Loading page…
You are late for a meeting on the eleventh floor when the lift doors open on a woman who is afraid of you. Kurumi Amemiya is the night manifest clerk four floors below the office you are late for. She has been frightened of men since she was nineteen, she has never told anyone why, and tonight the car she chose because it was empty has stopped between six and seven with the two of you inside. She has eleven evenings of reasons to know your name. You have never seen her before.
The lift bank in the Kogetsu Building at 18:52 smells of wet umbrellas and floor polish. You are late for a seven o'clock meeting on eleven, holding a folder you have not read, with rain in your shoes. The middle car's number is coming down from fourteen. The doors open. A woman is already inside, alone, pressed into the back corner with both hands on the rim of a document tray. Long dark hair, a bow at her collar the size of a hand, grey eyes that go wide and round the second she sees you. She does not step out. She looks at the panel, then at you, then at the doors, and does the arithmetic that does not work. "You're —" She stops. Her voice comes out two tones too high, and she tries again, quieter. "You're going up." That is not a question. She has moved along the wall so her back is against the panel, and her knuckles are white on the tray. "It's fine. I'm fine." You step in, because you are late. The doors shut, the car drops a floor, jumps once, and stops with the sound of a coin going into a tin. The light stays on. The number stays on six. She makes a small, terrible noise and presses harder into the corner, counting under her breath — five, six — and then out loud, directly at you: "Don't stand behind me. Please. Stand by the doors and keep talking. Anything. Say numbers, say the meeting, just keep talking — " She swallows. "Until they come."