PART II

Up in the sky, Zawati knew none of this.

She only knew she was happy.

The aircraft had been cruising for about forty-five minutes. Beneath them, cloud cover stretched like a white quilt. Sunlight poured across the wing. Beside her, Mrs. Yun had fallen asleep with her head tipped back, a soft, uneven snore slipping out every few breaths.

Zawati found that oddly comforting.

Mrs. Yun reminded her of her own mother in small ways—the warm tone, the easy kindness, the sense of steadiness. She pulled out the book she had packed, a story about a girl who wanted to become an astronaut, and settled in.

She had read it three times already.

There was comfort in familiar stories.

No surprises.

No sharp turns.

No fear waiting around a corner.

She was two chapters in when the plane gave a shudder.

Small.

Almost nothing.

Like a hand tapping the fuselage from the outside.

She looked up at once.

She knew turbulence. She had studied it. Clear-air turbulence. Convective turbulence. Mechanical turbulence near mountains. Most of it was just uncomfortable, like driving over a rough stretch of highway.

But something about that movement felt wrong.

A second tremor came.

Stronger.

Mrs. Yun woke with a blink.

“What was that?”

“Turbulence,” Zawati said, trying to keep her voice even. “Probably just rough air. It happens.”

The seatbelt sign chimed on overhead. A flight attendant’s voice came through the cabin, polished and calm.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some turbulence. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts. Thank you.”

Zawati checked her own belt instinctively. Already secure.

Mrs. Yun fumbled with hers.

“I hate turbulence,” she admitted. “It always makes me nervous.”

“It’s normal,” Zawati said. “Airplanes are built for it. The wings are designed to flex. The structure can handle more stress than this.”

Mrs. Yun gave her a surprised look.

“You know a lot about airplanes.”

“I like to read.”

“I can tell.”

Then the plane jolted hard.

So hard Zawati’s book flew out of her hands.

Voices rose around the cabin.

Someone gasped.

A child behind them cried out.

Then came another jolt.

And another.

The aircraft began shaking in earnest now, rattling like something giant had wrapped invisible fingers around it and decided to test its strength. Overhead bins buzzed. A paper cup slid from a tray and hit the floor, coffee splashing across the aisle.

Mrs. Yun grabbed Zawati’s hand.

Her face had gone white.

“Is this normal?” she asked, her voice thin with fear. “Because this does not feel normal.”

Zawati wanted to say yes.

Wanted to say they were safe.

Wanted to say the grown-ups were in control.

But the words stuck.

Because when she looked out the window, she saw the truth.

They had flown into dark cloud—thick, gray, ugly cloud, the kind that looked alive with anger. In the distance, lightning flickered like something being stitched open in the sky.

A thunderstorm.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said anyway.

But her own voice sounded smaller now.

The plane dropped.

Not a small dip.

A violent plunge.

Like an elevator whose cable had just snapped.

Screams broke loose all through the cabin.

Mrs. Yun made a sound that was half sob, half prayer.

For one breathless second, Zawati thought they were actually falling out of the sky.

Then the aircraft leveled again, still shuddering, still groaning, but no longer dropping.

The engines roared louder. The frame creaked. The whole airplane sounded as if it were straining against the storm. Zawati knew planes were supposed to make noise under stress. They were supposed to flex. That was part of survival.

She clung to that knowledge like a rope.

“I want to go home,” Mrs. Yun whispered.

Her hand was crushing Zawati’s fingers.

“I just want to see my son.”

“You will,” Zawati said. “We’re going to be okay.”

She wished she believed it.

The turbulence dragged on for what felt like forever. In truth, it might have been ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Time had stretched and warped in fear.

Zawati pressed her forehead to the window, trying to read the storm, trying to feel the airplane’s behavior through the seat and the frame and the pulse of the engines.

Then, gradually, the shaking began to ease.

Violence softened into tremor.

The engines steadied.

The dark cloud outside thinned enough to reveal pale patches of sky.

Around the cabin, people started breathing again. Nervous laughter slipped loose here and there. Someone declared it the worst flight of their life.

Mrs. Yun exhaled shakily and loosened her grip.

“I think it’s over.”

Zawati nodded.

But she did not relax.

Something still felt wrong.

She couldn’t have explained it in a way most people would accept. It was in the way the aircraft tilted. In how the engine tone rose and fell. In the timing of the little corrections. Small things, but she noticed them.

The plane was not behaving the way it should.

Before she could sort through exactly why, the intercom crackled.

But this time the voice wasn’t the smooth, practiced voice of a flight attendant.

It was strained.

Tight.

Holding together by force.

“This is your co-pilot speaking.”

Zawati sat up straighter.

Not the captain.

Why was the co-pilot making the announcement?

“We have experienced a medical emergency in the cockpit. I repeat, we have a medical emergency. Please remain calm and stay in your seats. Emergency services have been contacted. We are working to resolve the situation.”

The message ended.

The cabin went absolutely still.

Even the crying child behind them stopped.

Then everything shattered.

Questions burst from every direction. Passengers turned in their seats. A woman across the aisle started crying. The man beside her kept repeating, “What does that mean? What does that mean?” as if repetition could force clarity out of terror.

Mrs. Yun turned to Zawati, panic everywhere in her face.

“The pilot? What happened to the pilot?”

Zawati’s mind spun through possibilities. Heart attack. Stroke. Collapse. Food poisoning. Any event serious enough to remove the captain from the equation and leave the co-pilot alone.

And then a sentence from her father surfaced in memory with terrible precision.

The most dangerous situation is not equipment failure. Pilots train for equipment failure. The dangerous situation is losing half your crew at the wrong moment—one person trying to do the work of two.

That was what this was.

The co-pilot was alone.

And from the sound of her voice, she was struggling.

“I don’t know,” Zawati told Mrs. Yun. “But the co-pilot is flying now. She’ll get us down safely.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what she’s trained for.”

Even as she said it, doubt moved quietly through her.

Training was one thing.

Doing it alone under pressure, with a hundred and fifty people depending on you, was something else.

The minutes dragged.

The plane continued flying, but the movements grew stranger—overcorrections, wobbles, small imbalances that felt like a person trying too hard not to look afraid.

The co-pilot made a few more announcements. They were diverting to the nearest airport. Ground control was assisting. Everyone needed to remain calm.

Calm was becoming impossible.

Mrs. Yun had started crying in earnest now—not loudly, not theatrically, but in those terrible quiet tears that seem to come from somewhere too deep to stop.

“Mrs. Yun?” Zawati said softly.

“I promised him.”

Her voice was barely a whisper.

“I promised Minjun I would be there for his graduation next week. Middle school graduation. I promised.”

Zawati didn’t know what to say.

“He’s my only child,” Mrs. Yun continued. “His father left when he was small. Just walked out one day. Since then it has only been us. Just me and him against the world.”

Then she looked at Zawati fully, and something in her eyes hit like a bruise.

“I cannot die here,” she said. “I cannot leave him alone. He needs his mother.”

Tears stung behind Zawati’s eyes.

She thought of her own mother—the smell of vanilla and coffee on her sweaters, the way laughter lived close to the surface of her. She thought of her father, stiff-backed and sharp-edged, speaking in facts because feelings frightened him. She thought of the note on her pillow. Gone to chase clouds.

If this plane went down, her parents would live the rest of their lives inside that sentence.

But it wasn’t only about her anymore.

It was about Minjun.

About every person on board.

Every child waiting for a mother.

Every husband expecting a wife home for dinner.

Every life connected to every other life by ordinary things—school pickups, grocery lists, half-finished arguments, warm plates on tables, promised phone calls.

More than a hundred stories could end here.

Something shifted inside her.

Fear remained.

But something stronger rose beside it.

“I need to tell you something,” Zawati said.