Sweet Romance15 min read
You, Me, and the Pilot Pikachu
ButterPicks15 views
I learned to pack my life into a frame and a caption. I learned to make two minutes of sky feel like forever. I learned to fix engines on paper and compose sunsets in post. I did all of that because I wanted to be a person who could choose things for herself.
"My vlog intro," I said into the little recorder, "MES524—first class, king-size, watch the lights above the clouds—one day I'll lie there with my someone and press record on an aurora."
The flight to Shanghai felt ordinary until the captain's voice slipped into the cabin and into the theater of my memory. It was the same tone that had brushed my thoughts on the Kamakura platform. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking..." The sound folded things together, and for a second the window was a screen: Tokyo's sea, a green train, a boy in a white tee on the other side of the tracks, and me waving.
"Do you know the captain's name?" I asked the flight attendant, too shy to demand it but too curious not to ask.
"Our captain? He's one of our five-star captains," she smiled. "Very experienced."
"Fifty," I blurted, and we laughed because it sounded ridiculous. I wanted the face in my memory—the one with a jawline that could have been carved— to be younger.
"Madam, your hot towel," she said, kneeling. "A mojito mocktail. Enjoy."
I sipped, pressed the towel to my face, and tried to tuck my memory back into a pocket. But nostalgia was stubborn. The man on the platform had said something about drone settings and PP values in a way that made me want to rewrite my footage from the moment we met. He had been infuriatingly technical and infuriatingly handsome.
I pressed the service button anyway. I would ask for a name even if I had to blush through it.
"Yes?" the attendant asked.
"Who announced just now? The captain? He sounded... familiar." I tried to be casual and failed gloriously.
"That was our captain, Madam," she said with a professional tilt. "Very calm voice, very experienced. We are expecting smooth flight."
I watched the airport fade. The plane rolled. The three ground crew bowed at ninety degrees to the tarmac like tiny black silhouettes, and my chest felt heavier and lighter at the same time—like a kite pulling against its string.
Then turbulence hit, and my notebook of memories ripped open.
"We're encountering some rough air," the PA announced. "Please fasten your seat belts."
The world shook. My palms went slick. For an engineer there is comfort in facts and numbers, and if you ask me why I worry, I will tell you the truth: I had spent years reading flight manuals after classes, and still my stomach did summersaults when the sky did.
"Brooklyn!" my friend Beatriz Butler wrote later that night, teasing me about my 'fainted aboard' posts. "You always act like flying is both your job and a hobby."
"It is both," I wrote back. "And a calling."
I had come back from Paris three years ago with boxes and an accent. I had come home to help build a massive airplane that people would someday take across oceans. I kept a corner of my life for videos—vlogs of places and small stories—so that my days balanced like a well-trimmed flight path.
Three minutes after takeoff, the captain's voice cut through the cabin again. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are flying above a spectacular halo; look if you can." He sounded so composed, and the voice was older than the gleam I remembered on Kamakura's platform. I let the images swirl and closed my eyes.
On my memory screen the man was in a white tee with short sides to his hair and basketball shoes. He had the kind of face that made comic panels blush. He was scowled and sweet and had told me that my drone work looked: "a little stiff."
"You should try steady circular paths instead of constant-speed orbits," he'd said. "You do too much jerky motion."
I had been insulted at the time. "Do you think I can't fly my camera?" I had snapped at him. He had shrugged like it was nothing and added: "PP7 is hard to color grade. Try PP4."
He was the kind of man who corrected your camera settings as if he were lecturing you on the best way to butter toast. Annoying, yes. Infuriatingly exact, also yes.
When we landed in Shanghai the city looked cleansed. Typhoon Cooper had passed; the air was sharp and a halo flecked across the river mouth like a promise. The plane began circling, and we watched the Yangtze like a silver braid. The captain's voice told us we would hold for a while. My fingers curled around my camera. Holding means more time to shoot.
On the jetway I almost forgot the man with the small corrections. The crew file through like a parade, the captain at the front, five stars on his wings. And behind them—there was a man. He was the very one from the train and the beach: taller than the flight crew and wearing a uniform that fit like a second skin. His jawline cut like a new plane's wing. When he stopped by me he leaned in.
"You look a little dizzy," he said.
I smiled, half embarrassed and half pleased that the same voice from my memory was standing within arm's reach. "I just saw some halo," I said, and it sounded like nonsense even to my ears.
He opened a small tin and offered me a mint. "Peppermint helps with dizziness," he said.
"I thought only coffee keeps pilots awake," I teased.
"I fly night routes," he said. "We have our tricks."
"What's your name?" I asked, suddenly brave in the way travelers become at airports.
He fished a boarding pass out of his pocket. "Hugo Seidel. Photography thief, certified."
"Hugo," I said. "I'll find your videos."
"Post your Tokyo footage and I'll say hi," he said. Then he turned and walked away with a pilot's loose arrogance.
That first touch—the exchange of mints—stuck like a freckle.
At work I keep my life simple and sorted. I sit between stacks of blueprints and models, between a cockpit drawing and an engine core. My desk is a museum of sketches: MRJ cockpits, little fuselage cross-sections, neat boxes of old film besides little magnets from places I loved.
"Brooklyn, the Vietnam briefings are ready?" my boss asked.
"Almost," I answered. "I will check the cost indices and send them by noon."
"Don't forget the 2017 run curves," Beatriz said, tapping my files. She is warm and a badge of home in the office. We eat together, we argue over the best pastry shops, and she calls me "Director" mostly to annoy me.
I wanted to add the Tokyo footage to my channel. I wanted to turn the meeting of two people on a platform into a frame in a story, because that's what I do: I make things that won't go away. When I edited, I captioned the clip: "Your Name — Tokyo."
A week later an invitation pinged into my inbox for a car brand event. I had been late to confirm and nearly missed it; companies like cars because cars pay well and give you good backdrops. I had to go, and Lenora Collins—my college friend and one of the most dramatic women I know—volunteered to come with me.
"Make it cool," she said, already halfway into three different outfits on video. "Make it look like we were born with steering wheels."
"I'm bringing drones," I said. "And maybe a little engineering talk."
"Perfect. You do engineer-darling-badass. I'll do the glitter."
At the racetrack the day glowed. There were creators with enormous kits and beauty bloggers with teams and a table for every shade of the internet. I had prepared a segment: specs, comfort, aerodynamic bits with a twist of quippy commentary.
"You're '78-deg Aurora'?" a tiny voice asked, bright and eager.
"Yes," I said. "That's me."
"I love your videos. Do you really travel alone?" the girl asked.
"Mostly," I answered. "It's easier to frame a scene when you don't have to negotiate a hat."
"Give me your WeChat!" she squealed.
I laughed. "Okay, but don't ask me to dance on the hood."
Lenora and I made them jealous. Cameras lifted, the clip look perfect. When we were finished, the main sponsor announced that an official pilot photographer would give a demonstration. The crowd buzzed.
"There he is!" someone shouted. Heads turned toward a tall man walking like everything was under his control. Hugo Seidel stepped into the ring of sun and industry like a move on a chessboard.
"He flies for the national drone team," whispered a kid nearby. The air changed. Men who spoke nothing now had energy. Hugo didn't look thrilled by the fuss; he simply set his gear down and exhaled like steam.
His presence shifted the day.
"Hey Brooklyn," he said as he came closer. "You have a card? Storage card for what you shot. I can take a look."
"You're Hugo," I said, stunned into an awkward smile. "The one from Tokyo?"
"That would be me," he answered. He took the card with a smooth movement. "I'll give it back. Promise."
"And you're doing a demo now," Lenora said. "Don't go and steal all the attention."
"Watch me," he replied.
He gave me his sunglasses. "Here. When I fly I use these—no polarizing. You wear them if you want to look like a pilot."
I put them on and the world blinked cooler. He gave me a grin that wore a dimple.
When the drone—no, the "racing quad"—launched, it cut the air and then danced. The crowd cheered. I felt like someone had untied my ribs.
"Put your hand out," Hugo told me suddenly. "When it comes in, be ready."
My hand was shaking when the machine returned and dropped into my palm as if it had always meant to be there. He gave me a small plush, a tiny pilot Pikachu. "From Haneda," he said. "It is small. Take it."
It was ridiculous, and I loved it. I touched the plush and felt an annoying warmth that wasn't part of my camera.
That night he left without giving us his number. He had a plane to fly. Lenora laughed and accused me of stealing his sandwich and not returning it. I laughed back and went home with the plush tucked into my camera bag.
Hugo's life was lines and duties. He sent a message that night though: "Tokyo footage — good color."
"I do that," I messaged. "You were… a little harsh on PP7."
He answered: "PP7 is fine if you want film. PP4 is easier on presets. Also: safe flight."
We exchanged nothing like waiting hearts. He was a pilot. I was an engineer who kept secrets in her desk. But the small things added up; I noticed them the way people notice flight paths.
Days later he invited me to a simulator session. "I'm at the club," he wrote. "Saturday 10 pm, come."
"Do you expect me to fly a full jet?" I asked.
He wrote back: "You'll do better than a lot of pilots who haven't studied their FCOM."
The training center smelled like sweat and electricity. I sat in the cockpit and wished that physical motions were as simple as camera focus. Hugo's hand found the seat adjustments like he'd read the geometry of my body. He leaned, professional and close.
"Stretch your legs," he said. "Make sure you can reach."
He smelled faintly of lemon and something like coffee beans. His fingers were practical—long, readied by controls.
"Okay," I said. He keyed acceptance, and the simulator woke like a small stage.
"One hand on the stick, one on the throttle," he said. "Follow my count: three, two, one. Push."
His fingers brushed mine as we pushed the throttle together. The engines roared and pushed us into a theater of air where the ground slipped and the city became a glittering strip. In the dim lights of the mock cockpit our hands were still touching when he guided the climb.
"Hold it," he murmured.
"Check," I answered because pilots love the ritual of checks.
He watched me with the same careful neutrality he used on any instrument. Then his fingers closed around mine and held.
"Relax," he whispered, and something effortless folded itself into our shared breath. The plane rose like a secret. We flew a soft city waltz over Shanghai that no one knew we had danced.
After that, the simulation sessions became a place to meet and perform the small intimacies of two people discovering each other. He taught me to say callsigns; I taught him to correct color curves. We sat in the dark where the horizon line was a borrowed thing.
"You're hiding something," he said one night as we left the training building.
"I hide more than one thing," I answered. "What about you? National team pilot, world traveler. What's the thing you don't tell people?"
He showed me nothing but gave me a small, honest answer: "I used to be more reckless. I keep that part at the track now."
We started to meet in unexpected places. I would get an early morning message: "Coffee before your meeting?" And there he would be with carefully made sandwiches cut like geometry, espresso in tiny cups, and a patience that looked like caring.
"Do you make these every morning?" I asked once as Lenora wolfed down a sandwich and marched us toward the drone field.
"Whenever I fly and have time to cook," he said. "It calms me."
"You're efficient at many things," I said.
"Some things are practice," he admitted.
The drone field was where we learned to read speed and wind again. I watched him put his glasses on and become another person—precise, fearless in the way trained people are at their own instruments. We laughed and the machines spun like tiny comets. The boys around him called out in gossiping tones, and I thought they were showing their own small worship.
"Why do you fly so hard?" I asked him once, watching his fingers on the controls.
"You can't design a plane properly if you never feel the edge," he said. "I train to not be afraid of the edge. I train to be confident when I cross it."
We ate neon-lit meals after practice. People asked how we met—"at Haneda," I'd say, and see their eyebrows lift. I kept thinking of the MRJ model in a child's hands in a small Yunnan classroom and how that child had been given a glue-bound hope. Hugo had been there once too, we discovered—he taught kids, he had once been moved by a small note in a notebook that a child had kept. In a hundred small ways we fit together like plane parts: engineered parts that only looked separate.
"Do you ever wish for a different life?" I asked him on a night when the city seemed like a runway of lights.
"Sometimes," he said. "But I like to think I chose the right one. And you—you build the thing that flies."
"You make me use words like 'build' and 'choose'," I teased. "I thought you'd have time to be a playboy, not a homework pilot."
He smiled and took my hand without asking. "Homework pilots can be charming," he said.
Our closeness grew into a habit: messages about coffee, about flights, about edits. He sent me the tiny Pikachu and I kept it on my camera bag. Once, after a long rainy travel day, I found a box on my doorstep with my name and a note: "For the woman who flies the camera better than most fly planes. —H.S."
It was ridiculous. It was perfect.
We started to learn each other's rituals. He was fastidious about his socks and his crisp shirts; I was loose about my bagel and careless with my charger. He learned the way I watched sunsets and the way I stared at the horizon line. I learned the way his hands knew about buttons like hands know about piano keys.
There was a competition coming up for his team. "Chamonix," he said. "In August. The course is steep and fast. There is a new Korean kid. He is good."
"You'll do fine," I said, and meant it with the whole weight of the wrenches I'd tightened and the plans I'd drawn.
"Sometimes," he confessed, "I am not sure."
At dawn before the competition I flew to the training field. The place smelled of cold metal and early oil. People were there—friends, rivals. Friends like Canyon Peters who rolled his eyes and teased Hugo like a brother. They practiced and crashed and fixed machines until they felt like a team sewn by tape and sweat.
"Let's show them this year," Hugo told me, and the air around him was a wire.
The race burned like a comet. The machines were small but the stakes were not. He was graceful and then he pushed too much and the prop clipped the earth with a slap. We all held our breath. He picked up the broken frame like a surgeon and began to mend it punctually. He shoved excuses away and did not look for sympathy.
"You're reckless," I told him later, stirring sugar into my coffee.
"I'm human," he said. "And stubborn."
Watching him fix it made me want to wrap him in a blanket and carry him home. He was a composition of competence and scars. He said little about the loss in the final stretch of the previous year's race—about the second place that tasted to him like failure. But the shadow lingered in him, and once, when he thought I was asleep, I watched him scroll through old photos of the team and see his face collapse on the screen.
"You have to let go of the loss to fly," I told him one evening, and it felt like telling a plane to unclench a wing.
"You know how it feels to watch someone not try as hard as you?" he asked another time. "It eats at you."
"I know how it feels to design something and be told it's not elegant enough," I answered. "We both know what 'enough' costs."
When he stood before the judges, he did not speak except to drive and to show what careful risk looked like. At the end a small applause broke like a wave. He did not win first, but he came home with new lines of honestly earned pride. He also came home to me and to the soft ritual of the airport night, the simulator conversations, and the small plush that lived happily in my lens hood.
We had arguments. He was blunt and sometimes missed social cues; I was guarded because my heart had been wrapped and tucked. "You don't text as much," I said on a night when silence was a canyon.
"I didn't want to annoy you," he said. "I thought you were busy."
"I told you I wasn't always. Sometimes I wanted you to ask if I'd eaten."
He looked embarrassed and then clumsy. "I am sorry. Tell me. I will do better."
We were not perfect. We were a sketch and an inkwell, learning to put down lines.
There was one far wilder night when I invited him to an industry preview. The brand had a test track and a gala and a stage. People in glass towers watched the ribbons of light slide over low cars. He came with me in a quiet way. On the runway he did a drone segment that made the entire crowd stand up and clap until their arms hurt.
"You made me look like an idiot," he said to me afterward, "for all the ways I was not ready."
"You made me look like I could be on a soundtrack," I answered.
There were other small dramas: irritable messages from industry people, jammed equipment, and the occasional jealous comment online. But nothing big enough to split us.
We kept the truth of our jobs between us like precious metal. He did not ask enough about the early nights I'd spent drawing parts for our company's big plane; I didn't push him to tell the stories of the flights where the world felt like it was a thin sheet. But sometimes the truth revealed itself in fragments.
"That kid in Yunnan," he said once, to fill in the holes. "The one with the MRJ model. He kept a notebook of letters. He wrote that he wanted to fly our planes."
"I wrote letters quietly," I said. "I pay for some kids. I don't like to shout about it."
"That's you," he said. "Quiet but sharp."
We learned how to fold our lives together. He traveled, I stayed. He came back with stories and coffee-tucked sandwiches, and I came back with footage and a notebook of ideas. We shared structure and surprise like pilots share a cockpit.
Our first touch had been a mint. Our first flight together had been a simulator. Our first real landing together—when the plane trembled and kissed the runway after a long descent—left us both oddly calm.
"You're very steady," he said later, fingers finding mine like a buttoned strap.
"So are you," I replied, and the truth of that small sentence reached like a beam through stitched metal.
Sometimes there were nights when the city felt too small for the things we had found. On those nights we walked the river and counted the cargo ships like a naturalist counting constellations. He told me that once he nearly left the airplanes, once he nearly gave up the idea of "national team" for safety. "But someone needs to hold the line," he said, "so I stayed."
"And someone needs to build the planes you fly," I answered.
"Will you one day put me into your plane and make it the safest thing out there?" he asked.
"If you keep testing my nightmares, yes," I said.
There were small rituals to our courtship: the pilot Pikachu, a careful sandwich wrapped in paper, the VR goggles that made me dizzy in his world. He brought me to the Griffins Observatory once when he was in L.A., and we watched planes in long ribbons under a sky that remembered other films. He told me about a girl who had given him a drawing of a plane and called her brave. I found his face softer than his strictness.
And there were problems. Work press deadlines, social expectations, a country built of many rules. There was pressure for him to perform and pressure for me to produce. Sometimes the world was crowded with other people's fingers pointing in accusing ways, and sometimes the comment streams were venomous. But tangible fix was always a habit of ours—we fixed broken drones and mended frayed nerves.
There were moments when his control room for flying and my drawing table for engines collided. The day I told him I had been supporting kids quietly—that I had left a piece of myself in places where the sky met the ground—he looked relieved.
"I thought you were a solo traveler," he said.
"I am a lot of things," I replied. "Engineer, traveler, sister-of-the-sky."
"Are you afraid to tell?" he asked.
"Sometimes." I touched the pilot Pikachu in my bag like a talisman. "But you saw something in Tokyo and chose to stay."
He kissed my knuckles then, an uncoordinated, perfect maneuver. "I chose to wait in the little spaces," he said. "And you were always someone I wanted to know more."
There were no grand gestures—no televised proposals, no ridiculous scenes. We had instead a thousand small details: a sandwich left in my scooter basket, a line of text left in my editing app, a voice message from a radiantly tired pilot after a midnight crew.
"How do you keep from getting weary?" I asked lying on my couch.
"You sleep when you can," he said. "And when you love someone who knows the sky, you find ways to make small things matter. Like a small Pikachu that sits on a lens."
"Is that your metaphor?" I teased.
"It is ours," he said.
And if you ask me what would stay with me as a closing image, it would be the tiny plush from Haneda perched at the rim of my wide-angle lens, the dress I wore for the racetrack, the simulation cockpit's dim light, and the line he used on me the first day on Kamakura's platform: "Wear the glasses; you'll see like a pilot."
Our ending is not trivial. We are not the sweep of a novelist's neat punctuation. We are the careful click of toggles and the quiet hush of landing.
At night, when the city's lights run like wiring through the dark, I pick up the plush and press it against my camera. The lens glints. I lift the camera and press record. "This is Brooklyn," I say into the small microphone, and Hugo's text buzzes: "See you at the simulator."
We still take flights and edit footage. We still repair parts and argue over color grades. We still meet at the runway for coffee and talk about the small miracles of the sky.
At the last frame of one of my videos I keep a small, private shot: the pilot Pikachu seated on the camera lens with a tiny paper tag that reads "H.S. — Haneda." The tag is worn at the edges and bent, but it is the most honest thing I own.
"Put it in your kit," Hugo had said once. "You will need it for flights."
So I did.
The End
— Thank you for reading —