He shifted his body, squeezed together with Carl in the passenger seat. "At the very least, it should have more space than your car."
"Hey, this car is for picking up girls," Oliver shot back. "Letting two grown men sit in it already stretches its purpose. Even used, it's worth twenty-nine thousand Eurodollars."
"So this nomad-style cargo runner is for picking up girls?" Jack Welles said.
"Girls from Santo Domingo are more practical," Oliver replied.
"Give me a break. I've seen girls from Santo Domingo. East side's all wasteland and sandstorms, rough skin and high demands. Girls from Heywood are the real deal, hot, direct, and honest."
"I think girls from Heywood are too wild. Say a few words and they're already getting in the car to go home with you."
"That's enough, you two."
Watching them shove and argue harder, almost crushing him in the middle seat, Carl stopped their pointless comparison and pulled the conversation back on track.
"More important than that, Oliver, what are you planning to do with your money?"
"Me?" Oliver thought for a moment. "First, rent an apartment. Sleeping in the car or hotels isn't sustainable. Then I'll get some implants. You can't survive as a merc without decent cyberware. After that, like you said, I'll see if I can work as a team medic or a sniper. Oh right, Jack Welles, I'm planning to live in Watson District. Any recommendations?"
"The megabuilding in Little China," Jack Welles said. "Rent's reasonable, and there are cheap places to eat nearby."
"That place," Oliver said.
He remembered that it was where he had first met Carl. Thinking of that, he glanced over. "What about you, Carl? What are you planning?"
"I'll go take a look too," Carl replied. "If it works out, I'll live there as well. It's closer and more convenient. As for the rest of my money, I haven't decided yet, but I'll probably look for a good handgun. The Militech Lexington needs to be replaced."
They kept talking as the car followed the navigation, and soon enough, the three of them arrived at their destination.
At the Japanese Restaurant, the signboard question was simple. Was it Sashimi, Sushi, or Tempura that counted as the specialty. In 2075, these traditional dishes could still be made from odd synthetic materials, but their taste and look were far from the past, so they no longer held pride of place on the menu.
In today's Night City Japanese Restaurant, only one kind of Japanese food truly drew crowds. That was Yakitori. Made from synthetic meat, it looked less like chicken skewers and more like grilled meatballs.
Jack Welles ordered twenty skewers the moment he sat down and strongly urged Carl and Oliver to try them. Carl stared at the skewers, wondering what they were even made of and whether they could be eaten at all. Before he could decide, Oliver had already grabbed one and started eating, popping meatballs into his mouth with clear enjoyment.
After hesitating and thinking that bugs were something he would have to eat sooner or later anyway, Carl took a skewer and bit into a meatball. He chewed for a moment. "Mm." He spat it out.
This was not Carl wasting food, but a reflex. The moment it entered his mouth, his lips and teeth seemed to protest, and his stomach tightened in warning. His body told him clearly that this thing should not go down, so he spit it out at once.
If Carl had to describe the taste in two words, it would be awful. In three words, very awful, and in four, unbelievably awful, with several unfit words added on top. Overall, it tasted like the cheap, starchy sausage from his childhood mixed with sawdust, with heavy seasoning that hit too hard, like chewing a wad of paper soaked in soy sauce and vinegar with chili.
Oliver and Jack Welles had been eating happily, but when they saw Carl frown and spit out the meatball, both froze. For a split second, a scene from old movies flashed through their minds. Was it poisoned?
They stopped eating at once and grew alert, but what Carl said next made their guard drop. "This thing tastes terrible!" "Terrible?"
Staring at the skewer that looked no different from theirs, Jack Welles looked at Oliver, and Oliver looked back at him. Both saw the same confusion in the other's eyes. To them, the skewer tasted fine, so why was Carl saying it was bad.
Thinking maybe there was something wrong with that particular skewer, Jack Welles picked up the one Carl had abandoned and bit into a meatball. After chewing a few times, a puzzled look spread across his face. "This tastes bad?" "How does this not taste bad?" Carl shot back.
Hearing the exchange, Oliver took the skewer with only one meatball left and ate the last piece. He chewed for a moment, then showed the same expression as Jack Welles. "This is not bad at all."
Seeing their reactions, Carl understood that they were simply used to this kind of low-quality, heavily seasoned food. He could not properly explain how unbearable it was to him, so he just sighed. "Compared to real chicken skewers, this synthetic stuff is awful."
"Real chicken skewers?" Oliver laughed it off, thinking Carl was joking about the restaurant. "That breaks Night City law. Ever since that bird flu outbreak, poultry meat has been banned. If you want to try some, we could sneak around the black market, but it would cost a fortune."
Jack Welles noticed something else in Carl's expression. He opened his mouth, disbelief clear on his face. "Carl, you look serious. You are not saying you have actually eaten real chicken before, are you?" "Of course I have, or I would not judge it like this," Carl replied.
He waved his hand and added, "Anyway, I am done with these skewers. Get me something else. Eating this is torture." "Eaten real chicken and hates synthetic meat this much," Oliver said, now convinced. He recalled how Carl had wanted only vegetarian food during their first meal together. "Were you some rich corporate heir or something?"
"Would a rich heir still be carrying a Militech Lexington?" Carl said, shaking his head. He called the server over and asked for other dishes.
What followed looked like a relay of plates. Carl took one bite of each dish, then set it aside, and the untouched food piled up in front of Oliver and Jack Welles, who ate it without complaint. Before long, the table in front of them looked like a small hill of plates.
"Stop, stop, Carl," Oliver said quickly. If this kept going, he and Jack Welles would burst from overeating. He rubbed his forehead and sighed as he looked at the still dissatisfied Carl.
"Fried pork cutlet, Sushi, Sashimi, Japanese curry, and a bunch of other stuff," Oliver said, his cheek twitching. "You have nearly ordered the whole menu, sir. Have you still not found anything you like?" "This really is not my fault," Carl said helplessly. "None of this is edible to me. I am just glad I have been eating cold noodles the past few days, or I would have starved."
"I am getting more curious about how you lived before, Carl," Jack Welles said, patting his round belly. "Chicken, pork, beef, fish. You have eaten all of it. What kind of place did you come from?" "Probably one where real meat was easy to get," Carl said with a sigh.
He turned his attention to the final dish, the tea rice. Thankfully, it did not disappoint him, and at last there was something he could eat. As he ate, a gloomy thought crossed his mind.
After all this, he was still eating a meatless dish. If things went on like this, he wondered if he would really end up living on vegetables alone.