>>57810297>Emerald: "I want friends">Ruby and Sapphire cringe duo appear>Emerald: "Not like that"Emerald's ironically closer to Gold and Crystal, his personality is a mix of them both, you could even see him as their kid. Versus Ruby and Sapphire, who Emerald finds tiring at best, he's more like a coworker friend and less emotionally close to them.
Anyway in ORAS all we get is Emerald saying "I haven't seen Sapphire in awhile", so we can only guess how he spent the 4 year timeskip. I doubt he lives near Littleroot though (that's the Ruby/Sapphire cringe containment zone), besides he was adopted by the Trick Master, so we can assume he lives at the Trick House. I headcanon Emerald works remotely for Crystal and Prof Oak too, using his "Calmer" gimmick to catch Pokemon across Hoenn for research purposes. Emerald copies Crys a lot (even his Pokeball kick pose is just mimicking hers) so I figure he'd be happiest working with his onee-san/crush.
I also think Emerald being closer to the Johto guys is intentional, it lets him have friends without third wheeling on the R/S relationship all the time. Besides, there just isn't a "Hoenn trio" the same way there's the Kanto quartet (loose friend group, plagued by shipwars) and the Johtrio (tsundere friend group with fewer shipwars). The Hoenn dex holders are just 2 freaks
canonically dating each other, plus one random unplanned Battle Frontier shill OC who got tacked on later.
And isolating Emerald from R/S even further, he doesn't even end up doing anything related to Rayquaza. While disappointing, nobody really cared either, since at least in the past even the JP fanbase hated him. Poor dude 