Nina was seventeen years old and lived on the tenth floor of a block of flats in Przymorze, Gdańsk, where trams blew dust like waves every evening. In the lift she knew every buzzer tone, and from the balcony she could see the sea as a narrow streak of silver. She liked order and minutiae: hood strings, paper receipts, chairs set flush with the tile grout. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that for some time now things seemed to have squatted closer to her ear, as if waiting for someone to finally add them. She found a pen in her pencil case, although she swore it hadn't been there before. It was dark blue, worn out, with a microscopic inscription "Jablonski Zegarmistrz, Piwna 7". Grandfather had once mentioned the establishment, but no memory matched the pen, which wrote softly even though it had no nib. The first footnote came when Nina underlined a ceramic cup with white dots with it. Right next to her ear, a thin letter hung in the air, like a thread of steam over tea: "Laughter tastes better in this cup after nineteen." She trembled. She rubbed the letters with her thumb and they scattered into the usual steam. She tried on other things, carefully as with a new instrument. At Haller's red stop, the pen dragged a line across the blacktop, and the air trembled with words no one but her could hear: "Don't stop at this stop today." Nina looked around nervously, the tram was ringing, people were staring at their phones, the snow refused to fall. She pulled on her hoodie and walked, pretending not to understand any of this, yet listening to the end. At the next corner she passed a newsagent where newspapers were folded like origami, and a neon sign with a fish blinked to the rhythm of a metronome. A pen left a line on the shop window of "Everything after a bit", which turned into a whisper in a second: "7 Beer Street, today 5:14pm, ask for a clock with no hands". She looked at the phone: 4:58 p.m. "Maybe it's a joke," she muttered, but her steps quickened, as if someone had pulled a string near her heart. Beer Street smelled of coffee and wet stone. Above the narrow door hung a signboard like from the old days, the letters had shadows like wings. Inside, there was a twilight and the rustling of time that did not tire, but enveloped. Hundreds of clocks ticked unevenly, like rain on a roof, and under the counter lay glasses polished to a shine. On the studio door, someone had once pasted a gold letter J, worn off at the edges. Nina moved a pen across the brass handle and a footnote whispered: "You will only enter if you know what silence sounds like". Her heart began to rumble obscenely loud. "Hello?" - she called out briefly, but only a muffled ticking answered her. When she touched the doorknob a second time, all the clocks on the walls went silent at once, and a soft, very clear whisper came from under the door that knew her name.