After That Video Call from the Hotel Hallway, He Asked About Japanese Tengsu

When Chen Yanting wheeled his carry-on into the room, the city outside had just begun to light up in rows. He hung up his suit jacket, undid two buttons at his collar, and set his phone on the nightstand, where a message from his wife was flashing on the screen: You forgot to sign our son's communication book again today. He typed back "I'll sign it tomorrow," thought about it, deleted it, and changed it to "I'll call you when I'm back at the hotel." It was the seventh day of this business trip, and he had already lost count of how many convenience-store rice balls he'd eaten for dinner. All he remembered was that every night when he got back to the room, the air conditioner was louder than any human voice.

When the video call connected, his wife was in the kitchen putting away dishes. She asked how his meetings had gone that day. He said they were fine, then asked if their son was asleep. The two of them sat in silence for a few seconds across the screen, and then she suddenly said, "Every time you're on a business trip you say it's fine. So what exactly counts as fine?" He froze for a moment, then shot back, "What else do you want me to say?"—sharper than he'd intended. On the other end, she dropped the dishcloth into the sink and her voice rose too: "I'm not asking for a report. I just want to talk to you." The signal was unstable, and the screen froze on the moment she turned away. He stared at that frozen image of her back and suddenly felt the room was emptier than before.

After hanging up, he tossed his phone onto the bed and stood by the window for a while. The traffic below flowed like a river that never stopped. He thought about how these past few days he'd been hounded about progress in the meeting room, and then had to come back to the hotel and face an accusation of "you never tell me anything." Something unspoken was lodged in his chest. He opened his suitcase to look for a charging cable, but instead pulled out a receipt from a follow-up appointment last month, tucked between a shirt and his laptop adapter. That piece of paper made him pause: so he really had been more easily tired lately, and less inclined to talk—he'd just been brushing it off with "that's just how business trips are."

He sat back down on the edge of the bed and opened his messaging app. He'd meant to explain himself again, but his finger hovered over the input box. He suddenly remembered that a few days ago someone had dropped a link in a group chat, with a title about men's health or something like that. He hadn't clicked it at the time, feeling that sort of thing was far removed from him. Now he was a little curious about what that kind of information actually said, so he typed those keywords into the search bar one by one, and one of the results was Japanese Tengsu. He wasn't going to buy anything, nor was he going to believe anything right away. He just wanted to know: when a person starts to feel something is off, what claims do they usually come across first, and how should they judge whether those claims are reliable?

The next day at noon, he took advantage of a break in the meeting to message his wife. He wrote just one line: "I was short with you last night. I'm sorry." Before long, she sent back a photo of their son building with blocks in the living room, followed by: "He signed his communication book himself today. He said he wants to wait for you to come home and check it." He looked at the photo and laughed out loud, and the stifled feeling from the night before suddenly loosened by half. He casually saved screenshots of a few pages he'd looked up the night before into his notes app, planning to go through them slowly once he was back home. He realized that what he really wanted to know wasn't which product was more impressive, but whether, behind all those dazzling claims, there was a source he could verify, and whether ingredients and precautions were clearly labeled.

When the video call connected again that evening, his wife spoke first: "Were you looking up weird stuff again yesterday?" He froze, then asked how she knew. She said, "Every time you feel guilty, you keep scrolling on your phone, and the camera's always pointed at your chin." He couldn't help laughing, and simply turned the phone around to show her the screenshots in his notes app. After looking, she didn't comment on whether they were good or bad—she just said, "You should ask a doctor about that kind of thing. Don't just guess on your own." He nodded and said he felt the same way. He also mentioned that there were some words on the packaging he couldn't understand at all, and that rather than buying blindly, it would be better to visit a clinic once he was back home and lay out all these issues—feeling tired easily, not sleeping well—clearly in one go.

The two of them went on to talk about their son's blocks, next week's work schedule, and what he wanted to eat the day he got back. Before hanging up, his wife added, "When you're back, we'll go together. I'll go with you to ask." He said okay, and suddenly felt this business trip wasn't as hard to get through as the first few days. He took the receipt out of his suitcase and tucked it under his laptop to remind himself not to forget once he was home. Outside the window, that stream of traffic was still flowing, but the room was no longer filled only with the sound of the air conditioner.

He later brought this up with a colleague, who said he too had once come across a bunch of half-understood terms online, and in the end had taken the supplements he normally used and his prescription list to ask a pharmacist, only then figuring out which were foods and which required a prescription. Chen Yanting kept those words in mind. He wasn't trying to dismiss anyone's choices—he just felt that when there's more information than you can possibly get through, being willing to stop and verify the source and ask the right person is more practical than rushing to place an order. On the day he flew home, he bought a box of cookies his son liked at the airport, and as he went through customs he thought: this time, at least, there was one thing that had been made clear.