He got back to his room half-expecting his roommate to be there to troll him about his violin practice, but realised once he arrived that Dean would be down on the football pitch for practice around that time.

He had a couple of hours’ peace yet.

Lying down on his bed, he tucked one hand behind his head and contemplated the way Ms Paek had looked as she got more and more worked up. Motivation, she’d said he needed, and seeing her get hornier and hornier had been all the motivation he could ask for.

Thinking about it, he realised that he actually had been playing better; that watching her expression, watching those long legs, so well concealed under that skirt, cross and uncross, seeing her lips part and her tongue flicker out… All that had inspired him to greater focus. He wasn’t missing nearly as many notes, his bow-handling had been more careful…

Perhaps he wouldn’t undo her suggestions, he thought. He’d still test the metronome at their next session, but if the suggestion held, he’d leave it in place…

Riley’s brow furrowed in thought. Was that actually the best approach he could take here? It had been really fun watching her get all worked up, but so much of it had been hidden from him.

And that was how she always dressed for lessons; seeing her photo wall and enough of the rest of the house (even if he hadn’t had time to explore properly) had showed him that there was a version of Paek Keunhee whose body was more fully on display. Presumably she considered that something not for public consumption.

Riley could understand that. It was frustrating, but…

He blinked.

It didn’t need to be frustrating, did it? Not when he had an access pass to the back of her mind. That pass meant he wasn’t the public any more.

“After all,” he said aloud, “the public could be anyone.” He smiled. “She and I have a special connection.” Even if he hadn’t realised what he was doing, what the seeds he was planting pointed to. But that was a life lesson, wasn’t it? You make the best choice available at the time, and then you use what you chose to build something better.

*

The whole week between Riley’s lessons, in her idle moments, Keunhee thought back to the way she’d felt in that lesson. The music he’d played hadn’t even been a particularly passionate peace, but something about it had evoked strange reactions in her.

She saw great potential in Riley. She hadn’t realised how quickly that potential would start to mature, that was all. That, at least, was what she told herself.

Had she known that Riley, too, had thought back to the same moments just as often, she would have felt far less comfortable with the situation. She assumed him to have been too caught up in the music to have paid attention to her, and that assumption was a comforting one; it gave her assurance that she had…

This was where the thought process became a difficult one, as the phrase that would fit there was ‘got away with it’. Except that Keunhee thought about her experience in terms of the pleasure the music had given her, the enjoyment she had taken in it.

That wasn’t something she could think of as getting away with anything…

…was it?

Keunhee sighed as she prepared everything for Riley’s visit. This was all so unhelpful; she had become very distracted, and if anything she should be pleased, nothing else. Her student was showing his promise.

The doorbell rang, and she made her way out of the home studio to greet Riley on arrival and usher him in.

*

She didn’t meet his eyes, Riley noted. Usually she was more than happy to, and he could read in the level of amusement in her eyes whether or not she expected him to do well that day or not.

Was she embarrassed, he wondered? Or was there something else?

All it was, was that she hadn’t met his eye. He was making too much out of this.

“I hope you’ve been practising,” she said, and he nodded, blushing slightly. In fact he’d practised more than he usually would, and it was only now, when he could see the metronome still there, that it occurred to him he could perhaps have cheated instead.

"Of course, Ms. Paek,” he said. “I think… well, I hope you’ll be pleased.” He set his case down beside the table of metronomes, giving him easy access.

“I expect so,” she told him. “I’ve said before, if you can find your motivation, I don’t think there’s any height you can’t achieve.” Which, while she had indeed zeroed in on his motivation before, wasn’t exactly the sentiment she’d expressed before; but then, before, she hadn’t been talking to her favourite student, who she saw such potential in.

Riley just assumed she remembered it differently now, her mind scrabbling together something that still felt plausible with the ‘facts’ she now knew to be true about him.

“I’m flattered you think so, Ms. Paek,” he said. “Actually, I have a way I think you can help me with that.”

“I…”

But he had set one of her favourite metronomes moving, and as it continued to move, whatever she’d had to say to him was lost. He watched her eyes flicker to it, then start to follow it, and then in turn they synchronised to it, until it seemed as if her eyes were being tugged from left to right by the movement of the pendulum rod.

Her breathing was audible now, low, slow, shuddering deep breaths that were almost moans. As she stared and breathed, her jaw sank slowly, sending her mouth wider open.

Riley probably left it longer than he needed to before assuming she was in trance, but considering what he feared could happen if he woke her too early, he felt OK with his decision.

“Keunhee,” he said, “do you really believe motivation will help me?”

“Yes,” she answered, her voice dreamy, her eyes still dancing left to right in sync with the metronome even as her gaze seemed more and more unfocused and unaware.

“And you want to help me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I want to help you.”

“You’re going to help me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I’m going to help you.”

“You want to help me.”

“I want to help you.”

“You’re going to help me.”

“I’m going to help you.”

“You want to help me. You’re going to help me.”

“I want to help you. I’m going to help you.” Her voice was starting to slur slightly, the cadence of the syllables staying in sync with the metronome tocks even as the syllables themselves stretched sleepily out.

"Every time one of us says the word ‘motivation’, Keunhee, you will undo another button on your blouse,” Riley said. “You will not notice doing this. You will not notice the result. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“What will you do?”

“I will undo another button on my blouse.”

“When will you do it?”

“Every time one of us says the word ‘motivation’.”

“What won’t you do?”

“I will not notice doing it. I will not notice the result.” Something strange was happening; the slurring words were coming back into focus, were in fact being said with more precise and perfect diction than Ms Paek usually achieved. He could hear every single syllable fall into place.

He was sure that shouldn’t be a turn-on, but it really was. A level of precision that humans almost always fell short of, arrived at simply because she’d sunk so deep? It came across as mechanical - but a mechanism he had constructed, clockwork he had wound up and set going.

Riley wasn’t entirely sure why he was responding to that but he quickly decided he didn’t care; he was just going to enjoy himself with it.

“That’s a good girl, Keunhee.” He hesitated after that; had she sighed? Had she responded or had he just imagined it?

A thin bead of saliva was forming in the v of her open lower lip, and had begun to glint in the light the room received through the big bay window.

“Keunhee,” he said carefully, “do you remember any of what happened last week?”

“Yes,” she answered, and for a moment, as the bead became the tip of a dangling string, he felt a panic come over him before he realised that he hadn’t actually phrased the question properly.

“When you are not in trance, do you remember any of what happened last week?”

“No.”

“Good girl,” he said, having an excuse to now, and he was almost sure there had been a sigh in reaction again, but all too conscious that he might be deluding himself.

He was going to have to test that a little more carefully.

“Now, Keunhee, the new trigger - the new rule,” he corrected himself, realising perhaps a moment or two later than he should have done that she wouldn’t know the jargon of the hypnotist, “that doesn’t mean your old rules don’t apply, does it?”

“No.”

“That’s right,” he said encouragingly. “All the rules I give you always apply. Isn’t that right.”

“Yes.”

“What are your rules, Keunhee?”

“I will undo another button on my blouse every time one of us says the word ‘motivation’. I will not notice doing it. I will not notice the result.

“The more notes you get right in sequence, the more excited I get. I might find that it’s very hard to hide it. I will have no idea why I feel this way. I won’t even know what’s exciting me. But the better you play, the more turned on I get.

“This metronome brings me back to trance. I sink deep when this metronome is on.”

The rhythm of her speech was robotically unbroken, unhesitating, unthinking, perfectly articulated. The thread of drool was down below her chin now and swayed with every syllable.

When she reached the end of the list she stopped, and it caught Riley by surprise; the steadiness with which the torrent of words had poured out had seemed inexhaustible, and even though he knew he’d only given her a few instructions, he had thought there were more to come.

“Good girl,” he said. There was a twitch at the corners of her mouth, as if she wanted to smile but was so blank that she’d lost the ability to make that happen.

He stopped the metronome.

*

Ms Paek settled herself into the comfortable, high-backed chair she watched her students from, crossing one knee above the other in her long thin pencil skirt. She took a sip from her glass, placed her notepad on that raised knee, took a pen in her other hand, and looked up expectantly.

“Okay,” Riley muttered quietly, still not meeting her eye. “Focus. Confidence. Motivation.”

As she undid the top button of her blouse, all unknowing, Ms Paek thought it was an odd choice of words, but she was well aware of the importance of pre-performance rituals. She wouldn’t want to interrupt his.

He was playing something different this week, as she’d requested; a new piece to him that she immediately recognised as being on of the recital pieces she’d enjoyed the most when she was only getting started.

It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t complex by her standards, and Keunhee found herself warming to his play just as she had from the previous week, the passion and the pleasure he was feeling for the music coming through and warming her, a spreading heat washing outward from her crotch, stirrings of desire and contentment and excitement that pulsed through her, growing with every correct note Riley played.

She made a quick note on an early error, then licked her lips as the delight continued to grow. “You see,” she remarked, “what you can do with the correct motivation?”

She undid the second button on her blouse, her pen tucked between her teeth as her hands occupied themselves without her knowledge.

*

Riley let Ms Paek show him to the door, this time, without playing around with the metronome or delaying her, because as much as he enjoyed watching her struggle to (as she believed) successfully hide her arousal from him, this time he had to hide his own from her.

He hadn’t been ready for how strong his reaction would be, had thought it would be simple enough to handle, and was only now realising how badly wrong that assumption had been.

He hurried back home on autopilot; didn’t step out into the street without checking for traffic, didn’t turn down any of the alleys that weren’t safe near his path, but he was all but unaware of the route he was taking in any case.

His mind was on her eyes, and the curious emptiness in them, and on the way she had held her pen, the lid resting against her lips as she thought or even taken into her mouth, especially as she became more and more aroused, and of course his mind was on the smooth, beautiful expanse of bare skin that had been exposed by her unbuttoning her blouse bit by bit across the lesson.

It was a shame he hadn’t thought to make her untuck it first, he mused; the blouse had stayed mostly closed, and the thin once-white bra strap across her chest had not been as enticing as it might have been. Riley had not yet learned that, for the most part, women chose their underwear for comfort rather than display, unless they expected somebody to see it; Ms Paek did not expect anyone to see it on those days.

All the same, he had seen some real promise in what Ms Paek now thought of, even if only subconsciously, as her rules; he had some ideas for how to do things next week.

In the meantime he thought of what had already been achieved, and how she had looked and reacted, and he barely saw the mundane world around him; there were too many tempting thoughts to occupy him.

Back home, he sat at his laptop and, once again glad to know his roommate would be out of the room for a long time, he opened a folder labelled SORT FOR DELETION.

Nothing ever got deleted out of this folder; it was just called that because he’d wanted a name that wouldn’t be snooped on if he ever forgot to log out and left his computer open. Now he actually knew his roommate he didn’t think he’d needed to do that, but when he’d been preparing for college there’d been no good way to know that.

Inside the folder was a video folder as well as a collection of PDFs and zipped files; it was the video folder that Riley opened next. Two keystrokes had his screen showing files beginning with M and from there he just opened his target video.

The logo announcing the FBI would prosecute pirate recordings was missing from this video, precisely because it was a pirated recording and why would they include that?

Instead, therefore, a relatively-tasteful short CGI animation played, eventually resolving into the model’s own video label and website branding. And then, a shot of an empty office desk, while voices could be heart from out of frame.

The camera panned over to one side, where a door was left just slightly ajar, and where the conversation seemed to be coming from.

“Don’t worry about it, ma’am,” a woman was saying. “I’m sure he wouldn’t try anything of the sort with me, and even if he did, I’m far too stubborn not to win any contest of wills. I’ll soon cure him of this obsession with hypnosis.”

The camera panned back to look at the desk, making it clear this was a point of view.

The clack of heels on wood was heard. Riley wondered why it was that kink porn always had that sound, and why it was always so much louder than anything else.

A tall brunette in a deep red blouse and tight, shiny black skirt clacked into view. The rhythm of her paces actually made Riley think a little about the way Ms Paek had synchronised over time to the metronome, but it wasn’t quite as steady, wasn’t quite as reliable.

He found himself imagining Keunhee walking on that kind of floor, in those kind of heels, under instruction in trance; suddenly he was even gladder that his roommate was away.

The viewpoint character responded to the brunette sitting down by placing a metronome in front of her, and set it off with a showy flick of one finger; this was the video, one of the earlier ones Riley had downloaded, that he had been thinking of the previous week, and indeed had thought of after his lesson with Ms Paek every week before that.

“Whatever this is,” the brunette said, “you’re a fool if you think… uh, if you think… uhm…”

But her eyes were already tracking the metronome. “You’re not weak,” the viewpoint said. “You’re stubborn, right? And that’s good. That’s what’s going to hypnotise you.”

“What are you… talking… about?” she retorted, even if there were sudden slow pauses on more than one occasion.

“You’re stubborn. You want to prove me wrong. You’re not going to look away from the metronome.” There was a pause, and then the voice repeated itself. “You’re not going to look away from the metronome.”

Another pause. “You cannot look away from the metronome.”

“I can… uhm… not… look away from the metronome…”

Riley had spent a long time fantasising about stumbling into contact with the model. In his fantasies he’d joke about one of the trigger phrases from one of her videos, whichever he’d watched most recently, and he would then see her face slacken and go blank.

Even watching the video this time, seeing her doing it, he found himself instead imagining Ms Paek’s eyes glazing over, Ms Paek’s jaw slackening as her mouth opened vacantly, even his best guess at his violin tutor’s breasts over and above the actress’ well-remembered, perky, appetisingly fake tits.

He wasn’t really paying attention to the video. Instead he imagined Ms. Paek saying “I can… uhm… not… look away from the metronome…”

It didn’t sound right. He conjured, instead, the idea of her saying, in that same automaton-esque mechanical precision she’d accessed earlier through trance, “I cannot look away from the metronome,” and that worked so much better. Riley smiled and replayed that in his mind.

“I… will… obey…” the actress was saying, in what Riley could now recognise as a conscious mind’s pretence at trance speech. “I… must… obey…”

He watched as she unbuttoned that dark red blouse and imagined instead that it was Ms Paek monotonously chanting “I will obey. I must obey,” with such rhythmic precision that the dangling bead of her saliva swung like a metronome of its own.

He paused the video and opened up another. It took a frustratingly long time to get going; there were a lot of establishing scenes. Riley usually fast-forwarded through them, but this time he watched carefully.

He wasn’t at all sure why that was, at first, but the longer he watched, the more he found himself thinking about who the woman was when you first met her. Even in these relatively cheaply-made videos, perhaps because they were so focused on a particular niche and many of the people involved were at least partway interested themselves, every video devoted a little time to showing you a starting point.

When he’d watched these before, he’d been impatient to get to the good bit; to the bit where they came under control. Seeing these actresses attempt blank, unthinking faces had been the point.

Now, he kept thinking about Ms Paek. He hadn’t done a great deal of work on her yet, but she was already, at least a little, different to the woman he’d worked on before.

The blonde in the video was alone at home with the hypnotist. “Listen,” he said, an abrupt change of topic from the one she’d been trying to discuss. “Do you hear that?”

“No,” she asnswered irritably. But, in spite of herself, she quickly followed up with “What?”

“That sound.” He paused, smirked. “Is that your clock?”

There was a quick cut to a grandfather clock. No cheap thing, this was probably the inspiration for the script; knowing they had this available had determined how they wrote the induction scene. For the first time, a heavy tick… tock… was audible. It wasn’t, whenever the clock wasn’t on screen.

“I… guess…”

“Listen,” he said again. “Close your eyes.” She did so. “Focus.”

“I don’t know what this is all about.”

“That tick… tock… tick… tock…” His delivery was terrible, but Riley didn’t care. He was imagining saying it himself. Was imagining Ms Paek’s reaction.

“…tock?”

“That’s right. Gooood girl. Tick… tock… tick… tock…”

He watched her eyelids flutter, remembered the way Ms Paek’s eyelids had done the same, and smiled dreamily.

The real thing was so much better, but this… ah, this could cultivate fantasies, and fantasies became ideas.

He imagined standing beside her while she was watching the metronome, her mind so scattered and absent it didn’t matter, and he imagined undressing her. Taking his time with it. Savouring the way she looked. He wondered, as the blonde was stripped while she stood, near immobile, shifting only slightly as her clothes were tugged off, what Ms Paek’s skin would feel like, though he was sure he would enjoy it no matter what.

He was only barely watching the videos now. None of them gave him the same kick as the woman who was, really and truly, vulnerable to his hypnotic control.

But they did definitely represent some ideas. He’d have to think about that…

He smiled, and closed his eyes to imagine Ms Paek’s body, Ms Paek’s voice, saying the same things.

He could think about what he would do later. For now it was enjoyable enough to imagine what he might do.

*

The next week Riley was there a quarter of an hour early for the lesson, and Ms Paek was visibly surprised when she opened the door and saw him waiting there.

It took a lot, when she wasn’t playing herself, for Ms Paek to show anything, so he knew this was something beyond what lines she’d usually have drawn; he would have been in real trouble if she wasn’t already under a suggestion to think the world of him. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have dreamed of it if she wasn’t under that suggestion.

“I’m afraid I’m not quite ready yet,” she told him.

“That’s okay,” he said.

“I just didn’t quite expect… you’ve been very punctual.” The up until now was silent, but still more than loud enough to be heard.

Well, he thought, what the hell. It didn’t seem likely she’d kick him out entirely; she was too excited by his great potential. So when he stepped over the threshold, not quite pushing past her but moving past her with real determination, he knew there was only so bad it could be, and as she spluttered objection he pushed open the door into the studio and walked in, so that if she wanted to address this with him, she had to follow.

He knew he was going to have to address how that made him feel at a later point; it was overriding her will, and while he was already doing that by hypnotising her, this didn’t seem like the same thing, somehow, and he felt guiltier about it.

Maybe it was just that the hypnosis included some pleasure conditioning. Maybe it was more that this was the sort of thing he’d been taught not to do as a child, while not even the most imaginative babysitter had addressed the idea that hypnotising someone would be rude.

Not that he’d even really thought about hypnosis in those days, of course.

“Riley, I don’t know what’s gotten into you today,” she said, and it was almost tempting to try to plead his case, but he stopped himself.

Because it didn’t matter.

Instead, he started the metronome ticking once again.

Ms Paek stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips, a frown as severe as - no; more severe than - any other he’d seen. “Young man, that is my property,” she said, then blinked, and licked her lips for a moment uncertainly, “and I do not, uh, appreciate,”

There were a couple of moments of silence, and Riley decided it was worth a go to press his luck. “You appreciate some things, Ms Paek,” he said, and he put the confidence he didn’t feel into his voice, freighted it as deeply into his words as he could.

“I do not appreciate your cavalier,” she said, although while there was force to her voice there was also a strange vagueness. “Um.”

He could guess what she was going to say.

You’re stubborn, right? That’s what’s going to hypnotise you.

“You appreciate my attitude,” he said, sounding like he didn’t just believe it was true but like he knew it, with absolute confidence.

“I… appreciate your attitude,” she conceded, and he wasn’t sure, looking at how confused the remains of an expression on her face was, that she even understood it was a concession.

“That’s a good girl,” Riley told her, and the confusion softened into a hazy smile. “Remember what happens when this metronome is on?”

“I… sink… deep,” she said, and every word slurred more than the last, her features slackening into expressionless over three syllables.

“That’s right,” he said again, more reassuringly than focusing on the confidence he had tried to put across before. “Are you angry, Keunhee?”

“Yes,” she said, but there was uncertainty in her tone. He thought it was probably just the fact she was already sinking; from everything he’d heard or read, that wasn’t something that went well with being angry.

“Do you know why you’re angry?”

She inhaled and exhaled, a breath a little longer drawn out than most, an inhalation as the metronome ticked to the left followed by an exhalation as it tocked to the right.

Her hands were still on her hips, her elbows out to the side; everything about that stance should have projected rigidity, certainty, strength.

And yet she almost seemed… limp, in spite of the straight lines and harsh angles of her stance.

That was the power of hypnosis.

“Yes,” she said, but so softly that it seemed as if she didn’t believe that herself.

Riley started to smile. Giving the line of sight between Ms Paek and the metronome a wide berth, he made his way over to her, until he stood very close indeed.

“No you don’t,” he said, and she still stood, arms akimbo, but her eyelids fluttered over glassy eyes, her awareness of the world almost entirely gone.

He waited a moment with anticipation, but she said nothing. “Repeat,” he said.

“No I don’t,” she answered.

“You don’t know why you’re angry. Repeat.”

“I don’t know why I’m angry.”

“Good girl, Keunhee.” Ms Paek’s sudden smile turned her face into something vacant, empty of personality. Whatever it was about those words, they were properly having their effect. “You aren’t angry with me,” he said. “Repeat.”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“You’re not angry at all. Repeat.”

“I’m not angry at all.”

“It’s good that I got here early.” He was stood to her side now, watching her face intently from side on. “Repeat.”

“It’s good that you got here early.” Even in trance, there was a grace to the way her lips shaped the words - she was getting closer to that perfect pronunciation she’d achieved the last time, when in her deepest trance - and a beauty to the way the muscles of her neck and throat moved.

“You feel good when I’m nearby,” he said. “Repeat.”

“I feel good when you’re nearby.”

“Good girl, Keunhee.” He took a few moments after that, considering his options, weighing his words, and trying to decide which of the many plans he’d dreamed up - oh so many, refining or outright changing them several times a day, multiplied by the whole week of planning - was going to be the one that took shape in reality.

Well, there was time to choose. But of all those fantasies, almost all of them had one or two important factors that were the same. “Now, Keunhee,” he said, “I’m about to ask you some questions, and you will find that you must answer truthfully. That you simply do answer truthfully. That lying, or hiding the truth, is something that you can’t do around me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He saw the corner of her mouth twitch slightly higher up and smiled in his own turn just enjoying her response.

“Do you have some sexy underwear?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like to wear sexy underwear?”

“Sometimes.” For whatever reason, he hadn’t expected an answer like that one; a yes or a no was all he’d seen coming.

“When?”

“When I’m with someone I want to make an impression on.” The trance state sapped any emotion from her speech, but Riley was sure that if she weren’t entranced he’d be able to hear a knowing smile in her words. He was struck again by just how much more experienced she was.

“Do you have any sexy outfits?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I mean ones you wouldn’t wear out in public,” he pressed, just in case. He was remembering some of the photos he’d seen when he first tranced her, and while those were sexy, it wasn’t quite the kind of outfit he’d been thinking about.

“Yes.”

“…Keunhee, are you kinky?”

“Yes.”

Riley fell silent for a few moments, deciding what would be the right tack to take next.