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A young watchmaker fights to save an old street clock and, in the process, discovers what it means to belong. This slice-of-life tale follows small repairs, stubborn neighbors, and a community that counts its days by a single steady hand.
I wake to the clock before I open my eyes. It isn't mine, not in the way the dented teacup on my windowsill is mine, or the wrench with blue paint on its handle that's lived in the right-hand drawer for as long as I can remember. The loud, patient hand at the top of Alder Street counts out my mornings with the same blunt certainty it has for as long as anyone remembers. Today it clicks at seven, slow and assured. Outside the window a delivery van bumps past the bakery and the smell of baking dough reaches me like a memory.
I dress in the blue denim coat that smells faintly of oil and old paper, stuff myself into the narrow stairs that lead down from my room and choke on the condensation that gathers in the stairwell. The workshop is small enough that steam from the kettle fogs the magnifying lens in the first ten minutes. Oil and metal and lemon-scented polish meet me as I push the door open. Shelves of glass jars rattle with tiny screws and watch hands. A row of clocks that don't tell the same time line the far wall, some with faces like old men, some like little moons. The bench holds my tools like a row of quiet, patient animals; they wait without complaint.
A customer is already there. He leans on the counter like someone postponing bad news, blue collar coat and hands that still smell of engine grease. He hands me a watch the size of his palm, the casing scratched, the face almost blank where a name has worn away. He talks to me about his son who's moved out, about how the watch stopped the night they argued. I listen because that's part of the work; people don't just bring broken things. They bring moments.
I open the watch on the bench and the small gear inside looks like a tiny city. I cup it with tweezers and breathe, steady, like I was taught. I think about the first time my father showed me how the balance wheel swings like a small heart. He called it honesty: if you made something that could tell time, it had to be true. The hands of the big clock on Alder Street have been honest in that way longer than my father's memory. If you stand under it at noon the bells sound like a promise.