chapter 1

(please note that as the setting is Europe, any weight will be expressed in metric units - no worries, they will show up very rarely. As a rough estimate for American readers, 10 kilograms, or kilos, or kg, are approximately 22 pounds)

At first it seemed to be just another ordinary flight, on one of those overcrowded and uncomfortable short-haul airliners typical for Europe. The entire flight would barely last two hours, so there was not even the slightest attempt for the airline to make the journey comfortable, the point being to get from one place to the other as cheaply as possible. Almost as much time was spent at the airport waiting in queues, then waiting for the plane, then taking our seats and waiting for a timeslot to take off, as we actually spent in the air. Still beats spending half the day in traffic jams, so I didn't stress myself, and waited patiently in my seat. I was almost zoning out as the safety instructions were being recited, they were not much more than a background noise for me, so often did I hear them before. The plane was packed completely full, except for the two seats next to me. There were six seats in a row, interrupted by a narrow aisle in the middle, this left me sitting alone next to the window.

After everyone seemed to be seated, I took a glance backwards to check whether I would really not get any neighbors, and then I saw the last passenger slowly making her way in my direction. She was a young woman, probably in her mid-to-late twenties, and the fattest one I've ever seen in person. She had hips so wide she had to walk diagonally along the aisle, and even so she was scraping the seats on both sides. She grabbed the backs of the seats for support while she was sidling and waddling towards her seat, which undoubtedly was going to be in my row.

She was panting slightly when she arrived next to me, and despite many of the passengers gawking at her, some of them even with a visibly disgusted look on their faces, she was showing a confident smile.

I didn't have long to guess whether there will be someone else coming too, because she raised up the armrest between the two empty seats, and sat down right in the middle. She obviously booked both seats, as there was no way she could have fit into just one. Each of her thighs was big enough to cover a good portion of a seat, and after she finished positioning herself, the pressure of her weight pushed the fat on her hips further outward, so that she wasn't far from reaching the two armrests of her double seat. She seemed to be shorter than me, but she was elevated by her butt as if she was sitting on pillows, so that our eyes were about at the same level. Her butt must have been the largest part of her body, as it pushed her forward so much that her knees touched the seat in front of her and she had to lean back quite a bit to use the headrest. Only after she made herself comfortable, did I realize her true size, when my eyes, despite trying to resist the urge, darted across her body and got caught for a short moment on her belly. Her wide frame, huge hips and immensely thick legs made her belly look not that remarkable at first, but it was only an illusion. On a body not as pear-shaped as hers, this same belly would look utterly enormous. It was resting in her lap, crawling forward halfway to her knees. With her legs being spread apart, it was oozing down between her thighs who knows how deep, and it was still round and firm as if she was ready to give birth to twins. The same thing could be said about her breasts, they looked relatively small in comparison to the rest of her body, but they were still huge, occupying all the space between her arms and being pressed tightly together in the middle.

The only thing which didn't look humongous and bloated on her, was her face. It was round, with full cheeks, wide lips and an incredibly smooth skin, but as her neck wasn't fat at all, and even her double chin was only slightly visible when she looked down, her face wouldn't give her body's true size away.
With a barely visible but omnipresent smile, and with large, deep eyes radiating eagerness and curiosity, her face looked both intelligent and incredibly cute.

I don't know how it happened, and why it happened so fast, but I felt instantly attracted to her. Later I tried to rationalize it as an effect of her cute smile and her personality which showed through our earliest conversation, but I later had to admit that her whole self was attractive to me from the very first moment. I always had a fondness for plump girls, but I never imagined I would fall for someone so immense: she was easily at least double the size of the fattest body I thought I would be able to be attracted to.

Her voice was clear, eloquent and musical in tone, as I had the occasion to first find out when she called for the stewardess. She asked her for two seatbelt extenders as casually as if she was asking for a glass of water, then glanced at me so quickly I would have missed it had I blinked. I tried to make as neutral of a face as possible, not knowing whether she would understand a smile as support or mockery.

I traveled a lot by air, and I'm usually not the one who likes to chat with complete strangers, many of my flights passed without talking with my next seat neighbors at all besides an occasional "hello" or "excuse me". This time, however, I felt the tension between us rising as fast as the plane was ascending.

I don't remember the exact words we exchanged at the beginning. I don't even remember which one of us really started the conversation, but I think it was both of us, with some short, fumbling, empty questions about the weather and our travel route, interspersed by minutes of silence. I wanted to listen to her voice, hoping at the same time to satisfy my growing curiosity about her, and while I didn't know what she wanted, she seemed to reciprocate, so over time our half-sentences slowly grew into a proper conversation. Favorite books, favorite movies, places we visited, that kind of stuff. As time went on, we even started crossing the line from casual small talk into discussing art, culture, and other more philosophical topics.

After a while, however, my thoughts started wandering about her body increasingly more often. One might think that someone of her size would be grumpy, exhausted, insecure, feeling out of place and uncomfortable being pressed between the narrow seats, but she was instead full of energy, and behaved exactly as if she had no extra weight at all. And I should treat her as such, I reminded myself.
Still, one cannot fully ignore the piles upon piles of fat she is covered in. And it has to have an effect on her personality, I tried to rationalize my interest in her size. She lives with it day and night, it is part of her, it has to define her at least to some extent. What kinds of adjustments does she need to make in her daily life? And how did she end up this fat? Some kind of illness? Or does she just enjoy eating so much, not worrying about the consequences? Or is she worrying, being depressed about how out of control her weight got, and is merely good at hiding it? Maybe she's got some kind of fetish? Was she always fat, swelling up slowly and gradually, or did something significant happen to her that changed her so much?

But I can't simply ask a stranger I just met, "hey, why are you so fat?", so I tried to keep these thoughts out of my mind. I maintained eye contact as well as I could, limiting my downwards glances only for the short moments she adjusted her hair or shifted her weight on the seats. She had very smooth, silky, but still quite dense hair reaching somewhat below her shoulders, so perfectly straight that some tresses of it slowly fell forwards time and time again, she then tucked her hair behind her ear, only for it to gradually get loose again. Whenever she raised her thick arm (so thick that it blocked the view to her torso almost completely) to adjust her hair, I could see rolls of fat on her side, even through her clothes. I could also see the gap behind her back, her butt being so gigantic that she could have been wearing a backpack while still being able to sit straight. No wonder she had to sit with her legs spread apart, yet her knees were still touching the seat in front of her.
How did she end up so fat? And at what point did she realize the sheer magnitude of it? How did she feel about it? I wanted to know her story. I desperately wanted to know her story.
"I shouldn't think of this", I reminded myself.
"Fat. Fat! Fatty, fatty, fat, fat. Fatty, fat", my mind went on, being barely able to pay attention to her vivid description of the style of her favorite author.