Westbrook – North Oak District.
"You can drop me off here. On my way back, I'll see if I can bring you guys a few oranges."
After saying goodbye to the teammates who'd given him a lift, Karl stepped alone onto the neatly maintained streets of North Oak.
The car needed repairs, and Jack and Oliver were headed to the Badlands today to give V a hand—so after dropping him off, they didn't stick around. Within moments, their vehicle disappeared from Karl's view.
They'd already mentioned earlier that if the job ran late, they'd just crash at a roadside motel for the night and wouldn't be able to pick him up. Karl would need to figure out his own way back. Not that it mattered to him.
Worst case, he'd just hail a cab.
"The address… I think it was—"
Just as Karl was getting ready to follow the address Haruko had sent him, a Rayfield Caliburn came gliding toward him from down the road.
[Rayfield Caliburn]: Manufactured by Rayfield. Compared to the more elegant "Aerondight," this hypercar prioritized raw, explosive speed.
Karl recognized it thanks to Jack and Oliver's love of all things automotive. He remembered that the Caliburn had been released in 2070—five years before the Aerondight S7 dropped in 2075—and it had once been the object of Oliver's obsession, at least before the S7 hit the streets.
This beast was built using cutting-edge, military-grade alloy. You could hit it with a damn RPG and it'd probably still drive. Not quite as rare as the Aerondight, but still—very few people in Night City could afford to own one.
Just as Karl was wondering who the hell was driving it, the car door slid open like a luxury capsule, revealing a figure both unfamiliar and unmistakably threatening.
Unfamiliar—because this was clearly the first time Karl had laid eyes on her.
She had short, perfectly styled hair and sharp Eastern features.
But familiar—because of the aura. That subtle, unconscious pressure. Not hostility, just sheer presence. Power.
Karl had felt this before. And very few people had ever made him feel it.
Among women, only one had.
Instantly, Karl pieced it together.
"Chiyome?"
He asked, testing the waters.
She nodded.
"Get in, Karl. Miss Haruko asked me to bring you over."
"Got it."
Karl wasn't about to pass up the chance to ride in a luxury car—especially if it meant skipping the walk. For someone who hated effort, this was perfect.
He quickly slid into the passenger seat.
Both the Caliburn and the Aerondight were two-seaters, something Karl normally disliked. But the moment he sank into the plush interior, all complaints vanished.
So soft. So damn comfortable.
Whatever this "crystal-dome" tech was—it was insane. There weren't even traditional windows, yet from the inside, he had a perfect panoramic view of everything around them.
Leaning back slightly, enjoying the luxury of the ride, Karl found himself wondering—
Does Rayfield make a four-seater?
If so, once he had the eddies, he just might upgrade.
But just as quickly as the thought surfaced, Karl let it go.
Skydome Hera was still being worked on by V, Jack, and Oliver, and here he was already dreaming about cruising around in a hypercar. That was pushing it.
Riding in a car like this once in a while was fine, sure—but for jobs, for road trips, Skydome Hera was the real MVP. A luxury ride like this would stand out too much, and honestly, there was something nice about being crammed in with the others, talking shit and bouncing around in the back.
North Oak, being the ultra-rich district it was, had roads paved smooth as glass. No potholes, no junk in the streets. So while Karl was mulling over car choices, Chiyome had already pulled the Caliburn up to their destination.
While she exchanged credentials with the Arasaka-uniformed security guards at the front gate, Karl glanced around at the scale of the estate.
They called it a villa, but to Karl? It was a manor—no doubt about it. The land it occupied had far surpassed the scale of a typical private residence.
Just looking side to side, Karl could tell this place basically claimed the entire hilltop. Compared to this, even Fujiwara Ryonaga's fancy villa was like… a bathroom in one corner of the grounds. Maybe even a pet-only bathroom.
Of course, that was an exaggeration—but doing some quick mental math, Karl figured Fujiwara's villa, proportionally, was probably the size of a single room in an eight-story building. That's how massive this place was.
Karl recalled that in North Oak, the higher up the land, the steeper the price. Meaning…
This estate was probably worth more than twenty or thirty Fujiwara-level villas combined.
As the Caliburn rolled slowly through the now-open iron gates and down a neatly landscaped driveway between sprawling lawns, Chiyome kept an eye on the security layout—and on Karl. She noticed him scanning left and right, clearly calculating.
Without missing a beat, she gave him the figure:
"This manor is worth 150 million eddies. Covers 10 hectares—100,000 square meters."
"Ten hectares…"
Karl quickly did the math.
A standard football (soccer) field was about 7,140 m². So 10 hectares meant roughly fourteen full-sized fields. This estate was huge.
His current place in a megatower? It sat on maybe half a field, if that—and was 51 stories tall. Each floor had about 10 apartments. Even if each unit had just two people, minus the rooftop, that was still 1,000 residents packed into a building the size of half a soccer pitch.
And even those people were considered lucky just to have an apartment in Night City.
Now compare that to this place—28 times larger than that entire megatower—and it all existed just to serve one person: Haruko.
As for cost?
That megatower charged maybe 1,000 eddies per unit per month. So, 500 tenants paying in = 500,000 eddies per month.
Compare that to 150 million.
While Karl was mentally calculating these massive numbers, Chiyome continued beside him, her voice carrying a faint tone of discontent:
"This is all because of that negligent man. That's the only reason Miss Haruko has to endure such a cramped residence. Back in Japan, she lived in the main Arasaka estate. Compared to that... this place is tiny."
Karl tilted his head.
"How big is the Arasaka estate?"
"Not huge, by Night City standards—just 20 acres. That's about eight hectares. And the surrounding three kilometers are also Arasaka land—off-limits to outsiders."
Quick math.
Twenty acres is about 80,000 m²—so roughly 8 hectares, almost the size of this current estate just in building space. And with a 3-kilometer exclusion zone around it…
Assuming a square layout, that's 3,000 meters by 3,000 meters—9 million m², or 900 hectares. That's 90 times bigger than this estate.
And Arasaka land wasn't cheap.
The pressure hit Karl like a weight.
He shouldn't have compared them.
Now that he had, it was like a cascade:
His room in Fujiwara's villa? A bathroom.
Fujiwara's villa compared to this manor? Also a bathroom.
This manor compared to the Arasaka estate?
Still just a bathroom.
Karl blinked.
Wait a second…
If everything's just a bathroom when you compare it up the ladder…
Then in the end, everyone's just living in a bathroom.
Karl decided to call this realization:
The Bathroom Theory.
.
.
.
📢 Chooms, Listen Up! 📢
From now on, you can jack in and get 20 chapters ahead on Patreon for Cyberpunk: The Relentless! 💾🔥
Stay plugged into the action, the chrome, and the chaos—early access is live and waiting for you. 🧠💀
🔗 Join here: www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus👤 Patreon name: SrMagnus
Preem support as always, chooms. See you in Night City. 🌆💫