Free Web NovelChapter 292: 292 Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 3
This time, at my offer, Lucy thought for a moment, then spoke.
"What if I refuse?"
"We met like this by fate, so I’ll find you another job. From what I saw, it looks like you’ll get caught soon."
I said that and let go of Lucy’s arm. Then Lucy sighed deeply.
"Haa... fine. I’ll work as your assistant. But I don’t have a place to stay yet. Like you said, I haven’t been here long. So I’ve been selling shards to barely afford a motel."
Lucy, her guard now lowered to some extent, told me the truth. It seemed she had only recently arrived and was still homeless.
"Then you can just live with me." freeωebnovēl.c૦m
"Wh-what! Are you trying to joke with me right now!?"
Lucy, flustered at my words, blushed.
"It’s no joke. And don’t worry. The place I live in has two floors, so I’m saying you use the upper floor and I’ll use the lower floor."
"Th-then, alright."
Lucy, perhaps having nowhere else to go, agreed immediately when she heard it had two floors. Lucy didn’t really have any luggage besides the backpack she was carrying, so I just put her in my car and moved to the market first. Because now that we had an extra household member, we needed to buy various necessary items.
"Come to think of it, I didn’t even ask your name. What is it?"
"Well, you’re quick to ask. Call me Lucy."
"Alright, let’s do well from now on, Lucy. You can call me Jin."
"I never imagined the ’進’ (Jin) engraved on your jacket was your name. I thought it was just engraved for style."
"Well, whatever. It promotes my name and it looks cool."
"You seem quite proud of your name, huh?"
"It’s not that, but in this business, if you make a name for yourself, that many more jobs come in."
"I see."
As we talked and drove like that, we soon arrived at the market. It was a place mainly frequented by the wealthy, so prices were somewhat high, but thanks to the heavy security, buying things was actually easier. Of course, that doesn’t mean there were no robberies at all, but unless it was a considerable scale, the atmosphere wasn’t one where you could easily commit a crime. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
"I don’t have any money right now."
"Buy what you need for now, and pay me back later as you work."
"Got it."
Lucy purchased some daily necessities she would use, underwear, clothes, and a few pairs of shoes, and I bought a mattress, a blanket, and a pillow. Since my car had a small trunk, I just strapped them on top of the car and moved. They were wrapped in plastic, so it didn’t seem like it would be a big problem.
Arriving home like that, Lucy looked around the house.
"You live in a pretty nice apartment. So you weren’t lying about being a famous mercenary, it seems."
"Well, yes. It won’t be cramped for the two of us."
I moved the mattress that had been on the second floor to the first floor, and laid the newly purchased mattress on the second floor. Then I moved the pool table toward the sofa, and laid the existing mattress near the window. Meanwhile, on the second floor, Lucy was organizing the clothes and things she bought.
"Done. Let’s have dinner first."
"Okay."
I opened the refrigerator and made simple burgers with the ingredients I had. Lucy took a bite of the burger I made and was extremely impressed.
"What is this... how can it taste like this? It’s so delicious!"
Lucy’s reaction was understandable. Normally eating food like sawdust drenched in chemical seasonings, then tasting real food made with fresh ingredients from my inventory — it was a natural reaction.
"This juice is fresh fruit juice, isn’t it. How much money do you make to be able to buy and eat things like this?"
"Did you forget I’m a famous mercenary?"
"I-I see..."
Lucy, having enjoyed it immensely, devoured two burgers.
"Ugh... I’m full... did I eat too much?"
"If you eat that much at once, you’ll get sick."
"Well... I was eating so deliciously for the first time in a while... Or not? This is the first time I’ve ever eaten food this delicious. Until now, meals just felt like they were only for filling my stomach..."
From her talking like this, I could tell what kind of life Lucy had lived after escaping Arasaka.
I sat Lucy on the sofa and began asking her what she could do.
"Can you drive?"
"A little."
"Shooting?"
"I can handle a pistol."
"Hmm... I see. Then from tomorrow, watch me work, and after we’re done, you’ll learn to drive and practice shooting. You’re a netrunner, so you won’t be running around the field, but you need to be able to at least protect your own body. And I’ve registered you for this apartment too, so you can come and go anytime. But it’s best not to go out at night. This is Night City, after all."
"Got it."
When the conversation ended, Lucy sat by the window and smoked, but I didn’t particularly say anything.
From the next day, we took requests and carried out missions. Lucy, holding the ’Unity’ — a decent pistol from Constitutional Arms that I bought for her — just waited in the car, but using her netrunner skills, she began to grasp the situation inside and learn roughly how things worked.
"You’re really strong. What kind of implants do you use to be able to move like that?"
When we returned to the car after the request, Lucy asked, surprised.
"Corporate secret."
"Really..."
When the request ended like that, we moved to the Badlands near the city and I taught her to drive.
"Brake!!!"
CRUNCH!!
Lucy, as soon as she started driving, charged straight into a tree.
"Ugh... I-I’m sorry..."
"You said you could drive a little. That was a lie, wasn’t it?"
Lucy, embarrassed, admitted it.
"Ye-yeah... I felt like I had to say that, so..."
"Honestly... Starting tomorrow, I’ll have to teach you from the basics."
I went outside and checked the car’s condition. The Shion Coyote was such a sturdy car that only the front bumper was a bit damaged — it wasn’t a problem for driving. So, putting up with the squeaking bumper, we returned home, and I began teaching her various things about driving. Lucy, perhaps feeling sorry for crashing the car, listened intently to the explanation.
From the next day, I left the Shion Coyote and moved on the bike, the Arch Nazaré, with Lucy for requests. Lucy, having a bigger chest than I expected, the feeling transmitted through her back was quite pleasant.
"Don’t you have another car? Bikes mess up my hair, so they’re not good..."
"Then you shouldn’t have crashed the car. Until it gets repaired, we’ll have to move on the bike for the time being."
"Haa..."
Seeing Lucy sigh loudly at my words, she seemed not to like riding the bike, but it seemed I would have to ride the bike for the time being. Actually, in the Detective Conan worldview, I had given Ran a ride home after school, but I couldn’t go fast, and there was almost no physical contact. On the other hand, in the Cyberpunk world, the thrill of riding a bike at unlimited speeds with the two of us pressed together was definitely on a different level.
I taught Lucy Gun Kata and shooting techniques for a month like that, and only after a month passed did we start using the car again. I had no choice, because Lucy grumbled so much. And after a month, Lucy also gradually began to do netrunner work, hacking enemies to buy time while I was fighting, or extracting target data.
So, starting that day, I also split the request payment with Lucy, as promised. Then Lucy said, surprised.
"Wow~! You earned this much? And this is 20% of the request payment..."
"Yeah. And now that you’re doing mercenary work, there’s something you need to know."
"What’s that?"
"How to choose fixers. You need to listen carefully. Because for mercenaries, it’s a matter of life and death."
When I brought up life and death and said it was important, Lucy also listened intently to the story.
"Fixers, you see, come in two types. There are fixers who grow together with the mercenaries, mutually benefitting, and there are fixers who think of mercenaries as just horses and push unreasonable requests. From now on, you need to be able to filter out those fixers."
"Then who are the guys who think of mercenaries as horses?"
"There’s a guy named Faraday — the one with four eyes. He gives very high‑risk requests, but the pay is large, so many mercenaries are tempted. If you want to live long in this business, you need to filter out requests from guys like that."
"I see, got it. But I’ll be working with you from now on — will there be a time when we take a request like that?"
"You never know. A situation might come where we work separately for a while... I hope it doesn’t happen, but it’s possible that I might die, and you might have to join another team and work."
At those words, Lucy frowned. It wasn’t intentional, but it seemed to have slightly triggered her trauma.
Lucy was a victim sacrificed in Arasaka’s netrunner experiments as a child.
She was forced into extreme hacking training under corporate control, and was forced to deep dive beyond the ’Blackwall’ — the network barrier built to stop uncontrollable AIs. In that process, she had to watch countless comrades die before her eyes, and although she barely managed to escape Arasaka, even the comrades who escaped with her all lost their lives, leaving her with deep trauma.
"And one more thing — don’t trust anyone in Night City. Because in Night City, anyone can betray you at any time."
"Even you?"
"Not me. Because I’m the kind of angel who even takes in stray cats."
"That sounds like you’re calling me a stray cat, doesn’t it?"
"That’s right, you catch on well."
Lucy, finding that ridiculous, slapped me on the back with her palm.
SMACK!!!
"Ugh!"
When I flinched in pain, Lucy smirked. Anyway, it was fortunate that Lucy’s mood quickly improved.
"Anyway, let’s skip training today and have a party at home. We should celebrate Lucy’s first real contribution."
"Yeah, let’s do that."
I showed off my cooking skills for the first time in a while at home, making various delicious dishes and also taking out alcohol. As we ate and drank like that, when Lucy got a bit drunk, she asked me.
"Hey, you know... what’s the reason you’re being this good to me?"
At Lucy’s question, I hesitated for a moment, then spoke.
"It’s awkward to say this, but... let’s just say I fell for you at first sight. And seeing a woman like that resorting to pickpocketing was a bit sad, I guess."
At those words, Lucy, perhaps because she was drunk, suddenly became extremely bold, kissed me, and began to undress herself. So I also undressed and spent a hot night with Lucy.
On Lucy’s back, there were pink butterfly‑shaped implant marks — quite stimulating. And there were rumors that she had adult implants, but unlike the rumors, there was nothing like that. Almost all the implants inserted into her body were heat‑related, tailored for netrunning.
"Haa... this is my first experience like this. I’m completely sober now. But why don’t you have any implant marks at all? Are all the new‑model implants like this these days?"
"No, I don’t have any implants at all."
Then Lucy, extremely surprised, touched my body here and there, confirmed again that there were no implant marks, and then poured out questions.
"Liar!!! I can’t believe it!!! Then what were those movements?? And the communications all this time???"
I tapped the helmet I had taken off beside me and spoke.
"It’s this. I did it all with this. With this, I can communicate, I can insert shards, and it has a head‑up display, so I can receive information too. And it has built‑in AI, so it can block hacking too."
"That’s ridiculous... then what about the movements?"
I brought out a story I had prepared in advance for a day like this.
"That’s because I was an enhanced soldier test subject for some corporation. But perhaps they thought implants were more mainstream than biological enhancement, so various experiments were eventually scrapped midway, and the research data and samples were all destroyed. I guess they didn’t want to let the world know they had done inhumane experiments. Fortunately, I was able to barely escape with the help of a doctor who took pity on me, but the doctor who helped me escape died, shot."
"Th-that’s..."
"But then something interesting happened. As I grew up, I found out that the experiment had succeeded. Instead, because of severe rejection, I couldn’t install even basic implants at all."
When my story ended, Lucy looked at me with sad eyes and hugged me.
"I see... so you went through the same thing I did."
Just then, an alarm sound from the Leisure Life rang, and a translucent window appeared before my eyes.
DING~!
[Your (D) Swindler ability has ranked up to (C) Swindler.]
