Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Lin Wan truly disappeared on the day Wen Muning and I made our relationship official.

By then, the company had taken off, and I had become someone people fawned over in our social circles. Investor dinners, media interviews, cocktail parties, new partnerships-advances from women flew toward me like snowflakes. I used to think my breakup with Pei Shuwen was because she didn’t know a good thing when she saw it; later, I gradually began to believe that anyone who left me was only hurting themselves.

Wen Muning was beautiful, well-spoken, and knew how to play the part of a graceful partner. We got together quickly-so quickly that I never really stopped to think about whether I liked her or not. I just felt that having her stand by my side looked right.

The night we made it official, we were dining at a French restaurant.

She raised her glass to clink against mine, smiling. “Is President Shen finally willing to tear himself away from work?”

I smiled back and was about to speak when my phone lit up.

Sender: Lin Wan.

She hadn’t reached out to me of her own accord in a long time. More accurately, she had been slowly fading out of my life during that period. She stopped coming to the office, stopped asking if I was eating on time, and stopped replying with a “don’t stay up too late” in the middle of the night. Occasionally, when I remembered to message her, she would only reply much later with a simple, “I’ve been a bit busy lately.”

Back then, I actually believed her.

The text was only one sentence:

“Shen Du, I’m leaving. Take care of yourself.”

Wen Muning leaned over to take a look and asked, “Who is it?”

I turned the phone face down, my tone casual.

“An old classmate.”

She smiled. “An ex?”

“No,” I said.

And it was true.

I had never given Lin Wan that title. She hadn’t even earned the right to be seriously defined by me.

I looked down and replied with a single word.

“Mm.”

At the time, I thought her so-called “leaving” was nothing more than her finally coming to her senses-finally stopping her life from revolving around me and finally being willing to start a life of her own.

I even felt a sense of relief.

I thought it was for the best.

Only now do I realize that when she said she was leaving, she didn’t mean leaving Beicheng.

She meant forever.

After turning to this page in the diary, I couldn’t sit still a moment longer.

Night had fully fallen, and the river outside the window was a void of pitch black. Wen Muning called me three times in a row, but I didn’t answer any of them. When the fourth call came, I put the phone on silent, tossed it aside, grabbed my car keys, and headed out.

I went to find Tang Yutang.

She had been Lin Wan’s college roommate and later became a journalist; she had always stayed in touch with Lin Wan. When she opened the door and saw me, she was clearly stunned for a moment before her expression instantly turned cold.

“What are you doing here?”

My throat felt tight. “I want to ask about Lin Wan.”

She stared at me, the disgust in her eyes barely veiled.

“You’re remembering to ask about her now?”

I didn’t respond to that. I simply held out the diary. When Tang Yutang saw the cover, her face changed instantly. She took it and flipped through a couple of pages, her hands trembling.

“How did you get this?”

“I found it while moving,” I said hoarsely. “What exactly happened to Lin Wan?”

Instead of answering, she asked me, “Shen Du, three years ago, when she sent you that last text, what did you reply?”

I opened my mouth, but my throat felt like it was blocked by shards of glass.

“…Mm.”

Tang Yutang suddenly laughed, her eyes turning red with the effort.

“If Lin Wan heard that, she’d probably still find an excuse for you.”

She slammed the diary back into my arms, her voice biting cold.

“See for yourself. Come back and ask me after you’ve finished reading it.”

I stood at her doorstep, motionless for a long time.

Before closing the door, as if remembering something, she turned back and added one more thing.

“By the way. During those last few months, she was on painkillers the whole time. If you had been willing to ask just one more question back then, you wouldn’t have had to wait until today to find out.”

The door shut with a heavy thud.

Standing there, I realized for the first time with visceral clarity that what I was about to read wasn’t just a diary.

It was the record of a dead end that Lin Wan had endured all by herself.