7:56 PM KST

Airport are torture chambers if you're claustrophobic.

It's not just the looming threat of the ride ahead-being stuffed into seats like sardines and then catapulted through the air in a narrow metal tube-but also the terminals themselves, the press of people, the blur and spin of the place, a dancing, dizzying hum, all motion and noise, all frenzy and clamor, and the whole thing sealed off by glass windows like some kind of monstrous ant farm.

This is just one of many things that Nayeon's trying not to think about as she stands helplessly before the ticket counter. The light outside was starting to dissapear and her plane is now somewhere over the Pacific, and she can feel something inside of her unraveling, like the slow release of air from a balloon. Part of it is the impending flight and part of it is the airport itself, but mostly it's the realization that she will now be late for the wedding she didn't even want to go to in the first place, and something about this miserable little twist of fate makes her feel like crying.

The gate attendants have gathered on the opposite side of the counter to frown at her with looks of great impatience. The screen behind them has already been switched to announce the next flight from GMP to NRT, which doesn't leave for more than three hours, and it's quickly becoming obvious that Nayeon is the only thing standing between them and the end of their shift.

"I'm sorry, Miss," one of them says, the suppressed sigh evident in her voice. "There's nothing we can do but try to get you on the later flight."

Nayeon nods glumly. She spent the past few weeks secretly wishing this very thing might happen, though admitedly, her imagine scenarios have been a bit more dramatic: a massive airline strike; an epic hailstorm; an immobolizing case of the flu, or even the measles, that would prevent her from flying. All perfectly good reasons why she might have to miss her father's trip down the aisle to marry a woman she's never met.

It had been her own idea to skip the rehearsal dinner and arrive in Osaka the morning of the wedding instead. Nayeon has't seen her father in more than a year, and she wasn't sure she could sit in a room with all the important people in his life- his friends and colleagues, the little world he's built around himself an ocean away-whle they toasted to his health and happiness, the start of his new life. If it had been up to her, she wouldn't even be going t