At 11 p.m. on Saturday night, a steel beast soared above the clouds, the lights on its wings and tail blinking in steady rhythm.
Seen from the ground, it looked like a slowly moving star.
Inside the international flight bound for the Free Federation, blonde, blue-eyed flight attendants walked softly through the business-class aisle, speaking in low voices with the passengers and tending to their needs.
The business-class passengers were either dozing beneath thin blankets or wearing headphones to listen to music and watch movies. Aside from the drone of the aircraft, the cabin was completely quiet.
Zhang Yuanqing lay beneath a thin blanket, utterly sleepless. A Night Wanderer was an elf of the night—what ordinary people called a workhorse who only grew more energetic the later it got.
There were three flight attendants in business class: two blonde, blue-eyed foreign beauties and one Chinese-American woman.
Squinting, Zhang Yuanqing appraised the foreign attendants' delicate faces and slender figures. The quality of the business-class flight attendants was high; any one of them would stand out as a beauty.
Their bearing had clearly been professionally trained as well, their poise utterly eclipsing that of ordinary pretty women.
If Zhang Yuanqing's blatant scrutiny had happened back home, it would have been condemned as disgusting male objectification, enough to get him beaten to death by an angry mob. But the blonde, blue-eyed girls only smiled alluringly, not minding the young passenger's gaze in the slightest.
International flights differed from domestic short-haul routes. Those who could afford business class on an international flight were all premium customers.
They were premium customers to the airlines—and even more so to the flight attendants.
The aisle was to Zhang Yuanqing's left, while Annie sat to his right. To Annie's right sat a handsome foreign man with brown hair