Lijun and Wu arrived at noon, when the people moved with ease from the check-in desks to the cafe's and through the gates, each one of them heading for a destination of their own making.
They dropped their suitcases onto the conveyor belts and they received cheery welcomes from the check-in assistants, especially after Lijuan showed her ID.
In the background, the seasonal music played, but all the ambient sounds, from the sound of shoes against the clean white tiles, to the chatter of people in groups, were punctuated periodically by the sound of an aeroplane taking off or landing on the tarmac runway outside.
Wu looked up to the plasma screens of arrival and departure times on the wall, and huffed. Their flight got delayed for an hour and thirty minutes. He'd like to show his anger about it, but lijuan was pretty calm about it. Besides, there was nothing they could do, and shouting at the workers won't cause a miracle.
