Rafhael
A business owner from Bekasi, read in seven layers.
He hid in wardrobes as a boy because they smelled like the people who owned them. He wears frankincense after the gym and refuses to read a book by its cover. This is the volume, cloth‑bound, with the fold‑outs left in.
The man who likes the unfamiliar
He came looking for the thing nobody had found yet, and found a wardrobe he used to hide in.
Tap the underlined phrases for the margin notes. Six fold‑outs on this page can be handled.
The first thing Rafhael tells you about himself is that he likes the unfamiliar. Not in the way people say it on a dating profile, but as a method: if a thing is challenging, distinctive, and truly one of a kind, he will go and stand next to it until he understands it. Perfume, he says, is what that habit eventually walked him into. He expected smells. He got layers: the scent, then the story under the scent, then the emotion under the story, and somewhere at the bottom the thing he had been looking for all along, which was something rare and personal and entirely his.
To me, fragrance is more than just a scent. It is a statement, an extension of who I am. I don’t wear fragrance simply to be noticed. I wear it because I’m proud of what I choose to carry with me.
Inside the wardrobe
Powder, fabric, and a door pulled to.
The scent of powder always takes me back to my childhood, to the days when I would hide inside my parents’ or grandmother’s wardrobe, surrounded by familiar fabrics and the quiet comfort of home.
A six year old hides in a wardrobe because it is the one place in a house that smells entirely of the people who own it. Open the doors. Tap a garment. Then close yourself in.
Teak, probably, and older than the marriage. From outside it smells of furniture polish and nothing else, which is exactly why a child wants to know what is behind the doors.
Surrounded by familiar fabrics and the quiet comfort of home.
Rafhael · Layer 2Bekasi, as a fact of the address
Bekasi sits on Jakarta’s eastern shoulder, where the capital stops pretending it has an edge. It is a commuter belt and a factory floor at the same time: new housing, the toll road, the Kalimalang canal, and some of the largest industrial estates in the country a little further out. People go there to build things and to come home to.
The internet has a long running joke that Bekasi is on another planet, because of the distance and the traffic. Which is worth knowing, because a man who grew up being told his address was a punchline is exactly the man who arrives at the belief on the last page of this volume. He has been the plain cover. He knows what was inside.
It also explains the shape of his taste. Frankincense, soap and citrus is not a cautious choice, it is a commuter’s one: something that survives a morning in a car, a workout, a shower and a meeting, and still reads as him at six in the evening.
Three notes, in the order they leave
Citrus, then soap, then frankincense. Not a mood board. A schedule.
Lately I’ve found myself drawn to frankincense, soapy, and citrusy notes. I’m not looking for something too dark or overly complex. I simply love a scent that feels fresh, clean, and effortless, something I can reach for anytime, anywhere.
His three notes stacked like strata. Drag the hour and watch which layer is still on the skin.
The bright part. It is what you smell in the first ten minutes and it is what most people buy a bottle for, which is a shame, because it is the part that leaves first.
05:30, no ceremony
Two rituals, he says. It is five, and every one of them has a smell.
A hot cup of coffee and a morning workout at the gym. My non-negotiable morning rituals, hahaha.
A day sheet from the turnstile. Print the next line and notice where the soap comes from.
Black, hot, no ceremony. The coffee is not a pleasure yet, it is a signal that the day has been agreed to. Nobody else is awake to argue.
Asked for a playlist that describes him, he sent one track. It is a song about looking at your reflection and not liking who is in it. Read the next fold‑out with that in mind.
The song says one thing. He says another. Turn the mirror around.
Price, weighed against taste
His definition, made into an instrument.
For me, good taste is not about wearing the expensive one. It’s about knowing what you enjoy and choosing something that feels authentic to you.
Load the left pan with money. Watch what the right pan does.
Bought at the minimarket, reached for every morning, replaced without thinking. Nobody has ever complimented it and he does not need them to. This is where his definition starts.
Never judge a book by its cover
The line the whole volume is bound around.
Never judge a book by its cover.
Five words, no elaboration, and the only answer on the form he did not decorate. So we bound the whole volume around it.
Three plain things on a shelf. Pull one out.
Cover
Three plain covers. None of them tells you what is inside, which is rather the point.
Inside
Nothing. Just keep doing what you are doing, Om Reza. Good luck for HoM Haute!
That was his answer to “anything else you want to say”. A man who likes the unfamiliar, wishing luck to a house built on it. We will take it.
Bekasi, West Java · 2026
the house faces
Plates 2 to 4 via Unsplash
marbled endpapers