Seeing the girl jogging to reach the elevator, I hold a door open with one hand, triggering the system that should prevent them from closing.
 
I chuckle as she dashes through the doors… then fails to brake before ramming her forehead into the opposite side of the elevator, rattling the entire chamber. She stumbles and falls backward to the ground, dropping the bag she was carrying, curiously, in her mouth. I understand why she chose that hold when I see that she has no arms.
 
More worrying is the sound that her head made when it hit the elevator wall, so I call down to her. “Yo, girl. You okay?”
 
She opens her eyes, then closes them again. “Yes. No. Yes, definitely no.”
 
I take a moment to sort out what she means, then almost offer her a hand before realizing the futility. Unsure of what to do, I remain standing.
 
“Down,” says the girl.
 
“... What?”
 
“Down,” she repeats. “That’s the way the elevator needs to go.”
 
Another voice shouts from the other side of the closing doors. “Not so fast! Sleeping bitch coming through!”
 
Again, I hold the doors open for the boy coming through with, indeed, a sleeping girl in his arms. As he enters the elevator, however, he makes a terrible misstep onto the hair of the girl on the floor. Her eyelids force themselves more violently shut and her mouth stretches open as she winces - I’d mistake it for a yawn in any other situation, as she makes almost no sound. The boy, in contrast, screams as he and the girl in his arms fall down, with a few painful sounds of limb against metal, into a heap of person.
 
I stare, wide-eyed, at the scene, and stutter without knowing what I’m even trying to say.
 
“DUDE!” the boy barks. “What the hell are you laying down in an elevator for?”
 
The red-haired amputee girl rolls her head, still wincing. “What?”
 
The boy stands up. “You broke my glasses. You broke my glasses!” As he erects himself, I see that one of the lenses is in pieces. “Do you have any idea how much these cost? Because I sure don’t!”
 
The elevator doors close, and I remain standing and speechless.
 
“I don’t think numbers even go that high! These things cost, like, infinity yen!” He spreads his arms wide, emphasizing the physical size of infinity yen, as we accelerate downward. “And you’re paying!”
 
The blue-haired girl - the one he carried in - chimes in drowsily from the floor. “No! No I won’t! Not like this!”
 
Red ignores her. “I don’t think I have that much money.”
 
The boy’s face twists into a snarl. “Then pay with your blood, outlaw!”
 
Before he can enforce his statement, Blue’s arm thrusts upward with a fist at the end. This fist finds itself against the boy’s groin.
 
As he screams and bends over, clutching the area, Blue pushes the rest of herself to her feet, clumsily, yet with surprising speed. “That’s what you get, chauvinist pig!” she yells. “That’s what you get for touching SUZU SUZUKI!” She throws another punch, this time to the boy’s face, but he catches it in time, despite his impairment.
 
“Dammit, Suzu…” he groans.
 
She takes a moment to recognize him as the other girl and I watch. The elevator beeps twice as we pass two floors.
 
“Oh… Hello, Kenji,” says Suzu softly.
 
Kenji looks at her intensely from behind his broken glasses. “You stupid bitch,” he says.
 
“I’m sorry. I…”
 
He shoves the girl away and leans against the wall, shaking slightly.
 
Two more beeps sound from the elevator before I muster up the gall to speak. “H-How okay are each of you?”
 
The three of them turn to me as if acknowledging me for the first time.
 
“... I guess I’m all right,” says Suzu.
 
“There’s a chance I won’t die,” says Kenji.
 
“Medium bad,” says the girl on the floor.
 
Deciding that the last of these is the worst, I kneel down and pull the girl up by her back into a sitting position. She moves her legs compliantly.
 
She widens her eyes. “Is the bag of things okay?”
 
“Things?” I grab the bag for her, not checking, out of decency, to see what the “things” are. “It seems fine.”
 
The girl nods, not making any motion to grab the bag. I set it down next to her. “That’s good. It’s very important that the things be fine.”
 
Suddenly, the elevator makes an unpleasant sound, and the four of us are shaken as it halts.
 
We’re not at my destination yet - and nobody else input theirs. More tellingly, the compartment is leaning towards one corner. We’ve gotten stuck.
 
Kenji and Suzu sport worried looks, but the girl on the floor doesn’t. “Are we there yet?” she asks.
 
“We’ve stopped,” says Kenji.
 
Her expression doesn’t change. “Yes. But are we there yet?”
 
“N-No,” he stutters in confusion. “They’ve trapped - ah, we’re stuck in between floors.”
 
“Relax,” I say. “I’m sure they’ll have it moving again in a minute or two.”
 
----
 
Suzu checks her watch. “Five minutes.”
 
Kenji has spent all of those minutes pacing in tight circles around the square meter of elevator not occupied by me, Suzu, or the armless girl. The latter has identified herself as Rin.
 
The three of us have been trying everything - setting different destination floors, forcing the doors open, and, with Kenji’s help, screaming; all to no avail.
 
Suzu takes out her cell phone and begins dialing. I do the same, as I realize this waylay is putting me behind schedule.
 
As I wait for a coworker to answer, I look to Rin. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes half-closed and tracking Kenji’s feet. Their owner is muttering to himself; he wipes sweat from his brow.
 
On the fifth ring - took ‘em long enough - a familiar voice responds with a generic, overworked welcome.
 
“Oi.”
 
“Akira?” says my coworker. “Everything all right? What are you calling in for?”
 
I disregard the concern. “I’m fine. But I’m stuck in an elevator, so don’t expect me to show up anytime soon.”
 
“What? Really?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
Kenji leans back into the corner of the elevator and runs his fingers through his hair. I wonder if he’s claustrophobic or something. I could swear, though, that the word “them” has slipped into his mumblings more than once.
 
This gives me an idea. “Hey, can you look up a number for me?” I ask.
 
“Uh, sure.”
 
“I need the AER building.” On the other end, I hear fingers typing at a keyboard. “That’s where we are.”
 
My partner gives me the number. We exchange goodbyes, and I dial again. Suzu watches me; she’s put her own phone away already.
 
“I’m calling the folks who run the building,” I explain. “They’ll send someone to get us out.”
 
I don’t hear her reply.
 
----
 
I close my phone. “Should be ‘just a few minutes,’” I announce, emphasizing the quotation with disdain.
 
Kenji crosses his arms. Suzu rolls her eyes. Rin looks up at me with a look of concern and says, “How many minutes is that?”
 
I didn’t expect her to be so snarky. Regardless, it’s easy to sympathize with someone when you’re stuck in the same sticky situation, and reassuring to see that Rin also doubts the effectiveness of the bureaucracy. Not that I’m the sort of person to need reassurance.
 
“Hell if I know,” I say.
 
“Could be five, could be fifty,” chimes in Suzu.
 
Rin looks away, disappointed. “That’s the problem with fews. Fews and lots and couples.”
 
Suzu and I stare at the girl in confusion, and she takes this as a prompt to continue.
 
“There are a few people in this elevator, right?” she says.
 
I nod. “You could say that.”
 
She closes her eyes and leans back slightly. “If there were five of us instead of four, there would still be a few people in this elevator.”
 
I smile a little, understanding what she’s getting at.
 
“And then, if there were six people instead of five, there would still be a few people.”
 
“So,” I say, “the problem is that those words are all too vague?”
 
Rin considers this for a moment, then shakes her head, eyes still closed. “No. Being vague is okay. It’s just…” She opens her eyes and shuffles slightly, almost irritatedly. “If you take a few people, and you add one or take one away, you still have a few people, right?”
 
“... Not always,” Suzu says, mildly pensive. “If you go from two people to one, you don’t have a few people.”
 
Rin nods slightly in affirmation. “So you can’t always add or take away people and still have a few people. But a few isn’t always the same number of people, either.”
 
With a startling thump, Kenji slams a fist into the wall of the compartment, drawing our attention. Shaking, he snarls in a raspy voice, “Would you shut your fucking mouths!?”
 
The three of us stare at him. Rin, confusedly; Suzu and I, incredulously.
 
Kenji’s face is contorted into a furious grimace. “If I have to take one more second of this… inane, insipid, intolerable noise, my head’s going to fall off!”
 
I hesitate before replying. “Yo, are you claustrophobic or something? ‘Cause there’s no need-”
 
“Shut up! Just… SHUT UP!” He punches the wall again. “I need to get OUT of here! Now!”
 
“Calm down, Kenji,” says Suzu. “They’ll have us out of here at some point, okay?”
 
Kenji turns around and holds his fist in front of him. “At SOME point! That’s not okay! That’s, like, the opposite of okay!” He walks up to the panel of buttons indicating the various floors. “There’s gotta be something. Have you tried all of these?”
 
“That’s not a good idea,” I say.
 
He ignores me, pushing one button after another, then mashing all of them with his fist.
 
“Hey!” shouts Suzu. “That’s not gonna help at all!”
 
To our surprise, the elevator moves - first, with a jolt, it rights itself. Then it accelerates upward.
 
“See?” says Kenji. “Simple as that.”
 
The elevator beeps once. Twice. More. And we’re still accelerating.
 
“This feels weird,” says Rin.
 
Suzu holds out her arms a little for balance. “Idiot! You broke it!”
 
The rumbling of the building moving past the elevator gets ever louder, and the beeping gets faster - until we reach the highest floor. Then, a crashing sound. Then, nothing.
 
But we’re still moving.
 
The four of us look at each other, each unsure if the sound was real. We’re still accelerating, even though we should, theoretically, be farther than the highest floor by now.
 
----
 
The wind outside thunders.
 
“Heads,” Kenji says, loudly enough to be heard over the noise.
 
I let the coin fall to the floor of the elevator, then kneel down to read it. “Sorry, mate.”
 
Kenji rubs the bridge of his nose. “You’re sure you can’t do this, Suzu?”
 
“I just don’t have a lot of arm strength.”
 
“Some feminist you are.”
 
As Suzu scoffs at him, he turns to the door. After a few tries, he’s able to pull the doors open by a crack, and the rumble of the wind becomes a roar.
 
I almost don’t believe what I see: Pale blue.
 
Kenji steps back, and the rest of us crowd around the crack in the window to see outward. Pale blue above, and below us, clouds.
 
I blink thoroughly.
 
“That… that…” Suzu stammers.
 
“It’s been a long time since the last time I saw it from this side,” says Rin.
 
I pull myself back from the opening. Then, Suzu slowly does the same. Rin does not.
 
I look over to Kenji, who’s facing the wall. He leans his head against it, then reels back and slams it forward. Then again.
 
----
 
The sky has darkened. Not because night has fallen - it hasn’t even been fifteen minutes. It’s just that we’ve reached the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere.
 
“This makes a negative amount of sense,” says Kenji. “It should be hard to breathe by now. Or something like that.”
 
Right - the atmosphere gets thinner as you go up. “Depends how high up we are,” I reply.
 
Suzu and Kenji are sitting in opposite corners. The former fell asleep a few minutes ago, despite the noise the wind is making. Rin is on her belly, looking out the cracked doors. I’m still standing - I’m most comfortable when I am - in the corner between Rin and Suzu.
 
I haven’t bothered calling anyone about this. I’m not sure I believe it myself.
 
----
 
The roar of the wind has slowly dwindled into silence.
 
“What time is it?” Rin asks.
 
I check my watch. “Three thirty. Why do you ask?”
 
“Because it’s nighttime.”
 
Confused, I walk over to the doors, where Rin sits, and look out. The stars are visible in the black sky. I know that, unfortunately, it’s still daytime on the surface. What we’re looking at is…
 
“Good god.”
 
“What’s up?” asks Kenji.
 
“We’re going into… outer space.”
 
Kenji does nothing for a moment, then sighs in resignation. “And, yet, we’re still breathing,” he says.
 
Rin turns around. “You can’t breathe in space?” she asks. Her face is expressionless, as it has been for most of our… ascent.
 
“No, you moron. That’s why it’s called ‘space’ and not ‘super happy breathey place.’”
 
She tilts her head a little. “But we’re breathing in space.”
 
“I KNOW!” Kenji slams his fist again into the wall of the elevator. The sudden clang jolts Suzu awake.
 
“If we’re in space,” says Rin, “we should get the things.”
 
“Things?” I ask.
 
Suzu speaks up groggily. “Wait, we’re in space now?”
 
As Kenji brings her up to speed, Rin reaches for her bag of “things.” With her feet, she pulls the “things” out.
 
The three of us stare at the assortment of machine parts, jaws slack.
 
----
 
“All system are go, or some shit like that,” says Kenji. He steps away from the part he was installing.
 
“Um, thrusters are in,” says Suzu.
 
“Captain Akira,” says Rin, “I think we’re ready.”
 
“Personally,” I say, “I haven’t had enough to drink for this shit.”
 
I crank the lever forward, and we fly onward. Destination: the stars.