The remote vanishes into the gap between sofa cushions, under a pillow, atop a dining chair, mysteriously in front of the refrigerator. Remotes seem to follow their own geography of disappearance, yet they always turn up somewhere unexpected.
After dinner, when all you want to do is switch off the AC, the whole household scatters across rooms to hunt for it. You don't realize until much later, after consolidating them into one place, how those repeated 30-second searches were silently wearing away at your mental ease.