I Hope Love Is... [On Hold]

First Verse

First Verse

I didn't mean to fall in love that day
I was just walking down the street
when I saw you under your yellow umbrella
and you smiled at me
and my heart went thump thump...

-translated from “Hello Love”
from Future Colors' second album Colorful Life

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Minha opened his eyes and saw sunlight making bright squares on the floor by his bed. Someone had opened the curtains while he was asleep. He frowned, looking around him slowly at the room that seemed both familiar and unfamiliar. This was not his room at the band's dorm; nor was it his room at his parents' house in a suburb of Seoul.

And then he remembered where he was. He had arrived in the Philippines yesterday evening. But apart from the moment when he first saw Bea again after three years, he couldn't remember anything more. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs away.

Three years. Had it really been three years? It still seemed like yesterday when he and his bandmates in Future Colors had arrived in that small village...

* * * 

It seemed to be a perfectly ordinary place, nineteen-year-old Minha thought as the van approached the village. Nothing special about it at all. It was too hot, too dry, too dusty. Rice fields on all sides. Unpaved roads that bounced them around inside the van like popcorn. He was sure he would not like to leave the van when they reached their destination. At least the damned thing was air-conditioned.

“We came all the way to shoot a video HERE?” he asked out loud, and was rewarded with an elbow in the ribs. He turned to glare; Future Colors' band leader and lead guitarist Ahn Jungkyu pointedly gazed out the window.  Their band manager, Oh Dongmin, turned around in the front passenger seat to give Minha a quelling look. Minha gave him back a cold stare.

“We're almost there,” Manager Oh said. “I don't need to tell you to behave, do I, since your sunbae has generously allowed us to stay at his own home while we're here.”

“Is it far to the beach?” the band's drummer and maknae, seventeen-year-old Kang Myungseok, piped up excitedly from the back seat. “Jaeseung sunbae and Agency President Kang did promise us we'd have time to spend at the beach.”

“They did say that, but first you have videos to shoot,” Manager Oh reminded them. “You're not here to go to the beach, you know. You're here to work.”

The van finally entered the village, scattering a flock of chickens that had somehow decided to cross the road just at that moment. Minha rolled his eyes.

The houses were a strange mix. Here and there, unfinished concrete houses topped with tin roofs and surrounded with concrete and wire fences were interspersed among bamboo huts roofed with grass and surrounded with bamboo fences.

A few children playing in the street hastily ran to the side of the road as the van approached. A young girl in a faded cotton skirt and a t-shirt, the pastel colors faded almost to cream and contrasting vividly with her warm brown skin, stepped to the side of the road with her liter bottle of Coca-cola and watched the van go by. Minha caught a glimpse of large dark eyes and long straight black hair.

Farther on, they passed a concrete basketball court. At that hour, midafternoon, several boys were playing basketball; most of them wore shorts and the rest wore rolled-up sweatpants, some wore tank tops and the rest were unashamedly bare to the waist.