The wind was blowing so strongly that the coconut trees seemed to yield under its authority. It had started to drizzle long ago and by then it was already raining somewhat heavily. Waves wildly rolled as they approached the coast. The only visible thing in the sky was the great gloomy gray, lingering stubbornly there for hours. From afar, I could see lightning and hear thunder roared. It was really not the best time to take a dip in the sea.

Yet that was the exact time Lee Seunghyun ran to the sea, with me following him worriedly. I heaved a sigh but all he did was grin ear-to-ear. He swiftly put on the life preserver and rushed to the restless water. Having the gas-filled vest keeping him afloat, he stared blankly to the sky above. Even after knowing him for some time, his excitement for unusual stunts still amused me.

“Not afraid of the lightning?” I asked, half-shouting due to the noisy atmosphere of the stormy beach.

Seungri just chuckled. “Yah, that’s why I’m swimming with my face up to the sky, to see where the lightning is. I’ll stop swimming if the lightning gets close,” he said eagerly. “Well, death is inevitable anyway. If I was to die here, I wouldn’t mind.”

It was definitely a joke but the idea of death of the maknae just gave me the creeps.

“Why don’t you come here? It’s so fun. Come on and swim with me, hyung!” he invited enthusiastically. Hearing his cheerful, wind-blurred voice, I felt like nothing was there to worry about. Not the strong gust. Not the thunder and lightning. Not the furious waves. I grabbed a buoy which happened to be lying nearby on the wet sand and ran towards the sea, through the opposing waves. Soon, I found myself floating next to the baby panda with the turbulent wave rocking us sporadically.

“Awesome, isn’t it?” he said to me spontaneously. Big droplets of water kept showering us from above as I observed his delighted expression more closely. He shut his eyes and spread his arms, obviously enjoying the inconsistent swaying of the wave. Silently, I noticed how he had been keeping the same smile plastered on his face for quite a long time. It actually irritated me a bit to see how he sank so deep in pure bliss that he appeared to have forgotten me.

Lost in the noisy downpour and rocking of the waves, I could not really tell how long we were swimming that afternoon. At last, he suggested going back to dry land.

“Got something to do,” he decided to swim back to the shore. I followed him slowly. He hurried back to the bungalow where the five of us —we and three other colleagues from our company— stayed for a week-long training. Seungri nonchalantly threw away the still inflated life vest, as if not having any intention to get wet again after that. He wiped his wet hair briefly with a towel placed on the wooden railing before entering.

Upon returning, the youngest of the five trainees appeared with a sheepish smile on his face. He unclenched his fist, revealing probably six or seven coins. There were all apparently not Korean Won since I could not really recognize all of them. One of the coin has a heart-shaped hole in the middle. But, since all of the coins looked foreign to me, I could not tell whether it was the original design or the quirky panda had carved it himself.

“Shhh,” he hushed, the same excited expression still on his face. “It’s a secret okay? Don’t tell anyone else.” Honestly I felt happy that he chose to play this kind of it-is-our-secret game with me.

“What are you going to do with those?” I asked, still staring and somewhat puzzled. He smirked but kept quiet, further arousing my curiosity. He pointed seawards, as if to the horizon, and started casually walking away from where I was sitting. The rain had not fully stopped but I instinctively rose and lazily chased the young man anyway. I stole a glance at my waterproof, silver-colored wristwatch. It was almost 5pm. There were really no one to be seen in the beach other than the two of us.

Suddenly he called out to me, excited as always. “Look hyung, it’s a rainbow! It’s a rainbow! You see it right? There!” I could not contain my laughter. He was still a young boy after all.

“Yes, Lee Seunghyun. I see it.”

“Isn’t it cool! I never actually saw rainbow with my own two eyes,” he said. As a matter of fact, the rainbow is pretty cool. It appeared brilliantly clear despite the fact that it was really cloudy and getting darker as evening approach. “Yah, hyung, I feel so lucky today.”

Such a baby, I thought to myself. He looked exactly like a five-year-old believing that he had just received a Christmas present from the Santa. Seriously, he was beginning to get me, in a way, mesmerized by his rather juvenile behaviour.  He continued strolling along the shoreline, definitely fond of the occasional tickling by the weakened wave. Then he started going further until the water was soaking his knee.

I stopped following him and sat at my current spot. I knew him well enough to see that he wanted to do something a bit personal and expected to have no one but himself close at that moment. Then he started hurling the coins to the sea, one by one. After that, he stood there for a while, staring and motionless like a statue, before playfully jogging back to me.

I watched my dongsaeng walked as his wet, white clothings somewhat revealed his physical figure. I gulped at the sight and looked away when he got nearer. He was still a baby, alright. But he had clearly been exercising and his chest and leg muscles were clearly starting to develop. Seungri laid beside me, belly on sand and chin on his folded arms. He shut his dark hazel eyes for a few seconds.

“Hey what exactly were you doing?” I asked, as curious as ever. I leaned forward a bit, decreasing the gap between us. Seriously though, I would kil to just hold this one particular babo close to me.

Lee Seunghyun just threw me one of his signature, impish smile, closing his eyes once more. For a moment I could see his body slightly trembling. He was evidently starting to feel cold, I thought to myself. The sky darkened and the drizzling rain left a comfortably moist feeling in the air as it eventually ceased to fall.

“You’re not answering me,” I continued, simply out of the feeling that he was hiding a special something from me. Seconds felt like days when I was waiting for a reply from him. That was when, he opened his eyes and stared directly at me in the eyes. His eyes were really a pair of sinfully teasing eyes  – it was as if they were begging me to not look away even for a split second. This boy was really the real thing. He would refuse to answer my questions immediately, choosing to make misleading and ambiguous replies for me to ponder about instead. Then he would laugh at me after his mischievously tricky statements got me reacting nervously.

Unfortunately for me, most of the remarks he made were usually right. It just killed me inside to admit that he rarely failed to accurately read through me. To be quite frank, I loved his jokes and riddles. But I sort of dreaded the fact that I felt powerless whenever he was with me. Quite clearly, I had grown somewhat, somehow attached to this young man who had the same first name as I.  And, apparently, he noticed it as well.

At one point of time, I could not hold myself back anymore. I made a gesture to jump at him and to steal a kiss. Slightly deterred, he laughed and rolled away playfully. I knew that he knew that I was not seriously going to do anything him. But I actually wished I had the guts to do it, to taste those teasing lips.

“Appa, let’s go back to the cottage. It’s going to rain soon,” suggested Bom. She called two small children, a boy and a girl. The children quickly put a halt to their activities and obediently walked to their mother. People called me a lucky guy. I had an amazing career as a rapper and songwriter of a top Korean band. I have two sweet children aged seven. And on top of it, I have a very pretty and pleasant wife. Bom was the lead vocal of a girlband. My band and hers were close labelmates. Her band was also a successful band and we were often called the luckiest celebrity couple in Korea.

Bom was like a blue lake surrounded by a vibrantly green clearing. She was delightfully nice and calm and I felt comfortable to be with her. We also had similar vibe and she knew her limit in doing things. But what I had actually wanted all this time was a deep blue ocean which stretched wide and had its own perpetually restless waves.

“Appa, I found a dime,” my son showed me a coin, stained brown with age and salt. It was something else about the dime that caught my attention though. “Look, Appa, there is a heart-shaped hole cut into it. I wonder if this is an ancient coin used by the pirates.”

At that instant, I took the coin, almost forcibly, from his hand. After brief scrutiny, I felt a rush of memories flooding my head. Memories of six years ago came back furiously like those waves. It hurt. It terribly hurt.

“What? Are you stupid? It’s the freaking sea,” That was my first reaction after hearing his explanation. Seungri just innocently told me that the coins represent his wishes. “It’s not some wishing well or fountain. You’ll get fined for littering, idiot.”

“I don’t care.”

“Geez,” Frankly it did not bother me. In fact, it amused me so much I just could not help but act as if I was questioning his rationale to distract myself from bursting out laughing. “What about the one with a heart-shaped hole?”

Again, much to my dismay, he refused to give an immediate answer, blankly staring at the increasingly calmer waves.

“Is it a wish about love?” Frustrated, I just carelessly blurted out a guess. A rather hopeful guess.

He did nothing but nod weakly.

“You’re in love?”

This series of questioning had turned laborious as I saw him, again, only nodding in response.

“Do I know this very lucky person?”

He turned to me. I looked at his eyes curiously, not bothering to utter any more question. That was when I noticed my heart had been beating madly. It was as if time stopped for us and in that few seconds, surreal and timeless as ever, I glimpsed eternity.

“One day, that coin’s going to return.” He finally answered, half-whispering. His voice was slightly, painfully, trembling . “True love never dies. You’ll see.”

He started staring blankly again. My chest clenched in indescribable pain. I did not know what was going on with me. I just suddenly felt a sudden surge of overwhelming emotions. As if it had consciousness of its own, my hand instantly moved, trying to find his. I gripped his soft hand tightly as if it would stop my heart from beating if I ever let go.  Probably it was just me but I remembered feeling his delicate fingers wrapping my hand back. Even if it was real, he did it only for a few moments. And he never gave me any chance to do anything more than that. No matter how I would kill to hold him in my arms, how would I die to hug him and shower him with my sincerely loving kisses.

No. Not a single time.

“You see, I’m a guy,” That was always the excuse he gave me. I could pick a hint of pain in his voice. “Unlike your wife.”

My wife and children slowly raced to a nearby building. I followed them with heavy steps. The sky darkened and a bright, sudden lightning presented a startling view. It started to rain heavier and I turned around, my eyes surveying the surface of the sea, hoping in vain to catch a glance of a man and his childish grin floating with a life vest on the irregular waves, his overly excited face welcoming the pouring needles of water.

Hope was just a hope. I did not even know where he was now. Some people said he moved overseas with his family. According to another rumour, he went away to get married. No one was sure. Once I stole a glimpse of his record in CEO Yang’s desk. The resignation column only said ‘personal reasons’. He left no traces, no notices, no explanations whatsoever. He left me heartbroken. There was a hole in my heart, a hole in me—just like that coin.

If someone asked me why I had loved —and now still did love—  him, I could never come up with a certain answer. I just loved him. Cliché, perhaps, but that was how that was. My heart kept beating, even trembling, whenever I saw his two eyes. And if someone asked me how could the coin ended up here with me, I would reply that I kept asking that same question too.

Maybe that was just how love was. It came with no warning and left with none either. It knew no boundary. It knew no mercy. It was unbearably overwhelming. Well, maybe he was right. True love never dies. And maybe, that was true love.

The increasingly loud noise caused by the rain dragged me back to reality. I looked up, allowing the cool droplets to fall on to my cold face. I was not sure whether Seungri would be able to tell, but I was certain that other people, including Bom herself, would never be able to tell it was tears, and not rainwater, that wetted my face.