4+ years ago seems right. It might not have been that specific picture, but I do know I had a LJ icon made of that character (whoever she is) and may have used it as a forum avatar a bit. It was mostly to tweak at Nina/Akemi a bit as a (then-)Ovalisk avatar, since, as an avatar, it had the text "Hug me?" on it. :p
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Now, I went digging on the wayback machine, and found what is one of my first icons. I think, though, it wasn't the first -- I'm pretty sure I used "yume" (dream) rather than "ai" (love) for the first icon, but ... sadly not everything is archived..