After that, we could only contact each other on WeChat, and I spent three years studying in Japan. The information I received included that he was not accustomed to the dietary culture of the Japanese, and most of the time he dined at restaurants run by Chinese people. Japanese cuisine is abundant, mainly consisting of fish, shrimp, and crabs, and often served raw. Therefore, since he was already allergic to seafood, he avoided it even more. After graduation, he stayed in Japan to work because the employment environment in China was like this. The COVID-19 pandemic led to layoffs and business closures for many companies. I still don't know if Japan is in a similar situation, but it seems to be less competitive than I imagined.

During the period when the pandemic prevention and control had not been declared over, I would share news about Japan with him. For example, during the 2022 Qatar World Cup, I was particularly interested in how the matches between China and Japan were reported in Japan, and during the finals, how the Japanese public reacted when Japan defeated strong European teams.

After the pandemic ended, I returned to my home country to visit friends and family. During this time, I took him to a café called "Shido Coffee," where I had previously won a championship, to drink coffee and play with two British Shorthair cats that were the café's pets. One was black and named "American," while the other was a blue-gold shaded cat, named "Red Center" because of a straight line on its forehead. I also met A Bao again. I took him to meet my neighbor, Ren Min, who is from Shenyang, Liaoning. Ren Min was originally the general agent for the Jin Jie Cheng brand in Guangzhou but is now retired. He rented a warehouse in the alley leading out of our home to share or sell different types of coffee beans and some raw materials needed for tea drinks with his neighborhood friends. I will continue to write an article introducing how Ren Min and I met. However, Lin Zixuan is indeed the only one among my classmates and old friends who I connected with Ren Min.

After that, he returned to work in Japan and resigned from his first company. Having worked in the animation industry for a long time, the high-intensity work left him feeling overwhelmed, so he slowly started looking for a new job. During this time, domestic news reported that Tokyo Electric Power Company was illegally discharging wastewater from nuclear power plants into the sea, and many users on major domestic social media platforms condemned and criticized this.

I immediately told him not to eat seafood from the Japanese sea and informed him that my father's workplace conducts annual tests for radioactive indicators in our country's waters, so seafood from the coastal areas is temporarily safe to eat. He repeatedly explained that he couldn't eat seafood due to his allergy.

Sure enough, during his holiday back home, I had already moved my work to Guangzhou. I had previously mentioned that I opened a coffee shop in Taishan. After I informed him of this, he made travel plans to first visit his family in Kaiping and then came to my coffee shop alone after his family returned. At that time, I was co-managing with my cousin and her husband, and we also had a steamed oyster shop and a snail rice noodle shop that were connected. During our conversation, I learned that after taking a break from work, he found a new job, which was naturally no longer in the design industry but in the localization team of a gaming company. This gave me many more topics to discuss with him, as I love history. When he came to my place, he ordered two drinks, and when I introduced the steamed oysters from my cousin's husband, he became interested and ordered a dozen, pairing them with different sauces. During the meal, I introduced the origin of the oysters, which were farmed in my cousin's oyster farm. Because it is located at the junction of salt and fresh water, the oysters are particularly plump, with a tender texture and a sweet taste, which piqued his interest in the ingredients.