If the catch in her voice as she said his name had been wishful thinking, then the wistful longing in her widened eyes was too; but he wasn’t quite prepared to believe that. He’d much rather live in the world where her subconscious, at least, knew what was coming, and where the steady rewards he’d set up for her behaviour, the conditioning effect he hoped to have, was already starting to have its effect.

All the same, he started the pendulum rod moving, the steady mechanical tick filling the air. Riley marvelled again at how smooth the mechanism was; you could tell, he rather thought, that it had been well oiled simply by the way the pace stayed perfectly on rhythm, no staccato discord, no hesitating second tick to a tock as the movement reversed direction or passed through a sticking point. It sounded well oiled. It sounded mechanical. It sounded… precise.

Just as precise were the micro-movements of Paek Keunhee’s eyes as they tracked its movement, sweeping from left to right, to left, to right, to left again…

He had to admit it was fascinating to see, but he wasn’t looking as closely at her eyes as her eyelids, her shoulders, her lower lip. By now he’d had a proper chance to notice something that happened whenever she slid into trance.

Her eyes just kept tracking back and forth without interruption, unable to help themselves, and of course her line of sight did not change; without him prompting her, he didn’t think her line of sight could change. Riley wasn’t completely sure of the rules of hypnosis - whatever the rules actually were, the kink videos he’d learned them from seemed to play fast and loose with them.

But her eyelids drooped, her shoulders slumped, and her jaw dropped enough to part her lips almost simultaneously as her mind slipped over whatever vague threshold existed between near-trance and in-trance.

Riley had noticed he always felt lighter when he saw she’d dropped. It was as if the rules were suspended. He could do whatever he wanted.

For the time being, he set down his violin case and walked over to her, not obstructing her view of the metronome. He had his phone in his hand. “Stand straighter, Keunhee,” he ordered, and she obeyed without question, comment, or hesitation, though her eyes never lost track of the pendulum rod. There was a very slightly odd set to her face as a result.

Riley wasn’t worried about that. He stood by her side, put his arm around her shoulders, and brought up his phone in selfie mode.

It looked odd. He couldn’t imagine, if he sent this photo to his family, not getting some dubious comments about it. She seemed shrunk in on herself from the way her head was tilted, and the expression on her lips…

Well, he liked seeing her blank and empty, but it was definitely an unusual expression. He wasn’t sure what his mother or sister would read into her look.

“Smile,” he instructed, and Paek Keunhee smiled obediently. It didn’t touch her eyes, which were still focused, glassy, and staring, and the way the corners of her mouth had drawn back seemed completely off in some way. It took him a moment to realise that this was because it was almost exactly symmetrical; it just didn’t look the way people usually smile.

“Keunhee,” he said, trying again, “smile as if you’re with someone you consider a close friend.” He didn’t actually hold his breath for the response but he felt the same kind of uneasy anticipation he associated with that idea.

As it stood, though, the results were almost perfect; her eyes, of course, remained on the pendulum rod, but the smile was a natural one and with her eyes crinkling at one corner, even the appearance of a glassy stare was reduced. He moved his arm, finding a camera angle that fitted the way her head tilted.

There was, though, still something missing. “Put your arm around me,” he instructed. This time, Ms Paek hesitated, just for a moment, before the arm closest to him moved. It had hung limply by her side, but now it drifted back between them and slowly floated outward until her hand came to rest on his side, just above his hip.

Riley looked down at her hand and felt the blush blossom across his face. That wasn’t at all where he’d expected her to put it, and somehow this kind of embrace felt much more… intimate… somehow.

Still, that was no bad thing. He took the photo, and a couple more for good measure, and he opened up WhatsApp and sent them to his family chat.

Then he muted notifications. He stood there for a while, thinking.

“Are you wearing lingerie, Keunhee?”

“Yes.”

“Sexy lingerie?”

“Yes.”

Which was what he’d wanted to know; still there was a chance here to reinforce things. Before he went any further, he took the time to do so.

“Why are you wearing lingerie?”

“I always wear lingerie for your lessons.”

“And why is that?”

He was sure her smile had changed slightly; it seemed more vacant all of a sudden. “Because your lessons are special occasions, and because I want to impress you. And because instruments are happy to be played.”

Riley tried to remember whether he’d tied the idea that instruments enjoyed being played into the lingerie stuff. He didn’t think so - thought it had come up much later on - but it had been a week, and the week had been busy, and as such he would have been lying if he’d said he was confident in his memory.

He kind of hoped he hadn’t tied it in himself, hoped she was beginning to find things of her own to knot together. All the same, he wasn’t going to assume, he was just going to enjoy what it did for him. “That’s right,” he told her.

He tucked his phone back into his pocket and started unbuttoning her blouse. Very quickly he saw that it wasn’t the same bra as the previous week; this one had full cups, but the top half of each cup was near-transparent lacework, with purple padding underneath that had been cut into the shape of flames.

Riley once again found himself wondering about the true Paek Keunhee, the woman he was starting to adjust and shape the edges of. It wasn’t the edges that surprised him; it was the depths.

All the same, with the blouse wide open and the bra proudly on display, he took another photo. That was why he’d sent his family the picture immediately; he didn’t want to risk accidentally adding any of the other photos he wanted to take to the message.

“Pull the cups of your bra down so I can see your tits,” he told her, and the entranced woman silently obeyed. No - not silently. For the first time that day he noticed one of the short bursts of humming she’d made.

The instrument idea… that had really hit her where her subconscious lived, he realised suddenly. He was suddenly sure that it was her who had linked instruments being happy to her following his hypnotic suggestions - to her being played, as she must see it - not him.

He was going to have to find other ways to use that, but he might need to think about it first. She was clearly willing to take that metaphor and put her own spin onto it; if he chose his suggestions carefully he could probably control that, or at least limit the unpredictability.

He called himself back to the present from his plans for the future only with an effort. He took another photo of her with her tits on display, then stepped away from her so he could get a close-up that included her vapid, smiling face as well as her bare breasts.

He bumped against the small table that sat beside her teaching chair as he did so; glancing down, he noticed the pen she was using. It was a different one from last week - with enough lessons, he figured she probably went through them fairly steadily - but the pen cap was already showing signs of being well-bitten.

Riley entirely lost the train of thought he’d been on. Getting more photos of her for his own entertainment wasn’t nearly so important, all of a sudden, as what this indicated.

He raised a hand to her face, hovering his fingers near that slack-jawed dreamy grin that was her mouth. He watched closely, but there was no reaction.

Of course, her attention, visually, was as focused in on one point as it was possible for it to be…

He touched the tip of his forefinger against her top lip and watched as her mouth twitched, fractionally opening before hesitating, and he smiled.

“Keunhee,” he said, “what must you do when I ask you a question in trance?”

“I must answer truthfully. I simply do answer truthfully. Lying, or hiding the truth, is something I can’t do around you.”

Riley was grinning. He hadn’t even remembered all of those instructions, but they were clearly right at Ms Paek’s mental fingers, clearly had made a deep impression on her. And that meant he was going to savour the question he was about to ask.

“How often do you put something in your mouth that isn’t food?”

“Almost all the time,” she answered.

He rested his fingertip in the v formed by her lower lip. She was humming again, a single note, taut and excited. “You want to suck now, don’t you?”

“Yesss.” The answer came out in a hiss, eager, primed. Was it too fanciful to think of her as straining against her lack of orders to take him in her mouth?

“Suck,” he instructed, and her lips closed around him, as glossy as her eyes were glassy, and her head began to rock up and down along his finger, her eyes still on the pendulum rod. He felt her tongue curl into position to embrace his finger, felt the shiver of excitement as her tonguetip caressed down the sensitive underside of her fingers.

“You love sucking things, don’t you?”

“Mm-hmm…” It wasn’t hard to make out, even around his finger. He put another fingertip up and she opened her mouth enough to invite it in.

“Keunhee,” Riley said slowly. “If you and I are alone together, and I give you something to suck, you will always suck it. Understand?”

“Mm-hmm.” She nodded around his fingers, without her eyes losing track of the pendulum rod even for a moment; it was as if her head was somehow moving around her line of sight.

“If you and I are alone together, and I give you something to suck, you will fall back into trance as you suck it. Understand?”

“Mm-hmm.” Another nod, this time accompanied by - or perhaps causing - a shudder of the tongue that sent a shock of pleasure along his nerves.

“Fffuck,” he whispered, hardly willing to give the utterance sound but unable to fully stop himself. She was good at this…

He stood there in near-silence for longer than he realised, feeling the pleasure of his instrument humming around his fingers, showing just how experienced she was at giving pleasure without even knowing what she was doing, feeling his scalp tingle with satisfied pleasure.

Time seemed to stand still; the moment was strangely intimate given that only one mind was conscious in the room.

With an effort, he dragged himself back to the consciousness of what he needed to do, of the test he needed to make. It was one thing to install a new trance trigger; it was another to have it tested and to know it could be relied on.

He took a step further to her side, and moved his hand with him; still sucking, her head turned, but her eyes slid to one side to continue to watch the pendulum rod. Another step, and now she could not see the rod; all the same, she didn’t wake, didn’t stir, and the rhythm of her steady, eager sucking didn’t change at all. After a few moments, he saw her glassy eyes unfocus, then roll upward and cross, until she was staring unseeing at the bridge of her own nose.

Riley understood clearly that those kink videos were nothing - nothing - compared to the real thing, even before he properly started pushing its limits.

*

“Keunhee, do you truly think I’m improving?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Am I close to mastering any of these pieces?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Then I deserve more motivation, don’t I?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Riley vaguely understood the idea of a yes loop but had never heard of an mm-hmm loop. Still, he figured it was close enough that it should work.

“So whenever you think I master a piece, you’ll give me the panties you were wearing, won’t you?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“This will seem completely natural, normal, even logical. But it’s still a great achievement, so you will make a ceremony out of it. Do you understand?”

“Mm-hmm.”

It was good enough. “Without stopping sucking, tuck your tits back into your bra,” he instructed. Paek Keunhee complied, still humming contentedly around his fingers as she did.

“Button up your blouse.” And again, obediently, she did as she was told, as she had to. Riley turned her head back to face the metronome by moving his hand with the fingers still in her mouth, then pulled them free with a surprisingly loud wet pop.

He headed back to where he usually performed from, wiping his hand dry. His mind kept replaying the way her tongue had tantalised and teased; oh, if only it had been something other than his finger…

Of course, he was pretty sure that it would be something better than his finger before too long, now; he quite possibly could do it that day, but what if he couldn’t? And what if the alternative would have been just one more day’s work?

Riley knew now that he could shape Ms Paek, and he knew that there was enough of her that was interested in enough sexual things to be shaped in the right direction. He intended to go as slowly as his own temptation would let him, just to be sure that he’d done his work as well as he could.

On the other hand, he knew already that he was going to give into temptation intermittently. “Take a drink of water,” he said, and he tried to get the hunger and the eagerness in his voice back under control.

It was fine, he thought, to let his weaknesses and desires show in his voice when he was the only conscious mind. Ms Paek’s subconscious mind couldn’t judge him. Ms Paek herself had an ear for music and he firmly believed she had an ear for nervousness and deceit, too.

Ms Paek had taken a drink of her water and stood, staring at the pendulum rod again, focus returned to her vision, holding the glass.

Riley stopped the metronome with a touch.

*

Paek Keunhee had that strange sense of time having passed without her knowledge that she seemed to get just ever so often nowadays. She looked at the glass of water she was holding and took a sip thoughtfully.

“So, Riley,” she began. “Have you been practicing?”

“Just as much as I can, Ms. Paek,” he said. “College is getting heavy.”

She nodded, sympathetic. “But you’re still finding time for your violin practice?”

“Oh, of course.” He smiled broadly. “I feel like you’re bringing something out of me.”

She was aware that her expression had frozen, and she could feel the heat of the blush on her cheeks. She looked away quickly, clearing her throat, but mostly she wanted to hide her reaction from him until she could control her face.

The imagery that sentence had conjured in her head… well, she might even enjoy it later, but she’d certainly feel guilty as she did so. He was her student, even it sometimes she wanted to see what those dextrous, careful fingers could coax out of her if he switched his instrument of choice.

A thought flickered through her head, but it didn’t last; it was unworthy of her. She picked up her notepad and pen, crossed her legs, laid the notepad atop them and looked up. “Shall we return to one of your first pieces?” she asked. “I want to see how well you’ve developed your understanding of the series.”

Riley nodded thoughtfully. “I can do that, definitely.” She would have bet that he’d moved on, hadn’t been read for this; but that was part of why she’d chosen it as a test. She was very curious to see how he’d do, and who knew?

“Well, let’s see how it goes,” she said with a smile. “I was wondering if you still have motivation for your earlier experiments.”

She shrugged off her jacket and turned slightly to hang it on the back of her chair, then back to his performance. At no point did she notice what she was doing.

*

Riley drew out the last note of the piece, effort of will alone keeping his hand from shaking. Paek Keunhee could tell, just through looking, how desperately hard he’d worked on that piece; she could feel, too, through her own mounting desire and arousal, how thoroughly he’d mastered the transitions, the key changes, the most sweeping of the movements.

He took the bow from the violin and there was, yes, a tremble to his hand. Nerves, the cost of concentration, excitement - it could be any of them, or some strange heady cocktail combining them all.

She surged to her feet, notepad and pen discarded, and came upright in applause.

She felt it, from her heart on out, in her passion for the music, in the wonder in her mind that she and he had come, together, to the point where he could play like that so soon, in the aching, dripping need between her hips; his performance had been everything one could ask for. Never perfect - she didn’t believe in perfection in music; too much was tied to the emotion of the performer - but sublime, nonetheless.

She could feel tears of emotion welling up, and she blinked them back, smiling approvingly at her favourite student. He’d certainly shown why he held that position today.

She continued to applaud as she made her way over to him. “Bravo,” she said. “Absolutely sublime.”

She watched his eyes widen, his surprise and his genuine pride. His surprise, she rather thought, at his genuine pride. He hadn’t expected to feel this way when it came. Had thought it would be a triumph, but hadn’t understood what triumph truly meant.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No, Riley,” she said. She knelt, and her hands reached briefly to draw up her thin skirt, but her fingers found no fabric. Her thoughts skipped a step, bypassing the point where she might have wondered why not, her eyes briefly rolling up before her vision restored itself.

Rising back up, Paek Keunhee felt the weight of a skirt drawn up to her hips in each hand, but questing fingers beneath it found the waistband of her panties. She eased them off, had to squirm out of them somewhat, so wet were they.

She tried not to pay any heed to the musk that was suddenly all to clear to her nose; perhaps, she hoped in embarrassment, Riley wouldn’t understand what it was. College kids were usually already people of the world, but it was, just, dimly possible that he might not put two and two together.

Having wriggled them clear of her thighs, it was much easier for her to bring one leg up and step out of them, then lift the other foot to one side so she could slide the panties past her heels and take them in her hands.

She stepped closer to Riley, looking up at him for the first time in a long moment, as her hands unwound her panties. She held them out, the lace darker than usual with her juices, the purple flame one that would leave nothing to the imagination if she hadn’t let her skirts fall back over her modesty once her panties were off.

“A masterpiece,” she told him, “deserves a reward.” She bobbed, almost a curtsey, and held out her dripping panties.

Riley met her eyes, his proud smile tinged with something else as well, something she couldn’t read. “Thank you, Ms Paek,” he said, and she thought he was about to say something else, but he didn’t. Instead, his bow tucked under one arm, he accepted her panties. Still making eye contact, he raised them to his nose, took a sniff of her juices.

Her pussy twitched, hard, at the very idea. Her knees were suddenly weak, and for a moment, something of the authority he’d assumed in that moment almost sent her fumbling to the floor, unable to stand. But she wouldn’t embarrass herself so in front of one of her students, so as Riley put her panties into his pocket, she collected herself.

It was the first time one of her students had mastered a piece so well that she’d found it necessary to offer up her panties in recognition.

“No, really, it’s honestly well deserved,” she said, and she knew she was babbling as she did so. As much as anything, she was trying to cover for the excitement and the embarrassment that had mingled with her pride, the two emotions that weren’t proper for a ceremony like this and which she wanted most to hide.

Riley was looking at her like he knew anyway, a smirk on his lips. He took his hand out of the pocket with her panties and held it out to her at head height, two fingers extended, and she could smell herself on his fingertips.

Her head swam for a moment with embarrassment. But they were alone together, and he had given her something to suck. Her mouth was already open and she looked up at him with needy, guilty eyes as she took him into her mouth, the taste of her electric on her tongue, an embarrassment that was arousal in disguise. She was still looking up at him as she began to suck, but he seemed to fall out of focus just as she was thinking Well, I guess I haven’t done such a good job of hiding it as I should…

*

He saw her eyes cross and roll again, saw her shoulders slump slightly, and knew that once again, she was back in trance. Riley smiled to himself, nodding approval. She really was so easy to hypnotise.

Of course, there was no reason not to make sure of that…

“You’re so easy to hypnotise, Keunhee,” he told her wide-open subconscious, knowing she would believe it. It was an impulsive inspiration that led him to say “Repeat.”

“Uhmm sssh eess uh yp uh tie…”

“Again.”

“Uhmm sssh eess uh yp uh tie…”

“Again.”

“Uhmm sssh eess uh yp uh tie…”

“That’s right. And you love that about yourself, don’t you?”

“Mm-hmm.” Again, she nodded around his fingers. Her tongue seemed to jump in her mouth as she did so, and his nerves tingled in delight from the way that made her caress him.

“That’s right. You don’t remember any of this, but you still love how easy it is to manipulate you when you’re hypnotised. You’d like me to manipulate you like this more often.”

She was humming around his fingers, which he took as a very good sign. He pulled out his phone and recorded a short video of her, naked except for her heels, eyes rolled back and crossed, unseeing, helplessly bobbing up and down around his fingers in full fellatio mode.

“When I take my fingers out, before you leave trance, you will recite all your rules for me,” he said. “Do you understand?”

“Mm-hmm…”

He might have been imagining it, but it almost seemed as if that agreement was still a hum. He was going to have to pin the instrument thing down soon.

He withdrew his fingers. Ms Paek’s eyes stayed rolled up, her expression somehow happy while almost entirely absent.

“I am hypnotised,” she began promptly. “I hear and I do not think. I can hear and not think and not wake while talking at normal volume.

“You are my favourite student. I see great potential in you. I would never stop teaching you without your request. I want to go deeper.

“This metronome is one I do not touch. This metronome brings me back to trance. I sink deep when this metronome is on.

“Every time you get a note right, I feel more excited. The more notes you get right in a sequence, the more excited I get. It’s very hard to hide it.

“I have no idea why I feel this way. I don’t even know what’s exciting me. But the better you play, the more turned on I get.

“I must answer your questions truthfully. I simply do answer truthfully. Lying, or hiding the truth, is something I can’t do around you.

“I appreciate your attitude. I feel good when you’re nearby. I want to make it easy for you to get here early again.

“I will make sure the hour before and the hour after your lesson are always left empty in case we need it. Instead of undoing one button each time either of us says the word ‘motivation’, I’m going to remove my clothing, one item at a time.

“I consider my rule about motivation to apply to lingerie, too. I always wear lingerie for your lessons.

“I’ll change with an hour to go, if I have to. Because your lessons are special occasions, and because I want to impress you. I will follow my rules. But I won’t let myself know I’m following rules. I don’t need to know.

“Instruments don’t know the rules of the music they play. Instruments are happy to be played.

“I love sucking things. If you and I are alone together, and you give me something to suck, I will always suck it. If you and I are alone together, and you give me something to suck, I will fall back into trance as I suck it.

“Whenever I think you master a piece, I’ll give you the panties I am wearing. This will seem completely natural, normal, even logical. But it’s still a great achievement, so I will make a ceremony out of it.

“I’m so easy to hypnotise. I love that about myself. I don’t remember any of this, but I still love how easy I am to manipulate when I’m hypnotised.” There were so many harmonics from her attempts to hum while she recited that she was almost singing her rules now. “I’d like you to manipulate me like this more often.”

She took a deep breath and he could see her shoulder sit straighter. Her eyes uncrossed and refocused on him, and she smiled an embarrassed smile. “Well… uh… well played, Riley.”

He finished putting his violin and bow away in their case. “Thank you, Ms Paek,” he said. “Same time next week.”

“Of course. Let me see you out.”

“Ever the perfect host.” He was watching her when he said that, saw her blink for a second, her smile smoothing out into uncertainty just for an instant before she was smiling again.

Nude but for her heels, she clacked her way across the wooden flooring to the front door and showed him out. He didn’t know whether she just didn’t notice her nudity or whether she explained it away to herself. Hadn’t wanted to ask her in case he disrupted it somehow.

There had to be a better guide to hypnosis than fetish videos…

*

Paek Keunhee’s cheeks burned, on and off, for an hour after Riley had left. In the weeks since he first came to her, she had developed such an attraction to him, and it truly wasn’t right for her to feel that way, not for a student - really, she also thought, not for someone Riley’s age.

But the way he played…

Even thinking about it afterwards, picking up the clothes that always seemed to be strewn around her studio after a lesson with Riley, a shiver ran down her spine. The way he played did something to her, on a fundamental level; channelled emotion and passion and, for whatever reason, in this case those weren’t channelled to her mind but somewhere rather lower.

Embarrassing. More so that he knew, and she knew now that he did. She could still taste her own juices from his fingers.

And what had even happened there? True, he could offer her anything and she’d suck it, but he’d chosen, very confidently, even smugly, to offer her something soaked in her own excitement and arousal. No question but he was sending her a message.

There were too many possibilities for what that message might be for Paek Keunhee to be certain. She had speculated - speculated constantly for that first hour after the door closed - and she certainly had an answer that she hoped was true (though she knew she shouldn’t) - but she wasn’t sure.

She’d be putty in his hands, she was realising, as she took comfortable plain cotton panties and bra from their drawer, dressing again ahead of her next lesson. If he wanted to manipulate her she’d be powerless to stop him; she’d enjoy it too much to resist with any real determination.

She was going to have to be firmer with him, she thought. Starting at her next lesson she’d make it clear that any feeling she had were wrong, and that any attempt to capitalise on them would be wrong on his behalf.

She’d never stop teaching him without his request, but she could threaten to; he had no way of knowing that, after all.