Raindrops race down the window, and from in here they almost seem to be competing to reach somewhere first—a little like he feels, if I am honest.
Outside, the whole world is still blurred. A runway, perhaps. A strip of gray sky that would usually be discouraging.
But there is something funny about looking through a rain-soaked window before a journey has truly begun: you cannot see much, and that is exactly why your mind starts filling the emptiness with everything you do not yet know.
That half-shadowed face is not regretting anything. It is imagining.
There is an enormous difference, even if from the outside the two expressions look almost identical.
Someone leaving for a new place carries the same kind of baggage as someone running away from something—except that, instead of regrets, they have packed questions. What restaurant will I find? What will the light look like there on the first morning? Whom will I meet by accident in a bar I do not even know exists yet?
None of those details show up on an X-ray. And that is exactly as it should be.
A plane sitting still, waiting for everything to begin, is one of the few places left where life is not asking anything of you yet. You do not have to perform any role well. You owe no one an answer. You can simply sit there, watch the rain, and let your mind write a movie in advance that may bear no resemblance whatsoever to what actually happens.
And that is all right, because the beauty is not in guessing what will happen.
The beauty is that, for once, you do not know yet.
Behind the lens, I recognize that look perfectly, and it moves me more than any broad postcard smile. It is the look of someone still willing to be surprised by a place he has never seen, a road he has never traveled, a version of himself who may no longer be the same when he returns.
Outside, the rain keeps falling.
Inside, thankfully, something else has already begun.