This was years ago, back when I was dating 马. I was a guy who thought soap was soap, and anything beyond that was just marketing nonsense. I was the human equivalent of a three-in-one product -- simple, functional, and completely oblivious to the finer things in life. No, I don't take pride in admitting my bathroom cabinet could have been mistaken for a gas station convenience store, but that's how it was.

But 马's bathroom? Holy grail territory. Bottles lined her shower like tiny soldiers of sophistication -- Korean this, Chinese that, organic everything. Each one promised to transform you into a glowing deity of cleanliness. Those long, showers at her place became my guilty pleasure. I'd stand there like a kid in a candy store, reading labels I couldn't pronounce, wondering if this particular bottle would finally unlock the secret to having skin that didn't look like I'd been wrestling with sandpaper. But there was one bottle -- one magical, mysterious Korean body wash -- that stopped me dead in my tracks.

It smelled exactly like payasam. Now, for those who don't know, payasam is this sweet, creamy dessert that tastes like childhood and grandmother's kitchen and every good memory you've ever had rolled into one. I hadn't been home in what felt like forever, hadn't tasted real payasam in longer than I cared to admit, and here I was, in my girlfriend's shower, being emotionally ambushed by a bottle of body wash. The rational part of my brain knew this was ridiculous. The slightly-less-rational part wondered if anyone would notice if I just... took a tiny taste. Just to see. Just to confirm that yes, this Korean cosmetics company had somehow bottled up my entire childhood and was selling it for ¥¥. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't spend the rest of that shower fantasizing about payasam while scrubbing myself with what my nose insisted was the liquid version of childhood comfort food. It was probably the most emotionally complex shower of my life -- equal parts cleansing and torturous.

Today, as I was going through my usual shower routine, that memory came flooding back. The payasam soap. The internal struggle. The sheer ridiculousness of a grown man contemplating the flavor profile of body wash like it was a wine tasting.