Late at night, the city, the waves, the neon, and the breeze came together to form a quiet nightscape.
The two figures by the seawall looked like people painted into the scene, silent and still.
Lucy stared out at the sea, her gaze fixed even farther away, on the rocket launch platform in the distance.
After a long while, she slipped a hand into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a brown cigarette case. She flipped it open and, with practiced ease, drew out a cigarette between two fingers.
She placed it between her lips, then casually offered the case to Kai.
"Want one?"
Kai refused.
Lucy snapped the case shut with one hand and slid it back into her pocket, then gave Kai a look that suggested she did not quite believe him.
"Mm-hm?"
"There are still corporate executives who don't smoke?"
Kai thought to himself that in his previous life, he had tried more than enough things.
Lucy lit the cigarette on her own and exhaled a lazy stream of smoke.
"Now we're even."
Kai leaned against the railing. The sea breeze brushed past his nose, carrying the faint scent of burnt tobacco.
"Yeah, we're even."
"But next time on the train, you probably won't be this lucky."
Lucy held the cigarette lightly between two fingers and let the wind worry at the ember, carrying off tiny sparks.
"Obviously, I won't be going back for a while."
"I already caught security's attention last time."
"At the very least, I need to lie low for a while."
Kai turned his head to look at her, still suspicious about the way she specifically targeted chips from Arasaka employees.
If it were only about money, there was no need to take such a huge risk. She could just rotate between employees from all the major corps. It was not as if any of them were saints.
Clearly, there was a deeper reason behind the silver-haired girl stealing those chips.
"What you're doing is dangerous. It's not a smart choice. There are plenty of ways to make money."
Lucy turned her head too and looked at Kai in silence for a moment, saying nothing.
Kai explained, "You should know how Arasaka handles intelligence. Most of the people riding those trains are lower-level employees, but if attention gets drawn to it, you could still end up being targeted."
Lucy looked away again. She took another drag from the cigarette and flicked off the ash.
"Not bad for a high-ranking corpo."
"You really do know a lot."
Kai could clearly feel the silver-haired girl's expression turn colder, that sharp edge returning to her eyes the moment Arasaka came up, as if the word itself scraped against some hidden wound.
"You're still young, and you haven't gone through cyberware conversion."
"And yet you're already holding senior positions in two departments."
"That's enough to prove your ability."
"Or maybe just your luck."
Kai answered helplessly, "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just luckier than most. In a city like this, if your luck runs out, maybe you don't even live to see the next sunrise."
Something about his words seemed to stir her. Lucy exhaled a thin stream of white smoke, as though she had fallen into some memory of her own.
A moment later, she spoke again.
"Maybe you're right."
"People do need a little luck to live in this world."
"After all..."
"No one knows whether luck or disaster gets there first."
When she said that, there was a trace of melancholy beneath her calm tone.
Kai had the feeling Lucy was saying it more to herself than to him.
The girl in front of him was trying very hard to avoid certain memories and pieces of her past.
"So why did you come to Night City in the first place? Arasaka has plenty of influence here. Maybe you should think about somewhere else."
"Somewhere else?" Lucy's gaze turned deep and distant as she stared ahead.
"As far as I'm concerned, everywhere is hell."
"At least in Night City, you're free."
"Nomads, gang members, the homeless, this city can swallow all kinds of secrets."
Kai agreed with that much about Night City.
No matter who you were, you could come here and gamble for a chance.
Tonight you might still be lying in a filthy gutter.
Tomorrow you might be standing at the top of the city, drowning in a different kind of luxury.
"Like you said, Night City is tolerant enough. But it's not friendly."
"Arasaka, Militech, Biotechnica. Corps like that have monopolized this city, and pretty much the whole world."
"Everybody wants to live. Everybody wants room to breathe. But no one ever gets a halftime break."
A flicker of surprise crossed Lucy's eyes. She clearly had not expected words like that to come from someone at Kai's level inside a corporation. Then she smiled and teased him.
"So that's one of the pleasures of being a corporate executive?"
"You stand at the top of Night City, look down at all the little people scrambling around like ants..."
"And then sigh about how rotten the world is."
Kai looked a little helpless.
He knew the silver-haired girl had been deeply wary of him from start to finish.
At the very least, his identity as a high-ranking Arasaka employee had already become the gulf between him and everyone else, something almost impossible to cross.
Kai never blamed anyone for that.
Even he himself hated corpos.
All he could do was sigh inwardly.
Damn. Even after being reborn, I never wanted to be a corpo.
When Lucy saw that Kai stayed silent and gave no response, she turned around to face the city, her back now toward the sea.
Above Night City, several neon advertisement beams shot straight into the sky.
"From here, Night City looks like a cage made of light."
Kai followed the thread of her words.
"So that's why you come here to run at night? At least it lets you feel like you're escaping the cage?"
Lucy answered calmly, "Yeah. I just want to go far away. Somewhere very high and very far."
As she said that, her eyes slowly lifted toward the deep dark of outer space.
After a short pause, the silver-haired girl lowered her gaze and turned to Kai with a teasing look.
"Night running's a pretty good choice."
"Then again... speeding around in a shopping cart feels pretty good too."
"After all, danger is always one step behind us."
"Right?"
Kai was speechless.
That whole ride tonight had really been unnecessary.
Something that could have been solved with a single phone call had somehow turned into a full-on action sequence.
Still, he was not blaming her.
It had all been an absurd accident to begin with.
And he understood the goodwill behind it.
Lucy asked again, "Running again tomorrow?"
Kai answered firmly, "Of course. Night running helps with stress."
Lucy crushed the cigarette out and looked at him.
"Yeah. The stress on a dual deputy director must be huge."
"Running by the seawall is nice, but you still haven't had any cyberware installed. It's too isolated here. Sooner or later you'll run into something like tonight again."
"My advice? Bring two Arasaka bodyguards with you. At least then those idiot Scavs won't dare set their sights on you again."
"It wouldn't look very good for Night City's future king... mm, I mean Arasaka's rising star... to end up on the news."
Kai's expression turned strange. He felt like Lucy was hinting at something, as if she were deliberately hiding part of the story.
"And what about you? Do you run every night too?"
Lucy pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt, turned, and began walking away toward the other end of the seawall, waving one hand behind her without looking back.
"If you run too slow, danger catches up."
"I'm free tomorrow night."
"Same place."
With that, she left him only with her retreating silhouette, gradually disappearing into the distance.
Kai adjusted his workout clothes a little and glanced the other way.
"Too far to walk. I'll call a Delamain back."
(End of Chapter)
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