Another day of training. Yet another moment of distraction from MK, who once again couldn't control his thoughts.
It had been a few days since that special delivery to that brothel (when he returned to Pigsy's, the pig demon had declared that whatever the amount paid, the boy would never make deliveries to that place from now on), and once again he was shocked by what he saw.
And the fact that Monkey King was in front of him didn't help him remove the thousand questions that crowded his mind, preventing him from concentrating on avoiding the monkey's blows; until, inevitably, he was kicked off his feet, slamming into a rock face behind him, losing his grip on the Staff which rolled a little further away.
"Bud! Are you okay?", Monkey King was immediately beside him, a worried look on his face, as he helped him up and made sure he didn't get any bruise or wound.
"I-I'm fine. Nothing broken", stammered the boy, perhaps moving away a little too quickly from his mentor, awakening the latter's suspicions about the strange behavior of his disciple.
"Xiaotian," his tone immediately turned serious; he gently took his face between his paws, forcing MK to meet his gaze: "Now you have to tell me seriously what's wrong. This story is getting serious and I assure you that if we don't solve it I refuse to train you any further".
The boy's eyes widened, while his brain registered the sense of that veiled threat; his anxiety grew exponentially as he searched every corner of his mind for something to say in order to avoid that confrontation without suffering the consequences.
Monkey King actually realized the state in which the young man was and hurried to reassure him, also moving his paws from his face to his shoulders, squeezing them affectionately: "Don't worry kid, I'm not angry and I have no intention of giving up to you as successor, but this lack of concentration of yours is really worrying me, I already explained it to you". He waited a few seconds to see if MK could calm down before continuing the speech: "This is the second time I've seen you lost in your world and this time I really risked hurting you, although I'm trying to limit myself with you because you're still learning. So, please, talk to me."
MK returned his gaze only for a few seconds, before turning away, sorry that his mentor was worrying about him; he was right to talk to him like that, he realized, but it was really difficult for him to reconcile what he had seen in that place with what he had always thought of his mentor.
He didn't feel he had the right to ask questions about what was surely Sun Wukong's private life, but he really couldn't understand why he had done what he had seen that day: it was as if the pedestal where he had always placed the monkey was just collapsed, reducing itself to a pile of ashes.
Wukong meanwhile continued to observe him, a shiver of anxiety making its way through his mind in front of the boy's silence.
"MK...?"
"Why?". MK's voice came out in a barely audible whisper; if he didn't have his powers, Monkey King probably wouldn't even hear it.
"Why... what?"
"Why... Why did you do those things... in that brothel?"