"I've brought him over."
"Thanks, Jack. Sorry I made you go to Santo Domingo alone."
"It's fine, Oliver. You told me about what happened to you back then. If the Sixth Street Gang won't let you go back, then so be it. One day, they'll be begging us to go there."
Jack brought David Martinez, who was obedient as a chick walking beside him, over to Oliver and Carl.
David Martinez nervously surveyed his surroundings, only to discover that he had been brought to a restaurant—a luxury restaurant he had never dared enter, only glanced at from outside, where no dish cost less than a hundred eddies.
"Sit wherever you like. It's our first time here too, so don't be so nervous. We're taking this chance to treat you as an excuse to enjoy a luxury restaurant for once ourselves. Don't worry, order whatever you want. It's on me."
Carl smiled as she invited David Martinez to sit. Their table was beside the floor-to-ceiling windows, and after David took the seat closest to the window, Jack sat directly beside him, blocking every route he could have used to shift away or escape.
"Don't pull such a miserable face. Here, have a drink."
Noticing David's unease, Oliver smiled like the big bad wolf tricking Little Red Riding Hood and handed him a drink from the luxury restaurant.
"Apple juice. Real apples, too. Give it a try."
Urged on by Oliver, David Martinez looked left at Jack, then right out the window. His Adam's apple bobbed as he reached out and took the apple juice. Without even thinking of smelling its fruity aroma, he raised it to his lips and gulped down half of it as though resigned to his fate.
"What a gulp."
Amid Carl's smiling, peculiar praise, David, who had