“What cologne did you wear today, Director?”
In the corridor outside the restroom, Jiyeon tentatively pressed her nose to the nape of the director’s neck. In that instant, a twenty-three-year-old employee inhaled the scent of a fifty-four-year-old man. Her breath shortened. A few silver strands threaded through the black hair at his collar, and from the fine wrinkles of his neck rose a mixture of masculine citrus, cigarette smoke, and something like cardamom trembling on the air.
I mustn’t tell anyone. Not yet.
The Temperature of Power Beneath the Skin
Jiyeon began memorizing the smell of a man eleven years older than her father. At every company dinner the director never once looked at her. Yet each time she raised the shot glass—no more than fifty milliliters—he passed her, she caught the odor rising from the back of his hand.
This is not mere cologne.
It was the scent of years distilled between dead skin and living muscle, a silence fermented by time. Every night she opens the office messenger. When she sees the “away” status beside the director’s name she imagines him lying beside his wife, and a jealousy that he might at this very moment be exuding that fragrance for another woman swells to the top of her throat.
What She Hides in Her Desk Drawer
In Jiyeon’s drawer sits an empty cigarette pack the director discarded. After the company dinner on June 14 he had smoked on the terrace and tossed it in the trash. Jiyeon slipped it carefully into her skirt pocket. At home she sealed it in a plastic bag and stored it in the refrigerator. Each night she takes it out and breathes it in: nicotine, cologne, and something guilt-laden entwined together.
One afternoon the director paused by her desk and rested a hand on the cubicle wall. On the subway home she rubbed that palm-scent against her nose: the sour tang of kimchi from the grandmother beside her, the clunk of canned coffee from the vending machine, and the thought—now I carry his smell.
Mijin’s Case: Why She Rode Home with the Fifty-Eight-Year-Old Team Leader
Mijin is three years into her career. During last winter’s junior-staff workshop she climbed into the team leader’s car. From the back seat she watched the fine wrinkles on the backs of his hands gripping the steering wheel. As the heater warmed the interior, the scent of nicotine and worn leather drifted from his neck. She closed her eyes quietly. A fragrance seven years older than her father filled her lungs.
This is a sin.
Yet she drew the breath deeper. That night, remembering the smell of the team leader’s car, she made love to her boyfriend. Eyes shut, she pictured the hollow just behind the older man’s ear.
A Man Older Than Father: Why We Are Bewitched by That Scent
What stirs them is neither cologne nor cigarette. It is the scent of death, or perhaps life after death. At the brink of their own limitless twenties, these women seek the odor of a man who has exhausted all possibility.
He already owns the future I can never reach. And that future is soon to end.
This is the banquet of taboo and authority. They desire the impossible and yearn to inhale the fragrance that seeps through its impossibility. In that scent lie a father’s failures, a husband’s betrayals, and the years that have endured both.
Perhaps You, Too, Are Searching for That Scent
Tonight, at another company dinner, you stretch your neck to catch it. While you wonder who might notice, a darker thought rises: perhaps I hope the scent will settle on me as well.
Gradually, it has begun to rise from you, too.