By the time Monday morning came, everyone was ready to leave and was escorted by six cabs assembling them all to the airport. They checked in their bags, confirmed their passports and seated themselves on the plane.
"What do we do on a plane?" Remmi asked, clipping in her seatbelt across her lap and fiddling with the case of her Bluetooth Airpods.
"Watch a movie, listen to music, fall asleep, I don't know," Kasey replied, anxiously glancing around the plane.
"How come you don't like aeroplanes?" Remmi questioned, as Kasey gave her a shrug.
"I guess I don't like the impossibilities and uncertainty of the engines because of some worse-for-wear engineering. I don't trust 'em," Kasey explained putting on his headphones and shutting out Remmi for the time being.
Kasey had a tight feeling drawn in his chest, not that he had encountered a faulty engine himself, quite the opposite. He hadn't. But, when he was little, watching a single documentary on TV constantly sent his brain screaming. The documentary was of an old crash wreckage from the 1960s that had traumatised Kasey for years. It wasn't much but he didn't like it.
As a brief apology, the bluenette turned his head to face Remmi and scaled his hand over to Remmi's. He gripped his hand with hers, interlacing their fingers and giving a tight squeeze as if to say 'I'm sorry'.
Remmi returned the gesture with a smile and rested her head on Kasey's shoulder placing in her AirPods. She set up a group session on Spotify and listened to the songs in sync when Kasey accepted the invitation.
Kasey trembled and uncomfortably shifted in his seat as the plane lifted off the ground. He braced himself as the automobile transportation shook around them. To block as much of the plane's sounds as possible, Kasey squeezed his eyes shut and turned up the music from his headphones and bit his tongue, hard enough for a metallic taste to roll across his mouth.
Remmi gave his hand a confident squeeze as if to say everything would be all right.
Kasey relaxed as he felt the plane settle through the sky and turned down the speakers of his headphones so he wouldn't damage his ears. In thanks, he kissed Remmi on the cheek as she read her copy of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
(if you can tell, I wrote this chapter while I was reading that book)
A few rows back, Zane and Nana were huddled together watching a movie on Zane's iPad with a dual headphone adaptor. Even though it isn't necessary for a long flight, they had three and a half hours to kill, so why not use it to catch up on some new releases?
Except, within an hour Nana had passed out beside Zane because of their early start that morning.
~
Two hours later, they landed in Tokyo, immediately welcomed by the warm sun radiating through the populated city. After collecting their belongings through the airport and took half a dozen taxis to the capsule hotels.
Accompanied by Katelyn, Travis and Nana, Zane suggested a proposition. "How about we have a late lunch at one of those sushi restaurants where they make the food in front of you?" He proposed, shifting in his seat.
Nana turned to face the back seat and faced her friends, "I've been meaning to do that for years! I'd love to go!"
Katelyn shrugged, "I don't mind, but it sounds interesting. I'm in."
"Those restaurants with the scraping tools? Do they cook on a stove or something? " Travis asked.
"Teppanyaki grills," Nana corrected.
"My dad used to take me down there, the one around Phoenix Drop, every so often when I was a kid, let's do it," Travis said as Katelyn's hand laced in with his gave a reassuring squeeze.
"Awesome, we'll text the others and organise a plan."