Night Flight (En)

"Thanks for everything again. Winter’s almost here—stay warm and don’t catch a cold.”

I text my mom, warming my hands inside the sleeves of a worn-out hoodie.

At Haneda’s boarding gate for the London flight, the air hums with motion—people dangling neck pillows, dragging suitcases, shouldering oversized backpacks. A young flight attendant keeps calling names, her voice half-lost in the noise.

I used to think these flights were full of Japanese tourists heading abroad.

Now it feels the other way around—most faces look like travelers returning home.

I still remember teaching mom how to use LINE (Messaging App).

Back then her messages were as brief and stiff as telegrams. Now she’s a pro. Sending perfectly weird stickers, paid emojis, little hearts in all the right places.

She’s always been the kind who never hangs up first.

So, I have this tiny secret ritual in our chat. I never let her message be the last one. I send one more emoji, a sticker, something soft— a way to say I’m still here. It’s such a small thing. She 100% doesn't know. But I can’t help caring about it.

I’ve never been good at watching movies on long flights— actually, not even when I’m alone at home. 

Something about it makes me restless. Maybe it’s the quiet; maybe it’s the thought of sharing a story with no one. Up here, that feeling grows louder. I know, I am a weirdo.

So I rarely watch anything unless I have company— a willing “movie victim,” as I call them. I mean, I can go to the movie theatre alone... but wait, does that just make me sound even weirder?

Instead, I secretly love the quiet hours in the air: reading, writing, letting thoughts drift.

It’s like being on a train on your way to see someone you love, or the bus ride home after saying goodbye. 

That small, sudden pocket of time that floats up out of nowhere, cut loose from everything else. A flight is simply a longer version of that— a long, quiet luxury of being alone.

Between home, the places where I’ve scattered small fragments of myself, and the cities I’ve yet to know, 

I drift somewhere in between— cut off from where I came, not yet belonging where I’m going. 

Suspended in that narrow gap of time and space, floating softly in between.

And up here, I am alone— but not the sad kind of alone. It’s gentler than that. A little wistful. Quietly full.

I think of a passage from Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. 

“The towns flattened out beneath him, losing their shape.  The lights were like stars, scattered across the earth.  The world had become two-dimensional — a chart of trembling points.”

That moment when you’re lifted away from the world you belong to.

“He felt alone, yet linked to all men.”

A flight like this feels just like that. 

As if Saint-Exupéry were writing about us— travelers adrift in the dark universe aboard this solitary ship called Earth. 

You could see that solitude as emptiness, but as long as we carry intention—and a little love— perhaps it becomes a fulfilled loneliness, a silence filled with tenderness.

They say the Earth spins at about 1,670 kilometers per hour, while a plane flies around 900. 

So in a way, we move slower than the planet itself. 

Flying west from Japan to London, the sky seems to move in slow motion.

When the cabin lights dimmed and sleep settled over everyone, I looked up from my book. 

Outside the window, a beautiful sunset spread across the sky like a quiet ocean of light.

We crossed seas and mountains, passed over tiny clusters of village lights below, as the sun slowly, slowly sank beyond the horizon. 

No matter how straight we flew, we could never catch it— and still its orange hem flared across the sky, leaving behind a faint, seven-colored glow before it disappeared.

I forgot about my book, watching those traces of light for what felt like forever.

By the time the sun was gone, we had landed in London— a little colder now, wrapped in the breath of winter.

"Like twilight after the sun has fallen, quietly, I find myself missing you."

And maybe that very feeling— that quiet ache— is something I’ve come to love.

Well, maybe I’m being a little dramatic.