Reuniting Kafei and Anju



Reuniting Kafei and Anju is the biggest task in the Bombers' Notebook in Majora's Mask and arguably the most intricate and lengthy Zelda sidequest to date. It includes various characters and spans all three days. In order to complete every entry in the Bombers' Notebook, Link will have to go through most of the sequence twice, which means returning back to the First Day to fill in any remaining gaps in the Notebook he was unable to complete in the standard three-day-span.

Characters Involved

 * Anju
 * Kafei
 * Madame Aroma
 * Mayor Dotour
 * Sakon
 * Man from Curiosity Shop
 * Postman

Required Items

 * Ocarina of Time
 * Epona
 * Garo's Mask
 * Kafei's Mask
 * Hookshot
 * Deku Mask or Room Key

Items Involved

 * Kafei's Mask
 * Room Key
 * Letter to Kafei
 * Pendant of Memories
 * Keaton Mask
 * Special Delivery to Mama (Priority Mail)

Rewards

 * Postman's Hat
 * Chateau Romani (plus the Bottle)
 * Couple's Mask
 * Piece of Heart x 2

Places Involved

 * Clock Town
 * Laundry Pool
 * Stock Pot Inn
 * Mayor's Office
 * Milk Bar
 * Postman's Office
 * Curiosity Shop
 * Ikana Canyon
 * Sakon's Hideout

First Day
As Link exits the Clock Tower, he will see a young boy put a letter in the mailbox and run away. After that, he goes towards the Mayor's office in East Clock Town. At 10am, he must enter the office and head to his right. In this room Link should see Madame Aroma, Toto, and possibly Gorman. He then speaks with Madame Aroma, who looks for volunteers to find her long-lost son Kafei, and receives Kafei's Mask.

At 2pm he goes to Stock Pot Inn and speaks with Anju and tells her about a supposed reservation he has. Anju then gives him the Room Key; the young hero then sits still for some time and the Postman enters the room. After he tells Anju that a mysterious person sent a letter to her and leaves, Link sees that as the perfect moment to put on Kafei's Mask and speaks with Anju. She asks Link to meet her in the kitchen at 11:30pm. As Link got a reservation for a room in the second floor, he is able to stay in the inn even after it closes at 8:30pm. In the event that Link fails to recieve the Room Key, he can still enter the Inn through the unlocked door on the veranda.

At the meeting (interestingly with a 30-minute delay, therefore taking moment at 12 am), Anju tells Link that she suspects that Kafei was the author of that letter, then gives Link a letter and asks him to put it in the postbox. Link is also given the task of going to meet Kafei.

Quest-Ending Moments: If Link goes to the restroom and gives ??? the letter, he'll use it to make his necessities and the item will be lost. Likewise, if he stops Sakon from stealing the Bomb Bag in North Clock Town, the event will drastically lead the sidequest to a dead end later. In any of these cases, Link will have to restart the quest again.

Second Day
After Link deposits Anju's Letter into the mailbox, the Postman eventually takes it while examining every mailbox. Meanwhile, Link hangs around the Laundry Pool until the afternoon of the second day. The Postman delivers Link's letter to the young boy he saw on the first day. Following the boy into the door at the Laundry Pool leads him to a hidden room of the Curiosity Shop. Once inside, Link speaks with the boy to learn that he is actually Kafei.

He tells Link that he has been turned into a child by the Skull Kid and his ceremonial mask, the Sun Mask, was stolen by Sakon. Kafei promised Anju that he would come with the mask, so he refuses to return until he has the mask back in his possession. Kafei then gives Link the Pendant of Memories and asks him to deliver it to Anju. If Link hurries, he becomes able to give it to her on the second day (the Bunny Hood is helpful). If not, he can still wait until the third day to deliver it.

In any case, two optional events can be witnessed from this moment on. At 9:30pm, after entering the room he reserved in the first day, he can hear a dialogue from Anju's room, where the aforementioned owner of the inn is arguing with her mother, who suspects that Kafei fled to the ranch to join Cremia, but Anju refuses to believe that, and decides to wait for him (either until he finally comes or until 6pm from the next day if Link hasn't given the pendant to her yet); at 1am, Sakon goes to the Curiosity shop to sell the shopkeeper the Bomb Bag he stole the previous day (this is why Link shouldn't stop him at that moment). Kafei sees the thief from the back room, then plans to follow him.

Final Day
If Link has already given Anju the Pendant of Memories, then he can sit around the Laundry Pool until the afternoon. If not, he needs to deliver it first (in this case, Anju is found in the room where Gorman, Guru-Guru and the two pairs of twins were), then head to the Laundry Pool.

At 1pm, the door is unlocked and Link can go back inside. Once there, he meets the Man from the Curiosity Shop; He tells Link that Kafei has left for Ikana Canyon and gives him both the Keaton Mask and Priority Mail for Madame Aroma. If Link has saved the old lady of the bomb shop from Sakon on the night of the first day, Kafei will still be there since Sakon wouldn't have come yet to the shop (not without something stolen to sell); therefore, Link cannot continue this sidequest, and must start the quest over from the beginning.

Link then goes to Ikana Canyon, and finds Kafei where the river leaves the area. Sakon's stronghold is here, and Kafei tells Link that it's only matter of time before the thief returns there. At 6pm, Sakon indeed returns to his hideout, and somehow opens the door.

Quest-Ending Moment: As Sakon approaches, Link must not be seen; if Sakon suspects that someone is watching him enter the hideout, he flees and never comes back. The sidequest then ends at this moment. Nonetheless, a player may still take the priority mail to the Milk Bar and obtain the sixth bottle.

Once inside the hideout, Kafei accidentally sends his mask down a conveyor belt. It's soon realized that the switches and the doors in the place are mixed up, meaning that at least two people are required to infiltrate in the hideout, one in each route. For the next few minutes, the player will control both Link and Kafei as both work through Sakon's Hideout (this is arguably a first for the Zelda series).


 * As Kafei, the player needs to solve some simple block puzzles. The blue switches open the doors from Link's route. If Kafei steps on a red switch he and Link lose some time, as the conveyor belt moves faster; but if he steps on a yellow switch he and Link gain some time because the belt moves slower.


 * As Link, the player fights off Deku Babas and a Wolfos. The death of these creatures open the doors from Kafei's route.

Quest-Ending Moment: If the two characters take too long, the mask will fall into a hole leading to Sakon's whereabouts (where the thief is waiting for his acquisition to flee from Termina for good). If this happens, the sidequest is over.

At the end, Kafei gets the Sun's Mask back. Link then sees him start running back to town, and Link also needs to get back there, but he only has a few minutes and it is a lot easier to warp there using the Song of Soaring.

It's over 12am when Link goes to town, but the anticipated reunion only occurs at 4:30am. He can, meanwhile, do one of these two things:


 * Route 1: He can head to the Milk Bar and go inside; he then puts on Kafei's Mask, and speaks to Madame Aroma. She takes the Priority Mail Link received from the Curiosity shop's owner and then gives the Hero a Bottle full of Chateau Romani as a reward for his actions.


 * Route 2: He can head to the Post Office and go inside, and show the aforementioned Priority Mail to the Postman, who is worried because he wants to flee, but he also wants to fulfill his scheduled activities. He gets ready and takes the letter to Madame Aroma at the Milk Bar, with Link following him. After the Postman exits, Link speaks with him to receive the Postman's Hat as a reward for helping the postman to fulfill his last duty and enabling him to flee.

Note: Any player who wants to collect everything in the game will therefore need to guide Link through this long sidequest twice in order to get all rewards. Because the quest can be started early in the game, it can be played as soon as possible to help either Madame Aroma or the Postman, then once more after access to Ikana Canyon to help the other character and to further proceed in the task. It helps that the bar is open to the public between 6 and 9pm on the Final Day.

Finally, Link heads to the Employees Only room of the Stock Pot Inn, whose door has been unlocked by this point. Inside, Link sees Anju waiting for Kafei, but only if Link gave her the pendant. At 4:30am, the two receive Kafei, who finally comes in. The two engaged characters hug each other and then exchange masks, the Sun Mask and Moon's Mask (guarded by Anju), which magically merge to become the Couple's Mask, and the couple gives it to Link for witnessing the act (and obviously for helping them reunite).

As rewarding as it feels to reunite them, Link only gets to enjoy it for a brief moment. About a minute after he has reunited them, the Moon will crash. So, Link needs to play the Song of Time immediately to save his progress, or hurry to the Clock Tower if he plans to confront the Skull Kid and, if the Four Giants were freed, to complete the game's main objective.

Aftermath
If returning to the First Day was the chosen option, there is one more action that can be performed, thanks to the availability of the Couple's Mask. At 10am of the First or Second Day, Link heads to the Mayor's office but this time he goes left. He enters the middle of a fierce meeting, and puts on the Couple's Mask and speaks with the Mayor to end the meeting and receive a Piece of Heart. Likewise, if he got the Postman's Hat, he can view any mailbox to receive another Heart Piece.

Trivia

 * If Link does not talk to Anju with the Kafei Mask on during day one, she will go outside to the Laundry Pool.
 * If Link forgets to give the Pendent of Memories to Anju, she will flee town with her family. If Link still help Kafei, he will go to the Stock Pot Inn anyway and find that Anju is gone.
 * This sidequest is also useful to test one of the glitches involving the free use of the Fierce Deity's Mask.

''Images courtesy of Kafei A'La Mode. Used with permission.''