3
3 ### The Seal Is Broken-1
The place had not changed. The only difference was that two police officers had arrived.
“Huh? He’s waking up?”
The female police officer spoke.
“Hey, are you all right?”
The owner’s language switched to English.
“I’m fine. But why are the police here?”
“Another guest came downstairs, saw you collapsed, and called the police. Thanks to you, I even lost two travelers who were just about to make a purchase.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But did you open that perfume bottle?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you pass out?”
The owner brought his nose close to the cedarwood perfume bottle. Kangto snatched the bottle away.
“You said I could just take it if I opened it, didn’t you?”
“Damn.”
“Is he all right?”
The female police officer asked.
“Yes. I guess the perfume bottle wouldn’t open easily, so I must have used too much force.”
He came up with an excuse on the spot and kept the cedarwood perfume bottle.
“Can I go?”
He asked the owner and turned around.
With everyone watching him, he left the basement.
When he stepped outside, sunlight shone down on Kangto. He looked at the perfume bottle he had brought out with him. The events that had felt like a dream drifted faintly through his mind.
He sniffed.
He concentrated on the smells all around him, but they were faint. Nothing had changed. The same was true of the cedarwood perfume. He could sense its faint fragrance, but it was no different from yesterday.
Blanche Robert.
The person who had supposedly been his previous life.
Had it all been a dream?
He felt utterly deflated.
Those memories that were still so vivid had really been a dream?
Still, it had not been a bad thing. Even if only in a dream, he had experienced such an overwhelming sense of smell. He had experienced the finest fragrances on earth.
Grasse.
That word tugged at Kangto’s heart once again.
Even if it was only a dream, he did not mind.
It had comforted him, after all.
He took the train to Nice and arrived in Grasse. About two hours later, the bus doors opened.
He inhaled deeply.
He stretched his sense of smell once again.
“......”
There was no change in his sense of smell. The other foreigners made a fuss about how different everything smelled, but Kangto’s nose could not detect any of it.
He went up to Place aux Aires and asked for directions to Opio. It was the area where Blanche had worked.
“I’ve never heard of such a place.”
The coffee shop owner tilted his head. He handed the coffee Kangto had bought to an old man sitting on a bench and asked again. If what his previous life had said was true, it had already been more than two hundred years. Grasse had certainly not remained unchanged.
“Opio?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the name of an old village.”
“You know it?”
“Follow the canal east from here. It’ll take about thirty minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“Japanese?”
“Korean.”
“There probably isn’t anything there.”
“Yes.”
After exchanging a few brief words, he followed the canal.
The scenery of Grasse was clean. Traces of perfume could be found everywhere. Several world-class perfumery research institutes were gathered in Grasse. Along with Givaudan, headquartered in Switzerland, Galimard also had a research institute here.
He could see the buildings in the distance.
There had been a time when graduating from Givaudan or ISIPCA had been his dream. That was why he had become obsessed with organic chemistry and spent his life memorizing perfumery terminology. But something else had held him back.
What a perfumer needed was an absolute sense of smell.
Reality had given him the exact opposite.
An absolute lack of smell.
To overcome it, he had trained with scent pouches containing various odorants and consumed zinc supplements by the handful. Zinc deficiency could also cause loss of smell. He had tried everything.
He had failed at all of it.
Kangto’s weak sense of smell was a barrier that effort alone could never overcome.
“If your sense of smell is below normal, perfumery is not suitable for you.”
Unable to let go of his lingering attachment, he had once sent an inquiry by email. That had been Givaudan’s kind response.
He passed the Givaudan research institute. He also passed the rose and jasmine farms reportedly operated directly by Chanel.
“The scent of jasmine made me unbelievably happy.”
“During the rose festival, the entire town of Grasse was filled with the scent of roses.”
Where had all the excitement of the friends and seniors who had visited Grasse before him gone?
Flowers were everywhere, but their scents were only faint traces to him.
Trainees studying perfumery could be seen in the courtyard of the Givaudan research institute. Each of them was dressed in a white coat and working hard. They handled fragrances, and even their smiles looked happy.
He was completely envious.
Jean-Claude Ellena had emerged from here. Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, regarded as one of the world’s great perfumers, was also from Grasse. Kangto could not experience the fragrances he was supposed to enjoy. All he could do was display the knowledge and facts he had painstakingly memorized.
And so he arrived at Opio.
“......”
This was it.
The place Blanche had spoken of.
Standing in front of it, Blanche’s vision became clearer.
Just as the old man had said, it was a ruin.
Only traces of the old workshop remained.
Yet he could feel it.
Blanche’s scent.
It was already early evening.
Dusk began drifting in from the sea.
Remember where I burned.
Dig there.
It is a gift from my past self to my future self.
It all belongs to you.
Blanche’s words rose with the dusk.
Kangto quietly closed his eyes.
Had it been an illusion?
A brief dream?
<No.>
Blanche’s voice struck his ears.
He opened his eyes.
The forest had descended close behind the darkness. Within that deep blackness, another vision unfolded.
It was the perfumery workshop from two centuries ago.
Blanche was making perfume.
He selected calf fat and sheep fat.
They were the starting point of perfume.
Good flowers and good scents were necessary, but using the wrong fat could ruin the fragrance. Blanche’s hands moved without hesitation. The fats looked identical, but under his hands they were divided into S, A, and C grades.
Fat extracted from moringa seeds was also brought in.
He melted it and then filtered it.
Beyond the massive surveillance door stood Adelaide.
When Blanche cautiously peeked through the gap, roses bloomed on her cheeks.
The carefully selected fat was treated with benzoin before being spread over glass plates.
Treating it with benzoin prevented unpleasant odors.
Making pomade on glass plates was the enfleurage technique.
Jasmine was scattered over the layer of fat.
The sight was almost sacred.
Jasmine had a delicate fragrance. As a result, its extraction method also had to be delicate. It had to be handled as gently as one would hold a baby.
Even in modern times, despite the development of extraction techniques, that principle had not changed.
It did not end after one or two applications.
After a day or two, sometimes three or four days, the flowers were replaced.
This process was repeated ten, twenty, even thirty times before the pomade was finally produced.
Blanche smelled it.
A smile spread across his face.
He had copied the scent of jasmine perfectly.
Although Alain had stolen his talent, Blanche looked happy in this moment.
There was another method as well.
The flowers could be wrapped in linen soaked with olive oil.
That was maceration.
In modern times, enfleurage had sometimes been replaced by carbon dioxide extraction. It could transfer the natural scent almost completely. However, it had a fatal drawback: the concentration of residues such as pesticides could be higher than with enfleurage.
When it came to natural materials, traditional methods were still the best.
Blanche raised his head.
He gestured as well.
Was he calling Kangto?
Or was he calling Adelaide?
Kangto approached.
Adelaide also passed through the door like a fragrance and embraced Blanche. In front of their love, the massive door was no longer a barrier.
Kangto stood in that spot.
The place Blanche had told him about.
Since there was no one around to see him, he began digging into the soil.
How long had he been digging?
Something like leather caught his hand.
After looking around, he pulled it out.
Clatter.
The leather bundle that emerged beneath the moonlight made a sound.
It was about the size of a soccer ball.
The leather had been tied with extraordinarily intricate knots.
He stuffed it into his travel backpack and stood up.
When he looked back, Blanche and Adelaide were there.
The two of them waved with wistful expressions.
Then they gradually faded away.
Like an illusion.
Click.
After checking into a nearby guesthouse, he locked the door first.
He closed the window and drew the curtains.
Only then did he open the leather pouch.
A cedarwood box came out of the leather.
Inside it was another smaller box.
Each box was only two or three millimeters thick.
They had been carved so precisely that there was not even the slightest gap.
At last, the final box opened.
The box was divided into two sections.
There were six bottles in the upper section, all containing essences sealed with wax.
In the lower section were four bottles. They too were wrapped in wax.
The upper six were essences, while the four below were...
‘Ambergris?’
Kangto froze as he removed the wax seals.
He immediately pulled out his phone.
He brought up photographs of ambergris, musk, civet, and other precious materials.
Good heavens.
A shiver ran through his entire body.
From the photographs alone, they appeared to be ambergris and musk.
The other two appeared to be frankincense and myrrh.
Ambergris.
It was white in color and as large as a baseball.
If used as a signature ingredient, there was enough to last a lifetime.
Judging from the marks where pieces had been cut away, it must originally have been even larger.
If it was genuine, its value alone would be astronomical.
White ambergris was considered more valuable than black.
Because of its price and rarity, synthetic ambergris was now commonly used.
The main component of ambergris was ambrein.
The transformed ambergris was the star of the material.
Products sold under names such as Ambrox and Amberlyn were derived from it.
Sniff, sniff.
Instinctively, he brought it to his nose.
The smell of ambergris itself was by no means beautiful.
It was similar to the smell of something rotten.
“......?”
His brows drew sharply together.
He could not smell it.
That cursed sense of smell.
He could not even smell something as precious as this ambergris.
No.
It might not be ambergris.
Even if it was, perhaps being buried in the earth for more than two hundred years had destroyed its properties.
Sniff, sniff.
He tried several more times, but nothing changed.
Then, for one brief moment, as though a seal trapped by time had finally melted away, a stale smell stabbed at his nose.
Ah.
Only then did he come to his senses.
Genuine ambergris should not be smelled directly, whether as smoke or in concentrated form. Its anesthetic properties were strong.
His concern immediately turned into a physical reaction.
His vision became hazy.
Just because his nose could not initially detect the smell did not mean the smell itself had passed him by.
The ambergris was genuine.
He opened his eyes.
His mind was clear.
When he looked toward the window, dawn had broken.
But then.
“......?”
His nostrils flared on their own.
It was a smell.
He had fallen asleep the previous night after being anesthetized by the ambergris. The jet lag had also combined with it, knocking him completely unconscious.
Only now did he realize that he had not even closed the window.
Yet the smell was strong nearby.
He turned around.
The things he had seen the previous night were there.
Ambergris.
Musk.
Frankincense.
Myrrh.
Startled by the smell stabbing at his nose, Kangto sprang to his feet.
All of them were more precious than jewels.
He checked the other six essences as well.
One by one, he removed the wax.
The wax had discolored, but the essence bottles inside were almost perfectly preserved.
He slightly opened each lid and smelled the contents.
Ah.
Kangto’s sense of smell melted away.
Ahhh.
It melted away as though he were going mad.
A smell.
It was a smell.
His sense of smell had been unlocked.
Unable to believe it, he ran around the room.
He smelled everything, from the old curtains and chair to the worn-out coffee pot.
He even tore open the tea packets to check their scents.
Perfect.
He could even smell the socks he had thrown into a corner.
Aaaaah.
Kangto froze.
His sense of smell.
It had happened exactly as Blanche had said.
Blanche’s genius sense of smell had been transferred to him completely.
“......!”
The scents of the essences immediately brought Kangto’s stunned mind back into focus.
The six essences were oud, vetiver, rose, jasmine, sandalwood, and cedarwood.
Even after sleeping for two hundred years, their scents had not disappeared.
Behind the sharp scent of the essences came an intoxicating sweetness.
They were essences of extraordinary quality.
‘Is this ambergris?’
The method for verifying ambergris came to Kangto’s mind.
He put a little on his hand and rubbed his palms together, beginning the examination like an appraiser.
He had never seen genuine ambergris in person.
But Raphael and Professor Lee Chang-gil had told him about it.
It was the method used by fragrance experts to authenticate ambergris.
Behind the sweet, soft fragrance came the smell of the sea.
Every characteristic the two professors had mentioned was present.
It had to be genuine SSS-grade ambergris.
The intense scent of the essences did not matter either.
Essence fragrances were naturally strong.
The precious fragrances Blanche had left behind had successfully crossed two centuries of time.
Kangto hurriedly restored everything to its original state.
He resealed the wax, closed the box, placed it inside the cedarwood container, and put everything back inside again...
Then another scent pushed its way into his nose.
This time, the reaction was not intense.
It was gentle.
The scent of roses.
It was drifting in through the open window.
‘Bulgarian and Damask varieties...’
He could identify the roses from their fragrance alone.
‘No way?’
Even after realizing it, he could not believe it.
There were more than 8,500 varieties of roses.
Kangto had never possessed the ability to distinguish them by scent.
He looked outside the window.
There was a small garden.
It was overflowing with roses.
He ran into the hallway.
Here too, the odor molecules came pouring toward him like a rainstorm.
He could distinguish the smell of mold on the walls, even the scent of the oak used for the floor and the odors produced by its deterioration.
And then.
“Excuse me.”
The owner’s French was perfectly clear to him.
“Me?”
Kangto’s response was also in French.
“We received a complaint from the room next door that some strange smell was coming from your room. You haven’t been cooking something in there, have you?”
Even the long pronunciations presented no difficulty.
It seemed that along with Blanche’s sense of smell, his language abilities had also been transferred.
“Not at all.”
His pronunciation was excellent.
Good enough that someone could mistake him for a Frenchman.
“You ate the food, though. Crème brûlée and shrimp risotto, right? The shrimp was a little old, so you might get an upset stomach.”
Kangto delivered a barrage of facts.
Still in French.
“......?”
“Oh, the roses planted in the garden. They’re Bulgarian and Damask varieties, right?”
“Are you a perfumer?”
“I’m hoping to become one. There’s indole and skatole everywhere, and some of it is yours. You’ll be getting a signal soon, so you should head to the bathroom.”
“Indole? Skatole?”
“Farts. They’re components of roses and orange blossoms, but they’re also components of flatulence.”
He answered and ran outside.
‘Ah.’
Standing in front of the roses, the sunlight felt like a blessing.
Just like sunlight illuminating the entire world, his sense of smell began opening without limits.
It was as though a gas chromatograph had been switched on.
It swept up every odor molecule floating through the air.
The protein receptors that captured the odor molecules began producing their analyses.
They were faster than a computer’s calculations.
The scents of people from countless nationalities staying at the guesthouse, the smells of the grass in the garden, the flower fields beyond the hill, and the odor molecules of aquamarine drifting in from the distant sea...
Ah...
It felt as though his chest would burst.
Ahhhh...
He felt as though he might go insane right then and there.