Drops of Memory

Chapter - 1: Inheritance in Air

She didn't look at him again; she just walked out, quickly with her head down.

Rishi stood there, cold alcohol dripping down his collarbone, blinking through the sting.

His shirt smelled like vodka.

His skin smelled like humiliation.

The air around him smelled like something his father had once told him in a half-whisper:

"Some scents don't fade, Rishi. Some are meant to teach."

The student lowered his phone, grinning.

Rishi said nothing.

But that night, for the first time in months, he wished he did drink.

Aman ran towards him, so his girlfriend, Shiksha.

"I was amused to see you with a girl." He said.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

Unknown number.

International code.

He stared at it, a foreign interruption, buzzing in the thick air of the bar.

For a fleeting second, he wasn't twenty-nine in Delhi anymore.

He was five.

Small hands pressed against a wooden crate in his father's perfumery room.

Darkness.

Unmarked vials.

Raw attar - rose, henna, jasmine, petrichor - leaking into the air, each one too strong for a child to name.

"Papa," he had cried back then.

"Papa," he whispered now, before he could stop himself.

Aman nudged him. "Pick up. Might be important."

Rishi did.

"Rishi Vardhan?" a voice asked. Clean. Cold.

"Yes."

"I am your father's lawyer. Sorry to inform you... your father is no more."

The bar didn't go quiet - his world did.

The vodka on his skin wasn't cold anymore.

It began to burn underneath.

The call ended, but the scent of the past rose again - not in the room, but in him.

That scent didn't wait.

Didn't evaporate.

Didn't forgive.

Meanwhile, in New York - 7:18 AM.

Chloe rushed into the lab at Maison Anemone, the scent of the city still clinging to her - rain, exhaust, and the faint trace of a mistake she could no longer ignore.

She punched in the access code and pushed through the glass doors, letting the cold, filtered air swallow her.

"Lina," she called out. "I need you here. Now."

Her voice wasn't panicked - just sharp. Measured, the way she always was when emotion threatened to bloom.

Lina Herbert, her head perfumer, emerged from the back room in her black gloves and quiet grace. Lina didn't speak much, but when she did, fragrance listened.

"What happened?" she asked, already reading Chloe's face like a formula gone wrong.

Phoebe was right behind them, hair still damp, hands still bare. Girlfriend in real life, assistant in the lab. She moved beside Chloe, not as comfort but as structure - the kind of presence that steadied the air in a room, without needing to touch it.