Drops of Memory

Chapter - 1: Inheritance in Air

It should've been gentle.

It wasn't.

The bergamot was too sharp, the sandalwood too loud - the entire fragrance had shifted, like a chord gone off-key.

It was supposed to be 2.5% - bright, calm, balanced.

But last night, tired and overconfident, Chloe had pushed it to 5.0.

Twice the dose.

Twice the volatility.

Half the control.

At 2.5%, bergamot quieted the nervous system - anxiolytic, steadying.

At 5.0%, it crossed the threshold: the parasympathetic flip, moving from calm into agitation.

You couldn't smell it until the emotion in the room changed.

And this morning, the room was different. The air buzzed, faintly, like a wire pulled too tight.

A restless energy that wasn't hers. A scent she couldn't yet map back to feeling.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, registering the error - not in shame, but in curiosity.

Emotions are always accurate, she thought. Fragrances are the ones that lie.

She kissed Phoebe again - slower this time, breathing her in, recalibrating herself by touch.

Then, quietly, she reached for her notebook on the nightstand and wrote:

"Never trust a molecule above 2.5% if the heart note hasn't settled yet."

She underlined it twice. Just like her father used to.

Chloe remembered the way her father used to stand between them - not choosing, not reconciling, just measuring the world the only way he knew how.

"Chloe, you are the sweet note in this equation - the balance, the heart. Rishi... well, he's complicated. He quantifies."

She used to laugh when he said that. Now it only echoed. Especially the name. Rishi. She had just checked his Instagram. No posts for a year.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Dad - Calling.

She stared at the name until it slipped into voicemail.

The scent on her wrist shifted - not sharply this time, but with a slow, dissolving melancholy.

A fragrance never lies, she thought. But it can withhold.

Between her and her father, there was always a contrast - she built fragrances to feel, he built them to remember.

The air in the room felt split by it.

Meanwhile, in Delhi - 9:42 PM.

Rishi was being spoken to for the first time in hours - and not by a bartender.

A woman sat beside him, uninvited. He blinked once, surprised. He wasn't known. Not in this city. Not in any city he cared for.

"Finally," she said, swirling her vodka. "The mathematical professor."

"How do you know?" he asked, sipping his orange juice, not looking at her.

She smiled. "You've been writing equations on a napkin for twenty minutes. And you smell like someone who spends too much time thinking."

He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

"The scripted lines. The same I used during my lectures. Smell and scents." He thought.