After the funeral, Gennaro returned to his shop. The ticking of a hundred clocks, once a symphony, now sounded like hammers against his chest. He picked up a delicate gold pocket watch, his fingers trembling. He whispered into the still air,
Gennaro was a man of precision. For forty years, he sat behind a velvet-lined workbench in a shop no wider than a doorway, repairing the heartbeat of the city—its watches. But the only clock that ever truly mattered to him was the sound of his wife, Lucia, humming as she hung laundry across the balcony above. a_vita_senz_e_te_me_fa_paura
For weeks, he didn't work. The fear wasn't of being alone; it was the fear of a world that continued to move when his had frozen. He feared the silence of the morning coffee and the weight of the evening shadows. After the funeral, Gennaro returned to his shop