I saw Ye Jinghong by the elevator. She had not gone upstairs yet.
She looked at me, then toward the entrance of the residential compound.
There was no way to see the compound entrance from here.
She asked softly, "Has she left?"
I nodded slightly. She asked again, "What did she want with you? She didn't make things difficult for you, did she?"
I gave a bitter smile. "She wanted the heart core too. She said that as long as I handed it over, she would stop causing me trouble. She even promised to let you be with me."
"So, did you agree?" Ye Jinghong asked nervously.
I shook my head. "No. I could never agree to that. I told her I would not make that kind of deal, and you are not some commodity. Even if she is your mom, she has no right to treat you like goods to be traded."
A smile appeared on Ye Jinghong's face. "Well said."
But the smile soon vanished. "You just couldn't bear to part with the heart core, could you?"
I answered very seriously, "Yeah. I couldn't."
She viciously pinched me, and the pain nearly made me cry out.
"My mom won't let this go," she said with a sigh, her expression turning serious again.
Of course I knew that. It was not just her mom, but those Mechanical people as well.
"How did news about the heart core get out?" Ye Jinghong asked.
I did not know either. It seemed that not many people knew I had obtained the heart core, so how did those outsiders find out? And almost everyone who knew was close to me. They should not have betrayed me.
"Could the problem be with the Administration Bureau?"
I suddenly thought of the Administration Bureau's Alien Return