Was it smart to invite the girl she may or may not be hopelessly in love with over the moment Revali informed her of the fact that he and Link had seizing the opportunity they had been presented with when Sidon had informed them of how he was going to help his dad with his garden, almost immediately planning a date and that he would not be home until the next day?
Mipha decided that it probably wasn't, but as evidenced by how she had not been able to make herself sit down and study even when her grades were on the line, prioritising time with Zelda above that, she had never really been the one to put logic higher than her feelings when she had to make decisions. Again, that was most likely not the best way to go about her life, but as Mipha ran through her flat to make sure that she really had not missed anything, she found that she did not care.
It looked spotless, but she wasn't sure if that was because her having just spent the last several hours busying herself with cleaning everything had actually paid off or if she was overlooking something major.
But the sound to alert her to the fact that someone was pressing the button to be let into the building kept Mipha from being able to do any more. Even if she had failed to see something, she would just have to deal with it now.
"You can just go right in," Mipha said into the phone as she pressed the button to unlock the front door. The sound of Zelda first pulling at the door, the old wood creaking in protest as it took her a second to change her tactic, told her that she was already aware.
The flat was fine. Hopefully she would still have a couple of minutes before Zelda would have made her way up to her floor, but after having seen first-hand how quick Zelda could be when she wanted to, Mipha did not want to take any risks, so she ran to the bathroom, patting her hair with her hands to force it to stay in place.
With one last look at herself in the mirror, Mipha deemed that she at the very least looked presentable, like she had cared about her appearance, but not enough to make it look like she had spent hours trying to make the simple decision of what she should wear and how she should do her hair the way Revali had done to prepare for his date. Because it was not a date. Zelda was coming over for the two of them to eat dinner and watch films for hours on end. That was quite different from what Mipha had managed to overhear about Link and Revali's plans, with how a big part of it seemed to revolve around some go-kart place where they could finally find out who would be the best at go-karting.
"Hello?" Zelda's voice was accompanied by the sound of her tapping on the door, and just like that, Mipha was in a hurry to move through the flat and open the door for her.
The sight of Zelda standing just outside her flat made Mipha feel like she had just thrown on the first thing she had grabbed from her dresser while not even bothering to as much as running her fingers through her hair. For Zelda looked absolutely stunning as she stood there, beaming at her in a way that looked like she really had no idea of how she could make Mipha's heart skip a beat by doing something as simple as that.
"Uh," Mipha said as she regained the ability to speak, "come inside." she stepped back and held open the door to let Zelda in.
Just as she had passed over the threshold and moved enough to the side to let the Mipha push the door shut again behind her, Zelda paused. "Your place is lovely. As are you."
"I was about to tell you the same thing," Mipha mumbled. It seemed that Zelda did not quite hear what she had said, and although Mipha knew that she should be happy that sheer luck had been able to save her from making a mistake that might have led to her blurting out the truth, she could not help but acknowledge the slight twinge of hurt in her stomach as Zelda continued into the flat without giving any indication that she had heard her.
Should she repeat the compliment? As Mipha followed along behind Zelda, talking about the flat and answering Zelda's questions, she wondered if that would be the right thing to do. Because although Mipha could not imagine Zelda not already being perfectly aware of how she was able to turn even the worst day into a perfect one simply by being there, she wanted her to know that Mipha loved spending time with her. But if Zelda had heard her and had simply decided that it would be too weird to reply to that, then wouldn't she just ruin the atmosphere between them by repeating it?
In the end, the decision was made by her own inability to stay silent.
As Zelda flopped down onto the couch, patting the pillow next to her, a wordless invitation for Mipha to join her, Mipha could not keep it bottled up inside anymore, so, while making a vague motion directed at Zelda, she tried her best to hide her embarrassment. "You look really pretty today. Or, well, not that you don't look pretty every day, it is just that, uh," she cleared her throat getting herself back on track, "I really like spending time with you. And maybe, once we both get to a point in our lives where we have more spare time, we could do this more often?"
"I don't think we will ever get to a point in our lives where we will have more time to spend on ourselves than we do right now," Zelda said, and Mipha could feel her stomach disagree with any plans she might have had to eat something, before Zelda grinned at her, "but I would definitely love to try harder to make time for evenings like these with you."
"So would I," Mipha replied, the words having left her mouth before she was able to realise her mistake. Of course she would like for them to spend more time together, she had suggested doing just that only a few seconds before.
But Zelda just laughed. "I am happy to hear that. And now that we have both said that we want to spend more time together, it should be a simple task to plan for us to actually do so, right?" Mipha opened her mouth to say something, most likely to mention her imminent exams, but it did not seem that Zelda was finished just yet as she continued. "Or, well, it probably won't be, but, hey you can hope, right?"
Yes, she could hope. It was not a concept Mipha was unfamiliar with, not with how much time she had spent hoping that the atmosphere between them would change, first praying that she would one day wake up to see that everything Revali had told her about how she was supposedly in love with Zelda really was nothing but that; something Revali had told her to tease her about how little time it had taken for her to grow close to her and then praying for something Mipha could not quite understand.
"Yes. You can hope."
It did not appear that Zelda noticed the wishful tone in her voice, or at least Mipha would have expected her to mention it by now. But instead, Zelda averted her gaze, looking down at the book left out on the coffee table. Immediately, Mipha realised why she had had the feeling of having missed something; because she had indeed missed something.
"Don't mind that," she began, "I just didn't have time to put it away before you arrived. Here, just let me—"
But before she got the chance to do anything more than that, Zelda had already reached out to pick it up, flipping it over to look at the cover. "No, wait, isn't this by Nayru?" she looked down at the name written at the bottom. "It is! I didn't know that you already knew about it."
Seeing as there was very little she could do by now to keep the truth from getting out—and, if she was honest with herself, Mipha was not entirely sure she wanted it to remain a secret even if Zelda had not already halfway arrived at the correct conclusion—Mipha decided to tell the truth. "Well, no, I didn't, you just sounded so passionate about the book when you told me about it that I felt like I had to at least try it. And, luckily, it was right there at the library." she shrugged and hoped that, even if Zelda were to notice the way Mipha's voice cracked slightly on the last word, she would not guess the reason for it or see the connection between how close they were sitting and how much Mipha was mumbling.
And it seemed that Mipha had luck her side as Zelda simply hummed in response. But even then, it did not do much to quell the sense of disappointment gnawing in her stomach. Had she wanted Zelda to notice and ask for an explanation, with that tiny smile Zelda seemed to master? Perhaps Mipha had wanted that, an excuse to finally be able to tell her everything, but the moment passed without Zelda giving any indication that she had noticed it, and the courage that had begun to gather in her stomach, hoping for a chance to do something good, slowly evaporated once more.
"Have you read it?" Zelda asked and the question was what finally made Mipha look up, at once brought back to the present.
"What?"
"This book," Zelda lifted the book a couple of centimetres, waving it at her, "will I be able to talk with you about it without risking spoiling it for you?"
"Oh," Mipha exclaimed, nodding for half a second before she fully understood the question, "uh, well, no, I haven't. Not really, at least. But I have read the first couple of chapters, and from what I have read so far, I think I am going to like it."
Placing the book back down onto the coffee table, Zelda shifted in her seat to face Mipha. "Trust me, from what I know about you, you are going to love it."
"It isn't about someone who is about to fail her exams because she could not figure out that it was probably a good idea to sit down and study, is it?" Mipha said, trying to lighten the sentence with a laugh. It sounded forced, even to her.
But when Zelda returned the gesture, it sounded like she was genuinely amused. "No, it is not about that. But it is still about someone who is struggling in her life, trying to figure out what she wants to do and how to achieve it while still having to balance her friends' and family's opinions about what she should do with her life with her own dreams." she patted the cover of the book, her voice becoming softer. "I remember how much that meant to me when I read it for the first time."
Her father. Mipha could not believe that after how Zelda had sat there next to her on the blanket when they had gone to the beach, telling her how she had made such a major decision about how she wanted to live her life as the act of telling her father about her education had seemed to represent for her, Mipha had not once thought about asking her if her father had finally seen reason and accepted her decision. Even while Zelda had been busy being yelled at by Revali and generally being blamed the most by almost all of Mipha's friends, she had not once remembered to ask. Pushing the thought away, unwilling to let herself wallow in guilt, Mipha decided that it was probably better for the question to be late than never.
"Speaking of dreams and plans," she said, "has your father finally realised that it is your life and that he should accept your decisions in regards to what you want to do with it?"
The way Zelda went silent next to her was enough to answer her question.
"Er, well, no. he hasn't, not really." Zelda began. For a moment, she was silent, and Mipha could tell how she was struggling not to cry. But then she breathed in deeply and looked up, and although her eyes were still shiny, she forced a smile onto her face. "I thought about calling him a couple of times during this last week, but then I realised that, hey, I was not the one who was unable to accept their child's decisions and dreams, and that, given that, I should not be the one to call him and beg him to realise that I am my own person and that I have the right to decide what I want to do with my own life. So, no, I haven't called him and obviously he has not called me either, but I actually think that he has done me a favour by ignoring me. At least that way, I did not have to deal with him trying to tell me what to do or telling me about how my mother always got top marks and that it was probably because she had always been good at theology." Zelda snorted. "It is almost like he still has yet to realise that I am not my mother and that, just because she and her mother both loved theology, I don't have to love it like they did." she glanced over at Mipha, and Mipha was relieved to see that the anger in her eyes had evaporated a bit. "I am sorry, you didn't ask for me to rant about my father, but to answer your question, no, he still hasn't accepted my dreams, but I don't really care that much about it anymore."
"Well," Mipha said, struggling for a bit to figure out what she could say in response, "um, I am happy to hear that."
"So am I." the smile reached Zelda's eyes. "I know that it might sound silly, but I really feel freer than I have done in years now that I no longer have to be careful not to let any of his friends see me not going to the university's lecture halls in the morning. There simply is something magical about being able to go wherever you would like without having to first consider whether or not you might risk running into someone you know, isn't there?"
It was not exactly a consideration Mipha could relate to, but simply hearing how relieved Zelda sounded the more she got to talk about no longer having to worry about any of it made it so that she instantly knew what her answer would be as she nodded at her. "Yes, I suppose there is. And I for once am also happy to hear that you are happier now than you ever were before."
Zelda smiled, and it almost felt like the air around them become warmer, electricity running along Mipha's arms as Zelda reached out to take her hand. Now. This was the moment. Mipha was almost completely sure that, were she to ask if Zelda could remember anything from the bar that night and if she would like to repeat the kiss, the answer would at the very least not include Zelda moving away from her, withdrawing her hand like she had burnt it. But even then, the chance that she might be wrong and that everything between them—the electricity and the way Zelda's face was so close to hers—might really just be another sign that the freedom Zelda had achieved after finally gathering the courage to stand up to her father was still affecting her was enough to make Mipha look away and force herself not to daydream about what could have happened if she had only been a little braver.
Clearing her throat, she gestured towards the television in front of them. It was a sudden change of subject, but right then, Mipha could not imagine being able to continue sitting like that for much longer without risking doing something incredibly stupid. Whether that would have been confessing that she had not been able to forget about the kiss and that she knew full well that Zelda most likely had not wasted another second since then on lying awake at night, wondering what it had meant, or if she would rather have embarrassed herself even more by asking if she could kiss her, Mipha did not know, and she preferred for it to stay that way, so she hurried to speak before she would have found out which one of them would have been the case. "So, um, we should probably get started on watching something, right?"
A thin line appeared between Zelda's brows as she followed Mipha's line of sight. "Uh, yeah, of course!" she chuckled. "Wow, I had almost managed to forget that your almost exact words when you invited me over had included the sentence 'and watch films until our eyes will start to hurt'." Zelda's pitch rose, becoming a high-pitched imitation of Mipha's voice.
"I didn't say it like that!"
"Oh, really? Because that was what it sounded like to me." Zelda laughed, though she quickly stopped when Mipha grabbed the pillow from next to her on the couch and hit her on the shoulder, making Zelda give her an indignant look. "Hey! I am just repeating what you said!" but even then, she was not able to keep a straight face for very long, and before Mipha had had time to blink, the corners of Zelda's mouth had curled up into a smile.
Hylia, if it continued like this, Mipha was not sure how much longer she would be able to keep her feelings a secret.
Dropping the pillow back down onto the couch, she pushed herself away from Zelda and over to turn on the television, while still doing her best not to think about how she could tell Zelda with almost no risk of being teased about it later. It was only them, and even when Mipha had allowed herself to consider what the worst thing that could happen if she simply asked Zelda to sit down so that she could explain to her how she was not sure if her feelings for her were all that platonic anymore multiple times, Mipha was fairly confident that no matter what, even if Zelda's face twisted into a grimace of betrayal and hurt as she said that she had thought they were friends, Zelda would still never as much as consider the option of going to the café to tell Revali or anyone else. Which meant that, even if it would become awkward between them, at the very least, Mipha would not have to tell anyone about the reasons for it, even if Revali would most likely be able to guess the truth. And that, the fact that it would be so easy, was why she could not allow herself to entertain the idea of actually doing it. She could try to drop hints, try to figure out if Zelda felt the same way, look for reasons to spend more time for her, but she could not actually tell her the reasons.
"Uh, Mipha?"
Until she felt Zelda reach out to poke her shoulder, Mipha had not even realised that she had stopped moving, standing still in the middle of the living room, halfway between the couch and the television, the remote control hanging by her side.
With a jerk, Mipha forced herself to continue over to sit back down on the couch. "Sorry, I don't know what just happened there." a lie. "But I am ready to search for something we can watch now. Do you have any wishes?"
As it turned out, Zelda did have many ideas about which films they should watch. So many, in fact, that by the time Mipha had found a film only for Zelda to change her mind yet again and mention another title for the tenth time, Mipha put down her foot, insisting that the next one Zelda suggested, would also be the film they would watch.
After that, it did not take long before they settled back into the comfort of the couch, Mipha moving to the side and handing Zelda a pillow as the film began.
It was intriguing, Mipha had to admit that, exactly the kind of film she would have expected given that Zelda had been the one to suggest it, but even then, she still found her gaze drawn to Zelda more than to the television in front of her.
Was it normal to be so aware of just where she was in relation to Zelda's placement on the couch? Mipha doubted it, but even then, that knowledge did not stop her brain from constantly trying to figure out if the distance between them was enough, if Mipha would have felt comfortable with the way their shoulders almost touched if the situation had been reversed and Zelda was the one doing her best to hide the fact that she found her infinitely more interesting than the film. She hoped that she would, but it was still a difficult question as Mipha was not exactly sure how much the fact that she would not have minded of Zelda had asked to kiss her was interfering with her judgement.
They were about halfway through the last half of the film when Zelda inched closer, throwing the pillow to the side to instead settle into the space between Mipha's neck and shoulder, letting herself lean against her as her head dropped to rest on Mipha's shoulder.
It felt like her heart should have stopped beating. Either that or that all of the colours around her should have become brighter and more intense to acknowledge what had just happened. Ever so slowly, afraid that even the slightest movement would disturb Zelda, Mipha looked down. Luckily, Zelda seemed to be so absorbed in the film that she did not notice, but even then Mipha forced herself to only steal that one glance, looking back up at the television the next second, keeping her gaze fixed at the middle of the screen for the rest of the film.
As the credits began to roll over the screen, Mipha slowly reached out to pat Zelda's shoulder. "Hey, do you have any wishes about what we should see now?"
There was no answer, and when Mipha dared to look down, she could see why.
Sometime during the last twenty minutes of the film, Zelda must have fallen asleep. Her eyes remained closed, and her breathing was slow and even. It did not seem that Mipha's question had been enough to wake her up, and Mipha could not have been happier about that. Even though they had technically planned to order food and sit down to eat together before returning to the couch to watch a couple of films, if Zelda had fallen asleep, Mipha would not be the one to decide that she had to wake up just so that they could stick to the plan. Not when Zelda had just told her about how her father still did not like the idea of her working on her book rather than studying for the degree he wanted her to get, and not when Zelda still seemed worn-out after telling her about her latest worries about him.
She sat still, unwilling to move even a millimetre if that slight shift would be the thing to wake up Zelda. And, sometime during the evening, her body must have taken that as an invitation to fall asleep as well, for Mipha could feel how her head grew heavy, and before long, she was not longer able to stay awake, instead letting her head drop down to rest on top of Zelda's as she went to sleep.
Her neck was hurting. That was the first thing Mipha felt as the light flooding her living room, coming in through the windows, where she had of course forgotten to pull down the blinds. Marvellous. As she began to sit up, Mipha could feel how every single muscle in her body cried out, begging her to sit still, but she continued nevertheless, blinking a couple of times before yawning and attempting to rub the sleep out of her eyes with the heel of her hands.
A slight groan coming from next to her was what reminded her that she was not alone. Zelda was still asleep, although it seemed that she either moved in her sleep during the night or that Mipha must have done the same, with the result that Zelda was now lying with her head und upper body on the couch, while her legs were dangling off the pillows, feet hitting the floor. As she shifted slightly, rolling to the side in response to Mipha getting up from the couch, the sun hit her hair, and Hylia, it had gotten ruffled during the night, a couple of strands having moved to cover her face.
It looked beautiful.
Although Mipha was more tired than she had been before lying down to sleep on the couch, she could not deny the fact that the warm feeling in her chest was most likely a solid piece of evidence that Revali had been right.
She was in love, and there was nothing she could do to change that.