Su Qingrou’s Failed Suicide Attempt with a Knife

Su Qingrou’s failed suicide attempt with a knife is the point at which her conflict with Lin Yanche becomes an immediate struggle over life, control, and the future of the Su Family. Already injured, Lin faces her with a blade in her hand; when Su Qingrou declares that she would rather die than remain entangled with him, he rushes to stop her and is wounded in the process. The crisis exposes the gulf between her demand to end the conflict and his refusal to let her go.

Causes and Background

The scene unfolds against a relationship marked by coercion and threats. On an earlier occasion, when Su Qingrou tried to leave Lin Yanche’s manor, he grabbed her arm and threatened that Jin Zhengnan would never leave the hospital if she took even a step outside. She protested that Jin was only her friend and had nothing to do with their conflict, but Lin answered by accusing her of disloyalty. That exchange makes the attempt to leave more than a private disagreement: Lin has used another person’s safety as leverage to keep Su Qingrou within his reach.

The family conflict also sharpens what Su Qingrou says during the crisis. Rather than presenting her death solely as an escape from Lin, she frames it as a way to end his dealings with the Su Family. She tells him that if their entanglement is to continue indefinitely, she would rather give her life back to him, leaving him no reason to target her family. Her words reveal the logic of desperation in the moment: she sees herself as a possible price that might settle a debt imposed on people she loves.

A painful family memory gives Su Xiangwan’s response a further context without explaining Su Qingrou’s motives. Su Xiangwan has recalled that their mother, believing she had a terminal illness and did not want to implicate the family, walked onto a balcony after seeing a drawing of parents holding a child’s hand. In the present crisis, Su Xiangwan invokes the family’s dead and living relatives as reasons for her sister not to give up her life. The parallel makes the sisters’ fear concrete, but the story does not establish that their mother’s death caused Su Qingrou’s actions.

The Confrontation

When Su Xiangwan and Lu Xun reach the scene, they find Lin Yanche’s white shirt stained with blood and Su Qingrou gripping the knife, watchful and visibly agitated. Lu Xun initially restrains Su Xiangwan, warning her that her sister’s emotions are unstable and that approaching could put her in danger. Su Xiangwan insists that her sister would not hurt her and that she needs help. As they move closer, Su Qingrou keeps the others back and gestures with the blade.

Su Xiangwan approaches by speaking to her sister and embracing her, presenting herself as someone who has come too late rather than as another person trying to control her. Lu Xun quietly tells her to stay calm and first get the knife away. The exchange makes the rescue precarious: the sister’s closeness offers comfort, but every movement around the blade carries risk. Lin, meanwhile, is wounded and only partly able to intervene. He asks whether Su Qingrou is finished and whether she is tired of living, a taunt that meets her declaration that she would rather die than remain bound to him.

Su Qingrou then turns the knife toward her own neck. Before she can carry out the attempt, Lin Yanche rushes forward, pushes her down, and catches the blade with his hand. Blood runs from his palm onto the yellowish floor tiles. He takes the knife from her and throws it away, ending the immediate danger. His intervention saves her, but it is not a peaceful reconciliation: he tells her that even in hell he will not let her go, then lifts her pale face and kisses her.

Consequences and Aftermath

The scene leaves the sisters with distinct forms of helplessness. Su Xiangwan tries to reach Su Qingrou through physical closeness and appeals to family, while Lu Xun focuses on keeping her from acting impulsively near the knife. Once the immediate confrontation has passed, Su Xiangwan remains dazed. Lu Xun returns with hot milk and holds her as she tells him she is frightened; he reassures her that he has been there all along. Her fear shows that the danger has not ended emotionally simply because the blade has been removed.

Lin’s action has an equally conflicted meaning. Catching the blade and throwing it away prevents Su Qingrou from dying, but his declaration that he will never release her keeps the coercive bond at the center of the scene. Rescue does not erase the earlier threat against Jin Zhengnan or settle the conflict between Lin Yanche and the Su Family. Instead, protection and possession arrive together, making the immediate survival of Su Qingrou inseparable from the unresolved question of whether she can regain control over her own life.

Narrative Significance

The failed attempt reverses the scene’s balance of power without resolving it. Su Qingrou states a boundary in its most absolute form: she would rather die than continue the relationship on Lin Yanche’s terms or remain a reason for him to pursue her family. Lin prevents that choice through a sudden physical act, but his subsequent words and kiss do not offer freedom as an alternative. The scene therefore distinguishes stopping a death from ending the conditions that produced the crisis.

Su Xiangwan’s presence brings sisterly care into direct contact with that impasse. She refuses to see Su Qingrou as a threat and risks moving closer when others fear her agitation, yet care alone cannot undo the pressure surrounding her sister. The blood on Lin’s hand, the discarded knife, and Su Xiangwan’s later fear mark three consequences of the same encounter: physical injury, temporary safety, and trauma that persists after the immediate danger has passed.