Michael heard them.
He didn’t turn his head. He didn’t pause. He stowed his backpack overhead carefully, slower than necessary, because inside were personal items he didn’t trust to gravity or strangers.
Then he sat down in row nine between a teenage girl with earbuds in and a middle-aged woman who shifted toward the window the moment he settled, making a point of giving him as little shared air as possible.
Michael didn’t react.
He had spent years learning how to hold his face still under pressure. How to let insults slide off without granting them energy. The skills that saved you in one setting came in handy in others too.
But internally, something tightened.
Not because of Catherine’s words.
Because of the timing.
Because he could not afford to spend any emotional strength on a stranger’s bitterness.
Not when he needed all of it for what waited at the end of this flight.
The cabin filled. Overhead bins slammed. Flight attendants reminded people to keep bags out of the aisle. A man in a suit argued about space for his garment bag. Someone laughed too loudly about the delay.
Catherine continued radiating irritation like heat. She tapped at her phone, sighed dramatically, checked her watch as if time personally owed her an apology.
As the plane pushed back from the gate, Michael pulled a small notebook from his jacket pocket. The leather cover was scuffed and softened from being carried often. He opened it to a middle page where his handwriting filled the lines. Neat at first, then uneven in places where the pen had pressed too hard, or the ink had wavered.
He began to write.
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