#i'm late but wanted to acknowledge this somehow and organize his thoughts lol

[ringlorn]

"Hey, I'm back with the stuff!"

Nezha all but glides in through the back door, arms laden with grocery bags while his Wheels do the work of leading him into the kitchen. Why his roommate wanted so much soymilk he'll never know, but he trusts Macaque's cooking skills.

Even if he makes lotus root dishes far too often.

There was a sale on kale this week—Nezha doesn't know whether Macaque would use that, but he buys one bunch anyways, figuring the macaque can always whip up extra snacks to take to his boyfriend, or Liu'er, or whoever he runs into around the city. Most of the time he doesn't know what the guy gets up to at all since his shadows make him virtually invisible—but that's on him for not really caring. The rest of the time they spend passing each other in the halls, through the windows, or actually sharing sauce over the meal table (and isn't that weird enough, him eating with a monkey that isn't Sun), living more or less...like roommates do, he guesses.

He's not sure why Macaque doesn't just move in with Monkey King at this point—they obviously like each other and even the third guy's been accepted by both—but it's the same question he could ask himself: why not move in with Sun? Too many monkeys, is his first reaction, but honestly the threat of Zhang San coming back someday and seeing the two of them in one house is what really keeps him in check.

(If he wanted to win over Sun, he would've done it first and a thousand years earlier rather than settle for second place now.)

Once in front of the fridge, Nezha opens it up and starts to put stuff around what's already inside, finally used to the proper placement of things. (Honestly, the looks he'd gotten from putting vegetables next to raw meat once upon a time?)

"Do you want me to take out any of this stuff?" he keeps talking as he works. ostensibly to no one. But having a roommate with six ears means you can whisper and he'll hear you just fine, so he might as well been shouting right now.

It's Nezha himself who needs to strain his ears for a response, only to hear nothing. He checks the clock on the wall—it's getting on evening, so the guy should be home to cook? Unless he ran off to hang with Monkey King again and pranked Nezha into coming back to an empty house or something.

Pah, joke's on him. He's rich enough to order takeout for the rest of his life.

Closing the fridge, the lotus prince saunters to the family room, still talking to empty air. "Also, do you know any good cooks? I mean, guys who do it for a living. A friend of mine's thinking to hire...I don't know where to get that kind of chef, snipe 'em from a restaurant or something?"

That's probably the easiest way to do it, but otherwise he was looking at online research instead. Magnolia could do that herself. It was also a pretty stupid question so he's expecting a snarky comeback, but the fact that no one replies is pretty telling.

Macaque's not home.

Just in case, Nezha decides to float upstairs, planning to listen in on the guy from outside his room. If the monkey's not sleeping, sick, or well, dealing with stuff like last time, he's likely MIA.

He doesn't expect to see Macaque's bedroom door standing ajar by the time he reaches the landing though. Exasperated, Nezha dismisses his Wheels and stalks over noisily on foot. "C'mon, you've never been this obvious with bait—"

The door creaks open. The inside is bare.

This...what, did he actually move out?

Looking around the empty space makes the ends of Nezha's hairs stand on end. It takes a moment before he unfreezes enough to scramble through his pockets for his phone. Fingers scrolls through his contacts—nothing, no name—then social media, where people are posting about the eclipse that dropped by while he was obliviously browsing the aisles of the supermarket.

Gone, just like that.

He's not sure what he feels at the moment. Honestly, the ones who should be missing him are—again, more scrolling back and forth—still here, so that's gotta suck. The other guy's gone too, though Nezha doesn't recall him as much as he does Monkey King with him, and—his brows wrinkle, thinking back to the fridge.

It's full of food, and right now he's the only one living in this house.

...tomorrow. He'd deal with it tomorrow. Keep what he could eat, donate the rest or something—it'd be a joke if he tried to cook like Macaque, but wasting his ingredients is even worse.

Do I tell someone? No, they'd probably find out for themselves—and maybe even sooner than he did, since they were actually close. He and Macaque were—well, they couldn't be friends as far as Heaven was concerned, but they weren't enemies.

They were comfortable, Nezha decides, in their special brand of impersonalized co-living that had the guy bossing him around with a spatula in one hand and a pan full of spicy sizzling vegetables in the other to scrub the toilets already, it's only fair, Nezha, before setting a full bowl of food in front of him for lunch half an hour later.

Wordlessly, Nezha walks to the bedroom windows and throws one open. A late summer breeze trickles through the opening, hot and heavy, making it hard to breathe. He inhales it anyways—and then climbs onto the windowsill before stepping out entirely. Of course his Wheels catch him before he falls, and Nezha turns mid-air to hover outside his building, staring at the windows darkening with the onset of incoming rain clouds.

The houses here are never left empty for long—the Stars always fill them with new, confused faces every few days. He'll probably get a new roommate next time, but he'd have to figure out the groceries before that, and there's no telling how the other monkeys are going to cope with this all, or if they'll even drop by to check.

He frowns at that thought. Would it be better or worse for him to be there when they do?

If he keeps the window open, they can let themselves in—or just use the balcony, another favorite. There's been no issue of thieves in this area of city so he can keep things unlocked—the locals know better to try against all the superpowered weirdos they get every month moving in. And even if nobody comes—

Well, maybe he's the one who needs time to readjust to living by himself again.

Nezha looks at his phone and decides to book a hotel for the night.