Holden plans to meet his girlfriend at Myeondong at 2 o’clok, and he has some time to kill. He starts walking toward there, from City Hall. On the street, there are a lot of couples, celebrating Christmas ahead of time.
* * *
It was just as cold as the day before, but there still were goddam lots of couples on the street. It was near Christmas, so stores had red and green decorations all over the place, with little light bulbs wrapped around it. It was around noon, so the light bulbs were all off, and light bulbs look pretty ancient when they are turned off. What really killed me about the scenery of the street was the way an underwear store hung a glittering “Merry Christmas!” placard on its sign board, right next to “BYC”. I mean, what does an underwear store has to do with Jesus’ birthday?
It was then when I saw something that isn’t so phony among the things that I’ve seen in a week. There was this married couple walking in front of me, holding each other’s hands, in the flood of young couples. They were in their early thirties, and the woman was holding her boy’s hand on her left. They weren’t rich, I could tell by their clothes, but they looked really happy. Especially the wife seemed very excited about being in Myeongdong with her husband. I imagined how she would have longed for things that she had to give up as she married the guy, going out to Myeongdong being one of them. She reminded me of Mathilde Loisel in Guy de Mauppassant’s The Necklace, only kinder and more devoted to her family. Anyway, what interested me was the boy who was walking on the left of his mom’s. The mother was excitedly talking to her husband, as if she has regressed to a young fresh girl that she was ‘bout ten years ago, so she paid no attention to her son. He was just walking along, with his right hand held in the air as her mom held it, and he was keep looking on the ground, the way kids do. The best part is that he was walking on the yellow line in the middle of the road. I guess he wanted walk in a straight line. In the mean time, he was singing a melody that I couldn’t recognize, but was very familiar of. It was a song that every Korean kid sings when he’s a little kid, but I couldn’t recall what that song was. So he was humming this melody that I knew by my heart, rather than my brain. On this street that leads to Myeongdong, people were talking loud like hell, cars zoomed by, brakes screeched in front of people, and this boy, this young boy was looking down on the yellow line, trying to follow it, humming this song. It wasn’t so bad. A boy like him walking among the stupid couples, and Merry Christmas placard on an underwear store didn’t look so bad. It wouldn’t intimidate Jesus that badly, too.
Extremely poetic. You show how Holden is a true observer. He's a people watcher who finds value (and not always criticism) in the way people do things. In this instance you find a creative and touching way to contrast phoniness with familial values that Holden probably misses within his own life. The character feels lonely and happy at the same time. I really enjoyed this one, and like that you chose to focus on the more endearing qualities of Holden's personality. He's a dynamic complex character, and you can feel some admiration for the finer things in life here. The ending really bookends the beginning in a perfect way. Excellent job.
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