The plane droned, a steady, metallic hum that vibrated through the cabin and into Y/N’s bones. Out the window, the world was a blanket of endless, pillowed cloud, stark white under a sun that held no warmth at this altitude. They were on the final leg, the long flight that would drop them off in the nation where it had all begun, a lifetime ago in a small photo shop smelling of chemicals and rain.

She had thought about this flight, back when she was packing her bag under Taehyung’s worried gaze. She had known, in some abstract way, that the tour would change her. How could it not? To be immersed in so many stories of cataclysm and survival was to have your own soul gently, irrevocably scoured. She had expected to return heavier with empathy, wiser to the world’s pain, perhaps even with the first faint ghost of a real smile.