Chapter Text
“Zelda Harknian… why are you in my office again? I thought we addressed this issue last time.”
Zelda crossed her arms. She’d been sent to the Vice Principal’s office about five times since senior year began less than a month ago for unintentional dress code violations, and today was no different.
“I swear! Look! I don’t roll my skirt.” She untucked her uniform blouse just enough so the Vice Principal, Mrs. Joy, could see that she wasn’t lying. How many more times could she tell them that it wasn’t her fault she was tall?
Zelda had been petitioning for more lax rules. It brought them to butt heads more than once. While Mrs. Joy might be the Vice Principal, Zelda was the Vice President of the Senior Class at ‘Daphnes Rhoam Hyrule High’, and it meant something, even if it only meant something to her. If there was one thing she was going to accomplish before graduation, she was going to get these uniform codes reduced. Being one of the ‘popular’ students had to have a practical benefit at some point, like when she'd gotten a petition signed last year to remove restrictions on acceptable shoes. And it worked.
“Take that hem down then,” Mrs. Joy said, giving it a halfhearted glance and running a hand through her stress-tousled hair before pushing up her glasses and toying with a butterfly necklace she wore. She was tired of how many students were sent to her for breaking dress code but did little more than demand they fix things or offer them detention as an alternative. And Zelda Harkinian was her most frequent visitor, be it the wrong kind of polo, a button-down in the wrong color, a generic grey skirt rather than the approved one from the uniform store, or like now, the damned hem.
Zelda scoffed. “I don’t know how to sew. Neither do my parents. How do I even take a hem down?”
Mrs. Joy sat back at her desk and let out a long, frustrated breath. “Google it, or watch a YouTube video then. But don’t let me see you in here again, Ms. Harkinian. It’ll be a detention next time. You've worn my patience thin. Come to school tomorrow with that fixed. There are rules, and you haven’t been able to follow any of them.”
Defeated for now, Zelda crossed her arms in absolute disgust. “Could I at least have a late note to class, please?”
Mrs. Joy checked the clock and jotted down a note onto a piece of paper. “Remember what I said.”
“Of course,” Zelda said, grabbing her bag off the ground and heading for the bathroom. It took every ounce of self-control to keep her attitude from showing.
When she got to the bathroom, she set her backpack down in front of the mirror and ran her hands through her long blonde hair several times to take out any small knots before tying it up into a high ponytail. She enjoyed the small things in life, like the feeling of a high ponytail hitting her neck and swinging around with even the slightest move of her head.
And as she stared at her green eyes in the reflection of the mirror, she could see her frustration so clearly in them. She glanced briefly at the door before untucking her blouse and rolling her skirt up just once, just to see how bad it would be if she actually decided to roll it.
With her long legs, and athletic but willowy frame, her grey uniform skirt always looked short on her. It was the curse of being just over the average height of the other girls in her class, and all that height was in her legs, not her torso. But when she rolled her skirt, she was admittedly glad she was wearing tights. It was not the kind of attention she wanted to subject herself to at school. And while amusing to herself in a bathroom with no one around, she immediately unrolled it back to normal. Sighing, she pressed her hands flat against her side to see just how short her skirt actually was. The hem was above her fingertips, but not by miles. Maybe knuckle height, give or take an inch, but she didn’t know what to do about it. Go all Honey I Shrunk the Kids on herself and become the size of an ant? She bought the skirt a few weeks ago at the end of summer. It came this way.
Resigned, Zelda grabbed her bag off the ground and hurried across the first floor of the building to reach her class.
Daphnes Rhoam Hyrule High, or DRHH, as everyone called it, was a small, private school where everyone recognized each other and knew their names, even if they’d never spoken a day in their lives. She knew that the girl with short blonde hair at the water fountain was Ilia Woods. They’d shared six classes in four years, and she was pretty sure she’d never even said hello to the girl.
Zelda passed a classroom that was full, and she saw one of her best friends, Ruto Zora, looking incredibly bored as she took notes. Zelda waved frantically to get her attention, standing just far enough away from the door so the teacher couldn’t quite see her. She saw Darunia nudge Ruto and gesture to the door, suppressing a laugh of his own. When Ruto noticed Zelda, her face lit up and she waved back, living for the small moments of school like this where she could enjoy a surprise hello from her best friend.
Zelda began to dance in the empty hallway, dramatically head-banging the air and hopping from side to side. She could hear Ruto laughing and Zelda stopped just in time to see Mr. Auru pop his head out the door.
“Zelda? Why aren’t you in class?”
Zelda snorted as she stopped. “Sorry, Mr. Auru. I’m on my way. I have a note.”
“I thought you theater kids had better dance skills than that. That was just sad,” he jested before closing the door, leaving her with her mouth hanging open, amused. She loved Mr. Auru. He was everyone’s favorite teacher at the school, and he was notorious for comments like that, so it didn’t actually surprise her.
Biting her lip as she fought a laugh, she pulled out her vibrating phone to see the laughing emoji from Ruto. Rolling her eyes, she tucked it back into her backpack’s net side-pocket and finally made it to class.
Mrs. Uli gave her a kind smile as she stopped her lecture to take the late note from Zelda. Zelda felt her face turn slightly red as the entire class stopped to stare at her while she took her seat beside her other friend, Medli.
“Okay, get into your groups,” Mrs. Uli said, holding her hand out to Zelda to wait. “I want you to carry on a full conversation for as long as you can, and then you’ll come up and demonstrate for the class.
Zelda turned to Medli, but her friend just shook her head. “Sorry, she picked our partners.”
Groaning, Zelda watched Medli change seats to sit near her assigned partner.
Mrs. Uli leaned against the desk. “Okay, Zelda. Why don’t you join Maple’s group?”
“Okay,” Zelda said, looking around. And when she saw the group, she groaned.
Maple, a girl who talked about the unfairness of witch trials at least every day, was sitting between two guys. One was a jock, popular, like Zelda was, but someone she absolutely hated being in the presence of. Groose looked at her and wriggled his eyebrows, and she remembered exactly why she detested him. And then there was this other boy from homeroom and a few of her classes, leaning back in his chair, bored and fiddling with the threads of his blue uniform sweater. Link. Gods, she’d never spoken to him before, but she’d heard horrible things about him over the years, especially once people heard he'd been arrested. He was someone people purposely avoided.
She waved, which they all silently responded to.
It was an expected silence though. She’d been one of the ten people to opt to take the second ever addition of sign language as her ‘foreign language and culture’ class. Every one of them had started last year and were now in the 'advanced' class.
“What are we supposed to be doing?” Maple asked, though she signed incredibly slowly, thinking long and hard about each individual sign.
Groose just sat there, like he couldn’t even understand what she’d asked. Besides that, he was staring obnoxiously at Zelda, leaning toward her as if she somehow couldn’t see his big, annoying face.
Link, on the other hand, watched everyone, including her, before he pulled his headphones from his pocket, slid the wire up from under his sweater and plopped them into his ears. There were dark, baggy circled under his eyes and he smelled faintly like cigarette smoke, as if he’d recently found a time and place to have one.
Great, she thought. This was going to go well.
Zelda turned her attention to Maple, since it seemed the other two were going to be little help. “We can have a conversation about our likes or dislikes. ‘What’s your favorite food?’ ‘I like pie.’”
Maple’s face scrunched up. “What did you say? Slower.”
Zelda could see Link watching her with interest, unlike Groose who watched her with creepy googly eyes and a face that screamed ignorance. She apologized and signed slower for Maple.
“Okay. I like grapes. What’s your favorite food?” She directed it at Link.
Link gave a tight smile as Mrs. Uli glanced over at their group. he turned to Zelda, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “I hate purple grapes, but I really like green ones.” His eyes flicked up to Mrs. Uli. She gave an attentive smile before turning and bending down to help Medli’s group, her back to theirs. Link’s eyes darted back over to Zelda, a mischievous glint in them. “I think this is a fucking stupid conversation. You picked a really shitty topic. And now I’m going to have to sign slower for this girl because she’s looking at me like I’m fucking crazy. I’d bet she still wouldn’t know what I was saying.”
Zelda’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She glanced at Maple, who was, in fact, looking at Link like he was crazy.
But Zelda recovered quickly and turned her full attention onto Link. “If you’re so pissed at me for some reason, pick a new topic, asshole.”
It was Link’s turn to be surprised. He watched her genuinely annoyed expression for a moment before smirking to himself, like his suspicions about something had been confirmed. “You understood that?”
“I took this class because I know sign language already, not because I want to talk about grapes. I wanted an easy grade. Clearly, you’re doing the same thing. Don’t be a jerk to her just because she genuinely wants to learn.”
Slowly and deliberately, he signed what appeared to be a sincere ‘sorry’ to her and took a deep breath, looking back at Maple, returning to his bored expression. “She said she likes steak and soda. I like pizza.”
Maple smiled, understanding the much simpler conversation, and wrongly assuming they’d been actually discussing food in their rapid movements that she hadn’t been able to follow.
Out of the corner of her eye, Zelda could see Link tapping his foot, either bored or annoyed. She could feel his eyes on her as well.
And for some reason, she couldn’t get the encounter out of her head even long after she’d gone home.
Pompous ass.
She now knew why she hated Groose, and why she didn't like Link.