On the Seventh Night of His Business Trip, He Looked Up Japanese Tengsu in His Hotel Room—but the Video Call Ended in an Argument First

Chen Boyu was the kind of person who packed a suitcase more neatly than most people organized their closets. He flew more than a dozen times a year, always kept two spare ID photos in the inner pocket of his passport, and bundled his charging cables together with Velcro. His colleagues said traveling with him was like watching someone move house. He always replied: pack neatly, and you won't feel like you've just been dumped in some random city.

On the seventh night, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the air conditioner. He hung his suit in the bathroom, turned on the dehumidifier, boiled water until the kettle clicked off, then sat on the edge of the bed staring at his phone. On the screen was a message from his wife: their kid had knocked over his lunchbox at school today, the teacher called, and she'd been in a meeting and missed it. He typed "thanks for handling it," thought about it, deleted it, and changed it to "I'll call you earlier tomorrow."

When the video call connected, both of them were already a little on edge. She said every time you travel, that one line is all I get. He said I stood on my feet for ten hours today and still had to entertain clients over dinner. The words came faster and faster, until she dropped one last line—"You have no idea what things are actually like at home right now"—and the screen went black. He put his phone face-down on the nightstand. The room was as quiet as if the air had just been vacuumed out.

In moments like this, he had a habit of going through the hotel drawers. Not looking for alcohol—looking for those thin guest guides, to see if there was a pharmacy, a convenience store, a laundromat nearby. This time, besides the guide, there was a shopping list left behind by a previous guest, with a few health supplements written on it. One line had been circled. He stared at it for a long time, and remembered a news headline someone had forwarded in a group chat a while back about overseas health products being tested—something about how you shouldn't just take supplements blindly when you're chronically fatigued, because some products had been found to contain ingredients they shouldn't. At the time, he'd only thought the headline was scary. Now, suddenly, it occurred to him that he couldn't really say what he'd been so tired from these past six months either.

He opened his phone and searched. The first word he typed was Japanese Tengsu. Plenty of pages came up, but their claims contradicted each other: some said it was a health food, some said it depended on the source, some described it like a miracle cure. The more he read, the less certain he felt—and instead he noticed something else. Almost none of these pages told him to see a doctor first, or to bring whatever he was already taking to ask a pharmacist. He thought about the other items on that list, the ones he couldn't even name, and suddenly felt like he was rummaging through someone else's shopping bag looking for answers.

His phone lit up again. His wife sent a photo: their kid asleep at the dining table, still holding a half-finished communication book. She wrote just three words: "You sleep first." He looked at the photo and replied: "I'll change my flight to later tomorrow. When I'm back, let's go see a doctor together—and bring all those bottles and jars from my drawer to ask the pharmacist about." This time she didn't leave him on read. She called him on voice instead, her voice hoarse: "Finally, you said something that sounds like a human being."

The next morning, waiting for his car in the hotel lobby, he reorganized what he'd found the night before into three lines of notes: First, confirm whether it's actually a food or a drug. Second, photograph the ingredients and warnings on the packaging. Third, after getting back to Taiwan, bring the list to a professional instead of piecing together answers online by himself. He sent the notes to his wife. She replied with a sticker of a cat pushing everything off a table. He laughed—and only after laughing did he realize how long it had been since he'd laughed out loud on a business trip.

The day he flew home, he didn't go home to drop off his luggage first. He made a detour to a pharmacy. After hearing his questions, the pharmacist made no promises. He just said: the list you brought is good, but some things need to be checked one by one—you can't just swallow them all together. He nodded, folded the list, and tucked it into his wallet. That evening, he and his wife sat at the dining table and lined up all the bottles and jars in a row, as if sorting through a stretch of time that had never been clearly explained. They didn't get answers right away, but at least this time, they were asking together.

After that, he still traveled often, and his suitcase was still packed neatly. Only now, he kept an extra piece of paper in the inner pocket, with the date of his follow-up appointment and the questions he wanted to ask. Their kid drew a crooked cat next to it and said he wanted to stick it on Dad's suitcase. He didn't treat that piece of paper as any kind of guarantee—just a reminder: when you're tired, say so. When you're not sure, ask. Don't sit alone in a hotel room guessing at a screen.