“Wake up! Wake up! If you don’t wake up, I’ll…I’ll…I’ll kiss you…!”
“…Ngh.”
The alarm clock spouted its typical tsundere line, but it wasn’t sufficient to rouse its owner from his bed. He just tumbled out of a nightmare and flat onto the floor.
That guy was me, in case you hadn’t realized.
…I hated waking up like that. I’d had that awful nightmare again. All my dreams recently had been about Yuuma killing me. Still, since I was clearly very much alive, they couldn’t have been anything more than that.
“Wake up, Issei!” came Mom’s usual summons from downstairs.
“All right, I’m coming!” I called back, rising from my spot on the floor.
Things were off to a bad start again today. For some reason, I’d been feeling so despondent lately. With a deep sigh, I started changing into my school uniform.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I’m off,” I said with a yawn as I left the house. I squinted at the bright, morning sun as I set off on the road to school, feeling listless.
Lately, being out in the sun had been making me feel drained and weak. The rays seemed to burn right through my skin. Anyway, morning light just didn’t agree with me. I was not an early riser. That’s why my mom kept hauling me out of bed every day. I was fine in the evenings, though. Better than fine, actually. Something inside me seemed to come alive after dusk. I had turned into a total night owl. It was weird.
It shouldn’t have been like this. Sure, I stayed up late sometimes, but usually, it was a miracle if I could keep my eyes open past one o’clock in the morning. These days, I had no problem staying awake past three or four. There were even times I’d waited until sunrise before nodding off.
It wasn’t like I was hooked on online games or late-night TV or anything. Something was happening to my body…
Was my brain trying to keep me from falling asleep? Maybe it was to hold back those dreams where I kept getting killed? Even if that’s how it felt, there was no way that was right. The human body needs sleep, after all.
That didn’t stop the feeling from taking hold of me each night, though—it was completely different from anything I had ever experienced before. The sensation was difficult to explain, but it was like this really uneasy intensity that kept building up deep inside me.
I had gone out the night before to see if that made a difference. Weirdly, my feet felt like they’d become lighter, and my whole body looked as though it was melting away into the darkness. My heart positively shook with joy. I broke into a run for the hell of it and took off faster than even I could believe.
If I join the track-and-field team, they’d probably make me a starter without a second thought. I was filled with enough energy to run a full marathon without breaking a sweat.
Maybe I let it get to my head a little, but when I tried to do the same thing during the day, my stamina was so poor, it made the previous night feel like a lie. I mean, it was still pretty average for a high schooler, but it was nothing compared with how I was after dark.
Yep, something strange came over me at night.
This probably sounds like the kind of thing a crazy person might say, but whatever—this sensation of release and excitement gave me the sense that I’d morphed into a completely different person.
Ugh… The morning sunshine really was grueling, though. In contrast to how I got at night, mornings were incredibly trying. No matter how you looked at it, there was definitely something wrong with me. More than anything, I couldn’t shake the idea that something about me had changed the day I went out with Yuuma.