72. Thief
At 8:10, when the first class ended, Gaius Brutus left the classroom right on schedule.
After a brief day of getting acquainted, the other trial students had more or less learned some of their classmates' names. As for Gaius Brutus, the student who rushed out every time class ended, they remembered him especially well.
To the other trial students, someone who seemed completely unconcerned with using the break to review what they had learned in class was simply wasting the opportunity.
Didn't he feel sorry for the ten thousand euros his parents or other elders had spent on him? Did he have no desire to improve himself at all?
Experiencing Arasaka Academy was such a rare opportunity. It might even become a stepping stone toward joining Arasaka Corporation in the future. Even if he wasn't lucky enough to catch the corporation's eye, having elite education at Arasaka Academy on his record would help him find a better job on the streets. Even if he later went to work hauling cargo at the docks, he could confidently demand higher wages. Yet this Gaius was wasting the opportunity.
Gaius truly was wasting a good opportunity.
For ordinary low-income civilians in Night City, spending ten thousand euros to experience Arasaka Academy was naturally a good opportunity, and wasting it was disgraceful. If Gaius truly had been a poor kid from the streets of Heywood, he would have cherished it as well.
The only problem was that he had never been Gaius, the poor boy from Heywood. He was Carl.
There was nothing wrong with studying hard, but the knowledge taught at Arasaka Academy was not what Carl needed to work hard at learning.
Carl had memorized those lessons on how to allocate workers more efficiently—lessons that were really manuals on oppression—out