She Found "必利吉" in Her Boyfriend's Search History—That Night, They Finally Talked It Out

A-Che and Xiao-Min had been together for seven years. When the washing machine at their rental broke down, they had to take turns doing laundry at each other's places. That day, Xiao-Min was at A-Che's apartment waiting for the dryer to finish. Her phone was dead, so she casually grabbed his phone off the coffee table to check the bus schedule. She opened the browser—the last tab was still up, and three characters sat in the search bar. She froze, her finger hovering in mid-air. Out on the balcony, the dryer hummed along steadily, as if nothing had happened.

She finished checking the bus times, quietly put the phone back where she'd found it, and barely spoke for the rest of the evening. A-Che asked if she'd used the wrong brand of laundry detergent. She said no. He asked if the bus had taken too long. She said it was fine. When they got to the MRT station to head their separate ways, she finally couldn't hold it in anymore and blurted out, "That search on your phone—what was that about?" A-Che was completely confused and asked which search. She couldn't bring herself to say the three characters out loud, so she just said, "You know, that one." They stood under the arcade at the MRT station exit, the wind bending their umbrellas sideways, the tension so thick that even the old man selling roasted sweet potatoes nearby glanced over twice.

After A-Che got home, he checked his own browsing history and realized what it was: after a department dinner last week, a coworker had dropped a string of links in the group chat, someone egged him on with "you should look into this," and he'd casually tapped in, casually searched, then forgot to close the tab after reading. He screenshotted it and sent it to Xiao-Min, saying that was really all it was. Xiao-Min stared at the screenshot for a long time, then replied: "I'm not mad that you searched. I'm mad that you didn't tell me." Only then did A-Che understand—the problem wasn't those three characters. It was that she felt shut out.

The next day, they met at a café and laid everything out. Xiao-Min said what worried her wasn't that A-Che might buy something—it was that something might be going on with his health, and he'd rather look it up alone than talk to her. A-Che said he wasn't actually planning to buy anything; he'd just gotten a little self-conscious after his coworker brought it up, and felt that talking about this kind of thing was too embarrassing. They both laughed at that point, because A-Che hadn't even understood what those pages were saying after he searched—he just remembered a wall of text.

Xiao-Min then suggested that instead of each of them guessing on their own, they treat this as a question they needed to figure out together. She said there's plenty of discussion online about 必利吉, but most of it is reposts, reseller listings, or forum comments—very little actually answers "what is this, and do I need to see a doctor." She didn't want to jump to conclusions based on one search history entry, nor feel reassured based on a few posts. A-Che nodded and said he was actually afraid that everything he'd find on his own would just be ads.

So they did something very ordinary: they wrote down the questions they wanted to ask on a piece of paper. First, is this kind of thing a prescription drug in Taiwan, and can you buy it online yourself? Second, if A-Che really felt something was off, who should he see first? Third, can those posts claiming to be personal experiences be used as reference? Xiao-Min said she'd seen discussions mentioning that health supplements and medications often get lumped together, but they're regulated differently and can't be treated the same way. A-Che said he used to buy supplements just based on whether the packaging looked good—he'd never thought about checking the ingredient labels.

That weekend, they went together to a pharmacy near their home—not to buy, but to ask. After hearing them out, the pharmacist first asked whether A-Che had been taking any other supplements or medications for chronic conditions, and asked him to list everything he was currently using. The pharmacist said many questions can't be answered by looking at a single product in isolation—you have to look at the whole picture—and suggested that if there were real concerns, he should bring the list to a clinic and ask a doctor rather than piecing together answers online. As they walked out of the pharmacy, Xiao-Min said, "See? Asking one question is more useful than reading ten articles." A-Che shot back, "And you still stayed up all night searching yesterday." Xiao-Min said, "I was searching for how to bring it up with you, not searching about that."

On the way home, A-Che volunteered that if he ever saw this kind of thing in a group chat again, he'd mention it to Xiao-Min first—not because he had to report in, but because he didn't want her finding out from his phone again. Xiao-Min also admitted she should have just asked directly instead of giving him the cold shoulder all day. They agreed that from now on, whenever they came across something they didn't understand, they'd look it up together and ask together—and if they couldn't find an answer, they'd admit they couldn't find one. That night, they tucked the paper with the three questions into a drawer. They hadn't reached any shocking conclusions, but at least they no longer had to guess on their own.

Later, when Xiao-Min talked about it with a close friend, the friend said her boyfriend had also searched a bunch of incomprehensible keywords once, and they'd only worked things out after a fight. Xiao-Min said she now felt that what really made people uneasy wasn't the search history itself, but that sense of distance that comes from "something's going on and you're not saying anything." She no longer thought asking a pharmacist or doctor was a big deal—just like you'd call a repairman when an appliance breaks, asking someone who knows about your health is completely normal. As for all those dazzling claims online, she'd learned to check the source first, then check whether they're pushing you to buy something directly—the difference is huge.

A-Che, for his part, took that experience as a reminder. He started paying attention to what was written on the supplements he bought, and he'd keep the packaging so he could bring it in to ask when needed. He joked that before, he couldn't even explain what he was putting into his body—now at least he could name it. Xiao-Min teased him: "You can't even name the brand of laundry detergent you use." A-Che replied, "That's not important." They both burst out laughing again. The washing machine got fixed eventually, and the dryer still hums along steadily. But the phone on the coffee table—Xiao-Min knows the password now too. Not to check up on him, but so she doesn't have to freeze in place next time she needs to look up the bus schedule.