Drops of Memory

Chapter - 1: Inheritance in Air

She was wearing something sharp - cold white florals over clean musk. A perfume designed to signal confidence and mask intent.

He'd smelled worse lies.

He glanced at her again, just once, and beneath the alcohol, beneath the florals, there was something else.

A trace of shame. A chemical echo laced with unbalanced equation. Familiar.

He had smelled it before - on his mother. On himself.

Since childhood.

Some scents don't leave.

They just learn to linger.

She was perhaps 20 or 21. The typical age of his students. Also, he remembered her. Chloe. His sister he wanted to forget. He had just checked her Instagram latest pic before this girl intervened.

The woman beside him hesitated when he didn't reply. Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. She took one slow sip - not seductive, not nervous - more like someone bracing for impact.

Rishi finally turned to face her fully.

"You don't drink?" she asked, nodding at his orange juice.

"I don't need to," he said. "My system's volatile enough."

She laughed, but he didn't.

Her laugh didn't have the sound of someone amused - it had the sound of someone waiting.

That was when he noticed it - the way her eyes lifted just slightly to the side, toward the bar counter.

Not at the bartender.

At someone else.

A phone.

A camera.

A student from his evening class, half-hidden behind a whiskey glass, zooming in.

The woman followed his gaze and stiffened. Her smile fell apart.

"You're not supposed to see that," she murmured.

"Then you shouldn't have come," he said quietly.

She looked ashamed, and that was the scent he'd been tracing beneath her perfume.

Not alcohol. Not desire.

Shame. Not hers.

Borrowed shame. More like assigned shame.

"Please," she whispered, "I didn't want to do it. He said it was just for fun, a joke. A 'quirky professor caught flirting in a bar' moment. He'll put it on Instagram. I said no but..."

Rishi looked at her, and for a moment, he understood the equation structure of her fear better than any formula.

She was not trying to expose him.

She was trying to survive him.

He exhaled, slow and steady, like someone clearing smoke from a room.

"It's alright," he said. "I get it."

Then he stood, just as the student raised his phone higher.

And before Rishi could move, the woman did.

She turned - glass in hand - and threw the rest of her vodka straight into Rishi's face.

The bar went silent.

Everyone stared.

The camera clicked.

The shame, now captured, had the illusion of truth.