Early the next morning, Nyx wandered back in like nothing had happened, and just as he entered the door he was met with a cold stare from Ellis.
Nyx froze, then the corners of his mouth hooked and he leaned lazily in the doorway, "What, were you waiting for me to come back?"
Ellis didn't answer, retracting his gaze and faintly said, "Next time you stay out at night, at least say so in advance."
Nyx raised an eyebrow, his eyes lighting up for a split second before he smiled wryly, "So if I say it ahead of time, I can stay out all night?"
Ellis ignored him and just turned to go back to his work.
Nyx, on the other hand, laughed silently, his tone teasing and lighthearted, "Ellis, you really are special."
Ellis didn't reply, but the students all saw it that day - the young master demon was back to his old playfulness, he still loved to make trouble, he still made mischief, but the difference was that he now learned to "sell his pity" in time.
Their beloved tutor, Ellis, seemed to be unaware of this subtle change.
Nix was everywhere in Ellis's life.At first, he thought he was still living an independent and regular life.
That is, until he woke up early one morning to find an oddly shaped Abyssal Gem inexplicably added to his bedside table.It wasn't his own.It still had a faint demonic aura on it, and at a glance, it belonged to some demon who just threw things around.
Ellis was silent for a moment, picking up the gem and putting it in a drawer.He then got up and walked towards his desk, ready to work on his papers, however, as he pulled out his chair, his movements paused.
There was a long black tail on his chair.Oh no, it wasn't a tail, it was the robe that Nyx was draped in.
Ellis sighed slightly and picked up the robe, intending to put it back in Nyx's room.But when he walked into the living room, he saw a few more gold coins scattered on the coffee table, as well as an abyssal book of unknown content.
He didn't need to guess to know that these were Nix's "trophies"--probably from wherever he fished them out, or perhaps from some unknown demon.
Ellis didn't bother, just cleaned up a bit, then walked to the kitchenette.
He pulled open the cupboard to get his usual tea tin, only to reach out and touch a box of ... Abyssal specialty snacks that had been shoved in there at some point?Ellis's movements lurched as he stared at the box of strangely wrapped snacks and, after a second, closed the cupboard door.
He felt like his life was being encroached upon a little.Since who knows when, the bookshelves in the study were mixed with strange tomes brought by Nyx; traces of a demon's tail would appear on the cushions of the sofa from time to time; the spices in the small kitchen had more varieties that Ellis had never purchased before, and even the flower pot on the windowsill had a pitch-black seed from the abyss slipped into it by Nyx.
Not to mention the fact that when he occasionally tried to spend a quiet evening, he would always hear Nyx humming if anything from the living room, or the sound of some sort of abyssal instrument that he had gotten from somewhere and played automatically.
"Ellis."Nyx always called him by his first name as a matter of course, never with honorifics, and not caring if their relationship should be more formal.
He'd sometimes lie on his desk while Ellis was grading papers, resting his cheeks on his head as he watched him, sometimes he'd take Ellis's teacup right away to take a taste while he drank his tea, and sometimes he'd even wrap his tail around the back of Ellis's chair and wiggle it around.
But Ellis never really shooed him away.He'd still frown, he'd coldly remind the other man to leave himself alone, and he'd dispose of Nyx's pranks without mercy, but he'd never really banished the demon.
Because the demon had left so many traces in his life that he didn't even realize that he'd gotten used to them being there.