Before the Remarriage Countdown, He Replaced That Search Bar Phrase with a Checklist

A week before the wedding, Ah-Hong spread an A4 sheet of paper on the living room table. On it was a table he had drawn himself. On the left he wrote "mind," on the right "energy," and he drew a line down the middle. He said this wasn't some health scorecard, but a "warm-up" he and his fiancée, Xiao-Min, sat down to talk through for their life after marriage. Both were remarrying, each with a previous marriage behind them, and they felt both hope and fear about "starting over." Ah-Hong said what he feared most wasn't performing poorly, but that if something went wrong with his body, he'd keep it bottled up like before and let misunderstandings quietly grow.

The starting point for that table was a certain weekend afternoon. Xiao-Min casually asked him, "Have you been getting tired more easily lately?" Ah-Hong froze for a moment, because he couldn't quite say either. He was forty-five, under heavy work pressure, his sleep was squeezed, and occasionally he felt listless. In the past he would have chalked it up to "getting older," but this time he didn't want to brush it off vaguely. He looked things up online and came across an article titled "Health supplements aren't better the more you take," which mentioned someone who took large amounts of a certain trace element to grow hair, only to end up with problems instead. He was startled, because he also had a bottle of multivitamins a friend had given him in his drawer, and he had never looked carefully at the ingredients.

He took out that bottle of vitamins and turned it over, only to find the label densely packed, with some ingredients he had never even heard of. He remembered that at a gathering before, someone had mentioned the name "Japan Tengsu," making it sound almost miraculous, but he hadn't asked further at the time. Now, looking back, he wasn't even sure what type of product it was—he only knew there was a lot of discussion about it online. He didn't order it right away. Instead, he copied that phrase into his notebook and wrote three questions beside it: Is this food or medicine? Who is it suitable for? If I want to understand it, who should I ask?

The next evening, he invited his good friend Lao-Zhou out for a late-night snack. Lao-Zhou had worked at a pharmacy for over ten years, but he wasn't a pharmacist—he was only in charge of store management. Ah-Hong didn't ask him to endorse anything; he just slid his notebook over and asked how he usually handles customers' questions like this. Lao-Zhou said what he feared most was customers coming with phone screenshots asking "Can I take this?" because screenshots usually capture only half the information—you can't see the full label, and you can't see the warnings. Lao-Zhou suggested that instead of asking "Does it work?" Ah-Hong should first ask "Am I currently taking anything else?" Ah-Hong thought of his bottle of vitamins, and the box of cold medicine left over in his drawer, and suddenly felt that if this information wasn't organized, no matter who he asked, he wouldn't be able to ask clearly.

Lao-Zhou also mentioned something that had left a deep impression on him. A customer was taking several health supplements at once and thought, "If it's natural, it's fine to take more," but ended up feeling unwell and going to the doctor, only to discover that some ingredients overlapped. Lao-Zhou said he wouldn't tell customers that any one thing was definitely good or definitely bad, because everyone's situation is different. What he could do was remind them to list everything they were using and bring it to a professional. After hearing this, Ah-Hong circled the four characters "Japan Tengsu" in his notebook and added a line beside it: "First confirm what it is, then decide whether to keep looking into it."

That weekend, Ah-Hong did something he used to find very troublesome: he made an appointment with a family medicine clinic. Not because he thought he was sick, but because he wanted to treat "getting tired easily" as a formal issue. Before the visit, following Lao-Zhou's advice, he put all the bottles and jars from his drawer into a ziplock bag, including the multivitamins, the cold medicine, and a bottle of supplements someone had given him. The doctor didn't give him any conclusion about a specific product. He only asked about his sleep, diet, and work patterns, and suggested he start with some basic tests to see whether anything needed further attention. Ah-Hong said that in that moment, he actually felt relieved, because he had finally turned vague unease into concrete action.

After the test results came out, the doctor told him that some values were at the edge of the normal range and suggested he start by adjusting his daily routine and diet, then follow up after a while. Ah-Hong didn't get any miracle prescription, but he got a clear starting point. After going home, he redrew that A4 sheet. This time, on the left he wrote "sleep," on the right "diet," and changed the line in the middle to "record." He and Xiao-Min agreed to take a walk together one day each week, not talking about work, only about life. Xiao-Min teased him: "Didn't you used to hate this kind of table?" Ah-Hong said that in the past he found discussing his body awkward, but now he felt that not discussing it was what was truly awkward.

Three days before the wedding, Ah-Hong put the notebook into the bookcase; he didn't throw it away. He said what was recorded in that notebook wasn't answers, but how he had slowly found order out of a mess. He was no longer in a hurry to know whether some product could be taken. Instead, he first asked himself: Am I sleeping well? Am I eating right? Have I told a professional about everything I'm using? If he had done all that and still had questions, then he would bring the list and ask. As for that phrase that had once made him curious, he now treated it as a reminder: there is a lot of information online, but everyone's body is different. First figure out your own situation, then decide whether to look further.