He didn't look back.
Even as the glass doors of O. R. Tambo International hissed shut behind him and the wind briefly tugged at the edge of his coat, he kept his eyes forward.
The station swallowed his presence like it had done to thousands before him — no fanfare, no final shout, no half-waved goodbye.
The airport buzzed like it always did. Voices layered over wheels dragging on polished tile. Distant conversations in foreign languages, idle chatter over weak coffee. And somewhere, the faint lull of a radio playing old R&B like it had nowhere better to be.
He walked through it all like he wasn't part of it. His steps were steady. His face unreadable. He didn't fumble with his documents. He didn't check the departure board more than once. He knew the gate by memory. Gate A16. Flight 209. Departure to JFK. One-way.
The woman at the check-in counter tried to smile. She asked if he was flying alone. He said yes. She didn't ask why.
Boarding was uneventful. He found his seat — left window side, toward the wing. He had requested it specifically. Not because he liked the view, but because something about watching the engine soothed him. Something about watching the part that worked the hardest.
He sat down. A backpack between his feet. A silent breath through his nose.
The plane filled slowly.
A mother with a baby two rows ahead. A tired man in a suit who immediately pulled out a laptop. Two teenagers with earbuds arguing about which music artist was "overrated." Nothing out of place. Nothing alarming.
And yet… something already felt still. Too still. Not outside the plane. But inside him.
His fingers tapped the armrest once.
He had never flown across the ocean. Not once.
Not even when his mother's new man had tried to convince him. Tried again and again. Offered expensive getaways. Promised air miles and family time. Beaches and culture and distraction.
But he never went. Because his real father was never in the picture. He was in a wheelchair, far away. And eventually, not even that — forgotten in name and body by the woman who once loved him.
The boy refused the idea of joy that didn't come from his original home.
Now he was flying toward it.
The seatbelt clicked. The safety instructions flickered across the monitor, unimportant to most. A few glanced. Others ignored it.
The engines purred. Then growled. Then roared.
They lifted.
As the ground shrank beneath them and the blue of the sky widened, the airport, the continent, the past—everything small and shrinking—he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Let the hours pass.
Let the time fold.
---
They were halfway across the Atlantic when the first turbulence hit.
It wasn't sharp.
It was... curious.
A small bump. Like a tiny pothole in a sky that had seemed glass-smooth until now.
It was the kind of shake most would forget by the time they landed.
Except it came again.
A second one. Slightly firmer.
A few heads lifted. A man two rows down shifted in his seat, tugged his seatbelt tighter.
Then stillness again.
The engines hummed steadily. The lights above stayed green. The sky beyond the window was a cotton sea of clouds and sunlit emptiness.
He barely reacted. Not because he wasn't aware, but because he'd already accepted turbulence as part of the journey.
Still, the tapping of his finger returned. Two beats. Then stopped.
A whisper moved through the cabin. The kind of hush that wasn't conversation — just people reacting to nothing.
Then the plane dipped.
Not deep. But enough.
Enough for the overhead bins to clack lightly. Enough for a woman to gasp softly. Enough for tray tables to rattle against their brackets.
Still no announcement.
The pilot, it seemed, was as silent as the ocean below.
The boy turned his head to the window, eyes narrowing slightly. The clouds weren't as thick now. Just thinner wisps, scattered like breath. He watched them drift, watched them disappear, watched the curve of the horizon where blue met brighter blue.
The seat jolted again.
This one wasn't rough. Just... drawn out. Lingering.
He could feel it in the frame. A sustained tension, like something groaning to hold itself together.
Someone behind him coughed — or maybe it was a suppressed sound of discomfort.
The boy didn't move.
Didn't flinch.
He just blinked once and let his body sway gently with the plane, as if it were a boat gliding over invisible waves.
Still no voice came through the intercom.
Still no explanation.
And yet everything was still fine.
For now.
---
The flight had already spanned hours by the time the boy leaned back in his seat again, eyes half-lidded, shoulders sinking into a stiffness that no adjustment could soothe. The ocean below was endless — more ink than water, a canvas of memories he didn't ask for but still carried across the world.
He had not once spoken to the old couple beside him, nor even glanced at the chatty teenager across the aisle. Instead, he watched the wing. Just the wing. The way it sliced through the clouds with a steadiness that resembled certainty. Something he lacked.
His tray table had been cleared. The remnants of the in-flight meal — bland rice, a meat that claimed to be chicken — had long been swept away by a quiet steward with polite nods and practiced hands.
He reached into his jacket pocket, feeling the thin fold of the letter still tucked there. The one he never sent. The one written after his father's last recorded call.
He didn't read it now. Just held it. Let it stay sealed — like everything else.
Then, without warning but without violence, the second turbulence began.
It was slight. Barely a tremor at first.
A faint rattle in the cup on the tray of the woman three seats down.
A child sat upright across the aisle, wide-eyed but not yet afraid.
The fasten seatbelt sign blinked to life with its familiar chime, and an automated voice murmured from above like the tone of a drowsy ghost.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are currently experiencing minor turbulence. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts."
It was that word — minor — that caught him.
Nothing about the sky ever felt minor when it decided to turn against you.
He shifted in his seat, knuckles tightening against the armrest not out of fear, but out of instinct.
The lights above flickered once, then again — but no one panicked. Not yet.
A stewardess passed by briskly, her walk slightly stiffer than before. She glanced at his row, her eyes trained on every lap, every buckle. He met her gaze for half a second. She looked away.
Another jolt. This one longer.
He could feel the groan of the fuselage now. The whole body of the aircraft subtly shivering like something ancient waking from cold stone.
He leaned forward slightly and glanced out the window.
Clouds.
Just clouds.
But this time they were thick, the type that swallowed the sun whole — dark enough to forget what time it was.
Then came the sound.
A low hum, deep in the bones of the plane. Not mechanical. No, this was more primal. A sound that had no language. Like the sky grinding its teeth.
He heard something clatter in the galley up front. A bottle? A tray?
No announcement followed.
People were quiet now. More than before. Those who had been murmuring had stopped. A child cried softly into their mother's arm. Somewhere else, someone coughed too sharply, as though trying to clear more than just their throat.
The turbulence didn't spike all at once.
It pulsed — in rhythms.
As if the plane were breathing.
As if it were deciding.
The boy blinked. His ears had begun to throb.
Then came the vibration — a distinct shake, this time strong enough to make the overhead bins rattle, strong enough to make a woman gasp and grab her husband's wrist, strong enough for a man at the back to say, "Is this normal?" out loud.
It wasn't.
He didn't need a pilot to tell him that.
And that was when he looked out again.
This time, he saw it.
Just a glint at first — a flicker of something metal drifting free, too small to be noticed by most, but unmistakable to someone who had been watching that wing for the entire flight.
A piece — just a panel, perhaps — had come loose from the left engine mount.
He sat up.
His mouth was dry. His hands didn't move.
The glint vanished into the clouds below like a secret.
But then the wing itself trembled.
Not like before. Not just from the wind.
This was internal. A deep, twisting motion, the kind you feel in your ribs before you understand it in your brain.
The lights flickered again.
Only this time, they didn't return to full strength.
He looked down the aisle. The stewardess was gone.
No announcement. No chime.
Just the quiet return of that groaning — deeper now, like something ancient bending under weight it could no longer carry.
Then, the jolt.
This one sent his cup flying from the seat pocket, the ice scattering at his feet. A shriek echoed from the rear cabin.
The boy didn't speak.
He didn't scream.
He didn't cry.
He simply closed his eyes for one long moment, feeling the tremble in the soles of his shoes. Not just from the turbulence — but from the moment itself.
They were past halfway now.
And the sky had begun to change its mind.