Chapter 16: The Reactions
Chapter 17 – The Reactions
The box was heavy. That was the first thing Emma noticed. Most PR packages were crammed with shredded tissue paper and discount codes; this one felt expensive. Intentional. Like whoever sent it didn’t want to be thanked. They wanted to be remembered.
She turned the matte black package over in her hands before sliding her nail under the lid and lifting it open. No scent hit her at first, just clean air and a neatly folded white card.
Her brows furrowed as she read it aloud on camera:
“Wear it. Describe what happens. Hashtag Obsession, hashtag Volke Beauty. Okay… ominous much?”
The bottle was thick, cold, and minimalist, like a luxury liquor decanter, not a perfume bottle.
No ingredients. No marketing. Just Obsession.
She twisted the cap off and hesitated. “This better not be, like, drugs or some creepy indie horror shit,” she joked, spritzing it onto her wrist.
The scent hit like a warm breath, amber, spice, something almost citrus-sharp beneath it. Her head tilted. “Oh. Oh, wow.”
Emma leaned in to smell again. Her words slowed.
“Okay... this is sexy. Like, actual sexy. Not high-school body spray sexy. I need someone to smell this on me. Like right now.”
She laughed nervously and ended the video, her hand still hovering near the bottle.
The scent lingered.
Julian Rhys – lifestyle influencer, 32, polished, bisexual, emotionally repressed, posts mostly curated aesthetic content and ‘tasteful’ thirst traps
Julian adjusted the collar of his shirt and gave himself a once-over in the mirror. The bottle sat alone on his dresser, white label facing forward like a dare.
He didn’t usually wear anything unvetted. No one sent him things without a signature or a press release.
But something about this one…
He picked it up and dabbed a trace behind each ear. No spray. Just pulse points.
He expected cloying. Instead, he got warmth, smooth, skin-close, and inexplicably tailored. It seemed that whoever designed it had known him, what he wanted to feel. What he wanted to be seen as.
He blinked at his reflection. Was it just the lighting, or did his skin look flushed?
Dinner went smoothly at first. His date, Eric, an investment consultant, charming but dull, had just started talking about Barcelona when he paused mid-sentence.
“You smell good.”
Julian blinked. “Yeah?”
“No, like—really good.” Eric leaned in slightly, his voice lower. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Julian admitted. “It’s new. Came in a black box. No brand name.”
Eric’s eyes lingered too long.
By dessert, he was touching Julian’s wrist under the table.
By the time he got home, he was breathless.
And by morning, Julian was sitting alone in his kitchen, staring at the bottle like it might move if he watched long enough.
Harper Vale – lifestyle microinfluencer, 29, known for clean eating, breakup healing, and posting soft, melancholic reels from her one-bedroom apartment in Portland
Harper didn’t film the unboxing.
She wasn’t in the mood to pretend.
The package had arrived during a rainstorm, tucked on her doormat like a secret. She didn’t remember signing up for anything. But the aesthetic caught her, matte black, white label, no words but Obsession.
She lit a candle and opened the box with a butter knife. The card inside made her snort:
“Wear it. Describe what happens.”
“Cryptic asshole,” she muttered, setting it aside.
She didn’t smell it at first. She simply uncapped the bottle and let it breathe on the table while editing a reel about emotional detachment.
It started in the kitchen.
She walked past the counter and paused, turned her head. Something warm trailed behind her, like the ghost of someone who’d just kissed her neck. A phantom exhale, all heat and musk and comfort.
She turned around, confused. The scent was stronger in the hallway.
She followed it, slow, distracted, until she stood barefoot in her bedroom doorway.
Nothing was there. But her heart beat faster.
Harper swallowed and went back for the bottle.
She didn’t spray it. She just held it. Pressed it to her palm like a stone. Cold and heavy and good.
That night, she spritzed a single dot onto her pillow before she crawled under the covers. Just to see.
Sleep came faster than usual.
She didn’t dream of anyone she recognized, but the weight of a hand lingered on her lower back until morning.
When she woke, her first thought wasn’t coffee.
It was: I want to feel that again.
And her second?
No one has ever made me feel that way.
Except nothing had happened.
Nothing… but a scent.
Marcus Leary – boyfriend of influencer Tessa Marlowe (unseen), not part of the trial group
Marcus hated influencer stuff.
The filming. The edits. The performative brunches and pre-scripted surprise faces.
But he loved Tessa, or at least, he used to before her audience grew faster than her attention span. Before “us” became background noise to ring lights and promo codes.
So when she unboxed something new last night, some mystery perfume in a box with no insert, he didn’t say much.
She wore it to bed.
He woke up hard.
Not just aroused, needy. Jaw clenched. Hands twitching.
Tessa was already filming a GRWM in the bathroom mirror, talking to no one as she held her phone on a tripod. The scent drifted through the hallway as if it had a purpose.
Vanilla, but not sweet. Amber, but not thick. Something dark underneath. Sharp. Magnetic.
He leaned against the doorway and stared.
She barely noticed him until he reached for her waist. She flinched, playfully, but distant. “Not now, babe. I’m filming.”
But the smell was everywhere.
By the next afternoon, he’d watched her last three videos twelve times.
He kept rewinding when she smiled.
He couldn’t explain it.
She hadn’t done anything different. She was just… more. More present. More needed. More wanted.
When she left the house, he followed her Instagram story obsessively.
When she came home, he watched her sleep.
When she asked him if something was wrong, he said no.
But that night, when she reached for the perfume again, he told her to stop.
Not because he hated it.
But because he didn’t trust himself if she wore it again.