“Lewis? What are you doing here?”

He cleared his throat, suddenly very self-conscious. “I, uh, I was actually about to ask you the same thing,” he said. He wasn’t going to admit he’d been all but mugged over a sudden craving for cheap pizza.

“Don’t ask.” Miss Li had pulled a very disgruntled face but after a few moments, she hesitated, then sighed. “Well… actually… maybe I should tell you. I know your advice is always good.”

He realised he was smiling; a tight, pained smile but he was smiling nonetheless. It was always good to see some of her programming taking root in her properly. “Okay.”

“I went for a walk,” she said. “I’ve been walking… honestly, most of the time I’m not working. It helps me clear my head.”

Lewis nodded. His head twinged; that probably wasn’t a good sign.

“I’ve been…” She took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to meet his. “I’ve been having problems at home.”

“Okay…”

“My boyfriend and I… things aren’t going well. He just doesn’t seem interested in my feelings anymore.” Lewis caught her little hesitation before the word ‘feelings’ and had to stop himself from smiling, with her eyes on his face. He knew perfectly well what she’d really meant wasn’t feelings; it was her own sexual needs. “He’s taking advantage… I mean… he’s taking, he’s taking, always taking. And I can’t give any more, and…”

“And you’ve been with him a long time.” It was an effort to keep his voice soft and sympathetic. He hadn’t expected to have this conversation outside the dojo. Inside the dojo his authority over Miss Li might as well be absolute. Here, what he had was much, much less powerful. He was going to have to play it more carefully; it might be something he couldn’t even do in one go.

“Yeah. And this hasn’t been happening long, but…” She sighed. “Well, it’s… it’s getting to me. More than I understand. More than I’m really all that willing to admit.”

He nodded in sympathy, but that turned out to be a bad idea; as his head moved pain burst across his temple. He winced, raising his hand, and Miss Li’s focus completely changed. “Oh, what am I doing?” she exclaimed. “You’re hurting, and I’m making this all about me.” She took him by the arm. “Come on.”

“Come on and…?”

“You need checking for concussion, those scratches have gravel in them so they really need cleaning, and I’d be a lot happier if I knew everything was on the mend,” she said decisively.

Lewis had been working, in the dojo, to make sure he always had the authority. This should have been a point where he put his foot down. On the other hand…

Well, simply put, on the other hand, he was hurting, and she knew what to do. He allowed himself to be guided back to a somewhat less dismal part of town.

*

Lewis looked up at the house Miss Li lived in, quietly assessing it. It was an older building, well-maintained, nothing special to look at, at least from the outside; it wasn’t what he’d have expected of her either.

The adrenaline had gone away by now, and his aches were really starting to hurt.

Miss Li unlocked the door, disengaged the alarm, saw him safely inside and locked up again, setting the alarm too.

“It’s not much,” she said apologetically, “but it’s home.” She took a step toward him, and the two were close enough to feel awkwardly close. She flushed. Lewis wouldn’t have been surprised if he did, too, for all that he felt he had the upper hand. She cleared her throat. “Uh. And it’s got a first aid kit.”

“Right,” he said, and nodded. “Where do you want me?”

She gestured to a door. “Take a seat in the kitchen.” There was a quiet moment while she contemplated, and then “And please - this isn’t the dojo. My name is Hua Li. I’m not your teacher here; the title is inappropriate.”

As she fetched her supplies, he did just that; the space was weirdly art deco, built around a glass tabletop, with strange chairs that, admittedly, were very comfortable. It was just something else he hadn’t expected of her. Nor was the flowerpot on the windowsill; it looked like actual home-grown flowers, not a tawdry gift from a date shoved into a cheap vase.

This wasn’t his territory. He was used to dealing with her only on his territory. That had to change; he wasn’t sure if it would be easier to try and get her out of here, or just to put her on the back foot and make this a space where he was still in control.

Miss Li was back before he had a chance to do much more than glance around. She bustled with the kind of efficiency he’d found oddly infuriating when he joined her class; now that same efficiency was focused on checking his injuries, now the efficient woman doing it could be twisted around his finger with the right opportunity, he was a lot happier about it.

“I’m going to need you to take your shirt off, Lewis,” she said briskly.

He could unbutton his shirt, but his shoulder complained to the point of agony, and she clearly saw that. She placed her hands on his arms. “Let me do it,” she said quietly, and must have seen something in his expression he’d meant to keep hidden, because she paused, then said “May I?”

Lewis nodded, and she finished off the cuffs and oh so gently coaxed his shirt off his body. Bruises were already forming, but was this better or worse than what she was used to? It was difficult to get a read on her in a context like this, where she behaved differently to his teacher or his brainwashed toy.

Her skilful hands were surprisingly tender and gentle as she explored his injuries, bandaging some and applying ointment to others. “I’m glad I was out walking,” she said quietly. “Not of the reason, but I’m still glad I was out there. One of my students needed me.”

Looking away from her, Lewis pulled a face. How did she tally that against saying they weren’t teacher and student here?

“How badly does it hurt?” she asked. Lewis, unsure how to play this question, simply grunted.

“Mm-hm.” She wetted a fresh cloth and began cleaning the graze on his shoulder, where the impact with the road had drawn blood even through his shirt. “I won’t judge you if you admit to pain, Lewis.”

He remained quiet.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked into the silence.

He’d known she was going to want to ask this question from the moment she started leading him back to her home. Initially he’d just written that off as a price he was going to have to pay for medical attention. Now, as it came time to pay that price, he found he was uncomfortable admitting why he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I was out for a walk too,” he said. “Not the same reason. I-”

Of all the times for it to happen, his stomach growled. With the adrenaline now properly gone, the hunger was starting to return. He would never have said the attack would have been worth it if he’d got the pizza first; all the same, he was definitely glad now that he had.

Miss Li was frowning at him. “Were you going for dinner?” she asked. His silence was all the answer she needed.

“Oh, Lewis,” she said, and the disappointment in her tone was almost a physical thing; he felt the wind go out of his sails, felt his shoulders slump. She hadn’t had that effect on him since before their bet. “You got mugged for fast food?”

He couldn’t meet her eyes. His cheeks were burning. Embarrassment, in Lewis, was always easy kindling for anger.

“There’s nowhere anywhere near that park where the food isn’t swimming in grease. And if there’s salad at all, it’s some lettuce they put through a mechanical shredder the best part of a day earlier.” Disappointment had given way, in her voice, to distaste. “You’ve been such a promising student, Lewis. You have no idea the potential I see in you.”

Potential? Well, she was programmed to think well of anything he did in class. She always considered his advice to be right. In a lot of ways, her programming made her look up to him. As she was a trainer most of the time, it was probably only natural that she translated that into great potential in her head.

He bit his lip rather than snap out a comeback which, while it might have satisfied him for a few moments, would only have made the situation worse.

Miss Li turned her attention from him to the bin, where she deposited the wrappers from the bandage she’d used, and then the sink, where she cleaned her hands of the blood they’d picked up looking after him.

“We’re not all black belts,” he said, his voice pitched low and soft. He wanted her to hear him; he didn’t want it to sound like he wanted her to hear him.

“What?”

With an effort he pushed himself back to his feet and took a couple of steps forward. “We’re not all black belts,” he said. “And nobody’s a black belt in everything.”

Miss Li turned to face him. The expression on her face was sour; she wasn’t quite angry, but she seemed to be getting there, and certainly she didn’t see Lewis as the superior he wanted her to. “Lewis,” she said warningly.

“Miss Li-”

“I told you, Lewis, here you should call me-”

“Miss Li,” he said firmly, “would you like to be hypnotised?”

“That’s got nothing to - I -” Her eyelids fluttered. “I always…”

But rather than finish the sentence, her voice just trailed off, and he saw her blink twice, slow blinks, as she tried to regain her train of thought.

He couldn’t have that. “You always what?”

She shook her head, but her eyes were still distant, seeming somehow unclear. “I always… This is…”

“You always want to be what?”

“I… Uh…” Miss Li took a step back, or tried to; she was backed up against the sink itself. “I always… always… I always want to be hypnotised… no… I… do I?”

Lewis had been right; being at home made her feel more in control, made his suggestions, as a result, feel less important to her. But it clearly wasn’t erasing them, and in fact how frustrated she was with her lover proved they’d hold even against her resistance. Just so long as he pushed, he was sure he could get through it.

“You teach us muscle memory, Miss Li,” he said. “You emphasise drilling a response until it happens naturally. Your first response must be your right response, mustn’t it?”

All irrelevant to her question, but all true. Lewis had a plan forming. He just needed her to start buying into it, and she was nodding. The conflict of her frustration against her compulsion to the trigger had started to create confusion, and the way he was laying things out felt to her like it was a way out of this. He waited a few moments, holding his breath, until he saw her nod.

“And your first response when I ask if you’d like to be hypnotised includes the word ‘always’, doesn’t it?”

Her eyelids fluttered again. The taut lines of puzzlement in her expression started to relax. “I guess…”

“What was your first response?”

“I… I…” Her head was moving in a slow, tight circle, reeling just as much as her mind. “I forget,” she said quietly, and Lewis believed her, partly because of the shame she seemed to take in admitting it, partly because of the intensity of this moment, when she hadn’t been ready for it and when her mind was quite literally trying to go in two directions.

“You always want to be hypnotised be me,” he said firmly, and her head stopped lolling.

Her eyes locked dully onto his. “Yes,” she said, and her voice was full of wonder. “I always want to be hypnotised by you.”

“Would you like to be hypnotised, Miss Li?”

“My first response must be my right response,” she mumbled. “I always want to be hypnotised by you.”

“Would you like to be hypnotised by me right at this moment?”

“Yes.” She was still now, her eyes on his, her face and body at peace. Lewis smiled.

“Very good. Shall we sit?”

He gestured, not to the chairs around the table, but to the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Miss Li settled to the floor, going from upright to sitting cross-legged in one fluid motion. Perhaps, Lewis thought, he should dedicate a little more time during the lessons she taught to learning from her; aside from being better able to help himself if there was ever a repeat of that evening, there were times when he did truly envy her grace of movement.

Although he’d persuaded her to sit by suggesting they both would, and that they would therefore be positioned equally, he instead turned a kitchen chair so he could sit facing her. With her emotional state the way it was, he wanted every advantage he could get. He raised his finger. “Watch closely,” he said softly.

The expression on her face was a whirl of caution and worry and desire for it all to go away, to be entranced, and the contradiction built up in her emotions to be gone, to vanish away.

“You don’t really remember being hypnotised,” he said. “You try to, but it doesn’t help.” He was smiling now. He couldn’t help it; as angry as he felt, this was a perfect opportunity to take some big steps forward.

“Don’t I?” she asked dreamily. “Oh. Okay…”

Not that he’d been telling her new information, but it was worth leading in to something new. “Everything’s different when you’re hypnotised. Your hypnotised self knows you, but you don’t know your hypnotised self. And that’s important.” Her eyelids were half-closed already as he stroked his finger down, just a couple of inches in front of her face. “Do you understand?”

“No,” she answered. Hesitantly. Dreamily.

“But you accept it’s true?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” And there it was; confirmation that she was past the point where she considered herself outside trance. And if she thought she was in trance, her own mind would assure it.

“Why is that?”

“Because Master Lewis is always right.”

He was hard again, in spite of the pain, in spite of the frustration and his temper, in spite of the embarrassment. All it took was her affirming that mantra for him again, and he was hard again. He wanted to strip her naked, bend her over the glass table, and fuck her until her subconscious wouldn’t have any plausible explanation to give her waking self for the residue left behind.

But what he was doing with Miss Li wasn’t therapy, it was training. And in training, as any dog owner could tell you, you had to address problem behaviour when it came up to have an effect.

“Very good,” he said. “Miss Li, if your conscious self fails, it’s corrected with your entranced self. Therefore your hypnotised self is responsible for the actions of your conscious self. Yes?”

The logic chain was plausible, her mind was entranced, and he was treating her as a student, which she believed herself to be. “Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Can you name an action of your conscious self that must be corrected?”

There was a pause. Her expression, though absent for the most part, briefly flickered, and he suspected he knew what thoughts were getting in the way of her answering.

“I spoke in a way that disrespected you, Master Lewis,” she said.

He nodded. “You’ve already been disciplined for this once, have you not?”

“I have, Master Lewis.”

“Do you remember the discipline?”

Her head bobbed slightly as she droned “Yes, Master Lewis.”

“What was it?”

“I was made silent with my own, wet panties, and the gag was sealed with my belt, Master Lewis.”

“You understand that you need to be disciplined again? For the same offence?”

There was another hesitation, but it came across more as embarrassment than any disagreement. Which was good; Lewis would not have been willing to accept disagreement. “I understand, Master Lewis.”

“Stroke yourself through your clothes,” he told her. “You may not move in any other way.”

It was delightful how quickly her right hand had leapt to obey. “Yes, Master Lewis.”

He got up, and left the kitchen, searching through her house for the things he wanted.

*

He laid his equipment out on the clear glass of the kitchen table and settled himself back into the chair before her. Her fingers were still teasing her pussy lips in slow, firm waves.

Her breathing had begun to settle into the same rhythm with which her fingers sculled the increasing dampness between her legs, and her eyes rolled back and righted themselves at the same pace. A thin trail of saliva arced from her puckered, not-quite pouting lips down to a spreading wetness across her chest, the trail itself shivering with each exhalation, never quite snapping.

She barely seemed to register his return, so deeply drawn into her own pleasure was he. “Freeze,” he instructed, and within a heartbeat she was entirely still. A larger bead of drool followed the trail slowly down toward her chest as if it were commenting on her silence.

He moved her hand from her pussy to just beside her lips, posing it to point one finger to her drooling mouth, and took a photo with his phone. Strange how being simply so deep in trance could make someone so graceful and beautiful seem so like a lifesize doll, of no more importance or intelligence than a toy.

Miss Li couldn’t even understand how helpless she was while she was in a state like this, he thought, and he grinned.

With her fingers no longer in the way, he slipped his own hand into the waistband of her leggings, pulling them wide enough that, with the nail scissors he’d brought from her bathroom, he could slice through the red cotton of her panties across each thigh. From behind, he hooked fingers into the material that ran between her buttocks, pulled it out into the open, and cut it again. There was a pale scratch now running an inch or so across one buttock, but he had drawn no blood.

Setting the scissors aside, he thrust his other hand roughly down into her crotch, taking her panties in a handful and drawing them out. He’d thought, by the smell of her musk, that her leggings had been fully saturated; but the power of her aroma once her panties were exposed was so much deeper that he could barely believe how wrong he’d been. He must have been snooping around her home making his plans for longer than he’d intended.

“Open wider,” he said as he balled her panties up.

“Yes, Master Le-” He thrust her panties in early and, for a moment, she almost choked on the word. Her dazed, glassy eyes crossed slightly, the corners of her lips turning up; Lewis didn’t think that was pleasure so much as satisfaction that things were right now.

“Do you remember what I said before I offered to hypnotise you?” he asked.

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Nobody’s a black belt in everything. And it’s clear to me now, Miss Li, that you have not been the textbook student I’ve been treating you as.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.” Well, she could hardly deny it, could she? Not while she was being disciplined this way.

“You like prestige, don’t you?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“You like to achieve, too, don’t you?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“You work hard to achieve?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Well, you’re properly enrolled into my training now,” he said, and her eyes followed his hand, watching through the clear surface of the table as he picked up the white belt. “You are a Blank Belt.” He crossed his legs and laid the white belt across his lap so that the ends dangled down into her line of sight. “You understand that a white belt is the most basic and fundamental rank.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“It is also the least well-trained.” He gave Miss Li a stern look and leaned forward, securing her belt across her open mouth, around her head, just under the ponytail that kept her dark hair neatly managed. His eyes stayed on hers. “To progress, you must become better trained. Understand?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“You’ll need to ensure your waking self takes to the training just as well. Can you do that?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Will you do that for me?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

Lewis couldn’t conceal his grin anymore. On the other hand, he no longer needed to.

“Most of your attire here is unsuitable for a student in training,” he said. “Do you agree?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.” Of course she agreed. How could she possibly do anything else?

“Stand.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

She rose as smoothly as she had seated herself, in spite of the cooling, sticky wetness around her thighs. But when she came to be standing upright, her head was bowed, her eyes not meeting his, and her arms were behind her back, slender wrists crossing in the X Lewis had often hypnotically bound them into at the dojo.

This was the stance of a keen student at an examination in submission.

“Strip.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

He’d deliberately chosen a word which could be interpreted simply or with sexuality. It was a shame, he thought, that her undressing was almost entirely clinical; still, it could be hopeful. She was following his order to the letter, not the spirit. That could be a sign of how seriously she was taking her predicament.

Before long she stood in front of him, her clothing discarded on chair backs and kitchen floor, the only material on her body the blank belt and the gag it contained.

This time, as she straightened back up, she fell into a guard stance, as she had done so often in the dojo in their early training. Lewis smirked.

“You’ll find your training outfit laid out on your bed,” he said. “Go, dress, come back when you’re ready for training.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

She turned to go, and he barked “Hurry!”

She scurried, groaning her acknowledgement through her gag as she did, and Lewis enjoyed the jiggle her rear took on when she was motivated to hurry.

*

Her tallest heels increased her height by a good four inches. They weren’t stilettos - the heel block was actually quite chunky - but they were a shiny patent black. In her trance state, she descended her stairs as easily as she has climbed them without heels; Lewis wondered whether she had enough conscious experience to duplicate that feat when awake.

Rising from the shoes was a pair of black, wide-grid fishnet hold-ups that ended about a third of the way up her muscular thighs, accentuating their power. Lewis didn’t think they’d been worn often; the way they’d been tucked back into the pink-and-white paper bag they’d evidently come in suggested, to his mind, that they were part of some Halloween outfit.

Despite himself, he’d got his hopes up for discovering a cache of impossibly sexy lingerie collected by Miss Li as part of a libido and perhaps even fetish he hadn’t previously discovered. That hadn’t been the case; instead of the thong he’d dreamed of, he’d laid out a pair of black Lycra booty shorts which might have originally been hot pants and might just have been running wear, hovering in that strange grey area where womens’ underwear and sportswear seemed somehow to mingle.

He’d have gone for a sparkly pair of black leggings that he thought might be even tighter if he hadn’t discovered the fishnets; once he had, though, this combination had to be the one. It was a chance, too, to start her training along new lines, ones that would be near-impossible to continue in the dojo.

Above her shorts she wore a black T-shirt he’d found in her bedroom, with no bra beneath. Lewis had ‘creatively’ edited the T-shirt. Its sleeves were missing. Its neckline was low enough to show almost all of her cleavage. And it bared enough of her midriff that the curved swell at the base of each breast was on display. Depending on angle, it gave some to no modesty.

Everything she wore bar the blank belt was black, making it stand out all the better.

Naturally, Lewis took another picture; it wasn’t just about having the memories. He was sure that this photo would come in useful further into her training.

“You’ve had time to think about your most recent failure to offer respect,” he said with a grin. “You should consider yourself lucky that I’m still training you.” A thought struck him. “You do consider yourself lucky,” he corrected.

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“However, you’re going to remain gagged during training for some time to come.” He nodded. “At least another session after this. And it will be more if you don’t show improvement in your respect for instructors. Do you understand?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Bring me your phone and unlock it.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

He smiled. “You know, I didn’t get myself dinner in the end. Are you hungry?”

Her eyes were so glassy he could tell she wasn’t even considering the question.

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Then I think you can buy us both dinner…”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

He actually had to download the app, which he could hardly believe, but evidently she really was that dedicated to healthy eating.

He queued up an order, then turned back to her. “Listen carefully, Miss Li.”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“You’re going to pay for this order. You will then be racing against the clock; if you can make me cum, then cum five times yourself, and then make me cum again, all before we take delivery, I will remove your gag before you open the door and take delivery. If you can’t, you’ll answer the door even more obviously not in control of the situation.” He smiled. “Do you understand?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Will you obey?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

“Very good. And are you ready?”

“Yff, Mfftr Lwws.”

He handed her back her phone. “Then begin.”

*

Miss Li was still deeply under when she staggered back into the kitchen, eyes glassy, knees unsteady after her Herculean efforts to cum as often as her Master Lewis had required of her. Each orgasm had seemed better, deeper, more powerful, than any she’d managed to have in the house in recent weeks, and her legs didn’t seem to want to stand anymore.

Just as well; kneeling was a much more correct form while she was training. Really, standing and walking were things to do when Master Lewis was not in her home, when she wasn’t wearing the Blank Belt.

And oh, how much she wanted to stop wearing the Blank Belt.

She’d been lucky; it had been tied loosely around her hips rather than still holding her panties in her open mouth when she’d gone through to collect the food.

It all smelled wonderful; just the kind of thing she forbade herself. Not that she had that as an option at the moment. Master Lewis had said she was hungry. He’d said dinner was for them both.

And her stomach gurgled as she set the bags down on the table, the surface of which, Lewis noted privately in satisfaction, was barely glassier than her eyes.

“Very good,” Lewis said briskly. He busied himself with the bags, setting his own meal aside still wrapped in its packaged, and then extracted a wide foil package, at which point he grinned up at the standing Miss Li.

“Turn around.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” She pivoted in two easy, languorous steps, and Lewis, having intended to act immediately, lost himself for a few moments contemplating the ass those hot pants presented.

After that moment, however, he reached around her waist and undid her blank belt. He drew her arms back from where they hung, listless and helpless, by her side, and he crossed her wrists behind her, then tied them with the belt.

“It’s better with the belt, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You feel easily hypnotised and blissful whenever you wear the belt.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You are easily hypnotised and obedient whenever you wear the belt.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

He tugged the ends of the knot tighter, watching her arms jerk from the tug.

He considered his next move for several moments, and elected to run his hands over her ass, to squeeze it, and then to deliver a sharp whack to her rear. It was probably the heels, but she had to take a step forward to keep her balance. Lewis chuckled. “Are you embarrassed?”

“Do you want me to be, Master Lewis?”

“For this part of your training and onwards, if you would be embarrassed by something when not in trance, you will feel embarrassment in trance also. This is a vital part of the work you need to do to excel beyond Blank Belt. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Are you embarrassed?”

“I - yes, Master Lewis.”

“Were you about to say something else?” He found himself alert; that hesitation might conceal another stumbling block that would cause resistance, just as her romantic interests already had.

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“What?”

She was quiet for a long time. He had already started speaking to nudge her when he thought he heard her start to speak; she had been willing, but it had taken some time for her to reach that conclusion. “Miss Li, it is vital that you are always truthful and forthcoming with me. Do you want to be promoted beyond Blank Belt?”

“Yes, Master Lewis?”

“How much?”

“Very much, Master Lewis.”

“Is there anything you want more?”

“No, Master Lewis, I don’t believe so.”

“Very good. Now tell me, please, what were you about to say when I asked you earlier?”

“I… am excited, Master Lewis.”

It was his turn to fall silent as he worked through the possibilities in his mind. “Excited by your embarrassment?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Aroused?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” The hesitation was almost completely gone now. The more questions asked, the more often her sleeping mind remembered what was vital, the more natural it became for her to be truthful and forthcoming.

“Very good.”

She remained silent. He slipped his hand under her butt, stroked the mound of her pussy through her hotpants with one finger. The fabric was already sopping wet, but he was sure he felt her thighs twitch in response even as she tried to hold herself obediently still.

Lewis grinned. She was ripe; he could pluck her any time, but… well, one last lesson first. “Turn around and face me.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” She repeated her earlier pivot in reverse. Lewis wasn’t sure, but he imagined that if he could have compared the two they would have been identical if not for their direction.

He pointed to a spot beside his chair. “Kneel.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.” Once again he marvelled at the grace and efficiency of her motion, settling to the floor in a single swift movement - swift enough that knees on kitchen tiles made an audible noise, an eerily hollow knock.

If she felt any pain at the impact, her entranced expression gave no indication of the fact. No indication whatsoever.

He took the cardboard lid off the foil container. “You will eat with me,” he instructed. “You will not have access to your hands, and you may not leave your feet. You did not choose your meal, and it does not suit your preferences. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Do you have any choice in this?”

“No, Master Lewis. I have no choice.”

“Why?”

“I have no choice because I am not in control. I am not in control because I have no power.” The answer was unhesitating, but there was at the same time a quality to it that might be wistfulness, or might be the start of a slow, slurring drone. Either way, having started on her mantra, she couldn’t stop herself. “No power. No control. No choice. No power, no control, no choice. No power, no control, no choice. No power, no control…”

Lewis poured the chili over the nachos, added a dollop of sour cream and some guac, and bent to set the foil container under the glass tabletop, sliding it in a couple of feet. Miss Li was still emptily, blankly chanting her mantra, and did not even seem to have noticed.

“No power, no control, no choice.”

He got up and explored the room until he found where she kept her bowls, then transferred the thick pink strawberry milkshake he’d chosen for her into one of those bowls. This joined the nachos under the table, by their side.

“No power, no control, no choice.”

He circled the table, still listening to her needy chanting, and propped his phone up against a chair leg, making sure it would have her in frame throughout.

“No power, no control, no choice.”

“Stop,” he said, and she fell silent. He took his seat, picked up his burger, and paused. “Miss Li?”

“Yes, Master Lewis?”

“You may feed.” His word choice was not accidental.

“Yes, Master Lewis,” she agreed. Her hindquarters lifted off her heels and she leaned forward, ass waving in the air, as she buried her face in the tray of nachos and chili. Lewis watched for a few moments, enjoying how eagerly she followed the commands she was helpless against, and then began to eat. A burger was far from his original plan, but the right food to teach his student a lesson had taken priority when he was looking for a shop.

He was pretty confident she wouldn’t offer him disrespect again.

Toward the end of the meal, mulling over his evening, a thought occurred. It wasn’t one he was proud of, but it nonetheless wouldn’t leave him alone, and he turned it over in his head several times, debating, listening to the mutterings and grunts as Miss Li wolfed (once the word had occurred to him, there really was no getting away from it) down her meal.

“Feed time is over, Miss Li,” he said. “Stop.”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

There was a mild reluctance to the way she hesitantly returned to an upright kneel. It might be the powerlessness he’d been conditioning her to accept and enjoy revelling in her embarrassment. It might have been that kneeling with her thighs together and her hands tied securely behind her back was, at long last, the position from which she couldn’t gracefully and easily transition to others.

“We have seen discipline tonight. A reminder of the standards you must be held to. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“As well as discipline, I have decided there should also be punishment. It is not enough that you do not slip in future; you must also understand what you have done before now is wrong. Yes?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“I have now settled on your punishment. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Your punishment is for your conscious self, as your conscious self erred. It is this: You do not remember rescuing me from muggers. You don’t remember me trancing you - you never remember me trancing you. Understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Here is what you remember. You were walking along that alleyway, and you were mugged. There were three of them. You held your own against two, but three was two much. They had you down. They were about to take advantage of you. Then I happened along. Understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“I rescued you. Not the other way round. I rescued you.” He paused, slightly surprised at his own vehemence. “Say it.”

“You rescued me. Not the other way round. Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Of course, you watched me get hurt in the process. You brought me here to tend to your interviews. You will not permit your conscious self to think about the fact you are uninjured. Correct?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You’ve taught a lot of students, Miss Li. How often have you seen a student get arrogant because of some chance event early on?”

“A few times, Master Lewis.”

“I don’t want you to become one of these, Miss Li. A sense of superiority from rescuing me will hinder your progress beyond Blank Belt. Understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

*

He was almost ready to leave, but something stopped him. Lewis studied her kneeling blankly in her kitchen, arms hanging limp, eyes glassy, her lips still accented by pink milkshake, her torso bare except for his cum, wondering what instinct had prompted him that there was more work to be done.

As it stood, she already had a trigger in her mind to wake once he was gone, shower, and clean up her abandoned clothes - then finish the nachos without wondering why she’d bought them or why they were on the floor half-eaten.

“One last thing,” he said softly, stepping closer. He unbuckled his belt and took out his cock, knowing that now it was as effective a hypnotic focus as anything he could use on her. Holding it confidently, he moved closer again, and her eyes were drawn to it as if by some magnetic force. “Your waking self… she’s very frustrated with your boyfriend, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“In your experience, Miss Li, if what someone does is annoying, and they don’t change how they act, doesn’t it always get worse over time?”

“No, Master Lewis.”

That answer took him by surprise. “No?”

“Almost always, Master Lewis,” she answered. “I have found you much less annoying in the past few months, but you haven’t changed your performance in class.”

Lewis looked at her in silence for a moment, debating with himself whether some part of her was being sarcastic or whether that was honestly where her mind had gone. Asking, he decided, would have reduced his authority in the moment.

“Be that as it may,” he said, “you will consider me the only exception. Your boyfriend is not an exception. Understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis. My boyfriend is not an exception.”

“So you’ve been annoyed with him for weeks. Your annoyance will only get worse. Understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“You’re going to find yourself determined to change things,” he told her. “You’re going to find that the things you enjoy about him are harder and harder to notice. That the happy memories fade away when you reach for them.

“Enough is going to be enough, soon. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Lewis.”

“Very good.” Satisfied at last with the evening’s progress, he left her house behind, opening his phone to summon an Uber. He’d be gone before she finished her shower and had any awareness to spare for the world around her.