looked Carl over a few times and only relaxed after finding no injuries on him. "You got dragged into it, didn't you? What bad luck."
"Not exactly bad luck."
Carl took the plastic boxes of "plastic" sushi out of the plastic bag and placed them on the table in front of the two of them.
"I was the one who took down that Cyberpsychosis suspect."
"Huh?"
How did buying breakfast end up involving taking down a Cyberpsychosis suspect?
As Oliver and Jack questioned him, Carl bought two bottles of Chun water from the vending machine and told them what had happened.
"So you weren't dragged into it—you actively got involved. Sandevistan, Mantis Blades, Subdermal Armor... You still dared to face an opponent like that. You really don't value your life."
Oliver was a little amazed by Carl's nerve. If he ran into a Cyberpsychosis suspect like that on the street, he would have turned around and run without a second thought.
"I just wanted to make some money. Who knew it'd only be ten thousand eddies? Not even enough to recoup the cost of a weapon."
"If something like this happens again, call us, Carl. Going alone is still too risky."
Jack also didn't approve of Carl's reckless approach. Carl nodded at their worried words.
"I only wanted to test whether my feeling was right. I won't do it again."
It wasn't like he enjoyed courting death. Experiencing a Sandevistan once was enough. If he had to face one again, he would at least need to upgrade the cyberware on his body first. Or learn more techniques from braindances.
After buying the drinks and tossing them over, Carl remembered the chip he had taken while he was at it.
"Come to think of it, I also picked up a chip. Plugging an unknown chip directly into my own Access Port doesn't seem very safe. Oliver, can I use your computer?"
"Go ahead."
With Oliver's permission, as he took out forks and ate sushi with Jack, Carl walked over to the computer in Oliver's room and inserted the chip.
The data loaded quickly. There was nothing special on the chip, only a single text record.
But the communication record was somewhat strange.
'The Sakura born from chrysanthemum and rose has arrived in Night City.'
Carl could understand Night City—it probably referred to Night City—but he couldn't make heads or tails of the coded words before it.
What did chrysanthemum, rose, and Sakura refer to? Actual flowers?
But it used the word "born." Could it refer to a person?
The sentence probably meant that someone had arrived in Night City?
There was too little information.
Why did a Cyberpsychosis suspect have a text chip like this tucked away, and what could this message possibly mean? He had no idea.
But one thing was clear.
This was all the information he had obtained.
Carl placed great importance on gathering information. Whether it was useful or not, he generally committed it to memory, because his talent could only be brought to its fullest potential through accumulated information.
After asking Oliver and Jack to save him some tofu skin sushi, Carl opened other websites and browsed around. Then he came across a car-selling website.
"Isn't this Old Captain's car sales site?"
Oliver, drinking Chun water as he brought over the tofu skin sushi Carl wanted, saw the webpage on Carl's screen and spoke up.
"Old Captain?"
"He's from our Santo Domingo area. I heard he used to be a Corpo Dog, but he got sick of the company's rules, quit, and became a car salesman."
"They're all used cars."
Jack walked over too. He knew a little about the car sales site. "Most are used cars where someone died in them, or cars people are desperate to get rid of. If you don't mind that, the prices are pretty cheap."
"They really are cheap."
Looking at the cars listed for under tens of thousands of eddies, some even under ten thousand, Carl began to consider it.
"Oliver, Jack, what do you think about me buying a car? Then we won't have to squeeze together whenever we go somewhere."
"A used car?"
Jack stared at the vehicles on the screen. "What if there's something wrong with it later?"
"Old Captain's cars are trustworthy. The cars he personally handles are basically spotless. Check which cars on the site are being sold directly by him—he's cleaned those up himself, so they're safe. Forget the other listed vehicles. Those really might not be trustworthy."
Oliver knew a lot about Old Captain's website. Every street kid in Santo Domingo had more or less looked through Old Captain's car sales site. After all, what could attract a street kid more than a flashy car and a cool, powerful gun?
"Then do you have any car recommendations?"
There were all kinds of cars on the site, each one praised to the heavens in its description. Carl didn't know much about cars, so he decided to leave the matter to Oliver.
"First, pick a four-seater. Even if we drive two cars after you buy one, that's fine, but when we're doing jobs together, it's still better to have a four-seater."
After browsing for a while, Oliver pointed to one particular car. Carl happened to know it well—not merely know it, either. He had ridden in one before.
Rayfield Hera EC-D I360
This well-regarded, sturdy, and durable vehicle could now be bought on Old Captain's site for only thirty-one thousand eddies, nearly brand-new. The reason it was only nearly new was because the buyer had not even gotten on the road before being shot dead by street punks while on the way to pick it up. After losing their family's breadwinner, the owner's family could no longer afford the car and had no choice but to sell it.
"This one works."
Carl quickly decided on the first car he would buy in Night City.
Before you continue