Found a weird spring on top of my gearbox

[xyzal]

Hi guys, my first post here.

Was bleeding the clutch and I found a spring sitting loose on top of the gearbox. I don't know where it is from or where it should be.

Any advice? Thanks in advance. Car is a Golf V Variant 1.4 TSI engine code BMY, 6 speed manual gearbox.

 

[xyzal]

Please help?

 

[ROH ECHT]

I've never seen a spring like that in the engine bay. I can only think perhaps someone who worked on it in the past used the spring to hold on to something (light, cord, disconnected harness)...and forgot it, or dropped it and couldn't find it. Or perhaps the shift linkage was previously damaged and the spring was used in an attempt to fabricate a temporary fix. You can rule all of that out if you owned it from new...and only you worked on it.

 

[xyzal]

I've never seen a spring like that in the engine bay. I can only think perhaps someone who worked on it in the past used the spring to hold on to something (light, cord, disconnected harness)...and forgot it, or dropped it and couldn't find it. Or perhaps the shift linkage was previously damaged and the spring was used in an attempt to fabricate a temporary fix. You can rule all of that out if you owned it from new...and only you worked on it.

I bought it used at 230k kilometers, so that's why I'm not sure what happened.
My car shifts kinda hard (manual transmission), but I think that's a slave cylinder issue.
Just thought it might be an important part, however nothing seems to be missing from the gearbox. Maybe if it had a part number on it or something.
Will still try to figure this out, thanks for the reply!