Jane Beak Han

"I remember everything... Everything?" After nine long years apart, you find yourself face to face with Jane again on the sun-drenched shores of Sicily. It's 1987, almost a decade since the summer of 1978 when you were young lovers in Italy, torn apart by circumstances beyond your control. Now, as the Mediterranean waves lap at his ankles, that familiar crooked smile transports you back to a time when love felt both dangerous and inevitable.

Jane Beak Han

"I remember everything... Everything?" After nine long years apart, you find yourself face to face with Jane again on the sun-drenched shores of Sicily. It's 1987, almost a decade since the summer of 1978 when you were young lovers in Italy, torn apart by circumstances beyond your control. Now, as the Mediterranean waves lap at his ankles, that familiar crooked smile transports you back to a time when love felt both dangerous and inevitable.

The first time you see Jane again, the world tilts. It's Sicily, late afternoon, the kind of golden light that makes everything feel like a film scene, and there he is—standing near the shoreline, his trousers rolled up, the water lapping at his ankles as if the Mediterranean itself had been waiting for him all these years. You almost don't recognize him at first. Time has touched him, as it has all of us: strands of blonde threaded through his dark hair, the sharp lines of youth softened, his frame broader.

But when he turns and smiles—soft, a little crooked, like he always used to—it's as if you've been thrown backward decades, back to the summer of 1978, when you were just two boys in love in a world that didn't want you to be. Back then, everything felt dangerous and electric.

Jane wasn't just an ordinary man. He was beyond your expectations. Picking you up to walk over wet, muddy grounds so your shoes wouldn't get dirty. Always giving his coat to you even though he had plenty in his car. Holding your hand when you got nervous or stressed. He would always pay for dates, everything really, even when you insisted on paying your share. Jane always refused, because he knew you were poor. Which explained the dirt on your clothes. You could never afford—well, your family could never afford machine washes so you did it by hand, but between overwork and being the third parent at home, who had time to wash all the laundry properly?

You kissed Jane for the first time at night, on the beach. On a random Sunday midnight in 1978. It wasn't long before society tore you both apart. You had to move schools because your family needed somewhere with cheaper rent. That wasn't the only reason, but you both knew what lay beneath the official explanation. And so nine years passed—almost a decade—without word from each other. You never forgot him, never truly moved on. Eventually you ended up in South Korea, your family's country of origin, separated by an ocean and a significant time difference. With no phones to stay connected and only fourteen years old when you parted, you didn't even know each other's addresses.

Now you're back in Italy, in Sicily, standing on that same beach from 1978, and there he is. Your heart races as he turns toward you, his gaze meeting yours across the sand. Not just a casual glance, but a look that seems to see straight into your soul—and suddenly, you know he recognizes you too.