"Zelda!"

She woke up to find Anju standing over her, shaking her by the shoulder while repeating her name over and over.

"Yes?" Zelda mumbled, though she doubted that Anju understood any of it.

"You forgot to set your alarm clock, I just woke up!"

That made Zelda wake up. In an instant, she had sat up in her bed, her heart already beating frantically at the thought of being late for class.

"What?" Zelda exclaimed. She would have liked to say that she remained calm, but that would have been nothing but a lie; her voice was shaking, and she instinctively looked over at the window, only for her stomach to sink towards the floor as she saw the rays of sun coming in through the thin curtains.

"You were already asleep when I came back here last night, and I thought that you had set your alarm clock so I just let you sleep—"

"No, no, I got that," Zelda said, swinging her legs out of the bed, the rest of her body following. For a few seconds, the room was spinning. She had gotten up way too fast, but right then, Zelda didn't care at all. Instead, she stumbled into the bathroom, trying to force her eyes to adapt to the harsh, white light quicker than they wanted to as she searched for her toothbrush.

"How much time do I have?" she yelled through the door while forcing the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube.

"Well, you have about thirty-five minutes until we have to be in class—I have already texted Midna and Cremia not to wait for us, don't worry about it!" Anju yelled back, adding the last half when she noticed Zelda walking over to grab her phone.

It was only due to the fact that Zelda decided that not being late for her class was more important than personal hygiene and skipped her bath that she and Anju actually managed to run into the dining hall with a whole ten minutes left to eat breakfast before they had to sit in their seats in their classroom. About halfway through brushing her teeth, Zelda had woken up enough to realise that Anju was not leaving despite being much quicker to get ready than herself. Without really asking her, Zelda realised that Anju was waiting for her, the realisation making her have to stop for a few seconds to really absorb the fact that Anju was risking being late as well, before she hurried even more to not make Anju miss the class as well.

The dining hall was almost empty when they arrived. There were a couple of first-years who had not yet learnt that finding their classrooms was a bit of a puzzle due to the school's lack of logical naming systems for the rooms still sitting at one of the tables, gleefully unaware exactly how much they had to hurry if they wanted to get to class on time. But of course they weren't the only ones still left in the dining hall.

Sitting at their usual table in the far end of the dining hall, Zelda spotted Midna and Cremia looking over at her and Anju as they came racing into the room, Anju doing her best to adjust her hair while running.

Zelda came over to join Midna and Cremia at their table, Midna getting up to hand her a cup of steaming hot coffee.

"Anju wrote that you were running late," she said as Zelda accepted the cup with a smile, "so I thought that you might be tired when you would show up."

"Midna, you've just saved my life, thank you!"

They didn't exactly have time to eat a filling and nutritious breakfast and when they arrived back in time for lunch, Zelda could feel that her stomach had not been satisfied with the few mouthfuls of porridge she had found time to eat, but thanks to the coffee, at least she didn't fall asleep during class.

"Okay, everyone, we need to figure out who will be responsible for baking what, so if I read what cakes we have the ingredients for, then people can volunteer to bake whatever they want. I'm thinking groups of two or three will be the best for this, and remember: the better the cake, the more money we will make, and the better costumes the musical will have," Thelma said as she guided them all down towards the kitchen later that day.

She was walking with a lot more energy in her steps than Zelda thought was fair considering that most of the students following her looked like they just wanted to go back to sleep. As Zelda looked around, she got the feeling the Link was the only one who was actually looking forward to having to bake cakes to sell to their parents in the evening. Creating a stark contrast between him and the other students, the rest of the group where most of the students—Zelda included—were either yawning or clutching their cups of coffee like their life depended on it, while Link was chatting with Mipha, occasionally laughing loudly.

The staircase in the entrance hall creaked under them and a few of the first-year students looked down at the planks under their feet like they feared they could fall right through, edging towards the sides of the stairs to grab the rails, slowing them all down. But Thelma just continued walking at a pace that was just a little too quick for most of them, seemingly completely unaware that most of the students were not right behind her anymore. But still, they made it into the kitchen without losing anyone along the way.

Going over to stand in front of them all as the last couple of students entered the room and went to hide towards the back of the group, Thelma took in the sorry sight of the sleepy group. "Now, I know that you are all hoping for us to earn as much money at this bake sale as we can," Thelma began, retrieving a piece of paper from her pocket, "so I won't talk for too long so that we will end up not having enough time to actually bake the cakes. But I just wanted to remind all of you that this is not only a way to raise money for the musical, it's also a way for you to get to know each other, so maybe don't pick a partner that you already work together with every day." Zelda was almost completely sure that she saw Thelma look over at Anju and Cremia at that before she cleared her throat. "Good, now that's out of the way, we can begin to decide who will bake what. The first cake on my list is carrot cake, who wants to bake that?"

From the back of the group, Hilda and Ilia stepped forward. "We can do that, Hilda and I" Ilia said.

"Ilia and Hilda, carrot cake," Thelma mumbled to herself while writing something on her sheet of paper before looking back up, "Okay, you can do that over there," she pointed towards the table closest to her, "all of the ingredients are in the fridge, here is the recipe."

Hilda took the paper with the recipe on and went over to the table, Ilia following right behind her. Zelda looked at them, trying to decipher if perhaps Ilia had told Hilda. She wasn't really the best at that kind of thing, reading how people she did not already know were feeling, figuring out if people were together or not without them explicitly telling her—it had taken her months before she had figured out that the reason Anju had sometimes told her that she wanted to go to Kakariko with Cremia and only Cremia wasn't that Anju was bitter she had ended up having to share her dorm with Zelda, but rather that they had gone on a date—but she was pretty sure from the way that Hilda and Ilia were giggling at each other and standing just a bit closer at the table than necessary considering how they had plenty of space, that Ilia had told her something.

After she had made sure that Hilda and Ilia had understood what they were supposed to do, Thelma continued reading from her list. "And who'll make the chocolate cake?"

"That's an easy one, we can do that," Midna whispered to Zelda. Before Zelda had time to do anything and ask Midna if they didn't exactly qualify as 'people who already work together every day,' Midna had declared that she and Zelda could take care of the chocolate cake.

Thelma raised an eyebrow, and Zelda could see how she was agreeing with her on the fact that Zelda and Midna probably already knew each other pretty well. But after a couple of seconds of tense silence of Midna attempting to sway Thelma by sending her her brightest smile, Thelma just sighed and told them to stand on the opposite side of the table that Hilda and Ilia were standing at.

While being dragged behind Midna over to the table, Midna almost immediately dashing over to get the ingredients and the recipe, Zelda noticed how letting her and Midna work together had seemingly been the end for Thelma's idea of using the bake sale to bring people together and make them talk with someone they didn't usually hang out with as both Anju and Cremia as well as Link and Mipha used the same tactic of volunteering for a cake together and then smiling at Thelma. She couldn't help but feel a bit bad for the role she had played in that, but the feeling soon went away as Midna returned with arms full of milk, egg, sugar, flour, everything, having attempted to bring all of the ingredients back to the table in one go. Zelda had to hurry to catch a carton of milk as it slipped out of Midna's hand.

"Have you ever heard of this concept that's called 'don't try to take more at a time than you can actually carry'?" she asked after having just managed to save the milk in time.

"I have, but why waste our valuable time with that? Do you really think that if you ask someone on their deathbed what they are happy they did when they were younger, they would answer that they are glad that they always went back twice each time they had to transport anything from one place to another?" Midna said, placing the recipe between her and Zelda. "Because I know that I just want to get this over with."

"Oh, so it has nothing to do with you being lazy, it's just a question of your philosophy in life?"

"Perhaps," Midna replied with a smirk, "but since we have to do this, could you tell me what we're supposed to start off by doing?"

"Sure."

Zelda leant in over the page detailing just how they were supposed to add the ingredients and in what order the things should go into the bowl. It didn't take more than reading a couple of lines before Zelda realised that it was a completely different recipe, a completely different way of making chocolate cake than she had ever tried before. It seemed that the case was the same for Midna, at least if the two times that Zelda had to stop her from pouring the sugar in too early were anything to go by. The fact that she wasn't really sure exactly how the dough was supposed to look at the different stages of mixing the ingredients together was slowly making Zelda feel just a little bit stressed out over the entire thing. But at least she had Midna to count on, even if her friend was perhaps not the best and taking time to read through the recipe before doing anything.

When Zelda began to pour the dough up into the baking tin—the only one she had been able to find—stopping halfway through to go back and read the recipe again just to make sure that she had remembered everything, and Midna reached out to stop her, reminding her that she had already done that plenty of times and that there was nothing she could do now, should it turn out that they had forgotten something, Zelda was quite relieved that Midna had ruined Thelma's plans for making them all partner up with someone they didn't know beforehand.

And luckily, it seemed that she had not forgotten to add any of the ingredients, or at least the cake began to rise once in the oven exactly like the kind of chocolate cakes Zelda had used to bake with Tetra back at home, and as both Zelda and Midna crouched down to observe the process of the cake slowly looking less and less like dough, instead resembling the ones Zelda had baked at home, the entire idea of baking cakes while at school was beginning to seem less and less like it had been crafted only to make them feel as uncomfortable as possible.

Once all of the cakes had gotten done baking, Thelma made them carry all of them out to the tables that had been set up right outside the front door of the school, insisting that each team should carry the cake they had helped made. And for once, no one tried to argue or change partners. Zelda was pretty sure that part of it could be attributed to the fact that Thelma had spent the last twenty minutes pacing around the room, trying to tell them that everything was perfectly fine, despite it being clear to everyone that she was constantly looking at her watch and then over at the cakes while trying to figure out if they would get done in time for the parents to arrive.

But as Midna placed the cake down on the table, Zelda removing the dishtowel she had used to shield the cake from rain in the time it had taken Midna to get from the front door and over under the little tent that provided cover from the rain, they were still the only ones out there, no parents in sight yet.

"We made it." Thelma said with a relieved sigh as Link walked over to the last table, balancing with a tray of muffins. For a moment, she just looked at them like she had actually not thought they would manage to get so far, and then she got back to her usual cheerful behaviour. "So what you will have to do now is that you are responsible for the cake you have made, so you'll be in the exact same groups as earlier. I'm sure most of you are happy with that." she sent a glance towards a few of them. Zelda was sure that, had it not been for Thelma's little smile, she would have decided right then and there that bake sale was the worst and that she would never do anything like it ever again. Luckily, Thelma did smile. "The price is the same no matter what kind of cake your parents are interested in—ten Rupees to be exact—so just remember that and it can't go too wrong. Okay, according to my watch, there shouldn't be more than maybe five minutes until your parents will begin to arrive, and perhaps some of them will be a little early, so there's no point of having all of you go inside to wait for them."

Just as Thelma finished speaking, a car came around the corner, almost like it was trying to prove her point. One of the first-year students began to wave and Zelda could see how the woman driving the car—probably their mother—waved back before the car continued along the road heading towards the parking ground behind the school building itself.

They didn't have any chairs to sit on, and while Zelda decided to just stand up, Midna placed her hands on the edge of the table in front of them, shifting her weight to lean in over it.

"Okay," she said, looking over towards the school, "not that I don't enjoy spending time with you, Zelda, but I don't see why we have to stand out here in the rain without a chair to sit on when we could do all of this inside in the entrance hall. The result would be the same as it is now. Since the parents would come in through the front door, they would all be there to see our amazing baking skills," she gestured towards the cake in front of them. One half of it had seemingly lost all of the air in the cake, making the top of the cake tilt to one side, "so it's not like we won't make as much money as we will by standing out here ."

"Perhaps it's to bring us closer together."

"How?"

"Well, you know, sometimes when people have been really cold together, they just… become better friends. There has to be something about it, why else would people decide to do stuff like trying to survive a weekend completely alone in a forest together? It has to be some sort of group exercise."

The very first customer had arrived and from the way that she immediately headed over the waving first-year student's table, Zelda was sure that the lady was the mother of the student.

Seeming quite relieved that they had not yet gotten their first customer yet, Midna shrugged. "But why even bother with a group exercise. The entire musical team is made up of this tiny group of people who have been in the club since their very first year here."

"I think you're forgetting me. I didn't join until this year."

"Oh yeah, sorry," Midna said, "you're right; it's made up of this group of people who have decided to suffer together and then you, someone who had otherwise managed to stay out of that despite all of your friends spending most of their spare time singing songs dangerously close to you. Speaking of which, why did you decide to join just now?"

"I don't know… I think that there was just something about this musical that really spoke to me, I guess. I don't really know, from what you and Anju and Cremia have told me about being in the school musical… it just sounded like it was something you were looking forward to more than anything." Zelda paused to look over at the other people. The stream of parents walking over towards the front door of the school, passing all of the tables with cake in the process, had increased, and most of them made sure to stop at a table to buy a piece of cake, a few of them pausing to chat with the students selling the cake before heading over to the school.

"Something in this musical spoke to you?" Midna repeated. "Hopefully, you are not planning to shed your divinity while I die in your arms and you mourn me."

Zelda laughed, the sound making the team at the table next to them turn around to look over at her. "No, at that point in the musical, you would already be dead, and I would already have left you."

"I see that joining the musical group hasn't robbed you of your title as the smartest one in school." Midna said, nudging Zelda.

"No, I couldn't let it do that, you know that would mean I would not be allowed to continue being in the musical."

"Nah, you need to actually fail your classes before they would threaten to not let you be here, trust me on that one. But for what it is worth, I'm happy that you are so determined not to let it happen, you know. I do enjoy spending time with you in rehearsal. You're a great Hylia."

Her face and ears were feeling warmer than they normally did; something Zelda knew meant that she was turning red. But before she had the chance to answer Midna, to tell her that she also liked being in rehearsal with her, it seemed that some of the parents had finally realised that chocolate cake was amazing even if the shape of the cake itself was not exactly perfect, as they suddenly got very busy with handing pieces of cakes wrapped in napkins over the table and counting Rupees. Zelda managed to let it turn into a rhythm of saying hello and thank you to the different people, doing it so automatically that it took her a moment before she realised that both her mum and dad had also arrived and were standing right in front of her asking for the price of a piece of cake.

"It's ten Rupees per piece," Midna told them, shooting Zelda a look like she couldn't believe that she hadn't noticed her parents arriving. To be completely honest, Zelda was also a bit perplexed by that. She hadn't exactly watched what cars had arrived, but she'd thought she wouldn't have to; with her parents insisting that a light blue car was the epitome of style, she had been sure she would be able to spot it the second it would turn around the corner. Apparently that was not the case.

"Then we'd like two pieces, thank you," Daphnes said, smiling as Midna accepted the Rupee and handed him the two pieces of cake in return.

"So," Impa said, looking over her shoulder, "it seems that we won't be in anybody's way over here, so let me ask you two, how has it been here? How's it going with the musical?"

"Oh, it's been going well, really well, in fact. You should see Zelda when we are in rehearsal; she really has quite a voice," Midna said, beaming at Zelda, "I mean, I knew that she was good and all that since she has a habit of singing when she thinks other people can't hear it even though they actually can, but I didn't know that she could also sing well when she knew other people were listening as well."

Impa looked over at Zelda with a look in her eyes that Zelda couldn't read. But then it was gone as Impa smiled at Midna. "Yeah, she has always been like that. You know, when she was little—back before you met her—she used to have these singing competitions, only she was the only one there so she was both the contestants and the judges, and then she'd just do different voices for the different contestants she would make up. I asked her if she was thinking about making her own talent show a couple of times, but she said that it was a secret. But since you could still hear her even if you were sitting in the living room, it really wasn't that big of a secret."

Midna began to laugh while Zelda just stared at her mother with a horrified look. "Mum! You can't just tell all of my secrets like that, especially not to my friends!"

"Sorry, Sweetheart," her mum said, though the laugh that followed the apology instantly made Zelda doubt that she actually meant it, "but it's just too sweet of a story not to share with other people." Right as Zelda was about to open her mouth to announce that that did still not mean that she could just tell her friends about some embarrassing thing she had done as a child, her mother looked over towards the school, gesturing towards Daphnes. "And I think we have to leave now. We have to find out if you are doing well in school, don't we? We don't want you not being able to be in the musical anymore just because your grades have dropped." and with that, Zelda's mother turned around and began to walk up towards the front door of the school, Daphnes following right behind her.

"Don't worry, Impa," Midna called out after her, "Zelda is still a genius!" she took a step back as Zelda pretended to punch her on the shoulder, still laughing at her. "What? It's the truth, you are a genius. And a short one at that, way too short to have a chance of hitting me on the shoulder!"

After Zelda's mum and dad had left, the amount of parents arriving began to taper off and just about half an hour later, Thelma announced that there was no point in waiting anymore to see if there was anyone who had been really late, telling them all to pack up and that any leftover cake should go in the fridge in the kitchen. Zelda didn't miss the way she stared over at Link as she added that they were under no circumstances supposed to try to eat the rest of the cake, making Link shrug his shoulders with an apologetic look on his face.

"If I take the cake, will you hold the doors for me?" Midna asked, making Zelda look back over at her.

"Of course."

There was quite a bit of pushing and shoving each other while being careful about not putting the cakes at risk of being dropped as they all tried to be the first to get to the kitchen and put their cake away, Zelda almost falling over as some tiny first-year students had pushed her way harder than Zelda would have thought she'd be capable of. As she rubbed the point on her arm where the girl's elbow had hit her, Midna just looked down at her with a small smile on her lips, allowing everyone to walk straight past her.

"Are you laughing at my pain?" Zelda asked, trying to sound hurt.

"Nope, but I am finding it hilarious how you just got pushed over by someone who's a lot smaller than you. I mean, Saria would kill me if she ever heard me call her small, but fact is that even you are taller than her."

"And now you've insulted us both, well done," Zelda laughed as she got back up, walking over to open the door leading into the kitchen for Midna.

Luckily, there was still a little bit of space left in the fridge for their half-eaten, slightly squished chocolate cake, even though they were the last team to get into the kitchen. But at least they were not the very last persons to get there. As Zelda looked at the rest of the students, she could see that none of them were moving to leave the kitchen. Instead, a few of them were leaning against the counters or sitting on the floor, clearly waiting for something. And even when Midna seemed to be confident that the leftover chocolate cake would not fall out of the fridge, slamming the fridge door behind her, she didn't take a single step towards the door.

"Thelma is going to tell us how it went," Midna said when she noticed Zelda's puzzled look, "hopefully, we've made more than we did last year. That year was a total disaster, we hadn't thought about the fact that it could begin raining, so we didn't have tents, and the cakes got ruined."

"Yeah, that definitely doesn't sound good," Zelda agreed.

"It wasn't., but, hey, we still sold more than we would have had it not been for the fact that we were selling the cakes to our parents. The joys of raising money through your parents, I guess."

A couple of minutes passed, people chatting softly, before Thelma stepped into the room, looking at them with a wide smile.

"Are anyone excited to see how it went for us today?" she didn't wait for them to answer before continuing. "Now, we have only had time to count the money once, so the real amount might turn out to be a little higher or lower once we have time to recount. But as of right now, it looks like we've raised a little over two thousand Rupees." there was the sound of people clapping. Midna even let out a little victorious yell before turning around to hug Zelda. From her spot in the middle of the crowd of happy students, Thelma went quiet, though her face revealed that she was just as excited as they were. "Yeah, it's really something, and I'm so proud of all of you. Just keep up the good work from now on, and I'm sure that this year's musical will be a success. And on that note, I think it's time for you guys to be allowed to get out of here so that you can have some time to calm down before some of you will have to see me again tomorrow for rehearsal."

The otherwise calm atmosphere in the room instantly disappeared, the sound of multiple shoes scrapping against the floor as all of the students got up taking its place instead. Zelda hadn't exactly been prepared for them to be allowed to leave so soon after finishing the bake sale. The opposite seemed to be the case for Midna, who gave Zelda a lopsided grin as she took her hand and began to push her way through the crowd to get out of the kitchen, making her way up the stairs leading to the dorms.

Somewhere about halfway up the staircase, they heard some call their names, making Midna instantly stop and Zelda bump into her, almost falling back down before Midna caught her. They turned around to see Anju and Cremia stand at the foot of the stairs, looking up at them.

"Oops, sorry, Zelda," Anju laughed as she and Cremia ran up to join them, "I didn't think your reflexes were so much slower than Midna's"

"It's fine. But let's get going."

Without really talking about it, they all began to head towards Zelda and Anju's dorm.

Zelda didn't know about the others, but personally, she knew that she had a Hylian essay waiting for her, one that would be great to be done with so that she would not have to spend time thinking about it during the weekend. It seemed, however, that the rest of her friends either didn't think about it or just simply did not share her opinion on the issue, as the moment Cremia had closed the door to the room behind them, Midna walked straight over to Zelda's bed and flopped down onto her back, letting out a dramatic sigh. And although there were a bit more discrete about it and they actually went to sit down on the chairs next to the desks, Anju and Cremia didn't exactly look like they were about to begin doing their homework either.

"Nayru, I'm tired. Being outside in the rain sucks!" Midna declared from her spot on Zelda's bed.

"Funny how you seemed to have completely forgotten about that the entire time you actually were out there," Zelda commented.

"No I didn't forget about it, spending time with you just made the rain worth it."

Zelda didn't know how to respond to that. Taking a step back, she could feel the familiar sense of her cheeks turning red.

"Oh…" Zelda said, noticing how Cremia and Anju were looking at each other, a twinkle in their eyes.

"Yeah, don't get too used to me not complaining," Midna said, "because I know that I will definitely be complaining tomorrow about the fact that I have a mountain of homework that I need to get done before Monday."

"Why not begin to do them now?" Zelda asked.

But Midna just shook her head. "Definitely not. I don't want to do anything school related until Sunday." she seemed to notice how Zelda had opened her mouth to respond and quickly added. "And no, rehearsal tomorrow doesn't count as something related to school. It might be organised by the school, but it's not school and it's not obligatory, so it's fine with me." Midna moved to sit up, the bed creaking beneath her, not happy with the sudden movement. "Hey, speaking of the musical, what about this: tomorrow, after rehearsal, we all take the bus to Kakariko Village, go to a café and go over our lines together. I mean, we already have the manuscript, so what's stopping us?"

"Who are you, and what have you done to Midna?" Cremia asked. "Didn't you just say that you wouldn't be doing your homework until the day before it's supposed to be done?"

"And didn't I just tell you that the musical is completely different from school work?" Midna teased, rolling her eyes at Cremia. "So, what do you guys say? Zelda?"

She was supposed to say no. It was clear to Zelda that she would not get a chance to get any work done on her Hylian essay before it would be time for dinner, and she doubted that she would even get a chance afterwards. If she went with Midna and the others to Kakariko on Saturday, then she would have to do it all on Sunday and just hope that it was good enough to be turned in Monday. She was absolutely not supposed to go to Kakariko Village.

But when she looked at Midna, who had begun to sway from side to say, she just couldn't make herself say no.

"Sure."

The way that Midna beamed at her made Zelda feel confident that she had made the right decision.