Tutor
by Pan
Chapter 2:
I didn’t do anything else that lesson.
I was tempted. I mean, it had worked. My subconscious instructions to my sister had landed; she’d agreed with what I’d said. It had taken all my self-control not to follow that up with, y’know, “your brother’s dick tastes like candy and you’d be a fool not to drop to your knees right now and start licking.”
But I didn’t. Partially out of caution, of course—I’d already gone so far, I didn’t need to push it further and risk...well, I don’t even know what the risks were. Kayla consciously hearing what I was saying, or realizing what else I’d said to her, or...I dunno, her mind collapsing in on herself.
I stopped there partially out of caution, but mostly because I wasn’t going in completely blind.
I was following the path that Mr. Freudenberger had shown me.
“You’ll learn better when you’re comfortable,” he told the student he taught after me. I never learned her name—isn’t that funny? Considering everything I saw, everything I learned about her, everything she did in front of me...I never learned her name.
I’d always slip into the room after her class started, when she was focused on the violin (Mr. Freudenberger taught more than just sax). The first time I did, she’d looked up at me for a second, but Mr. Freudenberger had told her not to worry about me, to just pretend I wasn’t there.
At the time I clocked that there was something weird about the way he was speaking, but I was nowhere near putting it all together. Not yet.
It worked. After that, she literally never seemed to notice when I entered. She would just keep focusing on the strings, on the music sheet in front of her, on what Mr. Freudenberger was telling her.
On the metronome.
The student—for the sake of storytelling, let’s call her Viola—nodded at Mr. Freudenberger’s words. This was the second class he’d let me observe (I was moving slower than he was. I had more to lose.)—maybe there had been other rhythmic instructions slipped in there, but this was the first one I noticed.
Not because of the way he spoke (it took me a while to put that together), but because of her reaction. She nodded, and I saw her entire body relax.
Okay, yeah, not exactly the most intense reaction in the world. Maybe if it had just been that, I wouldn’t have ed anything strange, or even ed.
But with what came next, the whole incident was burned into my memory forever.
“You’d be more comfortable without a bra,” Mr. Freudenberger continued, and my eyes widened at what he was saying.
Again, Viola nodded. And again, Mr. Freudenberger didn’t stop there.
“Take off your bra,” he said, and...yeah, you can see why I ed this. Viola put down her violin, put down her bow, and—her eyes still glued to the sheet of music she was reading—reached behind her and took off her bra.
Mr. Freudenberger gave her a little nod. “There’s a good girl.”
Again, Viola just nodded in response. She set her bra down, picked up her instrument, and continued practice.
He didn’t say anything else for the next few minutes, just focused on her form (he was a good teacher. Or maybe he just knew if she didn’t actually improve, she wouldn’t return for future lessons.) and gave her notes.
Then, while he had her play the entire thing through without stopping, he continued his instructions. Quite loudly, so that she’d hear him over the sound of her playing.
“You shouldn’t wear a bra to lessons in future. It’s more comfortable without it, and you’ll learn better if you’re comfortable.”
Viola nodded, and a wicked grin appeared on Mr. Freudenberger’s face. And then—more for his sake than hers, I suspect—he said it again.
“Good girl.”
I wasn’t quite as forward as he’d been. For reasons that will become clear, I wasn’t using his instructions as an exact script—just a, like, general direction.
I mean, it’s possible that the only way to use the Freudenberger Technique is to follow exactly his steps in exactly that one order, but I don’t think that’s true.
Again, for reasons that will become clear.
So yeah, I could’ve been more explicit. I could’ve told Kayla that she wasn’t to wear a bra to the next lesson. But she’s a smart girl, and I didn’t think I needed to be be quite that clumsy.
You know what they say: Lead a horse to water and it’ll remove its bra of its own accord.
For the rest of that lesson, I didn’t say anything. I mean, I said plenty of stuff, but not to the rhythm. I just taught her as well as I could. She was picking it all up pretty quickly; not because I’m a particularly amazing teacher, my sister is just smart as a whip. Her brain is bigger than her distaste for math.
I wasn’t worried that we’d run out of stuff to learn or anything like that. I was pretty sure that everyone—Kayla, Dad, and definitely me—would be happy for me to keep coaching her for as long as she was in school.
And if they weren’t, I knew how to convince them.
“You won’t notice anything unusual about the way Kayla dresses.”
Dad nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The instruction was a little out of left field, but I’d tried like a dozen sample commands, and he’d responded fine to all of them.
The tricky part had been convincing him to be okay with a metronome running while he did his morning crossword. It had been a close call at first; he wasn’t musical like me or Kayla (his creativity was all visual, I guess) and so I knew he found it genuinely annoying. But when I’d told him that I was trying to internalize 4/4 time for the sake of my saxophone exam, he’d let me have it run while we ate breakfast.
Not because it was logical. But because he trusted me.
I felt a little bad, abusing that trust, but...I mean, it was for his own good, kind of. Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch—I doubt there’s a philosopher in the world who’d take on the case that ‘being manipulated into ignoring your daughter’s new dress code so your son can ogle her’ was a good thing for Dad, but...well, it was better than the alternative.
I’m sure that if Dad was given the choice between knowing what I was going to do to Kayla and not knowing, he’d have chosen not to know.
If he knew he couldn’t stop it, that is.
I smiled as my sister entered the study for our next study session. I say “entered”…maybe “wobbled” would’ve been a better description, har har har.
I’m not ashamed to it that I’d gone through my sister’s underwear drawer once. I mean, considering what else I’m confessing to here, it’d be pretty weird if that was where I drew the line.
Not honestly sure what I’d been expecting, but what I’d found had been a veritable treasure trove. Several pairs of lacy underwear, some of it black (which meant she ’wanted to have sex someday’, if 10 Things I Hate About You is to be trusted) (which it definitely is), and I learned her bra size: 35E.
Google let me that was big (confirming what my eyes had already told me)—big enough that she had to shop at, like, specialty bra shops and the like.
I wish I could say that I felt sorry for her, but...yeah, even if I’d had the power to snap my fingers and reduce her breast size, there’s no amount of money that would’ve made me do so. Sorry, Kayla—turns out your brother is selfish enough to prioritize his own viewing pleasure over your ease of lingerie purchasing.
As Kayla entered the study, it was all I could do not to drop my eyes and watch as her tits bounced from the momentum of the movement. but I kept my eyes on hers and smiled.
“Hey Mikey!”
“Hey sis,” I said, trying my best to sound like an educational YouTuber. “You ready to learn some math?“
She laughed and sat down. As she pulled out her stuff, I allowed myself a single quick glance at her chest—she was wearing a sweater, so it wasn’t like her tits were just hanging out for all to see—before getting down to business.
I wasn’t surprised to see that she looked completely comfortable, despite her braless state. Well, I guess she looked comfortable because of her braless state.
It was going exactly as I’d hoped. In no way am I going to claim that I was better at this than Mr. Freudenberger—he’d been doing it for decades, after all—but I had been right about how my sister would react. I didn’t need to spell it out for her; I just needed to provide the dots, and she’d connect them.
And I’d spent the last few days carefully planning what the next dots were going to be.
“You feel more comfortable without a bra,” I confirmed, as soon as Kayla’s head was buried in a series of somewhat tricky trig exercises. She nodded immediately—no pause like last time. Whatever minor resistance had been there had been overcome.
“You’d like to feel like this whenever you’re at home,” I continued. This time there was more of a pause, but barely—almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, my sister nodded...an action that caused a ripple beneath her sweater, I couldn’t help but notice.
I tried not to stare. The rhythm of the metronome hid my words from her conscious mind, but if she looked up and saw me staring at her chest...yeah, I don’t think she’d be comfortable for much longer.
Unless...
I like to think of myself as a pretty careful guy. I’m smart—I know how immodest that sounds, but I have the grades to prove it.
My plan had been to just continue along the same lines I’d already started on, to do what Mr. Freudenberger had shown me. But being smart has taught me to trust myself, and as soon as the idea popped into my head, I knew it was a good one.
I didn’t suddenly blurt it out or anything like that—as Kayla finished working through the questions, I silently chewed on the thought. But by the time she started on the next exercise, I’d convinced myself that my new idea was not only a good one, but it was even better than what I’d been about to do.
“It feels good to make people feel good,” I told Kayla. Maybe it was the slightly awkward sentence structure, or maybe my sister is secretly a misanthropist (it was probably the former) but it took her several beats to nod.
But nod she did.
“You like making people you love feel good,” I continued. A bit of a broad instruction, yes, but I don’t think a dangerous one. Kayla doesn’t have a boyfriend, so the worst case scenario was what, she was a little more generous with her friends? I was pretty sure we could all survive that potential disaster.
She responded to that one straight away. I was starting to grow increasingly confident, especially since my commands were so safe. If I’d missed the rhythm somehow, then what, she would’ve heard me spouting some milquetoast platitudes?
Again, I think we could safely weather that storm.
“It would make your brother feel really good if you fucked his brains out.” I said firmly. My sister nodded immediately, spread her legs, and...
No. Not really.
Not yet.
“If your brother looks at you...” I started, but was suddenly distracted by the idea of my sister spreading her legs for me.
To my alarm, my sister froze. Shit. I’d just implanted half a thought in her mind, and she was trying to process it.
“If your brother looks at you,” I repeated, trying to stay calm and stick to the rhythm. I really shouldn’t have started this thought before working out the phrasing. “...it’s because it makes him happy.”
After a few more moments of hesitation, my sister nodded and continued writing. A wrong answer, I noticed—I wonder if that was because my instructions were more taxing than normal, or because she was genuinely struggling with the lesson.
I let her finish the exercise without distraction, hoping she wouldn’t notice that I was sweating slightly. “If your brother looks at you, it’s because it makes him happy” was such a clumsy, half-formed thought.
And right after I’d just been internally bragging about how smart I was.
I had to fix this before the lesson ended, I didn’t want her going away and subconsciously interrogating that poorly-constructed idea.
“Do you mind if we go a little longer today?” I asked—non-rhythmically, just in my normal voice.
“Fine by me,” Kayla replied, glancing up at me. Did her eyes linger for a little longer on mine than normal, or was I being paranoid? Was there a hint of suspicion in her gaze, or was that how she just always looked at me?
This wasn’t the end of the world. Not even close. I could fix this.
“Your brother’s gaze isn’t sexual,” I said, as soon as I’d calmed down enough to start problem-solving again. To my relief, my sister nodded straight away.
Yeah, this was sort of the opposite direction of where I wanted to end up, but sometimes the fastest path to the mountain was...I dunno, by going in the opposite direction of the mountain. I was too busy trying to fix my blunder to come up with a great metaphor.
What had I said so far? What had my ‘great’ new idea resulted in?
Kayla liked making people she loved happy. Looking at her made me happy. My attention was non-sexual. That was a good start—those dots could be safely connected, I was pretty sure—but it was important I tie up any loose ends.
Like Mr. Freudenberger always did.
The next time I sat in on Viola’s class, I noticed immediately that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her tits weren’t as big as my sister’s—I mean, let’s be honest, few are—but she also wasn’t wearing a thick sweater like Kayla did.
Instead, Viola was wearing a thin white blouse. Not thin enough to be, like, pornographic...but when she lowered her violin, I immediately realized that I could see the outline of her nipples through the top.
When she nodded, her tits bounced just the slightest bit. Not even enough to see, not unless you were specifically looking for it.
I blinked twice, and realized that I’d been completely distracted by Viola’s lack of bra, and hadn’t caught what Mr. Freudenberger had just said. Fuck—had his instructions, whatever they were, worked on me?
At this point I hadn’t put everything together, but after what I’d witnessed the previous week, I was starting to at least identify the pieces. It was already clear that when he used that voice—that weird, rhythmic way of speaking—Viola didn’t notice. She also didn’t notice anything she did in response to the words she didn’t notice: like when he instructed her to remove her bra. Even when she left, she didn’t seem to notice it was missing.
Nor did she notice me. Mr. Freudenberger’s instructions had basically made me invisible.
“I’ll say it again,” Mr. Freudenberger said with a thin smile, “as your teacher, I sometimes need to touch you.”
Viola nodded again, and I realized with horror that I completely agreed with what he’d just said. Like, the statement was so obviously true, I spent a few seconds even questioning why he’d needed to use ‘the voice’ (as I was thinking of it at that point) to say it.
It wasn’t until I started to rationally deconstruct it that I realized this was a new thought. Now that’s a bizarre sensation: knowing something to be true...but also knowing that there’s no reason it should be. More than that, that if you’d heard it a few days ago, you never would have agreed.
It still felt right, down to the bones, but I intellectually knew it was wrong, y’know?
The closest parallel I can think of is...well, how I felt about Kayla. I know how wrong it is to lust after your sister, I know that incest is wrong and my taboo thoughts were sick.
But I still had them. I still wanted Kayla more than anyone else—everyone else—put together.
That was how I felt about Mr. Freudenberger touching me. As his student, sometimes he had to, I knew that for a fact. It was not only fine, it was, like...necessary?
But...at the same time, that simple, true fact didn’t actually make sense. It didn’t apply to any other teacher I could think of. It wasn’t a logical thought.
Just a true one.
So yeah—it wasn’t hard to work out that it wasn’t my thought, that I’d been so distracted by the outline of Viola’s nipples, ‘the voice’ had worked on me too.
I was lucky Mr. Freudenberger was straight, really. If he’d been interested in me, I wouldn’t have had a chance. I don’t know if his power could change your sexuality, but after everything else I’d seen it do, I wouldn’t be surprised.
But not only did my teacher never use his power on me (that I was aware of, anyway), after he noticed me nodding along, he’d made sure to repeat the instruction, to alert me to what he’d inadvertently done.
It took me a moment to realize I’d gotten lost in thought once more—Mr. Freudenberger must have noticed as well, because he waited for me to come out of my little problem-solving stupor before giving Viola another instruction.
“As your teacher, I’ll need to touch your arms, your chin, your hands, your fingers. This is necessary for me to adequately teach you the violin.”
Again, Viola nodded—without pausing, I should say. As soon as she started the next set of scales, he expanded on the idea. Mr. Freudenberger had clearly been doing this a long time, he knew how to build on acceptable thoughts.
Something I was still learning.
“If your brother stares at you,” I said, each syllable perfectly timed to match with the tick, tick, tick of the metronome, “that means you’re attractive.”
My sister paused. For longer than before. For longer than she, or ‘Viola’, ever had. My heart leapt to my throat as I waited, as the metronome kept ticking, as she froze as my thought settled into her brain.
Finally, after what felt like thirty agonizing seconds, Kayla continued writing.
And as she did, she shook her head.