Link's POV:
"What are you doing?" I ask Ruto when she leans closer to my desk to look at the picture of me and Aryll on the slopes. She's seen that picture a million times, why's she acting like this is all new to her?
She moves on to the shelves. "I remember when you got this trophy," she says. "You didn't even smile when they announced that you got first place."
"I was pretty exhausted that day."
"You must have been exhausted every day because you never once smiled when receiving awards."
"I don't brag."
"It's not bragging. People smile because they're proud of their accomplishments and happy that they made it." Well maybe I wasn't happy. "It's crazy how time flies."
She's right on that one. Last time we hung out like this was in our last year of high school. When things were still good between us. Before I signed the contract for HU...
I'm surprised she's acting so... friendly. I was a dick to her and she deserved a better ending. She stopped coming to my games when she found out I was leaving Japan, and at graduation she didn't even look at me.
I scratch the back of my head and take a step towards her. "I actually meant to talk to you about that."
"About what?" She asks, still looking at my medals and stuff.
"About back then. High school and all."
"What about high school?"
"I mean... I wanted to talk about... us." She turns around to look at me. She's not smiling anymore. She looks kinda curious. "Things ended on bad terms."
"Mh... We don't have to talk about that."
"Maybe we should?"
She walks up to me. A little too close. But she smiles innocently at me and I don't have it in me to move away from her.
"Why?" She asks. "Why open up old wounds? You seem like you've moved on."
I don't know what to respond with. Saying yes could hurt her feelings but I can't deny it either.
"Right?" She steps closer to me.
"Ruto..." I take a small step back.
"Link?" She tilts her head. "You're happy now, right? It's not a trick question. I care about you and I want you to be happy."
"I care about you too." I take her by the wrists to show her that I'm serious. "Which is why I want to apologize for the way I treated you back then."
"What?" Her eyes widen.
"I'm sorry for treating you bad," I say.
She takes a moment to think about my words. Her smile is gone and she gives me a shy nod. "You weren't the nicest person back then."
"Yeah..."
"Is that all you wanted to talk about?"
"Um..."
"If that's all you have to say to me, let's go back to the living room." She pulls her wrists out of my grip and moves past me to leave the room.
"Wait a second—" I call after her in a whisper and follow her down the stairs.
She grabs her bag and jacket from the couch where Zelda is passed out. Zelda is so out of it that she doesn't notice any of this happening.
"Are you leaving?" I ask Ruto in a low volume.
"It's late," she says without looking at me.
"I thought you wanted to hang out some more."
She ignores me, puts on her shoes, and leaves through the front door. What the hell? What just happened?
Confused, I grab my shoes. "Wait up, Ruto!"
She continues walking down the road so I follow her. When I catch up with her, I grab her arm to make her stop.
She finally stops walking and looks at me. It's dark out and the only streetlight in this part of my neighborhood is two houses down the road but the light is just enough that I can see how glossy her eyes are.
"What are you doing?" She looks at my hand on her arm. "Let go!"
"Why'd you leave so suddenly?" I ask her out of breath.
"You think an apology is going to fix the way you treated me?" She sniffles. Fuck, I knew it! She's still hurt by that!
"No, of course not," I say. "I didn't treat you right and there is no excuse for that."
"You left me in pieces!"
I thought we were okay but she hasn't forgiven me after all.
"I'm sorry," I say. I don't know what else to do or say.
"Sure you are."
"I am!"
"I bet you haven't even thought about me in the past 3 years."
"I have—"
"Be honest—"
"I—"
"Did you date my cousin too?"
"Mipha? No we—"
"She followed you to America!"
"What?"
"She came just for you!"
"I didn't know that! We never d–"
"And don't think I didn't notice the ring on Zelda's finger!" I open my mouth to explain the ring but she doesn't leave me a chance to speak. "Congratulations! How long did it take you to move on? A week?"
Why does she keep interrupting me! Let me explain myself!
"Did you ever even love me?" She asks me and finally stops interrupting me when I wish she would.
"I..."
"You...?"
"I cared for you," I say.
"You didn't love me?" She whimpers.
"I... I don't know! I don't know, okay? I was a stupid child and I was more focused on my career."
"How inconsiderate!"
"Yes! I was an idiot, I know that! But I did care about you! I'm sorry that I couldn't love you the way you needed me to but I never meant to hurt you."
"If you're a man, act like one!"
She's crying and shouting and it's all my fault. Again. I keep fucking up and hurting people! I don't even want to explain myself anymore. I feel like I deserve to be yelled at.
"How could you leave me behind?" She cries.
"It wasn't about you," I say, getting a little emotional too. Shit. I don't like seeing her so hurt. It's like Christmas Eve all over again...
"Take responsibility!"
I don't want all this responsibility! But I'm trying... I'm trying!
"You should have told me. You should have told me!" Her hands clench my shirt. "You hurt me so much! You broke me! I hated you when you left!" You're not the only one. "I felt so much anger and regret! I was serious about us and would have given anything to be with you!" I never asked you to do any of this for me! "I loved you! I loved you so much! And I hated you at the same time! And what's even worse is that I hated myself for loving you!"
"I hated myself too, Ruto!" I feel myself tearing up. I can't just say nothing. She has no idea how difficult that time was for me! "I hated Japan! I hated my life! I hated everything about my career!" I clench my fists, "I didn't mean to hurt you Ruto but my career was drowning me! I was suffocating here! I couldn't bear it! Call me weak, but if I had stayed, I would have injured myself to the point where I wouldn't be able to play anymore!" I grab her wrists to remove her hands from my shirt. "Ruto, I had to leave!"
Suddenly everything turns quiet. She looks at me with tears streaming down her face. I've kept silent for so many years. Every time somebody blamed me for a mistake, I kept quiet. That's what I was taught: ignore the haters, focus on proving them wrong. Prove it to my family that I can succeed as an athlete. Don't make them worry. So I thought... With all the pressure, all the expectations, it was my responsibility to bear all the burdens and keep it to myself. But I am so sick of people assuming that all of this was easy for me and that I just didn't try hard enough! I don't even like my life anymore with all the drama and challenges and I don't know if I ever really liked my life to begin with!
"Why do you think I stopped talking to my friends? Why I stopped taking in general?" I continue with an unsteady breath. "Everyone thought I was living my dream life but I barely slept in my own bed anymore and only saw my family on weekends. I was constantly gone for my career, always trying to please everyone else until I couldn't take it anymore! Everyone thinks I'm so gifted and naturally good at sports but they don't ever think about all the hard work I put into getting to where I am today. Or where I was before my surgeries... Even my friends and family think it's easy for me to be good at sports. My dad was the only one who understood what I was going through. He saw how hard I trained. Day and night, 10 hours a day! Every day! Weekends, holidays, sick days! No time for breaks! No time to recover! You fall, you get back up and keep going! I was always trying to be good enough but I still failed!"
I've never opened up to anyone like this. I don't think anyone knows that there was a time when I hated myself. I don't like opening up about my past but I couldn't hold back anymore.
Ruto looks shocked. "Why?" She whispers. I didn't even think about my words until now. Maybe I shouldn't have said all this stuff to her...
A raindrop brushes my nose. Another one drops next to me on the pavement. It's going to rain, maybe we should go back inside.
"Link," she cries and throws her arms around me. Her hug is unexpected but I don't mind it. At first, I'm the one to comfort her, but once I hug her back she's the one comforting me.
I think back to when I used to play for Japan's national soccer team. And how I'd kill myself for it. No sleep, no food. Just pills and diets. In the beginning, I was so lost and couldn't communicate. I was quiet and stayed to myself. Some of the trainers didn't speak Japanese, and my English wasn't good back then. Not only did I have to train my body but I had to practice my English every day and keep up with school while barely being there anymore. Nobody really knows how hard it was for me to become this good at English and that I did that while taking the national team to the top! I hated every bit of it. Even the fame and the praise. Even the money wasn't worth it to me.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Ruto asks me. Her voice is shaky and quiet.
"I never told anyone..." I say.
"You could have talked to me," she says but she's wrong. I couldn't have. I couldn't even tell my dad that I was unhappy. Even Mipha didn't know. I guess Zelda is really the only other person I've ever told that I don't like my career. But she doesn't know about half of what I went through.
Everybody always talks about my talent and fame. How I won this and that at a young age and broke record after record. This only increased the pressure. The more I achieved, the more expectations there were. It was never enough!
More rain drops stain the dry pavement but neither of us seems to care about the rain.
My friends envied me. They thought it was cool that I had money and popularity and fans. But I gave my money to charity, or gave it to my uncle so he can fix the roof and build a better stable for Epona. I didn't keep any of the money for myself. And having fans just meant having no privacy. It wasn't as glorious as everyone thinks. I was happy that my parents were proud of me but they believed that I was going to bring honor to our family name.
And how did that turn out? Fans have turned against me and there are people out there who hate me enough to send me and my family death threats.
I think about Ruto now. She wasn't the first person to show an interest in me and surely not the only one. People fell in love with me for my achievements, not for my personality. Zelda might have been the first girl to treat me like a human being, not some deity. Well, I guess Ruto and Mipha treated me nice too, but Zelda was the only one to ever treat me like a normal person. She cared for me in a different way. She risked everything she believed in to help me, not expecting anything in return. She was never obsessive, just caring. And she always stood up for me whether it was to her dad or the Boars or Malice or anyone else.
She wanted to change for me, not to make me love her, but because she believed we could improve each other. I never experienced being with a girl who wanted to give, rather than take. That might be why I fell in love with her so quickly. She didn't care that I was an athlete. I just knew that even if I wasn't successful, she'd still care about me and support my choices.
I don't know if I've been a good boyfriend or if our relationship is going the way it should, but I know that I can't fail her the way I failed everyone else. I have to try my best to make this work, otherwise there is nothing left to fight for in my life...
The rain is drenching our clothes, trickling down our arms, and my hair's falling into my face.
This reminds me of the time when Zelda showed up to one of my games and she was crying. I left the stadium to make sure she was alright. It was pouring that day but we didn't care. We just cared about each other. It was her birthday, and she was hurt, and she needed me, but she still told me to go back to the game because she cared about me and everyone else before herself.
If I hadn't met Zelda, I would have never considered quitting soccer. But for the first time, I feel like even if I'm not a pro athlete, there will still be someone who'll cheer for me. Maybe if our relationship succeeds, it's okay that my career didn't...
I wish I didn't feel the need to quit but I just don't have the same passion anymore and it sucks. Everything got even harder since I left Japan. Not only is the pressure higher but my body is weaker, making it impossible to reach those unrealistic expectations.
"Nobody understood," I whisper. "Fans said to me: You're so lucky to be playing a game for a living. Haters told me: You only won because the other team played poorly. My coaches said: Tough it out and play through the pain. But worst of all is hearing: It's just a game, why are you taking it so seriously?"
"Why did you take it so seriously?" Ruto asks me shyly.
"Because I didn't feel lucky. And because maybe I really did only win because the other team played poorly. And because I couldn't bear the pain. And... Because it wasn't just a game to me."
My fans, as well as my haters, only ever talk about the good parts of being an athlete. Nobody ever talks about me having to get up at 5 in the morning to train, even on Sundays, even on holidays. Or that I was constantly either fasting or bulking, never able to eat the things I actually wanted to eat. Nobody ever thinks about me having to constantly travel places for tournaments, conferences, or training camps.
I missed Aryll's birthdays, almost all of them. I couldn't go to Ojisan's funeral because I was attending a friendly game in Belgium. And to adjust to the time zones and stay focused, I had to take Adderall all the time until sleep became another one of my battles.
Trying to defend my tennis and fencing championships at the same time while playing for the national soccer team was so foolish of me. I should've focused on one sport at the time. I should've focused on my family and friends. I should've just balanced it better. I got gold medals and trophies and still felt like I was in last place.
The air smells like wet pavement. I welcome the rain and almost pray that it'll wash away my past.
I know it can't. I just want it to stop hurting! Maybe I was better off without my memory...
I did everything I could think of in order to be perfect for them. I made every sacrifice I could... No alcohol, no unhealthy food, no personal time, no privacy.
No excuses. No complaining.
Until now. I'm so done with all that shit! I have every right to complain and feel upset about my past! I wasted my whole childhood trying to be what everyone else expected of me, that I don't even know who I am, what I really want, or where I want to be!
I remember when the first articles came out about me beating athletes twice my age and how I became the youngest champion in multiple disciplines. For a while, everyone was talking about me and calling me a prodigy. Coaches from all over Japan gave me offers to play for them. Whether it was the World Cup for soccer, the Davis Cup for tennis, the World Championship for fencing, or the World Baseball Classic, every coach thought I was their golden ticket to get to the top. And when I did get them to the top, they called me a hero...
I never felt like a hero. I was just a kid.
I reached the top at a young age, but they were never satisfied. When I exceeded everyone else, there was no one left to compare me to. So people started to compare me to myself. They got so used to my level of skill that they started to expect me to improve from there and break my own records. I was competing against myself! The stakes got higher, too high for a kid... Fuck, I was just a kid!
I feel like I never got to be a normal teenager. Next year, I'm already turning 20 and I will have missed out on my teen years.
Ruto and I are still hugging. I look up at the rain and think back to the very first Winter Olympics I attended, when it was snow that was falling down on me. I hug her tighter and she does the same. I remember how exhausted I was that day. The Olympics were held the same week as an important tennis match in Budapest. I came to Pyeongchang straight from Europe. I only arrived a day before the snowboarding disciplines started. I knew that one night wouldn't be enough to adjust to the time zone so I just stayed up and practiced my jumps all night instead of getting a good night's rest.
I was so determined to become the youngest snowboarding olympics medalist that I didn't care about the risks when I tried to invent new jumps that nobody had ever seen before. My jumps were good but never good enough to satisfy me. I added yet another flip and another 360 until my jumps became impossible to copy. Even when I crashed and knocked the air out of my lungs, I got back up and kept going.
I was still sore from playing tennis for a week straight but I kept practicing my open air jumps until the sun came up. I went to a photo shoot and gave a quick interview in the morning. At the press conferences, I almost passed out. I was so unbelievably tired. I don't know how, but I managed to stay awake till the competition started.
I felt sick. I had a cold from practicing in the snow all night, a severe migraine was killing me, my eyes and lungs hurt from the freezing air, and I felt out of breath even though I wasn't even moving. But I competed anyways.
At the end of the day, I had not only become the youngest snowboarding olympics medalist, but I also set a new world record for the most gold medals.
People were going crazy! They said I gave an impossible performance. They said it was impressive. And then they started to wonder why I wasn't smiling... I was unable to feel pride that day because every part of my body was in pain.
My knee sent zaps of pain through my whole body with each step I took towards the podium. It's only two steps to get to the top but I swear I almost broke down on the first step. I had trouble breathing and I thought I was going to puke or faint at any second.
The guy with the medals walked up to me with a huge grin on his face. Reporters with mics and cameras followed him. When he shook my hand, I spoke to him for just a second before the cameras caught up with us. Without anyone else hearing it, I told him that I'm not feeling well and I remember asking him to please just hurry.
His smile froze and I could see concern in his eyes. He understood that I was seriously ill and thank god he kept his congratulations short. I felt bad because he was just doing his job by trying to interview me but I think if I had stayed a minute longer, I would've passed out on the spot.
After I received my medals, I went back to my hotel room without saying another word to anyone. That day, I didn't care if I looked rude or arrogant, I just needed to lay down for the first time in days.
I had given every ounce of my strength and when it was over, I just sat in the shower for at least an hour. I couldn't move. I couldn't feel my legs. I was so tired and in so much pain. My knee felt like it was in a million pieces. I later found out that I had actually injured myself during the practice jumps and my patella really was pieces. The adrenaline was the only reason I didn't feel any pain during the competition. But once it was over... Shit... I thought I was gonna die in that shower.
I considered quitting sports for the first time. But I wasn't ready to give up. I was too obsessed with reaching those impossible goals. I couldn't let down my team... My fans... My family and friends... and I knew that if I gave up on sports, there was nothing left in my life.
When I got back to Japan, I didn't want to hang any of my medals. For the first time in my life, I didn't enjoy snowboarding anymore. I was really sad that weekend. Snowboarding was one of the sports I picked up for fun, not to prove anything.
"Are you feeling alright?" Ruto asks me after having hugged for a while.
I back away just enough to look at her and nod. She looks a lot like Mipha...
After the Winter Olympics, Mipha visited me to treat some of my wounds. She noticed my medals on the floor in the corner of my room. I had become quiet at that point and barely talked to her about anything anymore. I didn't mention that I wanted to give up on sports, but I think she could tell that I was conflicted about my career.
I was really surprised when she told me to keep going. I expected her to care more about my well being, and to support my retirement from sports. I hate to admit it, but I was annoyed, maybe even hurt that she would tell me to keep going. I sort of wanted her to be okay with me giving up. I needed someone to be on my side.
We stopped talking when I moved to the US... I stopped talking to a lot of people at that point. When I found out that Mipha transferred to HU, we started talking again and eventually we met up at Vah Rudania to catch up. She told me that Sidon was here too, at a different school, and that he had gotten much bigger and that he was getting pretty good at snowboarding. Somehow we ended up talking about the Winter Olympics.
I found out that when she told me to "keep going", she wasn't telling me to keep competing for gold, she was telling me to keep enjoying sports. She opened my eyes that day. I will never forget the advice she gave me. She told me that she stopped competitive swimming for a while because she lost her passion for the water but once the pressure was gone, she enjoyed the sport again.
I realized that I didn't want to quit snowboarding. I just had to stop worrying about scoring first place in every competition. After that, I competed only to have fun and support fellow athletes. That's why it didn't bother me when I got third place at the competition in Mammoth Lakes. I was really happy that Sidon got silver, he deserved it.
Usually, I would have been annoyed and blamed myself for the shortcomings. But I was okay with the scores that night. All thanks to the advice of a childhood friend.
Unfortunately, this mindset only worked for snowboarding. I couldn't let down Hyrule after they gave me a scholarship. They were counting on me.
"I'm sorry," I say ashamed.
"What are you sorry for?" Ruto asks with a sad expression.
"Everything... Being a bad friend most of all.
"You should have just been open with me. I would have understood."
"I didn't understand it myself back then. I didn't think others would."
"Do you understand yourself now?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
I blink away the tears. I don't want to tear up in front of her. This wasn't supposed to be about me. All I wanted was to apologize for treating her so bad in the past. I also don't want Zelda to wake up and wonder where I am. I don't think she'd be okay with me and Ruto getting close like this... I don't want to mess up with her again. She's all I have left, I can't fail our relationship like I fail everything else! I wasn't a good partner for Ruto but I learned from my mistakes and now I have to be better with her Zelda. I have to really try, even when it gets tough sometimes.
"Are you cold?" I ask Ruto. "We should go back inside."
"I should go home," she says with a faint smile.
"It's late. Let me at least walk you to the train station."
"Can I ask you something?" Ruto puts her hands on my cheeks to make me look at her. My heart is racing. "Now that you're living in America..." She looks into my eyes for a moment and it almost takes me back to high school. In a whisper, she asks me the question nobody has asked me before. "Are you truly happy?"
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Hey guys! We're back on a schedule!
For the past year, I've been really busy with school and work but I recently graduated and got accepted to a great university (🎉yay!)
So while I'm on summer break, I'll be uploading a new chapter
🔥EVERY SATURDAY!!🔥