Chapter Text
Utena sighed with more than a little frustration as she made her way home. Gym glass had been harrowing, for all the usual reasons and then some. She wasn’t particularly coordinated or athletic, so she’d done poorly as usual. Worse, when changing into and out of their gym uniforms, Utena had a hard time keeping her eyes from straying. It had taken all she had to keep her magic suppressed.
Just a week ago, Utena would have confidently been able to say she’d never had a lustful thought in her life. Arousal wasn’t something she’d had any experience in at all. Even when they’d learned about arousal and stuff in Health Class, she’d been sure the teacher and textbooks had been exaggerating. Nocturnal emissions? Orgasm? She’d never experienced those things. And vaginal lubrication? Surely what Health Class talked about was an exaggeration; what she’d experienced for herself was way less messy!
At least, that’s how it had been before she’d become a dark magical girl.
Her transformation had awoken something in her, something she’d never experienced before. ‘It wasn’t an exaggeration at all,’ she now realized. If anything, Health Class had been playing it down!
If these newfound bodily reactions weren’t bad enough, she also had to deal with her magic. Two days ago, at the shrine to Inari, she’d accidentally transformed without meaning to. Ever since then, whenever she became aroused enough, her magic would start to roil and swell, just like it had done that day. ‘If it gets bad enough, I might transform accidentally again,’ she shivered.
To make things worse, her eyes had been opened to the beauty around her. Before, other girls were just other girls. Being naked or seeing other people naked was embarrassing at worst. Not arousing, not exciting, and not something she longed to see. Now, though, a low-cut top was enough to draw her eyes. Changing into and out of gym clothes in the classroom? These days, it was becoming an exercise in temptation and self-control.
There weren’t any girls in her class she’d call ugly or unattractive, but there were a couple that really stood out. Minakami-san’s tall stature and bountiful curves immediately came to mind; she was easily the most attractive girl in class. ‘No, in the whole school…’ she corrected herself, remembering how she’d looked dressed only in her underwear.
Aside from Minakami, Hanabishi was also very pretty. Not as generously proportioned, but super perky and youthful. ‘Like a flower just beginning to bloom.’
Tenkawa, who’d transferred in early in the school year the previous year, was also super cute! Her long blond hair and slightly upturned nose gave her an air of innocent sweetness, further enhanced by her petite body and short stature. It was enough to make her want to-
Utena felt the swelling of her magic and violently cut off that train of thought.
‘Ah… that was close,’ she shuddered. ‘If I’d transformed out in public like this…’
Utena ducked her head and did her best to keep her mind blank as she made her way home. She didn’t live too far from school, so the trip didn’t take very long.
“I’m home!” she called out as she entered the front door.
“Welcome home!” her mother, Hiiragi Hiroka, called back. “Please come see me upstairs, Utena-chan!”
“Coming!”
After slipping out of her shoes, she did as her mother asked, only to find her bedroom door open. Curious, she peeked inside and found her mother sitting in her desk chair facing the door.
“Mom?” she asked.
“Come in and take a seat, Utena,” her mother said, her tone gentle but unyielding.
“Um… ok,” Utena meekly replied. She crossed the room and sat on her bed.
“I was cleaning your room this morning when I found something in your desk,” her mother began. “I’m sorry for snooping, but given the nature of these items, I felt we should have… a talk.”
A cold spike of fear shot down Utena’s spine. Dreading the answer, she stammered, “W-w-what… what did you find?”
Hiroka grabbed one of the SM Club magazines and held it up for Utena to see.
“Ah-I… I… I can explain!”
“There’s no need to explain, Utena-chan,” Hiroka said, her voice soft and understanding. “I was your age once. You’re beginning to explore yourself and your sexuality. It’s completely normal and expected. However…”
Her mother trailed off, her cheeks flushing a bit in embarrassment.
“These magazines are a bit…” she trailed off, coughing into her fist. “Well, they’re a bit advanced for your age, I think.”
“... ad-... advanced?” Utena whimpered.
“Advanced,” her mother confirmed with a firm nod. “There’s nothing wrong with S&M, dear. Most couples experiment with it at some point, even if only a little bit. Not everyone is into it, and only a few really enjoy the more… extreme activities, but it’s not wrong or evil . Maybe a bit deviant, but…”
Her mother trailed off, flushing a bit more. Utena’s cheeks were already an atomic red by this point.
“W-well,” Hiroka cleared her throat. “Interest in kinky play is fine, but I wanted to talk with you about it before you begin experimenting on your own.”
“M-mom!” Utena protested, burying her face in her hands.
“I know this is going to be an embarrassing conversation, Utena-chan, but I think it’s important that we talk about it,” Hiroka told her, her voice turning a bit stern.
“D-d-do we have to!? ”
“I think we do,” she confirmed. Her eyes softened a bit. “Utena-chan… what you see in these S&M magazines… it’s not real. Or rather, it’s exaggerated. All pornography is exaggerated for the camera. I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea and trying something you or your partner isn’t ready for. I think… I think we need to discuss the realities of S&M play so that you’re prepared for it in real life. When… when you get around to it, that is…”
“ Mom!”
“Utena!” she returned, a hint of amusement in her eyes despite her flushed cheeks.
“T-this isn’t something I want to talk to my mother about!” Utena protested.
“Oh?” she asked, a smirk growing on her face. “Would you prefer to talk to a teacher, then? Or maybe a psychologist? Or maybe…” her teasing tone turned a bit sultry. Reaching out, she took Utena’s chin and lifted her head up so they were making eye contact. “You’d rather talk to a mistress , hmm?”
Utena’s eyes widened, and she pulled away. “Mom!”
“A-ah…” Hiroka’s sultry look melted into embarrassment. Lowering her hand, she murmured, “S-sorry about that. Force of habit…”
“ Habit?!”
“Oh… oh dear…” Hiroka flushed and looked away. “Just… just pretend I didn’t say that.”
Utena shook her head. “Nuh uh! Habit? You mean… you…?” she pointed an accusing finger at her mother. “Explain!”
“Ah… I was hoping to wait a few more years, but…” Hiroka let out a gusty sigh. Turning towards the stack of S&M magazines on Utena’s desk, she leafed through them to find one in particular. Turning back around, she held it up for her daughter to see. Pointing at one of the women on the cover, she asked, “See this? That’s me.”
“Ehhhhhhhhhhh?!?!?!” Utena exclaimed, shocked.
The woman Hiroka was pointing to was dressed in a tight leather corset and matching panties, thigh-high leather boots, nearly shoulder-length leather gloves, and a mask-and-hood combo that hid her identity and covered her hair. The woman was holding a riding crop in one hand, the other end resting on an open palm. A sultry, cruel smirk pulled on luscious red lips, showing the camera just who was in charge.
“W-well, you see, I… I didn’t do very well in school, Utena-chan,” Hiroka explained. “I only barely graduated from high school, and I didn’t go to university at all. I couldn’t support myself on basic jobs like waitressing or being a barista, so I eventually gave in and became a hostess. The economy was doing poorly, thanks to the Disappearance…”
They’d learned about the Disappearance in school. A bit more than thirty years ago, all men on the planet just up and vanished. After weeks of confusion, a magical girl team in Great Britain, The Round Table, explained that their nemesis, the dark magical girl, Fae Wicca, was responsible. Fae Wicca was an extreme misandrist and female supremacist and believed the world would be a utopia without men. According to the story, she’d murdered twenty-one mages (the male equivalent of magical girls), sacrificing their lives and magic to empower her evil ritual.
In the aftermath, there was a gathering of nearly 100 magical girl teams and their mascots from all over the world to try to correct the issue, but there was no undoing what had been done. In order to prevent the extinction of humanity, though, they were able to conduct a ritual that would allow women to impregnate other women, though thanks to genetics, only girls could be born this way. If two women had sex with the intent of procreation, magic would combine their genetics and create a viable embryo. It was thanks to that ritual that Utena had been born at all.
With the disappearance of men, there was a major loss of expertise in many male-dominated industries. Infrastructure started to break down until women could be trained up to take those roles. Many governments had to institute a draft, forcing the unlucky draftees into the dirty, dangerous jobs that had been left unfilled. It was a rough few years, but thankfully, most of the world pulled through. The decade after the Disappearance, though, was an economic downturn many times worse than the Great Depression. The only saving grace had been the reduced global population; with fewer people, there was less strain on infrastructure and resources. As women were trained and educated, they began to fill the roles left empty by the Disappearance, and the economy stabilized and recovered. Her history books had called the event The Lost Decades.
“One of my regular clients eventually introduced me to S&M play, and I discovered I had a talent for it,” Hiroka sheepishly explained. “Eventually, I got a position at an elite S&M-themed hostess club. I didn’t want to have to explain this to you while you were so young, so I didn’t talk about my job very much.”
“...” Utena opened her mouth, blushed, and closed it again.
“But now, considering your… extensive collection,” she said, gesturing at the neat stack of magazines on her desk. “I think I should educate you on the basics of S&M play.”
“... do we have to?” Utena whined.
“We do,” Hiroka confirmed.
Utena whimpered.
“Now, the first and most important thing you need to know is Safety,” Hiroka began.
Utena buried her face in her hands as her mother began her lecture.
Hiroka explained that many of the kinks in S&M had the potential to be dangerous or even deadly, should the worst happen. The first and most important aspect was to assess the safety of what you and your partner were attempting and to mitigate risk as much as possible. For example, when playing with bondage, it was important to use quick-release buckles or snaps, or easily untied knots if playing with rope or cloth. It was easy to accidentally cut off circulation or breath if a sub was bound incorrectly. If something slipped or gave way, it could lead to a dangerous situation. Breath play was particularly dangerous and should only be attempted under carefully controlled circumstances. A proper domme should be present and aware at all times if there was any chance that something could go wrong.
It might be fun to imagine tying someone up and leaving them there for hours, but that should never be done without a way for the sub to free themselves, just in case. Better a naughty sub getting free than to come back to a corpse.
Hiroka also discussed other safeguards. Safewords were useful, but a bit outdated. A red-yellow-green light system was preferable. ‘Red’ meant stop, ‘yellow’ meant to ease up, and ‘green’ meant keep going or do more. In situations where a sub can’t speak (for example, if they are gagged), you must use a noisemaker or a drop toy in place of a safeword. Drop toys are toys that light up when struck or dropped, and a noisemaker could be anything that makes a loud, distinct noise, usually a bell of some sort. The goal was to get the domme’s attention when the sub couldn’t speak.
“Now that we’ve discussed a bit about safety, let’s talk about consent,” Hiroka continued. “Ideally, you’d want to obtain clear and firm consent before doing anything with your sub. If they’re completely against a particular activity, it’s important that you respect their hard limits. However, part of S&M is pushing boundaries. It’s a careful balancing act, but…”
From there, Utena’s mother covered taunting, teasing, enticing, and challenging. A useful way of obtaining tentative consent was by using a batsu game (penalty game). That is, set up a challenge where the sub gets a reward for winning and a punishment for losing. If you want to introduce something new to the dynamic, you can propose it as a punishment for losing. It was important to propose it in advance and give the sub a chance to decline, and even more so, a chance to stop it if they truly didn’t enjoy it.
That led into Hiroka’s ‘golden rule’: the ultimate point of S&M play was pleasure. However, it wasn’t just about the domme’s pleasure; if the sub wasn’t enjoying it as well, it was just abuse. It was important to watch your sub’s reactions to determine if they were enjoying themselves or not. To that end, the most important aspect of being a domme was ‘control’.
Not just control of the scene or control of the sub (though both of those were vitally important). The most important part was self-control. Losing control of your emotions was absolutely forbidden! If a domme loses control, it is all too easy to go too far and hurt your sub. Worse, you could damage their trust in you, and thus damage or destroy your relationship with them.
“If you find yourself getting emotional, and especially if you’re getting angry, you must stop and step back from the scene,” Hiroka lectured her. “In the heat of passion, it’s easy to do things you’ll regret later. Do you understand?”
“... yes, mother,” Utena murmured.
“Speaking of relationships, we should talk about aftercare,” Hiroka said after a brief pause. “Scenes can get extremely emotionally charged. Both physical and emotional hurts need to be cared for once the ‘fun’ is over. It’s important to soothe your sub’s hurts, especially if you’ve engaged in humiliation play or NTR and NTS play. That means tender loving care and affirmations of love and trust…”
As Hiroka explained, a part of S&M was breaking the sub down, both physically and emotionally (if they were into emotional play). What separated S&M play from actual abuse was the act of building them back up afterwards. More than soothing the physical hurts, soothing the emotional hurts could make the bonds of love and trust even stronger. Reassuring one’s sub that the things the domme said weren’t true or, if they were, it was something you loved and cherished about them and was therefore nothing to be ashamed of.
“Managing shame is an important part of aftercare,” her mother said. “If you’ve pushed someone into doing something they never thought they’d do, sometimes they feel intense shame over it. But Utena, just like your interest in S&M is nothing to be ashamed of, their enjoyment of something new and unusual isn’t something to be ashamed of either. People are complicated. We all have hidden depths. It might be something we’re embarrassed about, or something we didn’t even know about ourselves. It’s important to learn to accept these parts of ourselves, and to accept these parts of our loved ones. Praise and affirmation go a long way, Utena, and you should give them out liberally during aftercare.”
“... praise, huh…?” Utena mumbled, her thoughts wandering to her encounters with Tres Magia.
“Mm hmm,” her mother affirmed. “Speaking of, I just want to say that… I’m glad you have an interest in these things, Utena.”
“Eh? Glad?!” she asked, shocked.
“Yes. I had been wondering how I was going to explain it to you if you ever found out about my job,” she said, cheeks flushing as she looked away. “Knowing that you’re interested in S&M means I don’t have to hide this part of myself from you. It might be a bit embarrassing to talk to your mother about such things, but I want you to know that I love you and accept you for who you are, no matter what.”
“Mom…” Utena murmured, her eyes welling up with tears.
“Plus, if you’re ever confused or need advice on S&M play, you can always come to me,” she continued, her tone turning a bit teasing. “I have plenty of experience, after all…”
“Mom!”
Hiroka laughed. “Ara ara, you’re just too cute when you look all embarrassed like that,” she said, closing her eyes and basking in the feeling of schadenfreude.
“Mou,” Utena moaned in complaint. “That’s too much…”
“Now, I think I’ve covered the most important bits,” Hiroka told her, a wistful smile on her face. “If you need guidance on more specific knowledge, such as how to properly tie shibari, I want you to come to me. Otherwise, I have a list of websites here…”
She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, unfolded it, and held it out to Utena.
“Eh? Websites?” she asked, taking the paper and looking it over.
“Yes. Not porn sites, but proper S&M guides,” she explained. “Real people engaging in real S&M play, not paid actors. The first three are general how-to guides and guidelines. The next ten or twelve are specific guides for specific kinks, like rope play and such. The last two are forum sites where you can read discussions others have had. Though you’re too young to make an account, so…”
“R-right,” Utena mumbled.
“Just remember to come to me if you have questions, okay, dear?” Hiroka reiterated. “I’ll always support you no matter what. Alright?”
“A-alright, mom.”
“Now, it’s getting late. I should get started on dinner,” she said, standing up from the chair and smoothing out her dress. She paused for a moment and carefully scrutinized her daughter. “I think you should explore that first website until dinner. There’s a list of kinks and their descriptions on the home page. I think you should read through it, see what you're interested in and what you would absolutely never try. It’s important to know your hard limits.”
Flustered, all Utena could do was nod.
“Well, I’ll leave it at that,” Hiroka said, making her way to the door. “I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”
“A-alright, mom,” Utena mumbled. Just before Hiroka was about to leave, Utena called out to her. “Mom?”
“Yes, dear?” she asked, pausing at the threshold.
“... thank you. For telling me,” Utena said, unable to meet her mother’s eyes. “And… and thank you for supporting me. I thought…”
She trailed off. After a long moment, Hiroka prompted her. “You thought…?”
“I thought you wouldn’t understand,” Utena mumbled. “This kind of thing is… is…”
Hiroka giggled. “Oh, Utena. Even if I wasn’t into this kind of thing, I’d still love and accept you. You’re my daughter, and nothing could change that. Besides, most people wouldn’t care one way or another if they found out you were into S&M. It’s only the prudes that’d get upset about it.”
“A-ah… yeah…” Utena mumbled. “Still… thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear.” With that, Hiroka went downstairs.
Alone in her room, Utena spent several long moments just processing everything that had happened. Eventually, she looked down at the list of websites she was holding. “Guides and guidelines, huh…?” she mumbled to herself.
Pulling out her smartphone, she began typing in a URL; she had some research to do.