Memory was not supposed to linger, yet Emma found herself tasting it everywhere.

It lived in the faint sweetness of the bakery she passed each morning, in the warmth of the paper cup she carried, in the ghost of sugar that still clung to her fingers from last week’s experiment. It even hid in silence—the quiet that existed whenever Liam Carter was nearby, a silence that vibrated like a half-remembered song.

She hadn’t meant to dream about the lab, but she had. In her dream, everything smelled like sugar and rain.

When she arrived at Brookvale High, the clouds had lifted just enough to let sunlight slip through the windows. The hallway echoed with the slam of lockers and the chatter of students, but the sounds blurred together, distant, as if she were underwater. The only clear thing was the echo of his voice.

*Expectation.*

It wasn’t a confession, but it stayed in her mind like static she couldn’t tune out.

Sophie appeared at her locker holding two muffins and a smirk. “You look tragic. That’s either insomnia or love.”

Emma snorted. “Neither. Just bad chemistry.”

“Uh-huh. What’s his name again?”

“I didn’t say it was a person.”

“You didn’t have to. You make that face every time you talk about him.”

“What face?”

“The one that says ‘I hate how much I notice him.’”

Emma sighed. “You should write poetry.”

“I do,” Sophie said. “It’s called gossip.”

They walked toward their classrooms. Sophie rambled about her art project while Emma pretended to listen, her thoughts looping back to equations, to words she’d written beside the data: *bitterness equals memory retention.*

At lunch, the cafeteria buzzed, filled with the usual chaos of trays and chatter. She spotted Liam sitting alone at their usual table, notes spread like a map in front of him. The sight made something inside her settle and twist at the same time.

She hesitated, then walked over.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Choice implies I have control,” he said without looking up.

“So, that’s a yes.”

“If it makes you quieter.”

She sat. “Working on the project?”

“Refining the hypothesis.”

“Which is?”

“That emotion alters sensory perception.”

“Pretty sure we proved that already.”

“Not reproducibly.”

She took a fry from her tray and pointed it at him. “You ever think maybe not everything needs to be reproducible?”

“That would make it unpredictable.”

“Exactly. Welcome to humanity.”

He finally looked at her. “You sound like Ms. Green.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It wasn’t one.”

Emma smiled anyway, dipping the fry into ketchup just to give her hands something to do. He was impossible—logical to the point of poetry.

After a moment, she said, “I rewatched our data.”

“Rewatched?”

“In my head. You know, when you keep thinking about something until it stops being numbers.”

He tilted his head. “And starts being?”

“A feeling.”

He wrote something in his notebook. “Subject exhibits persistent reflection on test stimuli.”

She glared. “Did you just diagnose me?”

“Observation only.”

Her laughter echoed in the half-empty cafeteria. For a second, he almost smiled.

The bell rang, and they both stood. He slipped his notebook into his bag, movements precise, deliberate. She grabbed her tray, then turned to him.

“Hey, Liam?”

“Yes?”

“When memory becomes an experiment, who’s testing who?”

He blinked. “You should write that down.”

“I already did.”

As they left the cafeteria, the rain started again—soft, rhythmic, tasting faintly of sugar.

By afternoon, the clouds had thickened again, dimming the light in the lab until everything looked suspended in amber.

Emma balanced a beaker between her hands, watching the surface ripple. The new experiment Ms. Green assigned—testing how temperature affected scent recall—was simple in theory, complicated in practice.

She glanced at Liam. He was reading the instructions with the kind of focus that could burn through glass.

“You know, most people just wing it,” she said.

“Most people make errors.”

“Errors are how we get stories.”

“Stories don’t pass peer review.”

“You really have no idea how to flirt, do you?”

He blinked. “That wasn’t flirting.”

“It was on my end.”

He froze for half a second, pen hovering above the page, then kept writing as if she hadn’t spoken. His ears, however, turned the faintest shade of pink.

Steam rose from the mixture on her burner, curling toward the ceiling in delicate threads. She watched the vapor twist, thought about how memory worked the same way—visible for a second, gone the next.

“Why do you think we remember smells more than sounds?” she asked.

He measured another milliliter, voice calm. “Because the olfactory bulb connects directly to the amygdala. It bypasses rational processing.”

“So memories cheat?”

“They take shortcuts.”

“Kind of like people.”

He looked up, and for once, didn’t correct her.

They took turns tasting the cooled solutions. One was sweet, another too sharp, the last faintly metallic.

“This one’s weird,” she said, grimacing. “It tastes like missing someone I shouldn’t miss.”

“That’s not measurable.”

“It’s still data.”

“Then record it.”

She smiled. “You’re learning.”

He said nothing, but his lips pressed together in a way that wasn’t quite disapproval. They kept working, the silence between them heavy but not cold.

Outside, rain tapped against the window, steady and soft. The smell of warm sugar filled the room. Emma thought of her last stream, of ByteTheory’s comment: *Memory never stabilizes.*

Maybe he was right.

When the final sample cooled, she slid the results toward him. “So? What do you think?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “our variables are starting to interfere.”

“You mean us?”

“I mean perception.”

“Right. Perception.”

He capped the beakers and started cleaning. She stayed where she was, chin resting on her hand, watching the way his movements aligned with the rhythm of the rain.

“Hey, Liam?”

He didn’t look up. “Yes?”

“If memory is chemistry, does that mean forgetting is too?”

He paused. “Probably. Different compounds, same reaction.”

“Then maybe it’s okay to forget some things.”

“Or impossible,” he said.

She tilted her head. “Are you trying to sound poetic?”

“I’m trying to sound accurate.”

“Same thing.”

For a moment, they just stood there—two voices caught in the hum of the lab, surrounded by heat and glass and things they couldn’t quite name.

When Ms. Green dismissed them, Emma packed her notes carefully. The title on the top page read: *The Chemistry of Memory — A Study in Persistence.*

Liam noticed and raised an eyebrow. “Persistence?”

“It sounds better than ‘obsession.’”

“Marginally.”

They walked out together into the hallway. The storm had stopped, leaving the air clean and cold. Somewhere, the scent of caramel drifted faintly from the cafeteria.

As they reached the doors, he said, “Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“Next week’s phase involves comparing emotional retention. You’ll need a partner again.”

She smiled. “Good thing I already have one.”

For a moment, the reflection of light off the wet pavement painted them both in silver. Neither spoke, but the quiet between them had changed.

That night, in her small apartment kitchen, Emma turned on her camera.

“Hi, it’s Sugar. Tonight’s flavor is memory. It’s the taste that stays even when everything else fades.”

Her voice was soft, almost reverent. “Some flavors never settle, but maybe that’s what makes them real.”

Across town, in the glow of his monitor, Liam listened to the stream replay. The words lingered longer than they should have.

He didn’t take notes this time.

He just listened.