Chapter Fourteen: My Choice Was Not Wrong

Lin Yanran’s body suddenly trembled, her eyes filled with shock and disbelief.

She sent message after message, as if suspecting her phone was malfunctioning, and even toggled her data connection off and on again.

But the result remained exactly the same.

Two prompts appeared in the chat window:

[Message sent but rejected by recipient.]

[Friend verification required. You are not yet friends. Please send a friend request. Only after the recipient approves can you chat.]

Boom!

It was as if thunder exploded by Lin Yanran’s ears, making her whole body tense and rigid.

Su Chen… did he delete me?

How could Su Chen possibly delete me?

He… he loved me so much—how could he bear to remove me?

Lin Yanran feebly set her phone down, hugged herself, and crouched on the floor, staring blankly ahead, her eyes vacant.

Her heart felt hollow, as if she had lost something of utmost importance.

In that moment, Lin Yanran suddenly felt like a clown…

At that moment, Xu Fangyuan also snapped back to her senses. She quickly pulled the despondent Lin Yanran to her feet.

Seeing Lin Yanran’s lost expression, she hurried to comfort her, “It’s fine. This Su Chen is just riding a small wave of popularity. At best, he’s a minor internet celebrity—he’s nowhere near your level!”

“We’re legitimate celebrities who debuted properly. Breaking up with him was the best decision you could make!”

The best decision…

A glimmer of light gradually returned to Lin Yanran’s eyes.

Seeing this, Xu Fangyuan continued, “He deleted you just to play hard to get, so you’ll chase after him. I’ve seen plenty of men like that! If you get back together with him, how can you ever aim for the Queen of Pop? Lin Yanran, have you forgotten your dream?”

Those words struck Lin Yanran like a hammer, jolting her awake.

“That’s right… the Queen… I want to become the youngest Queen of Pop! My decision wasn’t wrong!”

The last few words burst out from Lin Yanran’s throat in a near-roar.

Just uttering that sentence left her gasping for breath.

Seeing this, Xu Fangyuan nodded in satisfaction.

That’s more like it!

After calming down, Xu Fangyuan began to analyze the situation.

“Our only concern now is how to handle it if Su Chen tries to ride your fame by going public about your past relationship.”

“My previous arrangements only worked for ordinary people. Now that he has some fans of his own, public opinion might not be as effective…”

Xu Fangyuan mentally sifted through what she knew about Su Chen. After a moment’s thought, a sharp glint flashed in her eyes.

“Still, I have ways—bringing him down will be easy!”

Xu Fangyuan’s lips curled with confidence. “All his popularity comes from singing ‘Queen’ at Zhang Fuyu’s concert. As long as the song’s performance in the charts falls short of expectations, his popularity will naturally fade.”

Lin Yanran frowned. “But I just listened to that song. It’s really good. As soon as it’s uploaded, the number of downloads and clicks will surely be high.”

“There are plenty of good songs—why don’t they all make the charts? Because even good songs have their own tiers!” Xu Fangyuan crossed her arms and spoke with pride.

“Besides, a good song also relies on the team behind it for promotion. Su Chen has no capital backing—he’s naturally a step below!”

“And anyway, Su Chen’s songwriting is just so-so. How could what he writes compare to the gold-standard songwriters at Starshine?”

Lin Yanran frowned again. She felt something was off with Xu Fangyuan’s words, but couldn’t pinpoint what.

Surely Su Chen’s songs can’t be better than Zhou Qiang’s, right? That would be a joke! Zhou Qiang’s songs have won many awards, while Su Chen has nothing!

Xu Fangyuan sneered. “He’ll definitely upload ‘Queen’ these next couple of days, and Starshine has an artist releasing a song at the same time—a super popular young idol named Wang Qi.”

“Wang Qi’s new song was tailor-made by Zhou Qiang and it’s top quality! We’ll ramp up the promotion. If he and Su Chen release songs at the same time, Wang Qi’s song will crush Su Chen’s ‘Queen’!”

“As soon as ‘Queen’ fails to make a splash, Su Chen will quickly fade into obscurity! He’ll finally see that sudden fame is nothing but a fleeting dream!”

The more Xu Fangyuan spoke, the brighter her eyes became. She couldn’t help but mentally congratulate herself on her cleverness.

Lin Yanran, having listened to the whole plan, couldn’t find any flaws.

She couldn’t help but sigh.

Sorry, Su Chen. On my road to becoming Queen, there can’t be any obstacles.

The next day.

Su Chen was woken by the vibration of his phone.

After caring for Han Jiangxue last night, he was worried about leaving her alone, so he stayed another night in the guest room.

He barely slept, waking again and again, pacing to Han Jiangxue’s bedroom door each time to check that she was breathing smoothly.

After five or six rounds of this, he finally relaxed a little and tried to get some real rest.

But he hadn’t slept long when his phone started buzzing incessantly.

Opening his eyes, Su Chen saw daylight streaming through the window. He sighed and decided not to sleep any longer.

“So early… who could it be?” Picking up his phone, he saw his WeChat had over 99 new messages.

To his surprise, the messages were all from family, friends, and even classmates he hadn’t contacted in ages!

After his Douyin video went viral yesterday, everyone who knew him now realized he was the one who sang ‘Queen’ at Zhang Fuyu’s concert.

Not just someone with the same name—it was truly him!

So they all flocked to offer congratulations and try to reconnect.

Su Chen had always kept a low profile. At school, he was just a face in the crowd, and after graduating, he kept in touch with classmates even less—his college roommates didn’t even message once a year.

If that was the case for college, then forget about even older classmates.

But now that he was famous online, not just his college roommates, but even elementary school classmates from over a decade ago were messaging him!

Tsk… people are just like that.

When you’re poor in the city, no one asks after you; when you’re rich in the mountains, even distant relatives seek you out!

That’s how realistic society is.

No matter how nice their words sounded, Su Chen knew that, aside from his immediate family, no one was truly happy for his success. In their hearts, they must be wildly envious and jealous.

There’s that old saying: afraid your brother lives in hardship, but more afraid your brother drives a luxury car.

If that’s how brothers are, what about everyone else?

Su Chen replied perfunctorily to the ones he still remembered, and ignored the rest.

After answering the messages, he casually opened Douyin and was instantly dumbfounded.

His follower count had jumped from a mere twenty bots to nearly half a million!

And this was just overnight!

No wonder all those so-called classmates came running…

Su Chen stared in astonishment.