“Your seat,” she finished, “should never have been occupied as per the newly recalculated weight of the plane. It’s a system glitch.” The sentence hung between them, final and irrevocable. Alyssa felt a strange calm settle in, the kind that arrives only when uncertainty finally gives way to truth.
Alyssa understood then why no one wanted to say it outright. Saying it made it real. Saying it turned a quiet system failure into a human decision with human consequences. She also knew it was the holiday season, and the scarcity of seats meant nobody wanted to be accountable to another disgruntled passenger.