The Clockmaker’s Secret

In the heart of an old city, tucked between a bookshop and a bakery, stood a tiny clock repair shop called “Tick & Tock.” Its owner, Mr. Yousuf, was a quiet, gray-bearded man who had been repairing clocks for over fifty years. No one knew much about him, except that he never missed a day of work and closed precisely at 7:00 PM.

One day, a young woman named Amina entered his shop holding a curious antique clock she had found in her late grandfather’s attic. “It ticks,” she said, “but never tells the right time.”

Mr. Yousuf took the clock gently, examined it, and his face turned pale. “This… isn’t an ordinary clock,” he whispered.

He worked on it in silence, occasionally glancing at a locked drawer under his desk. After a long pause, he finally said, “This clock was made by a man who believed time could be bent. It doesn’t show your time… it shows when you’re meant to be.”

Amina laughed nervously, thinking it was just a story. But when she left the shop and looked at the clock again, it read 3:17—the exact moment she would meet someone that would change her life forever.

And she did.

A stranger bumped into her at 3:17 PM that very day, apologized, and handed her a book she had dropped years ago in college—a book she had thought she’d lost forever. That small moment led to an unexpected reunion, and later, a lifelong connection.

Back at “Tick & Tock,” Mr. Yousuf placed the clock’s twin—his own creation—back into the locked drawer and whispered to it, “One more destiny aligned.”