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Regect and Ze are good friends. Albeit, they fight— a lot, in all ways. Video games, play fighting, debates, arguing and bickering, it's really their way of enjoying each other's company at that point. Their clown friend treats their arguing as comforting background noise at this point.
Though, there are some big aspects of Ze that Regect tends to forget.
Regect forgets that Ze was not just some other traveller who wanted to take a break from civilization and found salvation in a nice part of untouched nature, which was ironically the exact opposite. Regect has to remind himself that Ze was still studying in college. Online college, to be very specific.
For this very reason, the entity was glad that he was not some regular mortal human who had to attend any college, or just pursue an education in general. After managing to make it out alive when he snuck into Ze's room when he had online lectures, from the sounds of it— they seemed hella boring. He was grateful that he was just some weird ass miracle of life who spawned into this world already having tons of knowledge in general.
And after witnessing Ze's multiple crash outs regarding his assignments, and him and Moe bonding over the 'horrors' of college (Moe comforting him mostly since she already got her degree), the entity knew that he should at least call himself lucky.
When they first had just met, both Regect and Moe didn't know that Ze had projects and online lectures to attend to. To be fair, Ze was building a house when they first made contact— and the rest was history.
It was most likely because it was the start of the year, so things started out slow. However, as the months go by, Regect was told by Moe that she could already sense the multiple deadlines and projects coming in Ze's way.
And of course, she was always right.
"ZE!" Regect burst into the man's room.
The entity held a magical crystalball.
"Look what Moe and Fante found! A magical crystalball— it's legit and and—"
"Regect," Ze sounded irritated. The entity shut his mouth when the man turned his office chair slightly to face away from his laptop and towards him.
That was only when Regect realized that Ze was in some online call.
"I'm in the middle of something here." Ze said, gritting his teeth.
"Oh sorry—"
"How about you, Ze?" There was an entirely new voice coming from his laptop.
The human's eyes widened and scrambled back to his device. "Just show it to me later, Regect."
Ze was quickly interrupted by that same voice. "What's your opinion on this theory?"
Regect watched Ze switched to a very formal version of himself that the entity had… never actually seen before.
Welp, the entity knew that Ze would genuinely shoot him if he dared to interrupt his studying hours— so Regect politely left, even closing the door fully this time.
Slowly, Ze was getting too busy to go on adventures with them every day. He was getting more tired, his studies draining his motivation to do anything else in his free time.
And worst of all, he was sleeping almost every single damn time to the point Regect had to look up how much needed sleep does a human need.
"Hey, Fante? Have you seen Ze?" Regect stopped by at the kitchen.
He had just gone out for a walk with Moe and realized that he had not seen Ze this morning for breakfast.
"Oh no, sorry I dont think so." Wakafante answered.
Regect paused. That familiar feeling of dread seeped in, rising in his stomach.
"What do you mean?" He muttered.
Then, he heard movement in the living room. Regect nearly teleported over there, but controlled himself and just walked.
Ah, Ze was there. On the couch, napping. Again.
Wakafante walked beside him, and his eyes lit up as if he just remembered something.
"Oh, yes!" Fante cheered. "Ze just came downstairs to uh, eat something— and went to the couch and absolutely passed out!"
Regect groaned, both in annoyance and in relief.
On the bright side, he gets to at least poke fun at Ze for not understanding new math right away. To make it even brighter, he'd never admit but it was nice watching Ze very focus on something whenever Moe tutored him (the advantages of knowing someone with an engineering degree).
"Okay so why do we need to divide them at the end?" Regect heard Ze questioned Moe.
The entity sat on the table with them to watch despite not really saying anything to help. He just wanted to give Ze and Moe some company, whether it'd help them or not.
Moe honked, Ze looked even more confused.
"Okay..? Uh." He stared at the problem, foot tapping on the ground and Regect managed to catch his frustration rising.
The entity sighed.
"It's because you need to give an approximation in your results to be more accurate." Regect repeated what Moe had told, just in a more simple matter. He pointed at Ze's paper. "Like Moe said, your professor wants it to be exact."
"Oh." Ze's voice was soft. "You were actually helpful."
"No problem." A beat. Regect blinked and glared at Ze. "Hey!"
Moe rolled her eyes as the man snickered, writing down his answer in the process.
"Not even a thank you!?"
"That was my way of saying thank you."
"You suck, you're so mean. I'm literally helping you not fail and you're like this. I'm hurt, I hate you."
"Pfft." Ze just shook his head lightly as they all moved onto the next practice problem.
Going back to sleeping all of the time, now— there was one day where one single project made everything the opposite.
As what Ze has said,
"I have a research paper to do I'm so dead." Ze groaned when he sat at the dining table for lunch.
Regect saw pity spread throughout Moe's face. It looked like the clown had definitely experienced this— actually, of course she did, maybe— Regect doesn't know a lot about college.
But this research paper project thing took a great toll on Ze since it literally took away all of his free time.
One week since that research paper project, Regect hasn't seen Ze come out of his room for anything else other than shower, the toilet— or run out of his room to get a snack to eat from the kitchen before racing back to his headquarters like his life depended on it.
Week 2, Regect and Moe started to get more concern. There were days where both of them wanted to at least try to get Ze to go for a nice walk.
But they always found Ze dead asleep napping in his bed, with his laptop still on at his desk, with notebooks and papers being a mess all over the place.
At week 3, on a random day— Regect and Moe wanted to do a Lord of the Rings marathon because why not. Wakafante was supposed to join, but he ended up forgetting and accidentally summoning an elder guardian right in their kitchen.
All three of them panicked, but not because there was a mythical beast that lived in the depths of the ocean in their own damn house— but because if they didn't get rid of it soon, it will eventually make too much noise, they would have to deal with an even more scary being.
A very stressed out and angry Ze who kindly asked for no loud noises at night as he worked on his research paper.
That terrified all three of them and they somehow managed to get rid of the beast in under 5 minutes.
Wakafante was sent to bed, and the other two finally got back to the couch to begin the first movie.
A couple hours later, it was nearing 2 am, and the two were now beginning the second movie.
That was until they heard footsteps coming down from the stairs. Moe turned, and honked an excited hello, Regect looked at her direction.
It was Ze, and he looked… well, he had better days definitely.
"Look who's alive!" The entity decided to tease a bit. He patted an empty spot beside him on the couch. "C'mon dude, watch a movie with us?"
"Hm..?" Regect watched in concern as Ze started wobbling towards them.
When Ze arrived, he just stood there. The other two stared at him in slight confusion. Moe honked again, asking if he was okay this time.
"Huh..?" Ze mumbled. He rapidly shook his head. "No no… just need, more.. more input."
Moe blinked in confusion. More input?
"I have to put more input." Ze repeated himself.
Regect adjusted his position slightly on the couch to face him properly. "Uh, for what, man?"
"For… my research."
...
"Ze, you okay—"
Then Ze titled too much, and Regect managed to catch him before he landed on the couch with too much force.
Moe shrieked, but quickly came to a calm and quieted down when Ze was okay.
"Dude?" Regect questioned as he fixed Ze properly to let him lay on his side on the sofa's back.
Ze was sleeping, snoring even.
…
Regect snickered, and Moe seemed to have figured it out as well as she started giggling.
"Holy hell dude, I didn't know you sleepwalk." The entity stated, even when the man he was talking to wouldn't be able to respond. "Okay— let me just— Moe, can you put a pillow on my lap, please?"
Moe did, and Regect gently laid Ze's head onto the pillow, his body instinctively adjusting itself to a comfortable position on the couch.
"Are research papers this hard?" Regect questioned Moe, who quickly nodded in response. "Damn."
They watched as Ze mumbled something incoherent— well, the only thing they could only catch was the word 'paper'. Ze shifted some more, and Regect was about to prepare to talk to an actual awaken Ze— but the man just moved, and turned his body sideways, his face burying himself into Regect's stomach.
The entity stopped moving, feeling loads of butterflies fluttering around. Moe just gave him a smirk, before going back to the movie.
Moe eventually fell asleep on the couch as well, leaning against her friend's shoulder. This left Regect being the only person awake in the house. He'd catch himself stroking Ze's hair, and did he stop himself? Nah, Regect told himself that Ze needed this due to the constant stress he's having.
When sunrise came, Ze gasped as he woke up— sitting right up like he was raised from the dead.
Regect stared, Ze was panting. The man turned.
"What's the time!?" Ze whispered scream.
"Uhhhhhhhhhhh," Regect blinked, and checked his wrist as if there was a watch. "Like, five minutes after sunrise."
"Oh." Ze blinked.
He then fell back into the pillow where he previously was. "Wake me up in… 2 hours."
And the man was immediately back to his dozing off.
Regect could only marvel even more at how humans and mortal handle sleep.
Week 4, things calmed down, and Regect slowly saw Ze outside of his room more day by day.
After that deadline, it was as if things went back to normal, and they all actually had an adventure together for the first time in a while.
A whole while after, Regect saw Ze running down the stairs, laptop in his hands.
"MOE!" Ze yelled, making Moe face him in surprise. "LOOK AT THE SCORE I GOT FOR MY PAPER!"
All Regect knew that it was a good one, as Ze and Moe both jumped in joy as soon as the clown looked at his screen.
Well, whether he understand it or not, at least Ze was happy.