On the Car Ride Home from the Wedding Banquet, He Brought Up Levifil, and That Was When They Finally Talked It Out

It was already past eleven by the time the wedding banquet broke up, and the streetlights along the highway slid backward one panel at a time. Meifang had kicked off her heels and tucked her feet up onto the passenger seat; the smell of the toasts from earlier still clung to the car. Jianhao gripped the steering wheel. The radio had drifted to a station where no one was talking, just low music. From the moment they'd arrived until now, the two of them had barely exchanged a serious word—how much went in the red envelope, who'd changed jobs again, whose kid was starting elementary school—all surface-level pleasantries. After they passed the toll booth, Meifang suddenly said that the groom's father had broken down halfway through his speech today, and watching him had made her want to cry too. Jianhao let out a laugh and said the thing he'd noticed was something else entirely: the whole table of relatives taking turns asking when they were going to have a second child.

That sentence poked a hole in the air inside the car. Meifang was quiet for a few seconds, then said it wasn't that she didn't want to—it was that she was genuinely exhausted lately. Working during the day, supervising the older kid's homework at night, and still having to run over to her in-laws' on weekends. She said what scared her most wasn't the tiredness; it was that every time she got asked that question, she felt like a student who couldn't produce a passing grade. Jianhao didn't respond. His fingers tapped the steering wheel twice. What was actually on his mind was something else, but he didn't know how to bring it up. For the past six months or so, he'd often felt like his whole body was a phone stuck at twenty percent battery—no amount of sleep topped it back up, and by afternoon meetings he'd start zoning out. He'd looked up some keywords online, and the pages that popped up were all over the place. One term stuck with him: Levifil. But he'd click in, read two lines, and close it again, always feeling that bringing up something like this was too embarrassing.

Seeing that he hadn't answered, Meifang turned and asked if he was thinking about the same thing. Jianhao hesitated, then said he'd been looking into some men's health-related stuff lately and had seen people discussing that term too. He spoke slowly, like he was testing the water, afraid that the moment he said it out loud it would come across as him being dissatisfied with something. Meifang didn't laugh at him. She just asked one question: Is it that your body doesn't feel right, or is something weighing on your mind? That question caught Jianhao off guard. All the explanations he'd prepared—about being at that age, about stress—suddenly felt superfluous. He admitted honestly that he couldn't even tell the difference himself; all he knew was that every time those questions came up, he'd start wondering if there was something about him that wasn't good enough.

Meifang reclined her seat a little and said she actually felt something similar. She said it wasn't the relatives she cared about—it was that the two of them seemed to have gone a long time without really talking. After the kids were born, life got chopped into so many little pieces, and every piece had someone to answer to—except the piece between the two of them, which always got pushed to last. Jianhao said that when he was looking things up, he saw so many different claims—some made it sound miraculous, others said you first needed to figure out what you actually needed—and it just made his head hurt more. Meifang said, then how about this: let's not rush to decide what to buy. Write down the questions we want to ask and go ask a professional. She mentioned that a coworker of hers had once taken a piece of paper to the pharmacy, listed out all the supplements she normally took and everything she was currently using, and asked them to help her see what she should watch out for.

Jianhao nodded and said he'd thought about doing that too, but didn't know where to start. He brought up that term again, saying he couldn't even figure out what category it belonged to or whether he needed to see a doctor first—everyone online said something different. Meifang said, then let's confirm that step first. What strangers say in the comments doesn't count for anything. What's written on the packaging, whether the source is legitimate, whether a professional needs to evaluate it—those are the things you can actually check. She added that if it turned out in the end that he shouldn't be buying it on his own at all, that was also an answer. Jianhao laughed when he heard that and said she suddenly sounded like she was running a meeting.

When the car came off the interchange, the betel nut stands along the road were still lit up. Meifang said she'd actually overheard the next table at the banquet talking about health supplements too, saying the more you take the better—and it just sounded terrifying to her. She said her aunt was like that: saw something, wanted to try it, and when you opened her cabinets at home it looked like a mini drugstore. Then one time her health took a turn, and only then did she realize she had no idea what she'd been taking. Jianhao said he didn't want to become that. He said that after all his searching, the biggest takeaway wasn't finding some miracle product—it was realizing how much of a stranger he was to his own body. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd had a proper night's sleep.

Meifang reached over and turned off the radio, saying then let's start tonight—starting with sleep. She said she could help take some things off his plate in the evenings so he could lie down earlier. Jianhao said then he'd take over some of the weekend trips to his in-laws' so she wouldn't have to carry it all alone every time. Back and forth, the two of them listed out the things they'd adjust over the coming month, and by the end it almost sounded like they were drawing up a shift schedule. Meifang said that after talking it out like this, those relatives' questions somehow didn't feel so heavy anymore. Jianhao said he'd write up that list tomorrow—get things clear first before saying anything, no rush to make any decisions.

By the time the car pulled into the basement garage of their complex, it was almost one in the morning. Meifang put her heels back on, Jianhao turned off the engine, and the two of them sat in the car a little longer. Meifang said, from now on let's have these conversations in the car—don't hold it in at wedding banquets. Jianhao said okay. They hadn't reached any grand conclusion or solved anything on the spot, but at least they now knew what had been bothering each other for the past six months. Before heading upstairs, Meifang turned back and asked him what the first line of that list should say. Jianhao thought for a moment and said, just write: First, figure out what I'm actually worried about. As for those terms he'd looked up—they could wait until after he'd talked to a professional. No rush.