A Love That Lasts

Chapter 1: Begin

Cebu, Philippines, 2018

Rose took one last look at the pictures of the greatest student reporters of their university; a large part of the mass communication department museum was devoted to their excellence – with their pictures and titles of their greatest documentaries in their senior years. These achievers were considered the reigning monarchs of their time. And they really were the kings and queens of TV! Most of them landed on great positions in many large broadcasting outfits. And Rose was one of those aspiring young journalists who were vying for the same spot in history.

They were already given the rules and criteria for the current competitions, making many of them crowd the libraries and archive centers to look for great stories of many different men and women. With only her scholarship as her support, Rose was pessimistic she could be the next senior to fill the blank frame in the series. She knew she was good but good stories also cost a big sum, and she didn’t have the abundance of finances.

There were already rumors of stories about the war Mindanao, the plaguing disease in Africa… Those seemed to be great topics and she envied the proponents. Many of them were children of prominent TV personalities also, and their source of money was very much sufficient for their production. With only a few thousand pesos in her bank account, and the scholarship she was given, Rose decided to settle on a local story, consoling herself about the beauty of their culture and the uniqueness of their country. But no matter how she made herself believe that she could make a good story even without going abroad, she still felt a tinge of jealousy.

They were given only a month to research and make their story. Next month, they would be presenting their finished story to the panel of judges who would decide the nominees out of the 90 aspiring seniors. With a limited time to plan, Rose decided to go into their library and dig from the archives interesting stories of the past.  After depositing her other things in her locker, she went inside the archives section and sat comfortably before a computer terminal.

A long list of stories according to date and newspaper appeared on her screen. She had scanned a total of six years of newspapers but she did not find anything interesting – at least for her. While scanning through headlines and titles, she found an interesting title, a story that shook almost the whole teen-age population six years ago. A story that nearly brought Alden Richards’s career into a halt: “Alden Richards Lost in The Sea”.

The whole series of events came rushing in her mind. The frenzy of the fans, the mourning and the crying of the country. Even the others who at first disliked Alden because of their love for other budding artists were affected by his loss. Four weeks later, the whole Philippines was  focused on the discovery of Alden in a desolate paradise on one of the islands of world renowned Maldives with Sarah, the niece of the formidable Asian woman billionaire Marcy Sy.

She read the whole article about his discovery. Only a small fraction of the news was focused on the woman who was with him. The picture accompanying the headline was so vivid but nobody before noticed a strange connection between the two, or maybe it was only her malicious thoughts that made her speculate that the two could have developed an intimate relationship while they were on the island. Four weeks was a long one, especially on a deserted island.

Intrigued by her hypothesis, she searched for a video copy of the rescue and watched it. To her dismay, she failed to see any physical indication each mattered to the other. They were both whisked away by their respective camps the moment they were released by the Maldivian authorities.

While Alden made an official statement after five days of recovery, the Sy’s never made any and soon after, the whole story was forgotten and was never revisited. The management of Alden Richards proclaimed that experience as a mere misfortune and dismissed any talk related to that matter.