Nobody in town owns a clock. When Taka goes by, everyone knows it’s noon.
Taka was the fastest sailor in town — and also the one man who could never quite make it home.
In this town, a scatter of islands rides a great current, turning slow circles forever. Call it sea, call it sky — everything just floats and drifts. The trouble is, the boats here have no brakes. If you want to shed speed, you either dump your cargo or loop again and again around the big, still island at the center, letting it gnaw your speed away bit by bit.
So docking takes technique. You circle the anchor island three times, shave off speed, and crawl in sideways like something wounded. Old folks and children alike, everyone comes home that way. Around here, “going straight” is just another name for the longest route possible. And it has long been settled that of all the things a sailor can brag about, speed is the least useful one.
Taka couldn’t stand that.
Three years ago, he’d left town, telling Hana he’d come back the best sailor there ever was. True to his word, he returned faster than anyone. On the night of the Lantern Festival, the whole island turned out at the dock to wait. Hana waited too, tying a welcome lamp to the old post — the same post Taka had carved and planted himself, years before.
A streak of light came in from the open water. Fast. No looping the anchor island, no dumping cargo — just a straight line, dead ahead.
“Hana! I’m home!”
Taka waved big from the deck, proud as anything. And then — whoosh — he sailed clean past Hana’s island, gone before she could even answer. Too fast to stop.
The next day at noon, Taka came in from the open water again.
“This time for real — I’m home!”
He sailed past again. Only the wave was impressive.
Old Gon, the veteran boatman, hollered from the shore. “You fool, dump the cargo! Circle the island! Keep this up and you’ll never dock in your life!”
But dumping cargo was out of the question for Taka. His boat was packed to the rails with gifts — bolts of cloth from faraway islands, rare sweets, a comb he’d bought for Hana. He’d come home to show off the whole of himself, fast and successful and complete. He couldn’t throw away a single thing.
“Next time for sure! Just watch!” Taka shouted, already sailing past.
And so it went — four times, five times. Taka passed the island at the same hour every single day, punctual as ever. At this rate, it seemed, he might never dock in his whole life. Somewhere along the way, without anyone deciding it, the town started telling time by him. “There goes Taka, third pass of the day — must be noon.” The old woman in the fields would straighten her back, and the kids would head home for lunch. Taka had become the best clock in town. Whether he knew it himself is another matter. Probably, even now, he still thinks he’ll dock on the very next pass.
On the night the festival ended, Hana went out to the dock.
A streak of light came in from the open water, just as fast as ever. On a sudden impulse, Hana picked up a rice ball, took her little boat, and slipped straight out into the middle of the current — onto Taka’s path, as close as she could get.
“Here, Taka.”
As he shot by, she pressed the rice ball into his hand. For one breath, just one, the two of them matched speed, side by side.
“Oh — sorry! Next time, I’ll dock for real, I swear!”
Taka held the rice ball up high, and — whoosh — he was gone again.
Hana sat in her little boat and watched his light for a while. Then she rowed back to shore, untied the welcome lamp from the post, loaded it aboard, carried it out to a floating post in the middle of the current, and tied it there instead — so that next time Taka passed, he’d pass as close, and as brightly lit, as possible.
Thanks to that, noon in the town came a little earlier from then on, because the moment Taka proudly sailed past his “closest point” had shifted. And nobody ever tried to fix it.