The selfish me, who
always knew only myself
The heartless me, who
didn’t even know your heart

Zitao opens his still sleepy eyes, waking up to yet another morning without her but it’s not going to be the same – it’s never going to be the same without her. He drags himself to the bathroom to wash up because he needs to move on.

‘If you can’t move on, move on some more.’

He wants to do that. Trust him, he really does. But how can he move on from that one person? How can he forget her when she gave him so much to remember?

“Tao, hurry up,” she calls him. She’s waving both of her frail hands in the air as she waits for him at the end of the tunnel. “Hurry up!”

He scratches the back of his head lazily and slowly runs towards her. “Why are you in such hurry?”

She smiles at him dearly – to dearly that it blinds him. “You’re meeting my parents tonight, aren’t you? We need to hurry. Mama’s cooking her specialty and I even asked Papa to come home early. Why aren’t you wearing those clothes I bought you?”

He just shrugs and puts both of his hands on his jacket’s pocket.

“Tao, why aren’t you wearing them?”

He doesn’t answer her.

“Tao, answer me, won’t you? Why aren’t you wearing them?”

“Heck, why are you nagging me about those stupid clothes?” Zi Tao exclaims exasperatedly. “If I didn’t wear them, it means I don’t like them! Do you understand?”

She slowly removes her arm that is tangled with his, looking at everywhere but his face. She bought those clothes with every last dime from her savings because she saw Tao looking at those expensive, sophisticated clothes once when they’re walking home from school. Those were her birthday present to him.

Zitao looks at his reflection in the mirror, wearing the clothes she gave him.

“I look handsome, don’t I?”

He goes out of the house, pausing just after his doorstep and letting a single snowflake fall on the glove she gave him along with the clothes. It is cold but isn’t it sad that it’s more cold in his heart than it is outside?

Eleven days before Christmas.