Mark was a boy in my second-grade class who invited me over to his house to play Zelda games. He was at the top of our class, and I came second to him no matter how hard I tried. But I didn’t hold that against him. Despite our scores being decimals apart, we were best friends and we looked out for each other.
The game we played was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on his Nintendo Entertainment System. We really got into it and would spend hours talking about the game, who our favorite characters were, and how hard the dungeons were. He would often say “I’m supposed to be smart!” whenever we have trouble solving puzzles. I think that’s when I first started liking him.
It’s pretty typical for boys and girls to have crushes on each other, but not all of them are sweet on each other because they bonded over Zelda games.
We lived close to each other and our mothers were both on the Parent-Teacher Association, so it wasn’t hard to see one another often. We’d meet every day after we got home from school and usually fix something that was broken. And of course, we’d always play The Legend of Zelda.
We didn’t just play Zelda II, but other Zelda games as well. We were playing through Majora’s Mask when it happened.
At the very end of the game when we were on the moon, he told me he has a crush on me. It was one of the most enchanted moments of my life. He was my hero, and I was his princess.
After the game concluded and there was nothing left to do in Majora’s Mask, he got angry because it meant we couldn’t play it together anymore. He was grumpy for days and days until I had to promise him we’d find another game.
None of them were ever as good, but it didn’t change how we felt about each other when we played them. We were still happy together while returning to The Adventure of Link, but it wasn’t the same as it was before. Then we turned fourteen and decided that it was time for us to part ways. He was going to a fancy prep school up west and I was going to the high school that was near our home.
He gave me a parting gift — a very special sword from an ancient land called “Hyrule” — so that I would always remember him. But in holding onto it, he forgot to give it back before we stopped talking.
Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell him not to leave, but I didn’t want to stop him from living his life. It’s been almost ten years since we last spoke, but I will never forget those times when we played Zelda games together, and how our feelings for each other grew stronger and stronger because of it.
