The narrative thread spun here by professional perfumer and author Ku Nai-Fang, beguilingly seasoned with the vagaries and aromas of life, turns funk into fragrance and does wonders with rubbish. The gems in this story, capped and sealed, effervesce with the true essence of self.

Up-and-coming perfumer Peipei transforms a rental flat in Taipei into a home-cum-perfumery studio. Her only companion, An, an orangutan who had broken out of an experimental laboratory, is blessed with an uncanny knack for fragrance aesthetics and creating alluringly unique olfactory configurations. An’s deceptively capricious blends always seem to end in something surprisingly wonderful. But this mutually advantageous relationship is not immune to conflict and, one day, Peipei is the catalyst that ends An’s life.

An’s loss traps Peipei in a circle of anguish and memories of their time together. But it is when their fragrance wins a long-coveted major award and she is unable to recreate the formula on her own that she finally realizes she must blaze her own trail forward. She restarts her life and studio in a new location where she meets a man who, like An, had been abandoned as a child by his mother. With so much in common, they explore a dense, magical forest in search of new aromatics together. Although Peipei feels in their closeness a baffling sense of distance, his subsequent betrayal hits her as a complete surprise.

The protagonist’s solitary journey, partially inspired by the author’s own life experiences, centers on honing her perfumery skills and, in the process, finding herself and pondering the true meaning of life. While the effect of aromatic perfumes on the senses may be pure magic, their chemical compounds, aromatic oils, and medicaments are all worldly substances. The joining of these two dimensions give perfumes their undeniable allure, while the entwining of experience and imagination nourish the soul and open the door to self-realization.