The coffee is burnt. I drink it anyway because my hands need something to hold.
My mother sits beside me, flipping through a magazine she's not reading. I can tell because her eyes aren't moving. They're fixed on the same perfume advertisement, some blonde woman laughing on a beach, and every few seconds she glances at me like I might bolt.
I'm not going to bolt. There's nowhere left to bolt to.
"They're boarding soon," she says.
"I know."
"You should use the bathroom before—"
"I'm fine."
She nods. Goes back to not reading.
The airport is loud in that specific way airports always are. Wheels on tile. Announcements nobody listens to. A baby screaming somewhere near the Cinnabon. I watch a family hug near the security checkpoint—father lifting a little girl, mother wiping her eyes, grandparents waving—and I feel nothing. Not jealousy. Not longing. Just the flat recognition that some people live entirely different lives.
My phone buzzes.
I don't look at it. I already know who it is. The number has been calling for three days straight. Blocked numbers. New numbers. Numbers I don't recognize from area codes I've never heard of.
"Flight 892 to Seoul Incheon, now boarding rows 25 through 40."
My mother stands so fast she drops the magazine. "That's us."
"We're row 12."
"I know, but we should—"
"We can wait."
She sits back down. The magazine stays on the floor. Neither of us picks it up.
I take another sip and watch a man in a business suit argue with a gate agent about overhead bin space. He's loud about it. Expensive watch. Wedding ring. The gate agent smiles with her mouth but not her eyes, and I wonder how many times a day she imagines pushing someone down the jet bridge stairs.
"You know," my mother says, her voice carefully light, "Seoul is supposed to be beautiful in the spring. Cherry blossoms everywhere. There are these palaces you can visit, and the food is supposed to be incredible. Spicy, but incredible. I was reading about this one neighborhood—"
"Mom."
She stops.
"I don't need the travel brochure."
She folds her hands in her lap. Her nails are painted a soft pink, but the polish is chipping at the edges. She did them herself last night, sitting on the bathroom floor of our motel room, because the salon appointments stopped when the money ran out.
"Flight 892 to Seoul Incheon, now boarding rows 15 through 24."
"That's close to us," she says, but doesn't stand this time.
"Yeah."
The man with the expensive watch has won his argument. He's boarding now, and the gate agent's smile has gone even more hollow.
My phone buzzes again.
I take it out this time, just to turn it off completely. But the notification catches my eye before I can.
Unknown Number:You can't run forever.
I power it off.
My mother doesn't ask who it was. She learned to stop asking about two weeks ago, after I threw a glass at the wall and screamed at her for twenty minutes about privacy and boundaries and all the ways she failed me when it mattered. I said things I meant. Things I shouldn't have said. Things that were true and cruel in equal measure.
She cried.
I didn't apologize.
We haven't talked about it since.
"Flight 892 to Seoul Incheon, now boarding all remaining passengers."
We stand together. She grabs her carry-on—a rolling suitcase with a broken wheel that veers left no matter how straight you try to push it—and I sling my backpack over my shoulder.
The line moves slowly. Boarding passes scanned. Polite smiles exchanged. We shuffle down the jet bridge and the air changes.
I find my seat. Window. Row 12. My mother takes the middle, even though the aisle is open, because she wants to be close. I don't tell her to move. I just buckle my seatbelt and lean my head against the cold oval of the window.
"I was thinking," my mother says, "that when we land, we could—"
"I don't want to plan right now."
"Okay." She's quiet for a moment. "What do you want?"
I don't answer.
"I want to sleep," I finally say.
She nods. Doesn't push.
The flight attendant dims the cabin lights somewhere over the Pacific.
My mother fell asleep an hour ago, her head tilted at an angle that's going to hurt when she wakes up. The magazine is still on the floor by her feet. She snores lightly—something she'd deny if I ever mentioned it.
I can't sleep.
The in-flight entertainment has three hundred movies I don't want to watch and a map that shows our tiny plane icon crawling across an endless blue ocean. Ten hours left. The couple in front of me keeps pressing their call buttons for more wine. The man across the aisle is manspreading into the walkway and hasn't stopped snoring since takeoff.
I shift against the window. Below us, there's nothing. Just black water and black sky and the occasional blinking light on the wing.
My reflection stares back at me in the glass. I look tired. Thin in a way that used to make me feel powerful and now just makes me feel hollowed out. My edges are all wrong—sharp collarbones, circles under my eyes that concealer stopped hiding weeks ago.
I pull my hood tighter and close my eyes.
Sleep doesn't come. It hasn't come easily in months. Instead there's just the dark behind my eyelids and the hum of the engines and the recycled air blowing stale against my face.
My mother shifts beside me. Murmurs something. Her hand reaches out in her sleep and lands on my armrest, fingers brushing mine.
I don't pull away.
I don't hold on either.
We land at Incheon as the sun is coming up.
The airport is massive. Glass and steel and Korean characters I can't read. Everything is clean in a way American airports never are—floors polished, trash cans emptied, staff in pressed uniforms bowing slightly as passengers shuffle past.
My mother is nervous. I can tell by the way she keeps fixing her hair,
checking her reflection in every surface we pass. She changed in the bathroom before we landed. Put on lipstick. Sprayed perfume from a sample she's been carrying in her purse.
"He said someone would meet us at arrivals," she says, walking too fast. "With a sign. Our names."
"Okay."
"Just—" She stops. Turns to me. "Please. Just give this a chance."
I don't answer.
We go through customs. Collect our bags—her two matching suitcases, my blue duffel held together with safety pins. The automatic doors slide open and suddenly we're in the arrivals hall and there are people everywhere. Families reuniting. Businessmen on phones. Tour groups with matching hats.
And there, near the exit, a man in a black suit holding a sign.
ELENA & AMARA BROOKS
My mother exhales. "That's us."
The man bows when we approach. Takes our luggage without asking. Leads us outside to a black car so polished I can see my reflection in the door.
Not a private jet.
But close enough.
The driver opens the back door. My mother slides in first. I follow, and the leather seats are cold against my thighs, and the car smells like something expensive I can't name.
"The Chairman sends his apologies," the driver says in accented English. "He was unable to come personally. He will meet you at the residence."
The Chairman.
That's what she's marrying. Not a man. A title.
My mother nods like this is normal. Like she's been riding in cars like this her whole life. I watch her settle into the seat, smooth her skirt, fold her hands in her lap.
She's already becoming someone else.
The car pulls away from the curb, and Seoul spreads out around us—highways and high-rises and billboards in a language I don't speak.
I lean my head against the window and watch it blur past.