I winced as the plane began to take off and tugged my seatbelt tighter.

"What's wrong with you?!" Daleun snapped.

I gulped, "I forgot to mention one tiny insignificant detail....i'm sort of terrified of flying."

Daleun rolled his eyes and turned out the window.

My ears began to clog as the plane steadily speed up, turning swiftly at a forty five degree angle.

My least favorite angle.

Beneath the deafening roar of the engines and the crying of a baby the next aisle over I heard something humming in a constant drone.

It started quietly, below a whisper, and as the plane grew closer and closer to take off the drone harmonized with the constant chatter of the landing gear and seat belt sign flashing. I thought I heard, if only for a moment, someone singing, singing something sad, like they had left something behind, something irreplaceable. I got chills all down my back and reached for the blanket daleun and loosely hanging out of his bag.

Daleun slapped my hand away and began to yell, "What the heck are you doing get lost! You think you ca-"

The suddenly something made him freeze.

 
The blood drained from his face and for a moment he didn't look like some Korean teen, he didn't even look human. I can't describe it, he was something else entirely.

He looked like a radar, searching the air for some sort of signal only he could hear. He turned his head ever so slightly, then adjusted, and then turned again. Finally, he put his ear right up against the window and listened.

Silent.

Great," I groaned internally, "I really did run off with a mental case. "

With a sudden jerk the plane left the ground, Daleun rummaged through his bag and grabbed a receipt. Frantically he began scribbling dots onto the paper, random dots in random shapes.  Circles that went up and down, wavy lines, spirals, I watched intently, what was this guy? An artist or something?

He was either a genius or an idiot: nothing in between.

Then the thought entered my mind that perhaps he was making a connect the dots to make the kid the next aisle stop that caterwauling.

But If I knew anything about Daleun by now, it was that he didn't like or care for kids one bit.

I leaned over his shoulder and stared at the dots of the back of the receipt. What did it mean?

Was it nonsense?

Then after banging his pen on the arm rest for a good five seconds, Daleun began to connect the dots in a mad fury, drawing lines every which way and adding long lines to connect all of them together. Beautiful lines, that rose with the plane and turned around in key and melody as we moved higher above the lives we had known. If Daleun had a life at one point, or any emotion about his past whatsoever it was on this scrap of paper.

I smiled in a marveled daze as I saw the dots transform into meticulously organized notes, notes of music.

Each note was barely the size of a pinhead, and within a moment, within a thought and the time it took for it to come and go, an entire symphony had been arranged and printed onto the long receipt. A reciept that had perhaps spent moths there, oblivius to its potential, wrinkled and torn in the backpack of a reckless recluse. That is if recluse and reckless can go together.

As if running out of steam, his pen slowed and the receipt reached its end.  

I looked at the notes and tried to receive the memory of my general music class from fifth grade, but barely anything came back. Rarely did my memory come back to me once it was gone.

"How'd you do that?" I marvled, eyes wide and mouth gaping.

"Shut up," he said gruffly.

To my horror, he proceeded to crumple the receipt to bits. 

"What are you doing!?" I exclaimed, "You just wrote an entire-"

"An entire waste of time. Now shut up and let me be," Daleun interceded and tossed the receipt away.

I picked it up when he wasn't looking and shoved it in my back pocket.

For a moment I thought I heard him whisper thanks as if he had wanted me to save that simple composition.

But now I knew two things about Daleun, and one of them for sure was that he never said thank you, to anyone.

But still I swear I heard it. Thats small word of gratitude. 

As if he knew it was something significant.

To somebody I guess, someday.