Winter Hearts

To The Point

Hongbin took a drink of his water and swilled it around in his mouth. They had spent a day recording footage at the Acropolis and its surrounds, but he felt distracted and unfocused. He was finding it harder to look interested than usual, and found himself smarting even at his own sarcastic comments, which were cutting a little close to home. After a few hours of roaming the flea markets of Plaka and Monastiraki, Kkomae had finally given him his own camera and told him to go for a walk on his own.

"Go look bored somewhere else, and make sure it's cute. Smiles and dimples," he had huffed as he spun Hongbin around and pushed him forward.

Hongbin knew the spin. He had become their second unit, tasked to record separate footage to intercut with the main story they were telling. As the sunlight was fading, he took some selfie videos with some ruins in the background, backlit by the orange glow of the sunset. They were scattered around the streets, fenced in by a wrought iron railing, some spanning whole blocks between streets, and open to the elements. He continued on back the way they came, having been dropped off earlier at a large square he didn't know the name of.

He was going to get lost in the city streets, and didn't want to refer to any information online to put any definitions on the places he would see. He wanted to roam with no end goal in sight, just be in the present and see where that took him. Despite enjoying the rigours of scheduling and preferring an organised and simple sort of living, Hongbin believed in a sort of fate, or rather, synchronicity - and that when one let oneself be guided by the little directioners in life, one is led to something one should, or needs to, see.

In this case, those little directioners would be the flow of pedestrian traffic, the attraction of a street corner, or a stray cat that lead him to turn this way or that. Ahead of him, he saw a few older women huddled together in the street, obviously shopowners or shopkeepers, gathered to catch up before the night traffic started. He could go around them, or he could see them as an opportunity that life, the universe, whatever, had placed before him.

Hongbin being Hongbin, intellectually saw it as an opportunity, and his sociable nature lent him an easy way with strangers, but in his regular life, his pragmatic side would take over and tell him to avoid unnecessary interaction.

Well, today, this moment, was about taking what came his way. He walked close to the chatting ladies so that he could greet them. Some responded with calls which, by the looks they gave him, he presumed were about his physique, others tried to get him to walk into their shop. He chose one, and bought some souvenirs, telling the camera that they were for his family.

He smiled as he thought of how many fridge magnets and tourist trinkets he had been obliged to give his relatives and their kids because he had said so on camera. With a cheerful goodbye, he left, leaving a musical trail of coos and adoration behind him.

He wondered whether those women would be so vocal if he didn't have a camera, filming himself. Perhaps they were so forthright because they sensed that a reaction to him was necessary for the footage. Perhaps it was their own desire to be captured somehow on camera. He didn't believe they would do that for every single guy with looks that walked into their shop.

One thing was for sure, women who behaved like that, were not limited to any one culture or country. They existed everywhere, and were both a delight and a source of concern. He smiled, remembering the old lady in the coffee shop Siana had brought him and Leo to, who had pinched his cheek and looked on him so lovingly. As long as they didn't push their boundaries, he was alright with it.

He passed a small tram that was circling the area, full of tired tourists and their children. As they passed, he waved and then made jokes to the camera about telling them to expect their new album.