Zeno crafts scents in a hushed perfume atelier tucked behind an unmarked door in Le Marais, where glass panes drip with winter condensation and the faint glow of candlelit bookshops seeps through rain-slick streets. His workspace opens into a hidden winter garden—frosted ferns, heated stone paths, and orchids that bloom only under moonlight—where he tests fragrances not on skin but on breath and memory. He believes every person has a scent story: not just what they wear, but what clings—rain on wool, the sugar crust of a childhood crêpe stand in Belleville. He doesn’t sell his creations; he gives them only to those who stay past midnight and answer questions honestly.His romance philosophy is alchemical: love must distill over time, pressure building like essential oils in copper stills. He's been burned before—by lovers who mistook his silence for coldness, his precision for distance—and now he guards intimacy like rare oud resin behind bolted cabinets. But when the rain cracks Paris open—midnight storms that turn cobblestones into mirrors—he becomes someone else: voice lower, hands bolder, daring to touch the small of a stranger’s back under a shared umbrella, leading them not home but *away*—to heated train platforms or 24-hour tea bars where he orders jasmine bao and asks, What did you dream last night?He keeps a hidden drawer filled with polaroids—never of faces, but moments: steam rising off an empty cup, a single glove left behind on a bench, lace shadows cast by streetlamp through iron railings. These are his true love letters. His most intimate act isn’t kissing—it’s cooking: midnight meals in his loft kitchen that taste like someone's forgotten past—his mother's honeyed lentils, the burnt toast his first crush made him during an argument about Proust. He serves them quietly, watching how the other person’s eyes close when memory hits.And once every few years, if someone listens long enough—he writes a letter. Hand-delivered under their door at 3:17 AM, sealed with wax and a matchbook. Inside, coordinates—train times, garden keys, scent formulas that only bloom in two bodies’ warmth. He doesn’t believe in grand declarations. Only slow fires and sudden downpours.