At five in the morning the river still looked asleep, which was how Jonas preferred it: less likely to start arguments. From the gatehouse window the water was a dark pane broken by the first gulls, the moored ferries, and the thin orange line of the bakery ovens lighting up across the quay. He stood with a mug of tea gone lukewarm and watched the great floodgate below him flex in the wind, a slab of steel that had the patience of a retired boxer. The left hinge gave its usual complaint, a long metallic groan, and Jonas answered it under his breath. 'Save the drama for the tourists,' he said. The gate, ungrateful as ever, only shuddered. He crossed the room, nudged the radio louder, and heard the harbor bulletin in a calm voice about barometric drift and low cloud. Outside, the town woke in pieces. A woman pushed a pram past the fish market. A man in rubber boots unhooked nets from a rail. Someone rang the church bell twice because someone always rang it twice when the weather turned muggy, as if the sound might shame the sky into behaving. Jonas set his mug beside the console and checked the pressure readout. Normal, normal, almost normal. Good enough for another hour, maybe, if the machine felt charitable. He had spent twelve years coaxing this place into obedience, and it still seemed ridiculous that a wall of metal and gears could hold back a river with a temper. Yet it did, most days. That was the insult and the miracle of it. His father had once said the gate was less a machine than a stubborn answer to gravity, and Jonas had spent years pretending that sounded like wisdom instead of a warning. He liked work that could be measured: a bolt tightened, a cable inspected, a number on a gauge. People were messier. He had one final shift. Then he would leave before noon, before anyone could persuade him to stay for soup, for repairs, for another useless conversation about the house, the river, or his future, that cheerful word people liked to throw around like breadcrumbs. He rubbed both hands over his face, drew in the smell of wet iron and diesel, and began the round.