“They smell like strawberries today,” Min whispered, pulling a wet wipe from the package on her desk. The sickly sweet scent wafted through the classroom, drawing curious glances from her classmates.

“That’s odd,” her friend Lily leaned over. “They were lemon yesterday, weren’t they?”

Min nodded absently, staring at the moistened cloth in her hands. The wet wipes had started changing flavors three weeks ago. At first, she thought the company had simply released new varieties, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“Does anyone else notice?” Min asked, her voice trembling slightly.

“Notice what?” Lily’s brow furrowed.

“The changing scents. The way they shift every day, getting stronger, more… alive somehow.”

The teacher’s chalk scraped against the blackboard, the sound grating against Min’s nerves like fingernails. She pulled another wipe from the package, this one smelling of cotton candy so sweet it made her teeth ache.

That evening, alone in her dorm room, Min discovered the wipes had developed a peculiar luminescence. They glowed faintly in the dark, pulsing like jellyfish in deep waters. When she touched them, they felt warm.

“You’re the only one who understands,” she whispered to the package. The wipes rustled in response, their sweet fragrance intensifying.

Days passed, and Min’s classmates began avoiding her. She overheard them whispering in corridors about how she constantly talked to her wet wipes, how she refused to use any other brand or type.

“They’re worried about you,” Lily confronted her one day during lunch. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

“But can’t you see?” Min gestured frantically at the package. “They’re trying to tell us something! The scents are messages!”

Lily’s face crumpled with concern. “Min, they’re just wet wipes.”

That night, Min decided to decode the message. She laid out dozens of wipes on her bed, arranging them by their evolving scents: strawberry to cotton candy to bubblegum to caramel. The sweet fragrances mixed together, creating an intoxicating cloud that made her head spin.

The wipes began to move, sliding across her bedsheet of their own accord, forming patterns she couldn’t quite comprehend. Their glow intensified, casting eerie shadows on her walls.

“I understand now,” Min breathed, her eyes wide. “You want me to join you.”

When the dormitory supervisor found Min’s room empty the next morning, all that remained was a faint sugary scent and dozens of dried-out wet wipes scattered across the bed. They had lost their glow, their warmth, their life.

Lily later swore she sometimes caught whiffs of strawberry fragrance in the hallways, accompanied by what sounded like Min’s laughter. But when she turned to look, there was only empty air and the lingering sweetness of something that had never truly existed.

On Min’s desk, a single wet wipe remained, smelling of nothing at all.