We are insensitive to the moment someone falls in love with us.

{% meting "255973" "netease" "song" loop:none"%}

There was a girl who used to love calling me cute...

When I lost a game and called her to complain about the opponents, she said I was cute. When we watched a movie together and I secretly wiped away tears, she said I was cute. I didn't know where I heard that running could alleviate menstrual cramps, so I asked her to go running early in the morning, and she said I was cute. When I passed by an elderly beggar and waved my hand at his bowl to say, "Thank you, I don't need it," she said I was cute.

"What exactly is cute about me?" I asked, fiddling with her hand. After all, no one else had ever called me cute. She said my habit of playing with her hands whenever I had nothing to do was also cute.

When I first met her, she was crying, sitting by the window with red eyes. I had already walked quite a distance away, but I ran back to hand her a tissue. I thought I could at least sit with her until she stopped sobbing, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn't say a word. Later, I thought I had read too many novels, but she said I was also cute when I sat opposite her, feeling restless and uneasy the first time we met.

She talked to me about her parents, who were on the verge of divorce, and their shattered coffee table. I told her about how I was completely hopeless at math and had spent all the money my mom gave me for tutoring classes on game skins.

Most of our conversations were on different wavelengths; we were just looking for a place to talk, each saying what we wanted to get off our chests. I told her I hated my mother too—not the kind of hate she felt for her father, just a resentment toward the omnipresent expectations she placed on me. But sometimes, I also felt that being born into this family wasn't so bad; maybe it was the fried eggs she made that I liked, or the apologies she secretly tucked into my books after we argued.

I was too arrogant back then and didn't notice that she never expressed envy or longing; she just occasionally said I was cute. "I like eating jelly," I told her. So, every time we met, she would carry a jelly in her bag. I shared the songs I was listening to with her, and the following Sunday, she sang "Love You" to me. She sang so beautifully, even when she sang "Two Tigers" casually on my birthday.

I was immersed in her gentle stream, clumsily and frantically trying to respond. Looking back now, perhaps the only thing that moved her was that first tissue; everything else was just quite cute.

I never remembered the name of the band she liked because it was too long. I seem to have forgotten how to fold the Pikachu she taught me to make with sticky notes, too. Did she like eating shepherd's purse or hate it?

I was so cute back then, as if falling in love was just playing house, pretending to be an adult, completely unaware that I actually needed to grow up. I talked to her about the names of our future children, yet I had no concept of marriage. I talked to her about wanting to live by the sea in the future, but I never thought about how I wanted to make a living.

The "Two Tigers" she sang was about her and me; we were the same age, after all.

The cutest thing I ever did was, after a long talk she had with her family, I told her I would earn money to support her. I dropped out of school to find a part-time job, only for my mom to chase me to the restaurant where I was working and drag me home. Even that text message of several hundred words I sent her on the ride home that day was cute.

If I had known that was the last message that would get a response from her, would I have made it even more sentimental? Later, when I watched 5 Centimeters per Second and cried in my room until I couldn't breathe, I felt that distance was a damn twisted thing, keeping people who love each other apart.

I watched 5 Centimeters per Second again during the winter break this year, and finally, I felt that the story was meant to be that way. Distance never hindered people who loved each other. It was I who caused the plot to end so sloppily.

Later, I read some books and realized that the words in them were things she had already said to me. When I encountered a show I liked, I was shocked to realize she had already talked to me about it before. So many years before we met, she had already grown up so much. The couple profile picture she chose—I didn't recognize that couple until four years later. The message she left me—it took me five years to understand what it meant. Why couldn't I have met you a little later?

Sometimes I wonder, if I could go back to that time, if I could be a little less "cute," would I be able to read The Little Prince to our daughter with her?

But, if the me of today went back to that afternoon and handed her that tissue, she probably wouldn't have taken it at all.

I asked her why she liked me, and she said I was cute back then.