고등학교 영어Ⅱ (NE능률 오선영) 연계 글

Narin had been knitting since she was twelve, yet every scarf she finished carried the same flaw. Near one end, a single stripe always wandered off course, because she lost count of her stitches whenever she was close to finishing. Her friends called the stripe her signature, but she saw it as proof that she would never become a genuine knitter.

Last December, she began to notice the man who swept the plaza outside the subway station at dawn. He worked in a thin orange vest, with his neck exposed to a bitter wind that made her own eyes water. For two weeks, she spent her evenings on a gray scarf with navy stripes, and once again, the last one went crooked. One Monday, while he was drinking coffee on a bench, she hung a paper bag on the handle of his cart. Inside were the scarf and an unsigned note, "For the person who sweeps our mornings clean," written in her neatest handwriting.

The next morning, she looked for a flash of gray at his throat but saw only his collar, now turned up against the wind. By Friday, she had concluded that he had either disliked her clumsy work or never found the bag, so she pushed her needles to the back of a drawer.

One February morning, Narin left her gloves behind on the bus and reached the station with fingers too stiff to hold her transit card. A cardboard box that had not been there the week before hung from the railing. It held a dozen mismatched gloves and mittens, each washed and clipped to a partner of similar size. "A stranger once kept me warm without leaving a name, so take a pair if your hands are cold," read an unsigned note on the lid.

As she pulled on a pair of brown gloves, the man in the orange vest stooped to pick up a red mitten from the slush. He dropped it into a bag on his cart, where several other lone gloves were already waiting. When he straightened, his collar slipped down, and beneath it was a gray scarf with one stripe that wandered off course.

Narin was tempted to call out to him, but she stayed quiet, for neither of their notes had asked for anything in return. If it had not been for that box, she would have spent the ride with her hands tucked under her arms. That evening, she took out her needles and began a pair of gloves for the box, and for once, a crooked stripe did not bother her.