They stayed that way for a long time, those two boys – one a reflection and one not. Each stared into the other's open mouth, even while something tried to crawl up their throats into the freedom of the open air. It might have been a scream, or maybe just terrified whimpers.
Whatever it was, it didn't get very far out of either boy's lungs before something had seized onto it. Clamped it like a fist closed around a mouse. Grabbed without crushing, leaving the mouse to feebly struggle all it pleased with no real chance of actually escaping its confinement.
Fear? Shock, perhaps? Whatever name that fist in each of them might have borne, it kept the sound paralyzed and locked away inside of them. Kept them paralyzed, in a way. But even if that fist hadn't rooted each one of them to their given place, neither could have summoned the mental focus to take a single step away from the mirror.
Every newton of the two's mental energies were focused on what extended from two specific points in their gums. The crimson eyes, shocking as they might have been to them, were almost forgotten within seconds of seeing them because of what was in their mouths.
Fangs. Issei Hyoudou had fangs.
They weren't as impressive as the word might make them sound. They weren't more than perhaps a centimeter-and-a-half longer than either teen's original canines might have been. Two at most. They certainly weren't the massive, bestial things possessed by creatures in terrible movies or children's stories. The fangs didn't extend down past his chin like some grotesque display. They fit comfortably in his mouth, and in fact didn't even pick at the insides of his gums within his closed jaw.
But they were still much larger than the canines he'd had just two days before, and that was enough. They didn't need to extend to the lengths of the saber-toothed cat's to make their mark, to seize him and terrify him in one sweeping gesture.
The real Issei and the one in the glass were captivated by those bits of sharpened enamel, both for their shape and their implications. They stared at one another, each partly fascinated, partly terrified by what they saw. Thoughts ran wild in their heads, jumping from point to point and slowly, ever so slowly, the puzzle pieces began to come together.
The sun's unflinching hatred. The sounds and smells. The undying thirst in his throat. And now…
Only when a new sound, a sound the fist couldn't restrain, came in did that little mouse in the boy's throats stop struggling. Only then did the little mouse allow itself to be dragged back into the lungs of the teenager with the brown hair and his red-eyed duplicate in the glass. Only then did Issei Hyoudou snap back to reality, and the puzzle pieces fell back down, not fully assembled.
The new sound was a simple knock on the door of the bathroom. A second or two later, it was joined by more of them, and then by the voice of Issei's father.
"Issei? Are you almost done in there?"
"Uh… uh, yeah!" Issei said, voice trembling slightly as his heart thudded and he struggled to keep his breathing in check. "I'm, uh, I'm just washing my hands." For auditory proof of that, Issei flicked the tap handle.
His father gave an appreciative grunt at the sound of running water. A moment or so later, Issei's suddenly-enhanced hearing told the teen that Mr. Hyoudou was trudging back down the hall.
But even as Issei gave his hands a quick rinsing, he did so thoughtlessly. Cleanliness and hygiene were the farthest thing from his mind. As he cleared out of the bathroom, his thoughts began to bounce off of one another once more as he tried once more to recall the previous night.
Issei's teeth ground as he, again, drew a complete blank. Not one image or fragment of the previous evening would shine itself under the light. Not that Issei could really blame it, of course. After his little walk home, Issei himself had no desire to expose himself to the rays of the sun, either.
As he dried his hands off, he turned and looked in the mirror once last time, at the young man who stared back at him.
The same crimson eyes gave him back his worried stare.
Issei cleared out of the bathroom with a head full of fuzz.
Nothing about any of this made sense. Not his senses or his appearance. The answer that jumped into his mind as those jigsaw pieces had come together was nonsensical, because they didn't exist.
But when he tried to come up with another explanation, Issei drew the same blank he'd drawn before. Nothing else would explain his sense, the eyes or the fangs. Nothing that he could think of, anyway.
Those thoughts chased at each other, going at one another like lions fighting for a control of a pride. One lion, called Logic, raked the arguments it called claws across the flanks of its opponent. That opponent, a lion called Want, roared back and bit down on the spine of Logic with its teeth that most call counterpoint.
This mental scuffle between lions went strong for the entire twenty-two steps between the bathroom on the hallway and Issei's bedroom and up to Issei's opening the door. As soon as they did, said lions immediately ceased their quarrel and began both bellowing arguments at him in unison.
Issei knew that his room probably wasn't the best-smelling place in the house, but now he found out just how true that actually was. The stench that wafted from Issei's personal lair was nothing short of stupendous. The reek of sweat mixed with the vile fragrance of general body odor and the stench of what was no doubt traces of another, altogether less appropriate-to-discuss liquid slammed into Issei's nose with such force that he almost doubled over from retching.
Luckily for him, the choppy waters of his queasy stomach remained calm enough that he was able to keep things under control on that front. He didn't need to add the smell of his own vomit to this foul concoction.
After a few moments, Issei turned and staggered back down the hallway, a decision having been made nearly the instant he'd breathed the air in the room. About halfway between his room and the bathroom, he turned and opened up the closet. From it, he extracted a number of bottles of cleaning chemicals, paper towels, a vacuum cleaner, the rug scrubber, garbage bags and several other implements.
Then, he turned again. Walked back down the hall. Took a breath of fresh air.
And stepped inside to begin the war on stench.
He started first with the most obvious thing – the dirty clothes. Those were tossed in the washing machine with enough detergent and fabric softener to make a dirty rag sitting in pond scum for a year smell like a spring breeze.
Next came the bed sheets. Those were stripped from the mattress almost as soon as Issei returned from the washing machine. He stacked those on top of said machine, as much trying to get any source of smell whatsoever out of the room as set them up for later.
After that, Issei began to rifle through what was on his desk. Every single broken pencil, wadded-up piece of paper, tiny crumbs of food and anything else he hadn't previously bothered to clean out – all of it went in the trash. Whatever remained was thoroughly wiped down with rags sprayed with dusting chemicals.
His closet came next. Issei tore everything out of it, throwing away a good chunk of what was in it in the process; most of it was junk he hadn't used in years and wouldn't miss, anyway. What was left – and it wasn't much – was pulled out. From there, every item was cleaned, disinfected, and otherwise washed. The racks and inside walls of the closet received the same treatment.
Issei made sure to slide the box of particularly delightful porn out of sight of a cursory glance.
Once he was done with that, the brunette went back to the washing machine, transferring his clothes to the dryer and sheets to the washer.
As soon as he finished up in there, Issei went to the window and scrubbed both the glass and the sill until each was smooth and silk. Luckily for Issei, the sun only directly faced his window in the early morning.
His door, desk chair, bed frame and every other bit of furniture in the room received the same treatment. Even his alarm clock was thoroughly wiped down.
From there, Issei gave the walls a scrubbing, cleaning off a few minor stains and leaving them appearing almost freshly painted. He returned for a third time to the dryer after that, tossing his sheets and duvet in to be stripped of their moisture after extracting his clothes.
After getting down on his hands and knees to scrub every single baseboard in the room until they nearly shined, Issei turned to the last two tools he'd brought along with him.
Issei had intended to vacuum the entire room. To clean every single corner of every inch of dirt that might still remain. He couldn't imagine that there would be much, considering the more-than-a-trash bag's worth of filthy towels he'd thrown away at this point; all the same, he wanted every single ounce he could remove gone. Even though his nose had grown used to the foul smell in a few minutes and was more concerned with the powerful cleaning chemicals he was using, Issei wanted to make sure that his room didn't stay awful-smelling.
Alas, he'd failed to consider one minor aspect of most vacuum cleaners that would be of great interest to another sense that had been enhanced recently.
As soon as he turned the vacuum on, Issei's ears were immediately assaulted by a screaming whine that left him desperately turning it back off just to give mercy to his ears.
He tried again, and he still couldn't bear it. A third time yielded the same result, and at that point, Issei went digging through his desk.
For a few moments, he thought he'd thrown them away. Then, he spied the pair of earplugs, still unopened, that he'd won in some game years ago and haphazardly thrown into the bowels of one of his drawers to go unused. With relish, he ripped the plastic and cardboard apart and stuffed the cylindrical bits of foam into his ears.
The vacuum was still hard on his ears with the earplugs in, but much less so. Not so much that Issei couldn't use it, and use it he did – every single square centimeter of carpet that it could reach was subjected to its rolling, sucking attention. The hoses on the same, with all their little attachments, searched every crevice and corner they could possibly reach. That just left one final place that it could reach quite so easily.
Issei had pulled aside his bed a few times before, of course, usually to look for a magazine or visual novel that he had borrowed from Matsuda or Motohoma. It was usually an intensive effort, one that left him with sweat trickling down his brow.
So as one might expect, Issei was immensely surprised when his bed moved with what was, from his perspective, a light tug. Not just move; it practically glided across the floor when he put any strain into his muscles.
And for just a moment, Issei remembered the red eyes of the young man in the mirror. Without any prompting, his tongue instinctively flicked around the inside of his mouth.
He could still feel them. The fangs.
Issei gave a vigorous shake of his head, desperately trying to toss the images out of his mind as though they might conveniently slide out through his ears.
As he sorted through what little was under the bed, he kept doing that. Perhaps a little too quickly, he finished.
The screeching of the vacuum helped to drown his thoughts. The scrubbing of the carpet followed on from there, with Issei moving the bed back into place with the same curious ease with which he'd initially dislodged it.
A quick trip back to the dryer left him with his bedsheets, which Issei spread across the mattress.
It was just as he was smearing out a few creases in the duvet that a knock at the door made him jump.
His head snapped around to see his father. "A little jumpy, are we?" he asked, a slight grin on his face.
"Sorry," Issei mumbled. "I, uh… was just finishing up."
"Good timing," his father replied. "Your mother sent me up to let you know that dinner's ready."
"Already? Isn't it a little…" The rest of that sentence died in Issei's throat as he looked over at his alarm clock.
It was quarter to six, and through the window Issei could see that the sky had turned dark blue and purple as the sun slipped down. He'd been at the cleaning process for nearly seven hours.
"Oh, uh, thanks," Issei said.
His father's head snapped around, taking a quick look around with a hint of the smile from before still tugging on his lips. "Looks good, Issei. Nice job."
"Thanks." Issei gave a smile at that, but just before his lips could part, Issei's better judgement forced them to remain closed.
To say the least, Issei didn't find dinner a particularly enjoyable experience.
It was quite obvious that his mother was still angry at him for having vanished overnight. Every word she spoke was intensely terse, filled with the sort of quiet hostility that a parent uses to make clear that they haven't forgotten their child's latest screw-up just yet.
Issei's father, bless his heart, tried to get a conversation going, but nothing seemed to stick. Issei didn't want to open his mouth more than he had to, and looking either his mother or father in the eye was straight out. One ill-timed gaze, one particularly attentive moment on either of their parts and the brunette knew he'd be up to his elbows in trouble. Because there was no explanation for what was in his mouth. There was no explanation for his eyes.
And there was no explanation for something else, something that wasn't visible from the outside.
The dryness in his throat.
Issei's marathon deep-clean of his entire room had started off as a way to expunge the odors that came with a teenage boy's living in it and not always being the cleanest of people. But it had had another effect, this one altogether unintentional: It had kept his mind busy. His focus had been entirely on scrubbing every bit of dirt and filth out of his room, not on his memory and the changes to his physical appearance.
With that out of the way, there was nothing else to distract him from the young man in the mirror.
Because, he supposed, his thoughts were wrong. Sitting at that table, his mind started working on the jigsaw puzzle again, and there weren't many pieces left.
There was an explanation, and the more Issei thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Issei also had no doubt that if he told anyone about it, he'd be tossed into a mental hospital.
Without much conversation, dinner went by quite fast. When it finished, Issei thanked his mother for the food, as expected. Also as expected, he asked if she needed help with the dishes, and, yet again, as expected, she told him she didn't.
They went through that routine every day. He had been asking every night they'd had dinner together since he was twelve if she needed help. Never did she need it, but never did she grow annoyed with his offers.
After being excused from the table, Issei walked back up the stairs to his own bedroom (to his relief, the air was at least moderately breathable, now).
Issei had had some plans made when he walked up the stairs. He'd intended to study for an exam he had coming up, then maybe watch porn.
As soon as he saw the bed, however, all of those plans collapsed as Issei felt an unnatural exhaustion surge. It washed through him like a tsunami, crashing through every bit of discipline and logic that told him to stay awake longer.
Within just a few minutes, Issei was asleep beneath freshly-washed sheets.
He was alone.
And then, his eyes claimed, he was not.
As he walked towards it, Issei stared at the figure, standing far away down this endless hall of stone. It was lit by no lamps or electric lights, and the stone itself pulsated, as though it were a living thing's beating heart.
But no matter how long he walked, the figure did not come any closer to him. Even as he began to run, he could see it raise an arm and beckon him. A whisper filled his ears, bouncing off the walls of this corridor to nowhere.
Then it turned. Vanished into the shadow down the ceaseless hall of quivering stone.
Issei raised his arm, and something grabbed it. A shriek, insane and full of rage, filled his ears.
After an instant, he saw that the thing that had grabbed his arm was some clawed thing, biting into his flesh. But even as blood flowed down his hand in a raging torrent, he felt no pain.
There was fear, of course, a little bit of it, especially when another limb came down and seized his torso and tore it open.
For a few moments after Issei's eyes dragged open, he didn't remember much of anything about the previous day. He had no recollection of the young man in the mirror. And when he did recall those things, he thought, for just a few moments that they themselves had been a dream.
But then he swallowed, and he felt the dryness in his throat. Felt that unquenchable thirst that seemed to get worse every time he paid attention to it.
A slight flick of the tongue, and he felt the fangs.
He sat up, heart beginning to throb again as he thought it over once more. He barely noticed that it was a quarter past four in the morning and that he ought to be trying to get back to sleep.
It was a minor movement that caught his eye – one very slight twitch of something in the room. It was practically coincidence that he'd seen it at all, that little shadow on the floor.
But he did see it, and stared at the rectangle on the floor. It fluttered this way and that, twitching as though blown about by a gust of wind.
It took a few seconds for Issei to realize that the rectangle sat directly in the center of a patch of silvery light. The light from his window.
Issei looked up, and he saw it. Saw the tiny piece of paper taped to his window.
In an instant, he'd thrown the covers off of himself. A few seconds after, he was at the window, unlocking it and reaching out to snatch the piece of paper from the exterior glass.
And in the square of moonlight, he read the text on the paper.
Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad.
– Lady Morrigan
AN: I have a penchant for some very weird metaphors. Also, has anyone else here ever cleaned out their room and found a bunch of crap they didn't know they still owned and will literally never need or want again? That's not just me, is it?