“Good morning Miss Bae. Thank you for flying with us again! Now if I could have your ticket number, passport and frequent flyer number please.”

It took Irene a few moment to pull herself back to the reality she now had to face. Just last week, she was an extremely successful entrepreneur as well as a developer for the trendy meditation app on App Store with an incredibly amazing girlfriend. The road to the current tremendous popular app was not an easy one to take. The moment Irene completed her Master for Computer Science in a prestigious college, she knew immediately that the industry would be a tough beast to handle. Even though the recruiters and employers have highlighted and emphasized a number of times that it was within their policies to not to discriminate against anyone.

The truth was far uglier. There have been countless times that Irene could feel the men looking at her pretty face and smirking, probably thinking to themselves that she was nothing but an empty and somewhat nice - looking shell. But Irene has decided to go above and beyond, smashing every little one of their doubts, assumptions, prejudices and small - mindedness. Not only was she a top performer at her previous employment, Irene was one of the youngest woman to ever be promoted to senior manager within such as short amount of time. But to her, such accomplishments were never enough to satisfy her deep-seated insecurity. For as long as she could remember, Irene has alway detested the fact that her mom always had to hide her ual orientation. Irene knew ever since she was in highschool that her beloved mother was a lesbian. Yet, when she passed away, her mother was never able to live in her own skin and freely do what she wanted. A part of Irene felt that it was her fault for holding back her mother for so long. Had it not been for her, Irene thought to herself, she could have enjoyed a life of ual liberation.

So Irene made up for it by living a life according to her will only. And the tech industry with its rampant but casual and hidden ism was nothing but a playground for Irene to prove and destroy the bias. However, in her fifth year with the company, Irene met the one. Having gone through all the trauma in her life, she always thought that she would never be able to fall in love at the first sight. She always wanted some sort of a slow burn romance, in which two people transformed friendship into romance and then into something much deeper like a marriage. But she was different. She was dark-haired, tall, determined and oh so beautiful. The moment Irene looked into her eyes, she was struck with a sense of wonder. And Irene knew she was doomed. Besides, the numerous interactions through the project did nothing to help Irene remaining calm and collected the moment that person sat next to her in a meeting, her soft and gentle perfume finding its way into Irene’s heart. Soon, Irene decided that she wanted more than just a client- consultant relationship. Right after the project ended, Irene decided to quit her job and asked her ex-client to be her girlfriend. To her delight, they started dating and within a year, began to live together.

If the affair did not happen, Irene would be one happy and taken, successful business woman. But here she was, checking alone into a flight that was supposed to take the two of them to Japan for the anniversary. As she absentmindedly handed all her documents to the staff, she was struck by a sense of familiarity, Jo Malone English Pear and Freesia. Slightly panicked and annoyed, Irene looked around to find a seemingly younger girl in white and jeans, with a huge LV bag was checking in as well.

“Miss Son, at this point, fortunately we would be able to upgrade your current seating to Business class. The fee for that is $1,549. Would you like to take the offer?”

“Sure, that sounds good to me”.

“Great, I need to see your passport, credit or debit card and your frequent flyer number”.

As the young girl digging her LV bag to find her purse, she dropped her one of her airpods on the ground. Seeing that, Irene quickly bended down to pick it up, when a tune from the single earpod suddenly caught her attention. Without thinking, she put it into her ear and listened to the song that was played. No doubt it was a self - produced song since the quality was rather rough. But the vocals, oh the vocals. Irene found herself so instinctively drawn into the sweet, warm and powerful voice. When she stood up, Irene felt slightly awkward and embarrassed for intruding the girl’s privacy. But to her surprise, the girl just beamed at her and for a moment, Irene thought she really saw the warm bright sun.

“Hi, I’m Wendy. I see that you have my earpod”, Wendy said as she held out a hand.

“Oh yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just the song and the singings were really good. Did you sing this by any chance?” Irene asked.

“Haha I wish, but this was just my cover of a song called “Honey” by Kehlani. I’m glad you liked it” Wendy said brightly as she returned the earpod into her back pocket.

As Irene was going to say something, the staff has finished with the check in process and interrupted their conversation to hand her the boarding pass. Feeling a bit sheepish, Irene turned to Wendy and the two exchanged a short-lived smile with each other. Before Irene took her carry-on and leave the line, she said softly to Wendy: “I’m Irene by the way. Really nice to meet you”.

Author's note: This is my first time ever writing and publishing a fanfic. Please let me know how can I improve. Thanks