  Massive stars have an impact on their surroundings from early in their
formation until the end of their lives. However, very little is known about
their formation. Episodic accretion may play a crucial role, but observations
of these events have only been reported towards a handful of massive
protostars. We aim to investigate the outburst event from the high-mass
star-forming region S255IR where recently the protostar NIRS3 underwent an
accretion outburst. We follow the evolution of this source both in photometry
and morphology of its surroundings. Methods: We perform near-infrared adaptive
optics observations on the S255IR central region using the Large Binocular
Telescope in the K$_{\rm s}$ broad-band and the H$_2$ and Br$\gamma$
narrow-band filters with an angular resolution of $\sim0\farcs06$, close to the
diffraction limit. We discover a new near-infrared knot north-east from NIRS3
that we interpret as a jet knot that was ejected during the last accretion
outburst and observed in the radio regime as part of a follow-up after the
outburst. We measure a mean tangential velocity for this knot of
$450\pm50\,\mathrm{km\,s^{-1}}$. We analyse the continuum-subtracted images
from H$_2$ which traces jet shocked emission, and Br$\gamma$ which traces
scattered light from a combination of accretion activity and UV radiation from
the central massive protostar. We observe a significant decrease in flux at the
location of NIRS3, with K=13.48\,mag being the absolute minimum in the historic
series. Our observations strongly suggest a scenario where the episodic
accretion is followed by an episodic ejection response in the near-infrared, as
it was seen in the earlier radio follow-up. The 30 years of $\sim2\,\mu{\rm m}$
photometry suggests that NIRS3 might have undergone another outburst in the
late 1980s, being the first massive protostar with such evidence observed in
the near-infrared.

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics;Astrophysics of Galaxies