Lu Shengxun and Song Yun'er's Old Engagement and Lasting Ties

Lu Shengxun and Song Yun'er’s old engagement leaves behind a durable but uneasy bond: he remains committed to helping her, yet the intimacy and assurance Song seeks from him are no longer reliably returned. Their history survives less as a renewed courtship than as a mixture of obligation, practical assistance, unresolved hurt, and a boundary made more visible by Lu’s marriage to Su Xiangwan.

The engagement and its lasting obligation

Song is identified as Lu’s fiancée, but the surviving tie between them is not simply a continuation of that status. Lu has promised Song’s father that he will take care of her for the rest of his life. He treats that promise as binding even when Song no longer has a claim to the same closeness: he says he will do his best to help if she asks in the future. The obligation gives their old engagement consequences beyond romance, making his continuing support both personal history and a debt he believes he must honor.

That commitment does not amount to an assurance that he will always behave as Song hopes. When Song asks whether he will always be good to her, Lu gives an affirmative nod, but his manner is described as indifferent. The contrast matters: his answer preserves the promise, while its emotional delivery offers little of the tenderness Song is seeking. Their connection persists, but it has become difficult to read as mutual romantic devotion.

Practical help after the change in closeness

Lu’s assistance takes a concrete, professional form when he offers Song a document for a project. He explains that it belongs to a branch rather than headquarters. The offer comes after Song has complained that, in a city as small as Cloud City, Lin Yanche has never collaborated with her. Lu acknowledges that cooperation is unavoidable there, then gives her an opportunity to consider. His intervention helps her through work rather than restoring the old intimacy between them.

The exchange also shows Song’s position as precarious. She is surprised by the offer and checks what kind of project it is before accepting its significance. Lu, meanwhile, presents the document without ceremony and returns to his work. His help is real, but its practical shape lets him fulfill a continuing responsibility without promising a return to their former relationship.

Reassurance, resentment, and distance

Song repeatedly tests whether Lu’s attachment still offers emotional security. After seeing him frown at a call from an unfamiliar number, Su Xiangwan asks who is calling. Lu describes the caller as a friend from the past, comforts his wife, and steps away to answer. In this marriage, Song’s history is present as a past connection rather than a publicly acknowledged rival, and Lu’s brief explanation draws a firm line around it.

Song’s question about whether Lu will always be good to her follows a markedly colder encounter: he looks at her indifferently and turns back to his documents. She leaves smiling after his nod, but the gap between his restrained response and her expectant gaze makes the reassurance incomplete. Elsewhere, when Song calls after being left at Lu’s doorstep, she asks whether he cares about her and says that her leg is broken and she has lost a lot of blood. Lu replies that he is in a meeting and tells her to have Old Wu pick her up. He does arrange for help, but delegates the immediate care rather than going himself; Song’s increasingly tearful appeal underscores how much she wants more than the assistance he offers.

Their shared past also contains anger, not merely lingering affection. In a tearful confrontation, Song accepts blame for what Lu has become and says that she has already received her punishment by being abandoned. Lu answers with a cold comparison of their appearance, turning her confession into an exchange of reproach and humiliation. The scene exposes how obligation and resentment coexist: neither the old engagement nor his promise to her father has made the history emotionally harmless.

A history that shapes other relationships

Song’s connection to Lu also leaves a mark on his marriage to Su Xiangwan. Su recalls that Lu once treated her with hostility because of Song, and she reacts sharply when she believes he has failed to explain a situation involving another woman. She explicitly compares it to what happened with Song before. The past therefore recurs not only in Song’s direct encounters with Lu, but as a precedent through which Su interprets secrecy and trust.

The relationship’s defining tension is the distance between a continuing duty and a former intimacy. Lu does not abandon Song when their closeness changes: he offers work, promises future assistance, and arranges for someone to collect her. Yet he can answer her requests with indifference, delegate care, or respond to vulnerability with scorn. Song, for her part, keeps asking whether his commitment still means that he will personally care for her. Their old engagement remains consequential precisely because it has not settled into either a clean separation or a restored romance; it is an unresolved bond whose practical obligations endure while its emotional guarantees have weakened.