In the Car After the Wedding Banquet, He Asked Me What Levifil Really Is

It was already past eleven by the time the wedding banquet broke up, and the highway streetlights slid backward one panel at a time. A-Kai gripped the steering wheel, while Yijun in the passenger seat had kicked off her heels and curled her feet up on the seat. All evening, relatives had asked, "So when's it your turn?" and the two of them had smiled their way through it, smiling until their faces ached. The car was quiet for ten minutes before Yijun spoke first: "You were in the bathroom a long time just now." A-Kai froze for a moment, then said he was replying to a message from work.

The conversation could have ended right there. But Yijun didn't let it go. She said that lately A-Kai never let his phone out of his sight, and at night he often said he was tired. She wasn't trying to check up on him—she just felt like the two of them were each holding things up on their own. A-Kai was silent for two exits before he said that his company had raised its targets for the quarter, and two people under him had quit and hadn't been replaced. He said it flatly, like reporting on progress, but Yijun could tell that flatness was something he was forcing himself into.

"There's something else," A-Kai said. He fished a folded piece of paper out of the glove compartment—something he'd scribbled down at a convenience store, with a few words he'd searched for. One of them was Levifil. He said that starting last month, he'd felt like something wasn't right with him, and he wasn't sure whether it was exhaustion, stress, or just age catching up. He didn't dare ask anyone, so he only dared to type keywords into the search bar alone late at night, then delete the history afterward. He was afraid that if he asked, it would mean admitting he had a problem.

Yijun didn't answer right away. What she thought of was how last week she herself had secretly looked up women's health supplements, and she hadn't told anyone either. She said, "So you looked this up—are you wanting me to help you confirm something?" A-Kai shook his head and said he actually didn't know what answer he was looking for. Some of the information he found looked like ads, some looked like discussions, and the claims contradicted each other. He couldn't tell which parts were verified information and which were just someone trying to sell something.

When the car came off the exit and stopped at a red light, Yijun asked him, "So have you first figured out whether this is a prescription drug?" A-Kai said he wasn't sure—he'd only seen a lot of people discussing it. Yijun said that if he wasn't sure, he shouldn't guess on his own for now; what's written on the packaging and whether it requires a doctor's prescription are things that can be checked. And if he really wanted to use it, he should bring what he was already taking to ask a doctor or pharmacist, rather than piecing things together from search results. She spoke slowly, afraid it would sound like she was policing him.

A-Kai said what he was really afraid of wasn't the drug—it was that after he said it out loud, Yijun would think he wasn't good enough. After hearing that, Yijun laughed a little and said that tonight she'd been asked eight times about her plans to have children, and she didn't feel good enough either. She said that when both people hide their worries, the result is that each of them sits in silence in the car. She suggested that after they got home, they lay out what each of them had been looking up, sort out which were supplements and which were drugs, and then decide the next step.

The next day, they actually did it. Yijun took out the piece of paper A-Kai had scribbled on, and the two of them checked the packaging labels and sources one item at a time. When they came across something they didn't understand, they set it aside for the moment instead of forcing a conclusion. A-Kai also made an appointment at a clinic near their home, saying he would bring the list he had to ask about it. Later he told Yijun that the hardest part wasn't looking up information—it was admitting he had questions. Yijun replied that questions can be spoken aloud in the first place; only by saying them is there a chance to get them clarified.

That drive home didn't solve anything physical, but it solved something else: they finally knew what each other had been holding up. A-Kai said that next time relatives asked again, he wouldn't hide alone in the bathroom. Yijun said that then she'd be in charge of packing up the dessert to take home. As the car pulled into the parking lot, both of them laughed—this time, a real laugh.