Taiping Continent
Kowloon Ice Room
Ling Mei, wearing a bear apron, huffed and puffed as she ran up to Brother Ni, who had just entered. She held a small notebook in her hand.
"What would you like to drink, sir?"
Her expression was extremely serious, as if she was doing something important.
In Night City, child workers as young as six or seven aren't uncommon. Most work by tugging at people's heartstrings to draw customers to family businesses.
"A glass of iced lemonade."
Ling Mei immediately scribbled her note in the notebook, in Chinese. Her handwriting was wobbly, but she wrote with great effort.
In fact, the shop had electronic notebooks, so there was no need to write by hand. But the cop said it would help her learn to read.
In 2076, English was still the lingua franca, but with a mountain of new code words added every year, you'd need to learn over 10,000 words just for daily conversation. It wasn't suitable anymore.
