That morning, the light came in slantwise through the sheer curtain, like a breath. A tram could be heard in the distance, and water was boiling in the kettle. She had gotten up early, with a vague feeling that something was about to happen. Not something big. Just… different.

She sat in front of the mirror, a towel wrapped around her head, and stayed there for a while. She didn’t comb her hair. She wasn’t in a hurry. She looked at that slightly tired but peaceful face. She knew it. She had learned it.

On the nightstand, a round perfume bottle waited. It wasn’t the perfume she usually wore on dates. Nor the office one. Not even the “Sunday” one. It was her grandmother’s perfume. She had found it the day before, forgotten in a box of old jewelry. She had opened it out of curiosity, without expecting much. And suddenly, the air filled with memories she didn’t know she still had: the smell of starched curtains, of lemon pastries, of warm hands smoothing the back of a dress.

I’ll wear it today, she told herself.

She picked up the bottle, tilted it gently, and applied two drops, like a prayer. One on the right wrist, the other in the hollow of her neck.
The scent wrapped around her slowly, like a whispered promise. It was floral, slightly dusty, but had a calming elegance—like an old novel read by the light of a lamp.

As she tied her hair back, she smiled to herself.
“This perfume has nothing to do with me,” she said.
But then the thought came: or maybe it does—with the part of me I’ve forgotten…

She stepped out into the street with calm footsteps. People hurried past her, but she walked as if dancing in another time. She could feel the perfume rising from her skin in gentle waves, touching the air, maybe even touching others.

A woman in a navy dress, a little girl clutching a bouquet of peonies, a man smoking against the wall of a café. They all passed by. No one looked at her. And yet, she felt the perfume linger. Like an invisible signature.

And then she understood.
She wasn’t wearing that perfume to remember her grandmother. She wore it because she was there too, in that old fragrance, in that woman who had once been young. She wore it because her life was made of layers—childhood, loves, loneliness, rebirths—and they all blended in that scent.

Perfume is not an accessory. It’s a memory that breathes. It’s a version of you, kept in a bottle.

When she reached the corner of the street, a breeze carried a trace of the scent behind her, like a trail of warm smoke. She didn’t turn back. She knew she had left something there, in the air.

Not something big. Just… true.