Chapter 110: Hot Pot and Cucumber

Perhaps because it was mealtime, the restaurant was bustling with noise.

"Can Lucy eat spicy food?"

Xida's soft voice sounded by her ear.

Lucy withdrew her gaze from observing the surroundings and replied softly, "I've never had Hot Pot before... I probably can't handle much spice..."

"Then let's order a Yuan Yang Pot to try first? It wouldn't be good to end up with some digestive disease from eating too much spice..."

Seeing Lucy nod to indicate she had no objections, Xida tapped a few times on the electronic ordering interface with her finger.

Although the Hot Pot Restaurant in Downtown Night City was expensive, the efficiency and quality of its service were indeed worth it.

Only about five minutes passed in total before a pot of prepared Hot Pot base was brought up by the Waitress.

"You ordered the Yuan Yang Pot?"

Yahweh happened to return from the food pickup area, carrying many plates of dishes in his hands, as if performing acrobatics.

Unlike the ordering mode during lunch hours, this restaurant switches to a self-service mode in the evening to cater to the habit of people with spare cash gathering for dinner at night, which counts as one of its features.

"You're really funny..." Lucy complained while standing up, taking the various-sized plates from Yahweh's hands and arranging them neatly on the table.

"Where is Xida?" Yahweh glanced at the empty seat beside Lucy and asked curiously.

"Right there, look behind you, at the entrance." Lucy pointed her chin toward the direction of the door, while simultaneously evenly dropping slices of beef, mutton, and other ingredients into the clear broth and spicy broth.

"Hello! Sorry I'm late, there was some traffic on the road..." Unlike their last meeting, this V clearly showed signs of having dressed up carefully, appearing more mature and professional.

"It's fine..." Yahweh nodded, pointing to Lucy sitting beside him, "Xida must have introduced her to you already, the new member of our team, Lucy."

Lucy politely stood up and shook hands with the two newcomers.

"Right, the one beside me is Gil, currently a bartender at a bar." V pulled Gil along and sat on Lucy's left side.

"You can come sit at that bar sometime..." Xida nodded, saying this while sitting on Lucy's right side, right next to Yahweh.

"By the way, is your team on vacation recently? Haven't heard any news of your activities for several days." V placed her bag on the chair back and asked curiously.

"Something like that... I guess we'll take on new work again by the end of January." Yahweh looked at V sitting on his right, thought for a moment, and then answered.

"What about you, V? Did you encounter any trouble on your path to promotion?" Xida asked, glancing at the boiling pot base, and invited everyone to start eating.

"A few people were quite envious, but it doesn't matter..." V sneered, indicating she didn't care about those jealous little people, "I heard from Xida that Lucy is a quite impressive Hacker? Indeed, young people these days are amazing..."

Lucy took a sip of the tea by her side and nodded somewhat nervously.

"Acting like your age is very old, so old-fashioned." Gil beside her rolled her eyes at V and muttered a complaint.

"Oh... I forgot, you're probably the oldest one here." V didn't hold back and countered directly.

"Pfft..." Xida couldn't hold it back, watching their little happy drama, and laughed out loud.

"Judging by the accent, are both Gil and Xida from France?" Lucy looked back and forth between Xida and Gil several times before finally asking out of curiosity.

"Huh? So I have an accent when I speak?" Xida was actually quite surprised; she thought her spoken English was authentic enough.

"It's at a level where you can't tell unless you listen carefully and compare." Yahweh spoke up to comfort his girlfriend a few times.

"I am indeed from France, and I went to university in France too..." Gil played with her long purple hair to avoid accidentally getting strands on the plate when she lowered her head.

"Before I was born, our family had already moved from France to Night City..." Xida recalled, her eyes looking somewhat dim.

Yahweh timely took her slightly cool hand, subtly changing the subject, "V and Gil, what are your two plans for the future? Will you continue to advance in your careers or do something else..."

"Actually, I didn't originally plan to be a bartender..." Gil scratched the back of her head and answered, "When I was in school, I was always irritable and short-tempered. Once, while drinking with my ex-girlfriend, she told me, 'If you keep hitting walls in life, why not try bartending?'..."

"So you went ahead and got your Bartender License?" Lucy glanced at the dejected Xida, apologetically rubbed her palm, and casually continued the conversation.

"Something like that... but it was after this guy broke up with her ex-girlfriend." V laughed, threw the cooked mutton into her mouth, chewed while rubbing Gil's head.

"How do you know that?" Gil was somewhat surprised; she remembered clearly that she had never mentioned her painful past emotional experiences to anyone else.

"Ha... looks like someone hasn't realized yet that they completely turn into a big mouth when drunk... crying while loudly telling how she and her ex-girlfriend did this and that... for example, the 'Cucumber' incident..." V shook her head helplessly, with a speechless expression.

"Tell us the details!" Xida sorted out her emotions and became lively again.

"Uh... Gil, can I tell it..." V turned to glance at Gil, but found she had already given up, holding her head, and lying face down on the table pretending to be dead.

"I'll tell it myself then... anyway, it's old news..." After a while, Gil lifted her head and answered in a muffled voice, "Ahem... I'll make it short... Xida, you can cover your boyfriend's ears..."

"Once, I hid all the Happy Sticks in my room... but then I found out my ex-girlfriend was actually using Cucumber as a substitute... The aftermath of this was that a few days later, she even made that Cucumber into a salad and asked me: 'Darling, do you like my taste in lunch?'"

"In the end, she even gave me a shirt printed with a Cucumber pattern... Alright, alright, I know you're struggling to hold back your laughter, just laugh if you want..."

"You guys play pretty big..." Xida said in amazement while tightly covering Yahweh's ears, but the corner of her mouth couldn't help but curve up with schadenfreude.

"Is it the kind I'm thinking of..." Lucy was shocked that there was such a game between girls; the old internet knowledge she found didn't include this aspect.

"Yes, exactly that kind..." V nodded with a heavy expression, while her fingers secretly wiped the tears that just came from laughing at the corners of her eyes.

"Good child, don't learn this..." Gil said to the innocent Lucy, "Those inferior cultivated Cucumbers are very thorny... one small mistake and they'll cut your skin..."

Yahweh was burying his head and eating wildly, looking as if he heard nothing at all.