"Finished reading it, Carl?"
"More or less. There's just one last bit."
Carl answered Oliver.
The three of them had already left Old Vic's clinic and found seats at a roadside diner. After making sure the nearby tables were empty, Carl began reading the identity information aloud to Jack and Oliver.
"Gaius, seventeen years old, born in Heywood. An abandoned infant left by the roadside, taken in and raised by an unknown scavenger. When he was four, the scavenger raising him was caught in a street gang shootout. After that, he survived by digging through dumpsters on the streets. At twelve, Father took a liking to him, and he started working for Father, all the way until now at seventeen."
"Sounds pretty much like a kid who grew up in Heywood."
Jack gave his assessment as a Heywood native.
"Is that sort of situation common?"
Carl asked, and Jack answered, "Not common exactly, but definitely not rare. I remember Old Hauler came from that kind of background too. I think he only went to the NCPD to register officially when he was twenty-one, then started driving freight trucks. Before twenty-one, his life wasn't much different from Gaius's."
"So there's no problem?"
"More or less."
Listening to Jack, Carl flipped through the Arasaka Academy application materials. After entering Gaius's information on the official website, a payment screen popped up.
"Come to think of it, would it seem strange for someone from the streets to suddenly have ten thousand eddies and spend it on school?"
Before making the transfer, Carl asked just in case.
"What's strange about that? Any normal person can come up with ten thousand eddies in savings, right?"
That was Oliver's answer, and Carl gave him a thoroughly strange look upon hearing it.
"I seem to recall someone telling