Sweat and Soap

Summary

At Liliadrop, a high-class manufacturer of women's cosmetics, employees are just as outstanding and glamorous as the variety of their products. In contrast stands Asako Yaeshima, a worker formerly nicknamed "Aseko"—"ase" meaning sweat—due to her unusual problem of excessive perspiration. To deal with her crisis, Asako develops a morning routine: she mixes different scents of Liliadrop soaps and unscented deodorants to mask her body odor. But her effort does not fool Koutarou Natori, a genius fragrance developer at the company with a sensitive and infallible sense of smell. Koutarou, astounded by Asako's natural smell combined with the soap, insists on sniffing her every day for a week to save their company's reputation by creating new Asako-inspired fragrances. With such an important reason at stake, Asako consents but never imagines how close she and Koutarou would soon become.