I can’t recommend this novel enough. Whether you’re looking for softness, healing, angst, or just a beautifully told relationship between two boys who grow into love this is it.
It has been so long since a story made me feel this soft, this full, and this alive. I started Wait For Me After School with no expectations, just wanting something short and different, and it ended up feeling like I had lived another life inside it.
This is the kind of romance that makes you ache in the best way. It is about two boys, Yu Fan and Chen Jingshen, stumbling their way through high school, figuring themselves out, and slowly learning how to love and be loved. It is quiet, real, and intimate, the kind of story you do not just read but live through.
This book reminded me what it is like to be young and in love, surrounded by friends who make the world feel big and safe. I have never had a romance like Yu Fan and Chen Jingshen’s, or a friend group like theirs, but I lived through them in these pages.
Reading this made me feel like I was back in school, like I had that messy, silly, dumb, loyal, ride or die group of friends who would sacrifice everything for each other. They tease, meddle, and make everything chaotic. I never had a romance like theirs in my own school life, but I felt like I was there with them, living through their youth, laughing with them, aching with them.
Yu Fan
(him blushing is my most fav part of this book)
A delinquent with sharp edges and a heart that blushes too easily. He is cranky, stubborn, and does not understand his own feelings, but beneath it all he is soft, loyal, and deeply worthy of love, even if he does not believe it himself. How he acts tough but melts for Chen Jingshen anyway. His false fierceness and salty attitude.
♡ The way he receives Chen Jingshen’s quiet care without words, like that wedding coat scene six years later when Chen handed him the coat and Yu Fan accepted it with no talking, just an exchange that said everything
Chen Jingshen
From dayy oneee
The top student who seems calm and collected but is hopelessly in love. He is persistent, devoted, and quietly kind, even while hiding his own painful family life. That quiet devotion still makes my heart swell.
I just lovee him ultra delusional man (after 6 years he ask “do you want to break up with me” like bruh he's soo me the delusion level)
Scenes That Live Rent-Free in My Heart
💌 The Wedding Coat Scene — Six years apart, reunited at a wedding. No words. Chen hands Yu Fan his coat, Yu Fan accepts. The air between them heavy with everything they’re not saying.
💌 The High School Confession — “Let’s date, I won’t hit you.” Aahhh.
💌 Theme Park Date — The photograph, the white shadow, the doberman plushie… pure sweetness.
💌 Birthday Scene — One on the balcony, one downstairs, looking at each other while talking on the phone.
💌 Time Skip — Six years apart, both hurting quietly. Justice when they finally meet again.
💌 The Reunion — “I have a boyfriend, we’ve been together for six years.” Heart-shattering and heart-healing all at once.
💌 The Friends Finding Out — Six years later, they finally know and it’s joyful, not tragic.
💌 Those kisses 😭 like youth's first time — not enough, everything new, exciting with a mix of fear of being exposed. Secret romance, meeting, kissing. Just love those moments and will forever cherish them.
I do wish we had more about the side characters.
I love when Yu Fan asked Chen Jingshen “do you pity me?”
And CJS just said “No, I love you.”