From Jester To King XXIX

We flew on Samsung Airways with the cheap violet seat backs and star design and this gregarious Korean group in front and to the right of me hemming me in and making me feel like an outcast to my seat. Like being literally squeezed out. They had me surrounded me by the window with two of them occupying seats to my right and the other three on the cluster directly in front. Three-four-three configuration. They were loud and big and towered over their head-rests as if being that tall was just absolutely par for this day and age. Then they moved and jostled and when they addressed each other it was always an almighty event or like a person being caught off guard by a loud hailer, particularly the guy in the front-middle in his oversized granny glasses with these uber thick frames which were more than obviously some token fashion trend the yoof had suddenly taken to in Korea, with him following on blindly please excuse the pun. The number of times he turned round to acknowledge the joke the one directly behind him had just made as if it was not allowable for any comment/observation/inquiry to go by without such acknowledgment, well I couldn’t count this number, him turning round hot on the heels of the previous turn around, turning round like he’d never tire as if he had an in-flight quota and wasn’t close to filling it. The seats buckled under the weight, luckily I didn’t have anyone behind kicking me up in the small of my back for good measure. I wondered how I was going to endure. Boy did I wonder. I wondered how long I could go without showing my resentment or saying something since if I did I didn’t know what was going to come out and wouldn’t be able to stop it. So I chose to sit and let my resentment simmer, because what was I going to say other than could you all stop enjoying yourselves please your carefreeness is rubbing me up the wrong way. I regretted my entire decision, blaming myself for taking the risk in the first place, blaming myself for falling into the trap of trying to save every last penny and for what, a stop-over in Korea with another flight to follow. This is not how you come back to Japan.