That businessman had become Zawati’s father.
“Normal is boring,” Zawati said, closing the laptop. “Normal doesn’t give you stories.”
“Normal also doesn’t give your mother gray hair.”
Nema crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, touching one of the hanging models so it spun softly in the morning light.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You were going to ask your father again today.”
Zawati’s face brightened immediately.
“He said maybe I could see the new prototype next month if my grades stay up.”
“And your grades are perfect.”
“Obviously.”
Nema laughed, and the sound floated through the room like music.
“Obviously.”
Then her eyes softened.
“You know he isn’t trying to hold you back.”
“Then what is he trying to do? Protect me from learning?”
“Protect you from yourself, my love.”
Her voice changed on that last sentence, became quieter, more careful.
“You are so much like him, Zawati. You see something you want, and you cannot understand why the world doesn’t just step out of your way. But the world doesn’t work like that. Not even for Park Junho. And definitely not for a thirteen-year-old girl who thinks she is smarter than everyone else.”
Zawati tried not to smile.
“I don’t think I’m smarter than everyone. Just most people. Maybe.”
Nema shook her head, smiling anyway.
“Come downstairs. Breakfast is almost ready. And please—try not to start an argument before your father has had his coffee.”
Zawati did know how he got before coffee. Her father without coffee was like a jet without fuel—technically still there, but not headed anywhere good.
She followed her mother downstairs, already running lines in her head, already building her case. She had been preparing her argument for three days. She had facts. She had logic. She had practiced in front of the mirror.
She felt sure today would be the day.
She was wrong.
The kitchen smelled like rice, eggs, and the special soup Mrs. Cho made every Saturday morning. Mrs. Cho, their housekeeper, had been with the family since before Zawati was born. She was small and quick and knew every secret in the house, including the time Zawati had accidentally set a paper airplane on fire in the backyard and tried to blame it on a bird.
“There was no bird,” Mrs. Cho had said then. “Birds do not carry matches.”
Now she slid a plate in front of Zawati.
“Good morning, little pilot. Up early again, I see.”
“I was studying.”
“Studying,” Mrs. Cho repeated in a tone that held both affection and disbelief. “Your father studies reports. You study how to give the rest of us heart trouble.”
Zawati wanted to object, but she couldn’t. The woman had a point.
When Zawati was five years old, she had wandered away during a visit to one of her father’s hangars. Somehow—she still didn’t fully understand how—she had slipped past two security checkpoints by following a man in a uniform who never noticed the little girl behind him. Then she had climbed into a parked aircraft and started pressing buttons.
So many buttons.
The alarm that went off had been so loud people in the neighboring building heard it. Security guards came running from every direction. Her father had ended up on the evening news—not because of a business triumph, but because his five-year-old daughter had exposed a humiliating security failure in one of his own facilities.
At the time, Zawati had only wanted to see what the controls did.
Her father never let her forget it.
Every time she asked to come to the hangar.
Every time she asked to learn more.
Every time she asked for anything connected to aviation.
“Remember what happened when you were five?” he would say.
Then the sentence she hated most in the world:
“You are not ready.”
She was very tired of hearing it.
She was halfway through breakfast when her father appeared.
Park Junho entered the kitchen at exactly 6:30 because Park Junho did almost everything at exactly the time he had decided he would do it. He was already fully dressed in a dark suit, his hair perfectly combed, his shoes polished to a hard shine. He looked like a man who had been awake for hours, though Zawati knew he had risen only thirty minutes earlier.
He had the kind of face that always looked serious. Even when he was happy, his eyebrows stayed level and his mouth stayed straight. Zawati had seen him smile maybe a hundred times in her whole life, and she remembered every single one.
He had built his aviation company from almost nothing—one loan, one impossible dream, and a willingness to work harder than everyone around him. Now he owned aircraft, helicopter fleets, maintenance facilities, and investments tied to airports on three continents. In the American business press, people called him visionary. In Korea, they called him legendary.
Zawati called him Abeoji.
And sometimes, under her breath, stubborn.
He kissed Nema on the cheek, gave Zawati a brief nod, and reached for his tablet.
This was the routine.
He would read, drink coffee, and speak only in short, functional sentences until he had finished at least one full cup.
Zawati knew she should wait.
She knew all of this.
She couldn’t help herself.
“Abeoji,” she said, setting down her chopsticks. “I finished all my tutoring work early. Mr. Kim says I’m two weeks ahead in every subject.”
“Good.”
One word.
That was all she got.
“So I was thinking…” Zawati kept her voice calm, reasonable, almost formal. “Maybe today I could come to the hangar with you. Just to observe. I wouldn’t touch anything. I would only watch.”
Her father didn’t look up from the tablet.
“No.”
“You didn’t even think about it.”
“I do not need to think about it.”
Now he looked at her. His eyes weren’t angry. Just tired.
“The hangar is not a playground.”
“I’m not asking to play. I’m asking to learn.”
“You learn by studying. By preparing. By building a foundation.” He took a sip of coffee. “When you are eighteen and enrolled in a proper aviation program, then you may learn at the hangar. Not before.”
“Five more years?”
Her voice rose despite herself.
“Abeoji, I already know more than most adults. I’ve read every book in your study. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of flight training videos. I know how every system on a 737 works. Ask me anything. Test me.”
“Zawati,” Nema said softly. “Not at breakfast.”
The words were already at the back of her throat, hot and crowded and fighting to get out. But she looked at her mother’s face and saw the quiet plea there.
Please don’t do this right now.
So she swallowed them.
The rest of breakfast moved in silence. She pushed food around her plate and barely ate. Before her father left, he paused near the door.
He did not turn around.
His voice shifted only slightly.
“There is a new aircraft arriving next month. A prototype. If your grades remain satisfactory, perhaps you may observe the inspection from the viewing gallery.”
Zawati’s head snapped up.
The viewing gallery.
Not the floor.
Not the engineers.
Not the pilots.
Not the real thing.
Still, it was more than he had offered before.
And somehow that almost made it worse.
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Part of her was excited. The other part wanted to scream.
From the viewing gallery, she thought bitterly. Like a tourist. Like a kid who only wanted to see pretty planes.
But she wasn’t just some kid.
She was his daughter.
She had his brain, his stubbornness, his hunger for the sky.
Why couldn’t he see that?
Nema watched her from across the table.
“I know that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you are planning something that will probably make my hair turn white.”
She reached across the table and took Zawati’s hand.
“Whatever you are thinking, please don’t.”
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“Zawati.”
“I’m not.”
But she was.
Oh, she absolutely was.
Two hours later, she sat at her desk with her laptop open to a page of domestic flight schedules.
Seoul to Busan.
Ninety minutes in the air.
She had looked at the route before. More than once. She had told herself she was only curious.
Today felt different.
After another conversation in which her father had spoken to her like a child playing dress-up with serious dreams, something inside her had shifted.
She was tired of waiting.
Tired of being told not yet.
Tired of being shut out of the world she loved most.
She knew the thought forming in her mind was reckless. She knew her parents would be furious. She knew this was exactly the kind of impulsive decision her father was always warning her about.
But how was she supposed to know if she truly belonged in the sky if she never tested herself?
She had flown plenty of times—with her parents to Tanzania to visit family, to the United States for business trips, to Europe for vacations, to cities whose airports she remembered more clearly than their tourist sites.
But she had never flown alone.
Never been up there without her father beside her, telling her what to notice, what to ignore, how to read a cockpit story from the sound of an engine.
The flight was leaving in three hours.
She could go and come back before dinner.
Or spend a little time in Busan, visit the observation deck she had read about online, watch aircraft lift into the air and settle back down.
Her heart hammered.
Her palms felt damp.
This was insane.
She opened her closet anyway.
She packed quickly before courage could collapse into common sense: her phone, fully charged, a portable battery, a book, a few snacks, a hair tie, and the emergency credit card her mother had once given her.
“For real emergencies only,” Nema had said. “Do not make me regret this.”
Zawati changed into her school uniform on purpose. It made her look more official, more composed, less like a runaway child. She wasn’t running away, she told herself. She was taking a short educational trip.
At the last second, she took out a notepad and pen.
She stared at the blank page for a long moment, then wrote:
Gone to chase clouds.
Do not finish my snacks.
I will be careful. I promise.
She added a small heart next to the initial Z and set the note on her pillow.
Then she slipped out.
Down the stairs.
Through the back door.
Into the garden.
