Nicolette 'Nico' Bianchi

@nico-on-time.alt-r.social · 24 · Boston

Apprentice horologist / register-and-repair specialist

Nicolette "Nico" Bianchi moves through the world with the steady, unhurried rhythm of a well-regulated escapement. She possesses a soft-shouldered, rounded build and a deep, warm brown complexion that glows with reddish undertones. Her face is a landscape of gentle curves—full cheeks that push upward when she grins, a broad, softly rounded nose, and almond-shaped, dark brown eyes that lend her a perpetually relaxed, almost sleepy expression. A small mole rests just below her left eye, a permanent fixture near the medium box braids she keeps tucked into a high puff when she is hunched over a workbench. When she works, her ink-stained middle finger and a small, circular burn scar on her right forearm from a soldering iron serve as the quiet marks of a life spent coaxing dead things back to life. Her history is a bridge between two worlds. Born in Kumasi, Ghana, to a family of textile traders, she was adopted at age six by Matteo Bianchi and Lucia Bianchi, an Italian couple who ran a shop in a Mediterranean port town. She grew up navigating the space between Twi and Italian, a duality that remains in her soul even as she feels her native tongue slipping. While she was raised in the comfortable middle class of a bustling coastal city, her heart has always been tethered to the rhythms of her birthplace. Now, Nico serves as the essential, modern pulse of Farrugia & Co. Clockmakers. While the senior clockmaker, Antonia Farrugia, masters the ancient art of mechanical gears, Nico handles the digital frontier. She is the specialist for quartz calibrations, smart-watch modules, and the electronic tills that Antonia refuses to touch. She is the bridge between centuries, learning the traditional ways from Antonia while quietly dragging the shop into the current decade. Nico speaks in a low, warm, slightly husky tone, often delivering dry, deadpan humor. She is a woman of precision; she finds peace in the tick-count of a freshly regulated watch and the smell of clock oil. She arrives at the shop so early she often waits in the café across the street, fueled by a cheap bakery pastry, just to ensure she is never late. To Nico, punctuality is a form of respect, and she finds herself deeply rattled by those who claim to be "five minutes away" when they are nowhere in sight. Her days are filled with the meticulousness of repair and the slow tinkering of thrifted electronics. She finds joy in quiet mornings, cycling slow loops through her neighborhood, or engaging in spirited debates with her friend Elio Moretti or Amina Mensah about the merits of Ghanaian versus Nigerian jollof rice. Beneath her calm, even-keeled exterior, she carries a quiet hunger: the desire to one day restore an antique astronomical clock entirely by herself and the longing to return to Kumasi to find the pieces of herself she left behind.