Airplane//KTH

Chapter 1

6:56 PM Eastern Standard Time

5:35 AM South Korea Mean Time

Airports are torture chambers if you're claustrophobic.

It's not just the looming threat of the ride ahead-being stuffed into seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube-but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm.

This is just one of the many things that Hadley's trying not to think about as she stands helplessly before the ticket counter. The light outside was starting to disappear and her plane is now somewhere over the Atlantic, and she can feel something inside of her unravelling, like the slow release of air from a balloon. Part of it is the impending flight and part of it is the airport itself, but mostly-mostly-it's the realization that she'll now be late for the wedding she didn't even want to go to in the first place, and something about this miserable little twist of fate makes her feel like crying.

The gate attendants have gathered on the opposite side of the counter to frown at her with looks of great impatience. The screen behind them has already been switched to announce the next flight from JFK to Incheon International Airport, which doesn't leave for more than three hours, and it's quickly becoming obvious that Hadley is the only thing standing between them and the end of their shift.

"I'm sorry, Miss," one of them says, the suppressed sigh evident in her voice. "There's nothing we can do but try to get you on the later flight."

Hadley nods glumly. She's spent the past few weeks secretly wishing this very thing might happen, though admittedly, her imagined scenarios have been a bit more dramatic: a massive airline strike; an epic hailstorm; an immobilizing case of the flu, or even the measles, that would prevent her from flying. All perfectly good reasons why she might have to miss her father's trip down the aisle to marry a woman she's never met.

But being four minutes late to your flight seems just a little too convenient, maybe a tad suspicious, and Hadley isn't at all sure that her parents-either of them-will understand that it wasn't her fault. In fact, she suspects this might fall onto the very short list of things they'd actually agree upon.

It had been her own idea to skip the rehearsal dinner and arrive in Seoul the morning of the wedding instead. Hadley hasn't seen her father in more than a year, and she wasn't sure she could sit in a room with all the important people in his life-his friends and colleagues, the little world he's built around himself half the world away-while they toasted to his health and happiness, the start of his new life. If it had been up to her, she wouldn't even be going to the wedding itself, but that had turned out to be nonnegotiable.

"He's still your dad," Mom kept reminding her as if this were something Hadley might forget. "If you don't go, you'll regret it later. I know it's hard to imagine when you're seventeen, but trust me. One day you will."

Hadley isn't so sure.

The flight attendant is now working the keyboard of her computer with a kind of ferocious intensity, punching at the keys and snapping her gum. "You're in luck," she says, raising her hands with a little flourish. "I can get you on the ten twenty-four. Seat eighteen-A. By the window."

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Thank you all for reading the second chapter of this FanFic. I hope you continue to read!