It’s just a flight, he told himself. Twelve hours. You’ll survive.
But when he reached his row, he stopped.
The scene in front of him looked like a portrait of human exhaustion.
In seat 23A, by the window, sat a young woman holding a baby. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, yet worry had already carved lines across her face. She wore a simple sweatshirt, her brown hair tied in a messy ponytail.
In her arms, an eight-month-old baby boy cried with relentless intensity.
The passenger in seat 23B kept sighing loudly, throwing irritated looks toward the young mother.
The woman rocked the baby desperately.
“Please, Noah… sweetheart… please calm down,” she whispered, her voice shaking.
Ethan felt a sudden ache in his chest.
He could have ignored it. He could have asked a flight attendant to move him somewhere else. But something about the girl’s fragile determination reminded him of his own mother years ago—long before his success.
He stepped forward.
“Excuse me,” Ethan said politely, addressing the woman in the middle seat. “It seems the noise is really bothering you.”
“It’s unbearable,” the woman snapped. “The plane hasn’t even taken off yet.”
Ethan nodded calmly.