Chapter 98: But I’m Chasing You, Yan Yan

The dishes were all served.

As the server exited, they gently closed the door without extra words or any trace of disturbance.

The private room returned to quiet once more, with only the aroma of the food slowly permeating the air like a gentle veil, softly draping over the barrier between them that had yet to fully dissolve.

“Jia Yan, let’s eat first. I’ll explain everything slowly after we’re done, okay?” Wen Wan Ning spoke softly, her voice laced with cautious pleading.

Shen Jia Yan didn’t respond immediately. She gazed at the plate of braised pork ribs, the steam rising and blurring her vision as well as the edges of her memories. “Okay.”

The two ate the meal in silence.

There was no forced small talk, no probing jokes—just the faint clink of chopsticks against porcelain plates, the soft sound of refilling teacups, and the fleeting glances when their eyes occasionally met.

When the server cleared away the last dish, Wen Wan Ning took a deep breath, her fingertips lightly smoothing the folds of her skirt as if to steady her heartbeat.

“Jia Yan,” she began, her voice steadier than before yet still carrying a faint tremor, “about Grandma… I did feel guilty all along, and I do want to make it up to her…”

Shen Jia Yan heard her words and lowered her head slightly, letting out a self-mocking chuckle.

As expected, it was just as she had thought. Everything she did stemmed from guilt, from feeling indebted, because she believed Shen Jia Yan needed a belated apology and a proper amends.

She dropped her gaze, her voice calm to the point of detachment. “No need to feel guilty—”

“But,” Wen Wan Ning interrupted her, “Jia Yan, it’s not just about making up for that one thing. I want to make up for the five years we missed. I want to…”

She nearly blurted out the words she had held back for so long. “I want you. I want to start over with you.”

But in the instant she raised her eyes, she saw Shen Jia Yan’s expression.

It wasn’t indifference—it was resistance. An instinctive recoil.

Her heart sank sharply. She swallowed the confession on the tip of her tongue and softened her voice even more, slowing her pace. “I want us to get to know each other again, starting as friends.”

Friends?

Shen Jia Yan felt exhausted by this approach.

She said helplessly, “I admit, I really liked you back then, and now… I might still like you a little. So I can’t bring myself to firmly reject you—to refuse adding you on WeChat, to turn down your dinner invitations, or even to coldly tell you to stop when you keep sending me ‘good mornings’ and ‘good nights.'”

“But,” she took a breath, “we’ve both grown up, matured. We won’t cling to an unrequited love anymore. One person’s feelings will eventually fade with the passage of time.”

She looked at Wen Wan Ning, wanting the words to sound resolute, but even she could hear how lightly the word “fade” hung, as if a breeze could scatter it.

“So, Lawyer Wen,” she met Wen Wan Ning’s eyes directly, her voice turning cold, “normal people can’t stay friends with someone they once confessed to and got rejected by. Didn’t you know that?”

From the moment Shen Jia Yan said “now… I might still like you,” Wen Wan Ning’s heart surged with waves of ecstasy, overturning the calm, restraint, and doubts she had built over five years in an instant.

She stood up, approached Shen Jia Yan, and leaned in slightly near her ear. Her long hair carried the familiar scent from their memories, and her voice was soft and steady. “I know, but I’m chasing you, Yan Yan.”

Her breath brushed Shen Jia Yan’s ear, warm and resolute. She didn’t pull back but instead looked straight into her eyes.

Shen Jia Yan’s breath hitched, her pupils trembling slightly. She abruptly stood up, her fingers gripping the edge of the table tightly.

Her ears registered the words, but her mind couldn’t process them.

She said… she was chasing her?

Her fingertips still clutched the table edge desperately, as if borrowing this feeble support to confirm whether she was hallucinating.

But Wen Wan Ning stood right in front of her, close enough to count the quiver of her lashes, her gaze bright and searing.

“What… are you saying?” Her voice was hoarse, almost inaudible, as if scraped by sandpaper.

Wen Wan Ning didn’t retreat; instead, she stepped half a pace closer, her knee gently pressing against the chair edge, trapping her in this small space.

“I’m chasing you, Shen Jia Yan.” She enunciated each word clearly.

“The ‘good mornings’ and ‘good nights’ I send you every day, every excuse to see you, every dinner invitation—they’re all my ways of chasing you.”

“I don’t just want to be friends with you,” she gazed at her intently, “I’m afraid—afraid you’ll reject me, afraid you’ll avoid me, afraid I’ll lose even this chance to get close to you. So I can only take it slow, at a pace you’re familiar with, at a distance that won’t scare you, to approach you.”

Shen Jia Yan finally understood. She wanted to chase her? She liked her?

Then what about all those years of self-doubt and denial?

She had spent five years turning “liking Wen Wan Ning” into unsigned songs, into sighs in the dead of night, into an obsession she thought she had sealed away.

And now, she said she wanted to chase her.

What about the pain of those five years? Was it her own fault for falling for it unilaterally? Were all those tears in the night, those days of numbing herself with work, just a joke?

Her fingertips finally released the table edge. She stepped back, putting some distance between them.

This single step felt like an invisible wall, shattering the courage Wen Wan Ning had just mustered.

“Lawyer Wen,” one corner of her mouth curved up, the smile not reaching her eyes, “so, what kind of answer are you looking for from me?”

The light cast faint shadows on her face, that upward curl of her lip appearing as a light laugh but hiding a sharp probe.

“I… I want us to start over, we—”

“Heh.” Shen Jia Yan cut her off with a cold laugh, her voice as chilling as a winter night’s wind, piercing the lingering warmth in the room. “What gives you the right to push me away so decisively back then and now come back saying you want to chase me?”

“What makes you think I’m still waiting for you?”

Each word landed like a heavy blow, smashing into the fragile fantasies Wen Wan Ning had carefully maintained for five years. She stood frozen, her fingertips icy, yet she didn’t dare retreat. She knew this strike was unavoidable—and she shouldn’t avoid it.

The room’s warm yellow light suddenly felt glaring. Shen Jia Yan’s cold laugh was like a knife, slicing through all the gentle pretenses to reveal the painful truth: she had no right.

Yeah, what right did she have?

The right from making Shen Jia Yan wait full of hope while she “took time”?

The right from telling her they were just good friends?

The right from brushing her off with excuses when she needed her most?

“I…” Wen Wan Ning opened her mouth, her voice hoarse and off-key. “I have no right. I know.”

She offered no excuses, no “I had my reasons back then.” She simply lowered her head, her shoulders slumping slightly, as if finally shedding the armor she had worn for five years.

“I shouldn’t think that one ‘I’m chasing you’ can erase the five years you endured alone,” her voice trembled faintly but carried unprecedented resolve. “I have no right to demand your immediate forgiveness or to ask you to start over. But if you’re asking what answer I want…”

She took a deep breath, as if summoning every ounce of courage, and murmured with her head bowed, “The answer I want is, ‘Will you give me a chance to chase you?'”

Shen Jia Yan watched her bowed head, a sharp pang hitting her chest.

But she forced herself to sneer, forced herself to stand tall.

She couldn’t soften, didn’t dare to.

She was too afraid of repeating the same mistakes, too unable to bear another abandonment.

“A chance to chase me?” she spoke again, her voice as cold as a frozen winter river. “Lawyer Wen, what do you think this is? Some romantic pursuit drama? Should I let you try, let you chase, only for you to push me away again someday for some inexplicable reason?”

She stared at her. “I don’t want to be your backup plan anymore.”

With that, she turned, grabbed her coat from the rack, opened the door, and left.

The door clicked shut like a rest note, severing all unspoken words.

Wen Wan Ning stood in place before slowly squatting down, her back against the cold wall, burying her face in her knees.

Scorching tears slipped through her fingers, dripping onto her black dress and blooming into dark stains.

She wasn’t crying over Shen Jia Yan’s rejection but over her own cowardice, over the five years of desolation brought by “we’re just friends,” over how, when she finally gathered the courage, she didn’t know how to prove that this time, she wouldn’t run.

She knew Shen Jia Yan was right.

What right did she have?

What right to think one “I’m chasing you” could tear down the walls she had built with her own hands?

What right to think one dinner, one plate of braised pork ribs, could win back a thoroughly wounded heart?

“I don’t want to be your backup plan anymore”—those words stabbed deep into her heart like a knife.

Outside the window, the north wind howled, cold air sweeping through the city.

In the shadows of a street corner, a black G-Class sat quietly, blending into the night.

In the driver’s seat, Shen Jia Yan leaned back against the headrest, eyes closed, fingertips still gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white. The windows fogged with a thin mist; she hadn’t turned on the heat, letting the chill seep into her bones bit by bit.

She hadn’t gone far. She had merely fled the private room, fled Wen Wan Ning’s tearful eyes, fled the surging heartache from “give me a chance to chase you.”

She knew too well how fragile she was. If Wen Wan Ning got any closer, any gentler, she would forget those nights of pain, forget those unanswered “good nights,” and respond to her recklessly, agree to her without hesitation.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t moved—she just didn’t dare to be.

She knew how harsh her words had been, but she had to be harsh.

She was too scared that one moment of weakness would plunge her back into the cycle of “she loves me, but she’ll leave.” Too scared that one moment of belief would shatter her again the instant she turned away, just like five years ago.

Her fingertips unconsciously slid across her phone screen, pausing at the chat with Wen Wan Ning.

She suddenly laughed, a bitter sound.

“A chance to chase me?” she murmured to herself, her voice strikingly clear in the silent car. “What makes you think I’d dare give you that chance?”

But before the words faded, her phone vibrated.

It was a message from Yang Han: [Trending again, #ThatKindOfFriendshipCalledShenJiaYanAndZhongRuyi#. Team wants to capitalize with a joint interview of you two. What do you think?]

Shen Jia Yan stared at the message, her gaze gradually cooling.

On one side, Wen Wan Ning approached her in reality, baring her heart with “I’m chasing you.” On the other, her world was still shackled by the “Jia Yan-Ruyi” CP persona.

She suddenly found it absurd.

She could reject Wen Wan Ning because she feared the pain. But she couldn’t reject this fake “CP” because behind it were the band, the team, countless livelihoods depending on it.

She closed her eyes and flipped the phone face-down on her lap.

The wind howled outside the car like an unheard scream.

And she, sitting in the darkness, realized for the first time with crystal clarity that what she wanted had never been the cheers of thousands on stage, the staged interactions on trends, or the fabricated emotions.

What she wanted was simply one person who could stand before her—unfazed by her coldness, unafraid of her barbs—daring to say “I’m here,” and also “I’m not leaving.”