Link's POV

Deku takes a sip from his coffee and nods his head. He asks his next question. "And how are the meditation exercises impacting your well-being?"

"Solid," I say, leaning back on his couch. This is like my 10th session with him this semester and I'm actually beginning to see improvements in my life. No more anger issues, no more fights. At least so far. Not sure if it's his doing though or if it's due to the fact that Ganon is locked up and Karusa has a broken leg.

"That's great to hear," Deku says, smiling with his eyes closed. "I'm glad those exercises are working for you and that you are refraining from violence. Meditation can be a valuable tool. But you already know that, as you have practiced it in the past. Now, let's discuss your academic performance."

"Let's not," I chuckle nervously.

"How did your midterms turn out?"

I shrug and look the other way. "I got an A- in Psych, way better than I expected."

"What about your major-related classes?"

"Passed them all," I say proudly but he doesn't seem impressed.

He just stays quiet. Typical Deku move: waiting for me to open up. He does that a lot. Whenever he's looking for a specific answer he just stares at me with that calm expression and waits until I come forward with it. Last time we sat here in full on silence for what felt like 10 minutes.

"Fine," I cave, "I got B's in my Sports Nutrition and Anatomy courses." But it's not good enough for him and he still doesn't say a word. I sigh. "And a C- in Kinesiology Research Methods." Still no response. "Okay, okay, I got a D on my astronomy exam. Happy?"

"Remember, Link, the appeal required a 3.2 GPA. Are you keeping up with that?"

"I'm trying! But c'mon, these classes are harder than they have to be. Astronomy's the worst of them all. Professor's a tough grader who deducts points for the smallest things. What kind of science teacher deducts points for misplaced commas? My girlfriend had him too and she agrees that he's a total jackass. I thought taking astronomy would be easier than chemistry or physics for my science requirements but I was wrong. So wrong! This one I might fail."

"Now, now, Link. Let's not give up that easily. Shall we look at some options together?"

"I could drop the class but it would show on my transcripts and push my graduation date. Which would mean I'd have to pay for another semester of tuition and fees!"

"Have you considered seeking external support?" he asks.

"Like the dean or president of the science department?" I ask, leaning closer as if Astor was listening to us somehow. I whisper, "To get Astor fired?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of a tutor."

I plunge back into the couch and groan. "A tutor?"

Deku looks thoughtful. "A tutor could be a strategic move, Link. It's not about weakness; it's a smart play that reflects your commitment."

He's trying to talk like a coach to me in hopes I'll give it a shot. Nice try, Doc.

"If you want to use sports talk on me, let me ask you this: if the referee is biased and gives red cards to the blue team because he hates them, but he lets the red team score points because he likes them, what do you think will fix the situation? Do you think the blue team just needs to train harder, or do you think the ref should get off the field?"

He smiles at my metaphor. "I understand that it may be frustrating when a professor appears biased. But let's give the tutoring a shot, okay?"

"Fine..."

His smile stays on his wrinkled face. "While we're on the topic, let's discuss another topic: sports."

I feel tense just at the mention of sports. I think the last time I touched a ball was in Japan. And I lost against kids. Little kids.

"Have you thought about returning to sports?"

Being a pro-athlete, representing Japan in soccer and HU in baseball, and dominating the fencing scene... it's taken a toll.

"No," I answer.

"You haven't considered it?"

"No, I'm not going back," I say and he looks surprised. "Look, Doc, it's a lot. The pressure, the expectations, the injuries... The hatred. Not sure if I'm ready for that hustle again."

"I wasn't necessarily referring to joining a team. Have you considered doing sports for fun?"

"What's the point in that?" I ask.

He looks at me for a few seconds as if I know the answer. But I don't, so he is forced to reveal: "Fun."

"Sports was never fun."

"Never?" he calls me out.

"Well not since I was a kid." A little kid.

"Link, may I ask you... Why did you perform sports in the first place?"

"Because it made people happy when I won. And I won a lot."

"So you did it for others?"

"I guess so."

"Did you ever enjoy a sport where you didn't win?"

I consider all the sports I've played. "Fencing was always fun. Same with tennis and snowboarding. But I still usually won."

He nods. "It's natural to feel hesitant about it, considering your history. But sports used to be your sanctuary, your happy place. Perhaps it could be good for your mental health to return to it. For fun."

"Fun..." I repeat like it's a new word in my vocab.

"Link, it's not always about winning," he says with a comforting look.

"I know that."

"Do you ever miss it?"

"I don't know. Sometimes, yes, other times it literally gives me nightmares."

"What kind of nightmares?"

"Like I'm back in the game and everyone's cheering me on and then I fail or get injured. Or I'm unprepared and forgot to bring my jersey or gear. Or I'm playing against Ganondorf instead of the team. Or Zelda is in the stands but on the wrong side of the stadium and... Let's just say it's been a lot of sleepless nights lately. And then I pass out in class. Might tie in with my low grades."

"Rediscover the joy in sports without the weight of expectations might just be the remedy your mind needs."

I sit back, letting his words sink in.

Fun, huh?

I don't know if it can even be fun anymore after everything that has happened. I don't think I'll ever want to play baseball again or even touch a bat. But after a moment, I nod, agreeing to at least think about it.

"Good," Deku says, his smile hopeful. "Maybe it's time to let sports be a source of joy again. No pressure, no expectations." He checks his watch and I already know what that means. "Is there anything you wish to discuss before we wrap up our session?"

"Not really."

"Okay. Well, I'll see you again right after Thanksgiving break. Are you doing anything fun over the weekend?"

"Me and my friends are going to Mammoth Lakes up north."

"That sounds delightful. Enjoy the retreat with your friends, Link."

"Alright, Great Deku. See ya after Thanksgiving."

"And do look into finding a tutor for astronomy," he says when I'm already on my way out. I pretend I didn't hear him.

When I exit the building, I pull up my phone to see if Zelda texted me. No new messages from her. I wonder how her talk with her dad went.

The sky is vibrant today with the sun so bright that I can barely see the screen. I open Zelda's chat to check in on her while I walk toward the parking lot. Before I can hit send, a hand wraps around my arm, holding me back.

My first thought is Ganon. My second thought is groupie. But thankfully it's neither.

"Hey there," Zelda says, smiling at me with her arms tightening around mine. "You walked right past me," she giggles.

"Sorry, I didn't see you," I say surprised. "The sun was blinding me. I was actually just about to text you."

She continues to smile at me, then she goes in for a quick kiss and a tight hug.

"How did it go with Dr. Deku?" She asks.

"Chill as always. What about you and your dad?"

We continue down the trail to the parking lot. She tells me that the talk with her dad went better than expected. Just like my Psych midterm.

"It just felt good to say a lot of things I've been dying to tell him," she says. "I honestly don't know if it changed anything or if he was even fully listening to me, but I said my piece and now we'll have to wait and see how he takes it."

"He didn't say anything at all?" I ask.

"He sort of admitted to his plans with Ramses and Penn. And he apologized."

I can't tell her how much it sucks that her dad tried to set her up with another rich kid but it's good that he at least apologized. I guess there's not much I can do about it anyway other than proving to him that I'm going to be a much better husband than that Rambutan guy could ever be.

"Anyway," she continues, "It's better that he didn't say too much. We Hyrules are known to be pretty impulsive in such situations, so I'm glad he just listened for once without interrupting me constantly. I think your advice helped a lot: making him speechless beforehand."

I snap my head at her in disbelief. "You really told him we were getting married?" I ask in shock. "I meant it more as a joke when I told you to get back at him, I didn't think you were actually going to go through with it!"

"Well it worked," she giggles. "I actually told him I was going to marry Ramses, not you."

"Why him?"

"Because I didn't want him to interrupt me and prohibit it. Think about it... If I had told him we are getting married, he would have thrown a fit. But if it was Ramses, a man he was trying to pair me with, he would be too torn to object."

"I guess, yeah. How'd he react?"

"He didn't pop any champagne."

"Did he yell?"

Zelda starts to laugh, "When I told him I was pregnant, he lost the ability to speak in proper sentences!"

"You told him you were pregnant!" I gasp, holding my own laughter. "From Rummy?!"

"Ramses," she corrects me in between her laughter. "Father looked like a ghost, Link! It was almost scary how pale he got."

"After what he pulled with you and Ramster, he deserved a little scare."

She goes into detail, describing her dad's face and how he stutters every word he tried to say. Man, I just wish I could've been there to see it.

We reach the parking lot. I lean against my bike, holding her hand and caressing her thumb while we chat for a bit.

"So, I was thinking," she says after she's done laughing. "Do you want to come over tonight? Father is gone for business this week so you could spend the night if you'd like. We could order pizza, watch a movie, or play video games. Or tennis? We haven't played for a while. We can go swimming too."

"Wow, Zelda, are you asking me on a date?" I smile.

She smiles right back at me, brushing her thumbs over the scars on my knuckles. "Would you like that?"

"I'd love that." I lift her hands up to my lips to place a kiss. "But what about Malice? Isn't she staying in your room?"

"She can spend the night in the guest bedroom."

"All alone?" I question hesitant.

"Alone? Of course not! You'll be sharing the room with her again," Zelda says with a straight face.

"Nah! You couldn't pay me to share the room with her again! I'd rather sleep on the street!"

Zelda smirks and rolls her eyes. "I'm just kidding, Link. Malice isn't experiencing withdrawal anymore and has been sleeping soundly most nights. She'll be fine by herself for one night."

"If you say so."

"It'll be fine. Let's just have a good night without worrying about her, okay?"

I nod in agreement. I'm so down to just spend the night with her. Feels like we haven't done that in forever.

We kiss goodbye, then Zelda heads across the parking lot toward her car. I stay behind for a few minutes, trying to untangle my white headphones. I give up midway and just play music through the knots and hoops. Then I strap on my helmet and drive up the hills to her house. She may have had a head start, but I get to skip all the traffic and end up beating her to her own house.

Malice's POV

I flip to the last page of the book, feeling bored and hungry and thirsty and sleepy. This book was so lame! I wish Zelda wasn't such a paranoid control freak.

'You can't make any noise!' she said when I asked if I could watch something on her iPad while she's at school.

'Come the fuck on,' I groaned. 'I will keep the volume to its bare minimum!'

'Just read some books, it'll be good for you,' she told me with an unnecessary gesture at her book shelves. As if I didn't know it was there. As if I didn't spend every minute of the past month in her bedroom.

'I've already read all the books in your room,' I told her but she laughed in disbelief.

'If that's so,' she shrugged with a complacent smirk, 'there is an entire library downstairs with many more books for you to read. Which genre would you like me to pick out for you?'

'Horror,' was the first thing to come to mind, and so before she left for school this morning, she gave me a whole stack of new books to read.

In excessive boredom, I drop the book on the rub and hold my breath for a moment, becoming as quiet as the human body can, like a corpse, listening for any noise in the hallway. A few seconds of silence later, I quietly open the door and peek out of Zelda's room. There's nobody. Nobody at all.

My growling stomach is tempting me to make a trip to the kitchen, but I really shouldn't leave the room. Zelda should be home soon anyway, and then she'll bring me something to eat.

I quietly close the door and walk over to the large windows to distract myself from the nausea that always accompanies the thought of food. No staff in sight, only a magpie perched by the poolside. It's collecting the leaves swept up and ensnared in the skimmers. Those leaves are dead and drenched in chlorine, but the bird doesn't seem to give a shit. It continues its task, gathering as many leaves as its slender beak can hold. Then, in a graceful motion, it takes flight, darting across the pool, the tennis court, over the hedges, and down the valley nestled between the glowing hills of South Cal. The sun is already setting again, weaving autumn riches of reds and yellows that make the landscape appear on fire. If it were, the sky would be black and ash would fall like snow.

Isn't it kinda weird how sunsets are so different from sunrises but at the same time they are basically the same thing? I guess they kind of are; the sun needs to set to rise somewhere else.

When Zelda brought me these stacks of books this morning, the sky had all the same colors as it does now, but it was upside down. If Pike were here, he'd say some bullshit like "that's just how life is sometimes. It's the opposite but in parallel waves." 

I don't know—he'd make it sound like it actually makes sense. For example, I don't actually like horror; the authors always fail to capture the true experience of fear. They write stories about death, but they have never known nor will they ever know what it's like to die. To suddenly become aware of your very last breath and having to settle on one last thought. To be so very sure of your own death that you feel like you've never been fully sure of anything until that very moment when you realize that you will cease to exist once you shut your eyes for good. You try to keep them open for as long as you can, but your body's instinct is to blink, and sooner or later, you will.

Now here's the parallel wave: while I hate horror, it does make me happy to read about death because I think to myself if this really is what death is like, then I must still be alive. So it reminds me that I haven't died yet.

But this only works if the author writes about death, not dying. Because, while nobody knows what it's like to die, there are some people, the really unlucky ones, who know what it's like to be dead even without having died.

I call those people dead sparrows. They understand what it's like to feel dead, to want to die. They've stood at the edge of a building before. They know what it's like to spread your arms like wings, yearning to feel weightless. They know what it's like to hope for the wind or for gravity to push and pull you down because your muscles will fight your every attempt to take that tiny step forward.

One tiny step. That's all it takes. But something ties them to the ground, something that prevents them from leaping off the edge. People tend to think that 'something' has got to be big. Big enough to keep a person alive. But all it really takes is something heavier than the feathers of those waiting wings.

As much as we want to be sparrows, humans are too heavy to fly. Something will always pull us down. Like a bird born in a cage. That bird will never fly, because like humans, it never learned how. So when given the choice, we, too, choose not to fly. Even on the day when the door of that cage opens wide.

Dying is a little easier when you're not given a choice. A lot easier. And it is precisely because it's so much easier that most authors don't bother giving their characters a choice. Just like most humans don't get a choice.

Echoes of a male voice swim through the back of my mind as I watch the bird fly off and disappear behind the blazing hills and nearby mansions. The voice calls my name. I can't tell if he's angry or if he's worried. I can't tell if it's Ganon or Karusa. As I lower my gaze, the sound becomes clearer and louder, pulling my eyes away from the sky until I hear a very sharp, "Malice?" in the tone of Link's voice.

I turn around to find him standing next to Zelda by the door.

"How long have you been standing there?" I ask.

"Ten seconds? Did you not hear us?" Link replies.

"No."

"Are you okay?" Zelda asks. "You seem out of it."

"Maybe she's high," Link says, scanning me cautiously.

Then, before I can explain, something alarming takes over Zelda's face and she storms toward the night stand, pulls the drawer so hard that it almost flies off, and pushes her entire arm inside to pull out the little orange pill bottle. She counts the pills inside the bottle carefully, then she lets out a sigh.

"I thought..." she says, breathing in deeply with relief, "Never mind."

I roll my eyes at her. "I'm not going to off myself with painkillers!"

Link's eyes meet mine briefly, but escape to the other corner of the room hoping I wouldn't notice it.

"What was that look for?" I ask him.

Zelda turns to Link, studying his whole body for a look that isn't there anymore. She chooses not to question it and changes the topic instead. "Are you going like that or do you need to change?"

Link shrugs with his hands in the pockets of his athletic shorts. "I'm good to go like this."

"Where are you guys going?" I ask them.

"We're going to play some tennis," Zelda says.

"You play tennis?"

"I try," she says with an awkward smile. "Er... would... Would you like to join us?"

Link looks as surprised as me and as nauseous as I feel. "Join you guys for tennis?" I say with a mocking chortle. "This is a trick question, right?"

Zelda shakes her head.

"What if someone sees me?"

"My father is gone until Thursday night."

"And the staff?"

"Most of them are gone. And if someone sees you, they will think two friends of mine are visiting. It has happened before, and nobody complained."

I sneak a peek at Link with a look of confusion in my eyes, as if asking him silently to confirm whether Zelda is for real right now.

"Guess it's just you and me," Link says without a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"Come on," Zelda bids with a smile that I don't deserve. "You haven't set foot outside in weeks. Don't you long for some fresh air?" She follows my eyes to the window, sensing that I'm not quite convinced yet. "You've been cooped up in here for so long, don't your legs ache to move?"

Of course they do. Every step I've taken here was on tippy toes. It would feel incredible to breathe in the autumn air for the first time this year, to let the breeze touch my skin. But I just can't risk getting caught by anyone. Even if she says it's safe. If Ganondorf finds out I'm here, I'm dead. And so are they.

"You are nervous," Zelda says.

"I'm not nervous."

"Of course you are. You're nervous that Ganondorf will find you. But nothing will happen to you as long as Link and I are by your side," she says. "I promise."

"You know how I feel about promises..."

Zelda doesn't say anything in return. She just waits a few seconds to see if my eyes will notice her inviting smile. I choose to look the other way. I expected her to push me until I say yes, but she just leaves it at that.

"If you change your mind," she says gently, "you know where to find us."

"I can't play tennis," I say as soon as she turns around.

"Link can teach you."

"I mean..." I clench my fists. "I can't play tennis."

Zelda, facing me again, tries to understand what I mean by that. She takes a few seconds to think about my words but she doesn't take any guesses, because she knows I will snap at her if she gets it wrong.

"Malice," she says with a carefree ring to her voice, "did you know that bumblebees are too heavy to fly?"

My eyes are as if pulled by her words, and nothing, not even the setting sun with all its colors and wonders, could avert my gaze.

"What?"

It's such a random thing to say, but just the mere mention of flying keeps my eyes locked in place. Could it be a coincidence?

Zelda explains, "The size and weight of bumblebees make flight impossible according to traditional aerodynamic principles. The only reason they fly is because nobody ever told them that they can't."

"Is that true?" I ask skeptically. "That sounds like a bunch of bullshit."

"Only one way to find out," she says, still holding that smile of hope, as if it was my responsibility to prove her right.

"I don't want to fly," I say. "I'm no bumblebee."

"Sure you are."

Holding her gaze, I tell her honestly. "I'm a sparrow."

Zelda's smile turns sincere, as if somehow I did prove her right. "You're a bumblebee. You just don't know it yet."

Link stifles a laugh. I don't blame him. I want to laugh at her too. But something inside of me hurts so bad from her words that I can't bring myself to return a snarky comment.

"It's okay if you don't know how to fly, as long as you don't believe that you can't," Zelda concludes before she leaves the room with Link.

I stay behind. Left alone, I remain standing by the window, watching the dimming landscape until Link and Zelda reappear below me, walking hand in hand toward the lit tennis court.

One tiny step, I think to myself. That's all it takes.

Like the wind and gravity, I've been pushing and pulling. My feet so close to the edge of the window, I aim my eyes at the distant ground. Maybe it's time to leave the cage. It's scary to leap off the edge, and though my muscles fight my every attempt to take that tiny step forward, I finally do.

I step away from the window and leave the room for the first time in weeks. And moments later, I breathe in the fresh air and feel the breeze against my skin. Half-determined and scared to death, I join Link and Zelda on the court to find out if I can fly. 

---

It's almost May, guys!! I have three more final exams and then I'm done with the semester! Can't wait to start summer break and write/draw every day!!!

Do you have any fun summer plans? I'm gonna travel to Europe!!!! I'm sooo excited!