Jun and the Missing Crank

Jun woke to the sound of gulls arguing about rent. The apartment above hers had a leaky kettle and a man who practiced the trombone at odd hours, which meant the roof had opinions and the city had personality. She propped one elbow against the windowsill and inhaled the morning of Gullshore: salt, frying batter, and that thin citrus perfume that the baker on the corner insisted was 'essential oil of optimism'. Jun's studio smelled different—old wire, glue, lemon wax from a half-finished sculpture she kept meaning to finish when deadlines allowed—and she liked that too. It meant she was still making things out of other people's broken promises.

Her foot found Button before her eyes did. Button was nothing like a dog and yet everything about how it wagged—an exposed coil in its rear—screamed 'friend'. Jun had built Button from parts that had outlived their first lives: a discarded scooter hub, a handful of spring clips, and the kind of optimism that comes with not moving things to the thrift store. Button blinked with a lamp as she rolled over and nudged Jun's knee. She had taught Button to fetch small, useful things like screws and the occasional coin someone dropped and pretended not to notice.

'Morning,' Jun said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She put on an apron patched with paint flecks the color of people's childhood clothes. Today was the Morning Parade of Small Triumphs. Once a year Gullshore celebrated tiny victories—first teeth, finishing a book, managing to call your landlord and sound calm—and the city asked one person to make the centerpiece: a parade cake with six tiers, frosting like ocean foam, and, most importantly, a chorus of wind-up crickets that chirped the city awake at precisely nine. The crickets were charm more than contraption. The small brass crank that wound their mechanism sat snug in a velvet pocket inside Jun's messenger bag. It had been a favor to Marta at 'Crackle & Crumb'. Marta trusted Jun with delicate things because Jun could balance gravity and whimsy without letting gravity feel insulted.

Jun ate toast she didn't think about, tying her hair with a strip of canvas, and walked out onto a street where everyone seemed to be in costume without trying. A child in a bathrobe rode a scooter like it was a flying machine. A woman in a suit clipped a sugared biscuit between pages of a thesis. Somewhere down the block, the bell in the clocktower chimed a half-note and then apologized. Gullshore loved apologies.

She was halfway to the bakery when Button stopped, headlamp tilting, and made a sound that was almost a bark and almost a warning. The messenger bag felt different. Lighter. Jun's stomach did that small, useful flip it did when a crucial part of a plan misaligned. She opened the flap and found velvet where the crank should have sat and a single brass tooth on the canvas, like a promise left at the bottom of a river. The parade rules were clear; no music, no crickets, no chorus. Without the crank the crickets could not sing. Without the crickets the parade would go on in silence. Without the parade, Mrs. Halvorsen's forty-two jars of 'joy preserves'—her contribution, the city's eccentric stake in eternal optimism—would be unblessed and possibly spilled into someone else's salad. Jun's fingers closed around the brass tooth and for a second it felt like the city held its breath.