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### Prologue — I Called Myself
Good.
The moment the airplane door opened, that thought suddenly came to me.
Was it because of the smell of France?
My sense of smell, which people called hyposmia, felt as though it were finally clearing up.
My nickname was Truly-Hyposmic Yoon Gangto.
It wasn't that I couldn't smell anything at all. When other students could detect a one-thousandth dilution of amyl
acetate, I would be floundering around with my nose practically buried in a one-tenth dilution.
Strictly speaking, I belonged to the category of hyposmia.
[Arrived in France. I am absolutely safe, so don't worry.]
After sending a text to my grandfather, I set foot on Parisian soil.
I got off at the Saint-Ouen flea market.
It felt even more refreshing, as though an ultra-powerful menthol bomb had exploded inside my olfactory bulb.
It felt so good.
There was no way to explain this feeling unless I had somehow been bewitched.
One morning in May, one day before my twenty-sixth birthday.
Taking advantage of the holiday, I had flown all the way to Paris, prepared to miss classes for several days as well.
I was standing at a crossroads where I might have to give up on my dream of becoming a perfumer.
Even that heavy feeling had disappeared.
France.
Grasse.
Perfume.
There were three words that clung to Yoon Gangto like glue.
It was a sense of déjà vu without any reason.
After the mugunghwa, iris was his favorite flower.
And although he wasn't a blind worshipper of Europe, after the Taegeukgi, he liked the French flag, La Tricolore, the
most.
On the hundredth-day celebration table, among all the things laid out, what Gangto chose was his mother's perfume
bottle. When he didn't pick anything, his mother hurriedly added another object, and that object was a perfume from Jo
Malone.
"Why perfume?"
His father frowned, but unexpectedly, Gangto chose that perfume bottle.
"I guess he likes perfume."
When his mother lightly sprayed it, Gangto reached around in the air and then fell asleep.
His feet stopped in front of an antique perfume shop.
It felt like he had reached the destination his navigation system had been guiding him toward.
The fog inside his chest cleared a little more.
At last, it felt as though the broken navigator inside him had finally lit up.
Why?
Why France?
And of all places, why here?
In a way, he had been drawn here like a homing pigeon following its instinct to return home.
As though he had received a revelation from God.
"Chinese?"
The owner of the shop with the blue awning began calling out to him.
"Korean."
Gangto brushed him off with a single word.
"Oh, BTS."
The owner struck a pose from Dynamite and tried to charm him.
"Looking for something?"
The English continued.
Gangto's gaze was fixed on the perfume display. It was as though he had been hypnotized by the powerful scent of
patchouli.
The old cedar shelves were packed with antique perfume bottles. Some of the names were familiar. There were even what
could be called secondhand luxury perfumes. Some were partially used, some had torn labels, and some had broken sprayers
that had been crudely sealed with corks.
All-kinds-of-everything.
That phrase seemed to roll around on top of the old bottles.
"Have a look. We've got everything from fourteenth-century rose water to Houbigant and nineteenth-century Fougère
Royale."
'......'
Gangto's brow creased slightly.
The owner was exaggerating far too much.
There were quite a few antique perfumes, but something like that couldn't possibly be here. Fougère Royale was the one
and only specimen at the Osmothèque, the perfume museum in Versailles. When it came to knowledge of perfume, Gangto was
by no means lacking. He had properly studied both the field and organic chemistry.
His only fatal flaw was his sense of smell.
"How about some English perfume? Men's fragrances are the best from there. Spray some on and women will practically
swoon."
"......"
Ignoring the owner's sales pitch, he walked past the perfumes on display. His feet stopped in front of a staircase
leading underground.
It was as though his destination had been predetermined, and he was still moving automatically.
"Hey. There's nothing useful down there. Just trivial junk."
"......"
"Damn, another antique enthusiast who won't make me any money. Everything in the basement is twenty euros apiece. If you
find something you like, just bring it upstairs."
The owner's voice drifted down the stairs.
The basement stairs were made of wood. So was the door. Judging by how thoroughly aged everything looked, the building
seemed to be more than a hundred years old.
"......!"
As he stood before the door, his nose became clear again.
Clear?
Was this really happening?
Sniff, sniff.
When he flared his nostrils, he could even detect a musty smell.
He really could smell it.
This felt incredible.
Could the seal on the olfactory bulb that had been persecuted by hyposmia finally be cracking?
Please.
Please let that be the case.
But then.
Something strange happened.
The moment he touched the door, a violent wave struck his body as though he had been hit by a barrage of transparent
gel. The force was so intense that it almost seemed excessive.
'What the hell?'
He barely managed to steady his staggering body. He wondered if the owner had pushed him, but the man was upstairs.
Once again.
As he tried to push the door...
'Urgh.'
This time too, an invisible wave violently shook his body.
Without realizing it, his heartbeat accelerated and even his breathing became ragged.
It was a shiver.
But it wasn't anxiety.
It was excitement.
Those two emotions collided within him in a strange intersection, like the combination of a sharp metallic note and a
floral accord, and rushed toward him.
The fine hairs on his skin stood straight up. Even his hair rose stiffly like wires.
This was it.
The mysterious reason that had pulled him all the way to France, as though his homing instinct were calling him.
This moment.
Gangto felt as though he had spent twenty-six years running toward this very moment.
What on earth.
What was inside?
Gulp.
Gangto planted his feet firmly and pushed open the old door.
The thick bronze hinges groaned as the world inside came into view.
It was a paradise of junk.
Old perfumery equipment filled the room, including small alembics, measuring instruments, presses, grinders, cooling
containers, and more.
Perfumes that were beyond restoration, or that simply looked like trash, were scattered haphazardly among boxes and
wooden crates.
There was even a CCTV camera rotating around, as though someone had thoughtfully installed it.
Dust, rust, and mold covered the perfume bottles.
It felt as though he had wandered into an antique junk shop from hundreds of years ago, yet Gangto's steps never
hesitated.
To the left of the entrance.
His long journey stopped there automatically.
Thump.
His heartbeat accelerated on its own.
His gaze was drawn toward an old, grimy cedar perfume bottle.
A cedar perfume bottle covered in layers of fingerprints.
"......!"
The moment his eyes locked onto it, he felt dizzy once again.
This perfume bottle wasn't new to him.
Definitely.
He had seen it before.
But not in reality.
In his dreams.
Not once, but three times.
Without realizing it, he grabbed the bottle.
It fit perfectly in his hand.
It felt as though it had belonged to him from the beginning, as though it had been made solely for him.
"Korean, of all things, you picked that? Even Hercules couldn't open it. A mixed martial arts fighter came here recently
with his blonde girlfriend, showed off for a while, then gave up and left."
The owner's voice came through the speaker.
Apparently, he had been watching everything.
Even so, Gangto didn't move an inch.
He was completely, utterly captivated by the cedar perfume bottle.
"Damn, if you open that, I'll just give it to you. ...Welcome."
The owner's voice quickly faded away.
Apparently, another customer had arrived.
"It won't open."
Gangto didn't hear those words.
His body was convulsing violently.
His hands had been trembling like aspens for some time. The trembling traveled all the way through his spine and into
his organs, making it difficult to breathe.
Blanche Robert.
A name carved into the perfume bottle, almost erased with time, crossed through the fog.
"......!"
The name that unfolded rapidly within his unconscious mind struck the limbic system of Gangto's brain like a bolt of
lightning.
In an instant, as if it were a lie, the perfume bottle opened on its own.
He had casually twisted the cap, and it had simply opened.
It was as instantaneous as unlocking a password-protected file.
Whoosh.
A faint radiance seeped out from around the perfume.
"......?"
Before long, the basement was bathed in light.
The brightness was so intense that he covered his eyes with both hands.
Perfume.
It was a word he had instinctively been close to since birth.
Gangto, who had picked his mother's perfume bottle from the table at his hundredth-day celebration.
A child whose first word had been "flower."
Until he was three years old, he possessed an almost genius-level sense of smell.
But after an accident around the age of three, it rapidly deteriorated, and he had lived an extreme roller-coaster of a
life bordering on complete anosmia.
Even so.
Gangto's dream was to become a perfumer.
Although he majored in chemistry, he eventually chose perfumery as a double major.
He even obtained all the necessary certifications, including those for cosmetics manufacturing management and
responsible sales management.
After graduating from the Department of Chemistry, he continued his additional year of double-major studies in
perfumery.
But in the end, a professor who held considerable influence in the perfumery department delivered a merciless verdict:
becoming a perfumer was impossible because of his sense of smell.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Absolutely impossible.
Could this be the light of fate coming to save him from such a cruel destiny?
In Paris, where he had been drawn as if by a homing instinct.
In the basement of the Saint-Ouen flea market, where his feet had stopped of their own accord.
A perfume bottle belonging to a stranger.
Like Aladdin's magic lamp, its seal had been broken with an astonishing sense of déjà vu.
"......?"
Gangto's breathing stopped completely.
When he lowered the hands that had been shielding his eyes, the basement was gone.
In its place stretched a jasmine field as vast as the sea.
Jasmine.
The flower of July.
Jasmine's fragrance is governed by cis-jasmone and methyl cis-jasmonate. Its scent is delicate and sweet.
The information stored inside Gangto's head began listing itself.
He didn't really know whether that was what it smelled like.
He had desperately tried to smell jasmine because he had heard that no perfume could be completed without it, but all it
had ever done was barely register in his nose.
Today was different.
All the scents he had been unable to smell until now seemed to have been waiting for their moment, forming a gigantic
tidal wave that came crashing down upon Gangto.
It was an explosion of fragrance that even a hundred crushing deaths couldn't have withstood.
Remember this.
I am the scent of jasmine.
One of the two great pillars of perfume notes alongside the rose.
Smell every last bit of the scents you have never been able to enjoy until now.
Starting with fresh notes, an empire of citrus, fruity, and floral notes opened before him.
A feast of spicy, balsamic, musky, and woody scents unfolded as well.
The panorama of fragrances continued into leathery and powdery scent families.
An empire of fragrance.
Those scents that had remained beyond the barrier, never allowing him near them, had now formed a tsunami and come
sweeping majestically toward him.
Gack.
His nose was pinched by the overwhelming scents.
Gack, gack.
They seemed to strike his olfactory cells and olfactory bulb with precision.
The impact was practically nuclear.
"Gack—cough."
As the violent explosion of fragrances left him dazed, a strange figure shimmered within the mist of scents.
Had the owner come downstairs?
No.
It wasn't him.
The person who emerged through the waves of wondrous fragrance was a young Frenchman.
He was twenty-six years old.
The same age as Gangto.
But.
The sense of déjà vu was maddeningly strong.
No.
His face was somewhat different, but his atmosphere...
It was exactly the same.
'Me?'
Gangto's instincts struck his consciousness.
He stopped trembling and focused once more.
In the meantime, the man had come closer.
He was now within arm's reach.
"......?"
The man held out his hand.
There was an irresistible pull, as though Gangto had encountered something divine.
Gangto took his hand.
The moment he did, the man's energy surged through an infinite panorama of fragrances and crashed into Gangto's sense of
smell.
Yoon Gangto.
His voice traveled straight into the limbic system of Gangto's brain.
The olfactory bulb lies close to the brain's limbic system.
That was why, without passing through any process of perception or cognition, the voice struck directly at his emotions.
It's me.
"......?"
Your past life.
Blanche Robert.
"Blanche? My past life?"
More than two hundred years ago, your past life died after being exploited for her talent in a perfumery workshop in
Grasse.
"More than two hundred years ago?"
A genius of the sense of smell who captivated the souls of everyone, yet was acknowledged by only one person.
"One person?"
Adelaide.
She was my woman, yet I couldn't even hold her properly in my arms once.
"......?"
I called you here.
"......?"
Because the time God had granted us has finally come.
"God?"
Look.
Your past life.
Blanche pointed into the air.
There, jasmine flowers rippled like waves.
The flowers spread out a hazy carpet as dreamlike as the heavenly realm.
Across that carpet, the next scene unfolded vividly.
Grasse.
The French city of Grasse that had always felt strangely familiar for no reason.
The scene had already shifted back more than two hundred years.
A corner of Grasse's coastal fish market appeared.
It was filthy enough to make one feel sick, yet strangely familiar.
Inside a shabby shed in the corner, a child was being born.
It was Blanche.
Her mother was a woman from a fallen German noble family.
She had met a chemist husband with a pure soul, but he contracted smallpox and died.
The mother struggled desperately to survive.
She had been pregnant with Blanche.
Even her husband's laboratory equipment had been sold to pay for medical expenses, leaving her no better than a beggar.
Even in Grasse, the city of flowers, she couldn't find work picking flowers.
The reason was that she had suffered from smallpox.
Her face had been scarred by the aftereffects, and people even said that she would contaminate the flowers.
Fortunately, with the help of one of her husband's friends, she found work cleaning fish at the market.
She was also given permission to use a small shed attached to the end of a warehouse.
Along with the pains of labor, Blanche was born.
She was a tiny mass of red blood.
Her mother cut the umbilical cord herself and wrapped the baby in linen.
Blanche was unusual.
Before she cried, what burst from her was the breath of her nose.
The baby flared her unusually white nostrils like a little pig.
It was as though she intended to inhale every scent in the world through that tiny nose.
Her mother held the child and went outside.
It was a moonlit night.
There was a plain nearby.
There were flowers there.
Then again, it didn't matter if it wasn't there.
Anywhere would do, as long as it didn't stink like her home.
Once she escaped her dwelling.
The whole world was a field of flowers.
That was Grasse.
But such a place was permitted only at night.
During the day, the owners of the farms and their servants did not allow her to approach.
The mother's feet stopped before a cluster of snow-white irises.
The baby still hadn't cried.
She laid Blanche down among the flowers.
Then the baby's nostrils began breathing even faster.
Waaah.
Finally.
The baby's cry burst forth.
It was a cry announcing the birth of an unfortunate, yet genius perfumer to the tens of millions of flowers blooming
across the land of Grasse.