Behind his eyes, sparks danced. And on his skin, warmth crawled.

He wasn't sure why, at first. What was this haze, this aura, in his eyelids? It shifted, churned with sparks. One second, it seemed red, then orange, then blue, then other colors, all without quite seeming to actually be those colors at all. The sparks, colored and yet not, twisted and bent about the way the wax in a lava lamp separates and rejoins like sludge, all without rhythm or rhyme. Shapes appeared and disappeared, gained coherence and lost it just as quickly in the way of someone halfway between consciousness and drowsiness.

The warmth, too, was confusing. It slid all over his skin, enveloped him in a way he absolutely detested. Had he just turned the heat up and forgotten? Or perhaps left the curtains open or something else?

And more to the point, what the hell had happened to the bed?

He felt neither sheets nor duvet over his skin, and he assumed he must've kicked them off of himself during the night. Perhaps a particularly awful nightmare? Sure, he didn't remember it, but for every dream a person remembers, a thousand go forgotten.

But the lack of cloth atop him wasn't all that was wrong – the mattress seemed to have lost all of its padding, and his pillow was nowhere to be found, either. His neck was stiff and part of his skull was sore from resting directly against the surface.

Then his arms shifted, and he felt something else.

Dirt. Not much of it, but dirt. And what lightly scraped his arm from beneath at his motions was the rough touch of stone.

Issei Hyoudou's eyes finally dragged open, and he saw the reasons for all of these things.

"What the hell…?" Issei murmured, barely aware that he'd spoken at all.

He wasn't in bed. That wasn't much of a surprise, really. Nor was his knowledge of where he was, either – just a secluded plaza in the local park that Issei often used as a shortcut on his way back from the mall.

No, the real surprise was his being here at all. How the hell had he fallen asleep out here?

Issei slowly pushed himself to stand on stiff legs, head throbbing and throat parched. But neither of those things were what he was paying attention to.

He squinted hard against the sun, wondering when the hell it had gotten so bright. And… unpleasant.

Issei was a teenager and spent a lot of his time in darkened rooms, that much was true, but he didn't hate the sun. Or, at the very least, he hadn't before this morning.

Now that opinion was being reconsidered. The once-friendly rays of light thrown off of that ball of gas in the sky seemed hateful, now, cruel and taunting. No longer did they welcome him out into the day; now, they seemed want nothing but to drive him into the dark and keep him there.

Even as he stood there, Issei's eyes began to water, but as he took a slow breath, he noticed something else he didn't remember.

Every single scent was far more intense than Issei could ever recall it being. The bittersweet scent of the cherry blossom trees around him was now almost noxious and choking. Beneath it, there was the unmistakable earthy scent of the dirt they grew in, and mixed into it was the scent of…

...water?

Issei's head turned, and as it did, he saw the fountain sitting directly in the center of the secluded plaza. He stared at it for a long while, at its plain-looking spigot that extended several meters into the air. At the water that flowed from the spigot's top and into the basin below.

Issei stared into the source of the scent, lost in both confusion and wonder. Confusion at his own ability to smell the things he did, wonder at how he had missed it before.

Had his unplanned night out in the park somehow cleared out a sinus problem he somehow hadn't known about?

Issei shook his head even as the thought crossed his mind. It was a ridiculous proposal, he knew it, and discarded it almost immediately. Whatever the reason for this, that wasn't it.

But if not that, then what?

Issei's mind was drawing a blank, and he quickly shook his head.

It was what it was. Issei didn't know the why, and that question certainly left him quite interested, but he tried to shove it to the back of his mind. The answer wasn't going to just appear conveniently in his brain, after all.

As he turned his back to the sun and his head down to the shadow he cast, his brow furrowed as he tried to piece together a more basic question: What the hell was he doing out here?

Issei's fingers slowly and unconsciously reached up to dig into the side of his skull. And as he thought it over, the further his fingernails bit into his head.

He remembered getting up to his alarm. Going to school. Playing video games and watching porn at Matsuda's house after classes let out for the day. Returning home, eating dinner with his family, doing homework and then going to bed.

At no point in-between then and now had he come anywhere near this park.

Issei shivered despite, or perhaps, in some strange way, because of the sun's glaring down on him. At its insistence that he leave its rays and cease insulting it by its presence.

His fingers dropped from the side of his head, falling by their own will and digging through his pocket. They searched for a single heart-wracking instant before finding what they sought and pulling it out.

And as Issei opened his phone, he gave a hard swallow, saliva trickling down a throat that screamed for hydration.

It was quarter to eight on a Sunday morning.

But when Issei had gone to sleep, it had been just past ten on a Friday night.

Issei took one slow breath after another as he walked, trying to keep his heart rate from going to madness even as it threatened to leap out of his chest. He was having little success with that, and the constant breaths of the trees and earth wasn't helping.

After seeing the day in his phone, Issei had immediately decided to go home. He didn't have much of a plan beyond that, but to have a plan to that point was comforting. And as he almost always did when coming this direction, he'd taken the shortcut. It cut off about half a kilometer from the walk back, and while perhaps not all that much, all things considered, anything that would shorten the distance between him and his house would be much appreciated right about now.

Alas, he hadn't considered his suddenly-improved sense of smell, and the once-pleasant smell of the woodland patch was now inviting in the first twinges of a headache. The woody scent, mixed with the earth's was a pungent concoction now, and Issei desperately hoped this enhanced sense of smell would go away sooner than later.

That hope was increased further as he reached the small fence one had to leap to get back to the sidewalk. Even as Issei approached, the combined smell of gasoline, diesel, stone and slightly warm tar nearly made him retch. As he walked, the brunette silently wondered to himself if Kuoh had always smelled this bad and he just hadn't noticed.

But as he approached an intersection he needed to cross and checked both ways, his thoughts about the smell of the tarmac, the continued wrath of the sun's rays and the increasingly-hard-to-ignore parchedness in his throat were all shoved to the back of his mind by the hum of a motor.

On instinct, Issei looked both ways, trying to discern the direction the car was coming from. But he saw absolutely nothing there, even as the grinding sound of the car's engine grew louder and louder.

Issei spun around, looking at the sleepy, empty street in front of and behind him, but still no car appeared to claim ownership of the growling engine that grew still louder in Issei's ears.

Issei's teeth ground in his gums. That engine, wherever it was, wasn't getting any quieter, and the headache Issei had been getting from the smell of the tarmac, trash cans and other assorted nastiness proved to be bolstered just as much by its roar.

Then, after nearly thirty seconds of looking around, a perfectly normal sedan rounded the corner to Issei's right. And as it did so, the roar of the engine suddenly became much louder than it already was.

Vaguely, Issei realized that the hum of the engine's pistons and cranks and whatever else wasn't all that was there. Beneath the roar of the engine, he could hear the grinding rumble of the tires biting the asphalt as they spun beneath the metal frame, the spitting choke of the exhaust as it pumped foul-smelling fumes into the air. All of the sounds of the vehicle coalesced together, and the resulting low-pitched screech grew ever-louder as the car drove closer to Issei.

Intolerably louder, as it turned out.

As the car drove through the intersection, Issei found himself with his hands involuntarily clamped over his ears like a small child.

Then, as it passed him, the sound of it began to finally and mercifully quiet down, and after almost a minute, Issei could finally hear clearly again. And when he could, Issei became aware of something else, something so obvious that he was rather shocked he hadn't noticed it prior.

It wasn't just that the sun was more hateful or that Kuoh smelled much worse. The entire world had suddenly become louder. It was as though a particularly petty and vindictive god had gone to some mystical dial and turned all the sounds of the world up by several notches on the speakers. Even as he crossed the street, Issei could hear the lousy-smelling wind blow in a gentle gust that sounded like a full-force gale. The few people he saw as he walked back seemed to be stamping their feet with every step, and every time a car passed him, Issei just about wanted to slice his own ears off.

All the while, the infuriated rays of the sun incessantly cut at his skin, and the parchedness of his throat only grew more aggravating.

With his senses kicked well past overdrive and the sun itself having decided that it wanted him dead, the normally twenty-minute walk from Issei's house to the mall took more than twice that long. Eventually, however, Issei did manage to drag himself back to his house. He'd hoped to slip inside unnoticed, pretend that he'd just come back late.

His mother, naturally, was standing directly inside the front door.

"Issei Hyoudou!" she snapped, in the way parents do to get their child's attention. As parents also do, she didn't let him get a single word of explanation before immediately plowing ahead. "Where were you last night? Your father and I were worried sick! And don't tell me you were at a friends' house! We called both of your friends and neither of them had seen you! Your father's out driving all over town looking for you and-"

Issei was nodding along with his mother's worried ranting, but he was already starting to check out mentally. As he did, he noticed something else, something perhaps odder than every single thing he'd experienced since waking up an hour or so ago.

His mother smelled good. Better than good. Quite delectable, in fact, but not in the way one would expect. She didn't smell good because she and her clothes were well-cleaned and because of perfume. Certainly, Issei's nose made it clear to him that both of those things were true, but that wasn't the smell Issei's mind was so fond of; if anything, that was actually rather annoying. While it wasn't near as strong as the tarmac and trash of outside, the close quarters meant the comparatively weak scents of soap and perfume were still too powerful for Issei's liking.

No, the lovely smell was of something else. A wonderful, salty smell, like a breeze of the ocean, yet with a metallic tang mixed in.

Only when he noticed she had stopped rambling after several minutes did Issei come back to reality.

"Well?" she demanded, brown eyes that her son had inherited leaving Issei feeling as though he were being scanned by an electron microscope. As mother's eyes do.

"Umm…" Issei said, fidgeting slightly. "I… fell asleep in the park…"

His mother's eyes narrowed. "You… fell asleep. In the park."

Issei nodded, eyes darting from side to side.

"And you really expect me to believe that?"

Issei remained silent at the question that was already answered by his mother's tone.

"Fine," his mother said, glaring at him harsher than the sun had been. "Lie to me. But I will find out, Issei, and when I do, you're going to wish you'd just told me the truth. Your father will hear about this, too, once he gets home!"

Issei nodded in that submissive way expected of a child being scolded by an angry parent. But as she walked away, a rather dry thought wormed its way into his head.

Be sure you tell me as soon as you figure it out. I'd love to know, too.

Once his mother had gotten out of his face and stomped off upstairs, Issei walked to the kitchen.

Now that he was out of the sun's rays and in the security of his own home, Issei sought to do something about that dry throat.

For just a moment, he fished around in the cabinet before snatching a glass. Then, he went to the tap, and watched the water flow.

Issei's stomach churned as he stared down into the partially-full cup.

Six. Six damn cups of water he'd drunk now, and they weren't small cups. And yet his throat still felt dry as ever, maybe even worse.

But Issei stubbornly fought off the queasiness in his gut, and turned up the glass, trying to force yet more water into his system.

As he downed the last of the water, Issei made a split-second decision that it would be his last glass for a while. His stomach kept rocking about, its own little storm threatening to billow into a rather foul tsunami if jostled too much.

Slowly, steadily, he walked out of the kitchen, back into the front room and towards the stairs…

…just in time to nearly crash into his father.

"Issei!" his father yelped, but the cry didn't have much alarm. "You're okay?"

"Yeah," Issei said. Before he could continue, however, his father kept speaking.

"I guess your mother already screamed at you?"

Issei nodded, and his father returned the gesture, his expression sympathetic.

"Moms are like that. Mine did the same to me when I stayed out the first time." He winked. "No need to tell me what you were doing. I know the sorts of things guys your age get up to when we're not around."

Issei swallowed and said nothing, but to his relief, his father didn't seem to notice as he treaded up the same stairs his mother had gone.

Once Issei heard his parent's door open and close, he followed his father's track.

As he walked up the stairs, Issei's plan was to go to his room, draw the curtains back, turn all the lights off and lie down for a while.

Then his stomach gave a particularly nasty shake, and Issei was left going straight towards the bathroom. The churning grew worse with every step and second, and even as Issei threw the door open, it felt as though his stomach would start erupting. Just as it reached a fever pitch, Issei leaned down over the toilet, sure that every single drop of water he'd just drunk was going to come right back out, along with whatever else might be in there.

Nothing. Nothing came up. At the last possible instant, his stomach and the storm going on inside it subsided.

For a while, Issei stayed knelt there. Not moving, sure that his stomach was working against him to fake him out and erupt when he was far from somewhere that the result could be easily disposed of. But as the time passed, Issei's fright over that began to wane. There were no signs of the nausea returning, no hint that everything in his stomach.

Even as he stood once the while was up, Issei began to feel just a little better… even if the dryness in his throat and inexplicable, unquenchable thirst refused to abate.

He turned. And froze when he looked in the mirror.

Issei couldn't figure out quite why at first. The young man in the mirror seemed to be the same person who'd greeted him so many times before. He had Issei's same face, the same perverted grin and the same clothes he was used to wearing.

As his eyes kept looking over the young man in the mirror, the young man in the glass' eyes matching his every movement in perfect reverse, Issei noticed something.

Was he going crazy, or was he paler than he was before?

Issei blinked as his left hand ran down his right arm and his mirror twin's right ran down his left. He stared as the skin blanched and then returned some of its color, but it didn't help him make any judgement. Issei had never been the darkest-skinned individual, and if he had grown paler, he couldn't quite tell.

Issei shook his head, his mind idly rambling to itself that he just might be going a little bit crazy.

The teen started to turn from the mirror, and then froze once more when the sensation hit him again. That sensation that there was something wrong with the young man in the mirror.

He turned back again and looked at himself once more. He went somewhat more in-depth this time, looking over every exposed bit of skin that he could.

But that turned up just as inconclusive as before.

Issei leaned toward the mirror a bit more, and for just a moment, his eyes and the eyes of the young man in the mirror crossed.

And then he saw it. And when he did, both Issei's eyes and the eyes of the one in the mirror widened in perfect unison.

When Issei had gone to sleep at ten o'clock on Friday evening, his eyes had been the same earthy brown that his mother had.

The young man who stared back at him had eyes that almost glowed in a rich, ruby red. And as his and the young man in the mirror's jaws fell open, each caught sight of the extended canines in the other's mouth.