Two siblings.
One equation.
A scent that remembers.
In the perfume archives of Versailles, Rishi and Chloe must recreate their father's final formula, a fragrance that captures every emotion in equal proportion.
But the closer they get, the more the...
They rise uninvited, linger without mercy, fade when you beg them to stay. Around the world, people chase aroma - bottled nostalgia, designer desire - all to smell good in a world already half-decaying.
For a moment, it works. For a moment, they believe freshness means freedom.
But they forget the older reason scent exists - to remember what time tries to erase.
There are always two kinds of people: those who avoid scent, fearing what it might return, and those who drown in it, searching for what it once promised.
Between them, a reaction begins - and at its center, two siblings.
One is like night in Delhi.
The other, day in New York.
The distance between them is not just miles, but fragrance, and grief, and the very air they breathe.
Rishi was at a bar, though he didn't drink. He was there because his stupid friend Aman had begged him - the kind of plea that sounds like loyalty but smells like avoidance.
Aman was already leaning into his girlfriend, laughing too loudly, their perfume cloud mixing in the air - muddled sweetness, jasmine overcompensating for desperation.
For Rishi, love was an unknown fragrance - a formula without balance, a scent not yet fixed.
It was what perfumers would call a volatile blend: too many variables, no base notes, impossible to stabilize.
He caught hints of Aman's cologne - something mass-produced, citrus on top, musk underneath, the kind worn by men who wanted to smell confident without being questioned. But beneath it, there was something else in the room. Something faint, like memory trying to breathe.
He ignored it.
Instead, Rishi found himself doing what he always did - reducing the moment to a quiet function in his mind:
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In real terms: the math always came undone when emotions entered the room.
Even equations evaporated.
Meanwhile, in New York, Chloe had just woken up beside Phoebe.
Chloe woke slowly, the kind of waking that rolls into the morning like a second skin.
Phoebe was still asleep beside her, one arm thrown carelessly across the sheets, her breath slow, her hair smelling faintly of last night's jasmine mist.
Chloe leaned in and kissed her - soft, unhurried.
That was when she noticed it.
The scent.
Not Phoebe.
Not jasmine.
Something else lingering faintly on her own wrist, a test batch she'd dabbed on in the lab hours before she collapsed into bed.
