Seamus said, “Asuka! How nice to see you! Would you like something?”

Asuka looked at the cane in his hand. She nodded. “Sensei -“

“Call me Seamus.”

“But I’d rather call you Sensei. It doesn’t feel right to call a teacher by his first name. May I speak with you, in your office?”

“Of course.” Seamus opened his door and held it open for her, indicating that she should go in. She hesitated, then preceded him. She stood near his desk, looking at the framed picture of the Birmingham FC on the wall, and the copy of Led Zeppelin’s new record, In Through the Out Door, on his filing cabinet.

Seamus took a second to admire her slender thighs while she had her back to him. She seemed to sway, even when she was standing still.

She wore a plain white shirt and a short dark business skirt, though not as spectacularly short as the schoolgirl outfit she’d worn last night. Seamus closed the door. “Take a seat,” he said.

She sat neatly, with her hands clasped on her lap. Seamus sat behind his desk, since it was the only other chair in the room. He realised he was still carrying the cane, and hurriedly put it on the desk. He suddenly felt that it had a sinister glamour, lying between them, but it was too late to move it again.

He swallowed. “So, Asuka, what do you want to talk to me about?”

The clasped hands twisted. She blushed. “Well, I wanted to say I’m sorry about last night. I know we embarrassed you. I am very sorry.”

Seamus smiled, he hoped reassuringly. “I wasn’t embarrassed. And I was incredibly tempted by your offer.” He used the plural form of ‘you’. “I just wasn’t sure it was appropriate to take you up on it.” That time, he used the singular.

She amazed him by laughing, hand over her mouth. “Oh, Sensei, you didn’t need to worry about that. None of us are married, and we know our own minds. Chiaki and Yua were very disappointed when you didn’t spank them. And do what comes after.”

Seamus frowned. That gelled with what Gentaro had told him. Knowing this took the conversation in a new direction and there was no coming back from it, he asked, “And what about you?”

“Me, Sensei?” She seemed surprised. “Of course I was disappointed too.”

“I meant, did you want to be spanked? You brought out my wooden spoon and said I should spank Chiaki with it. Then Yua volunteered too. Did you want to watch while I used that spoon on Chiaki and Yua, or did you want to feel it too?”

She smiled, bowed her head and looked up at him through her eyelashes. Seamus knew that was practised, perhaps in a mirror, but it still made its impact. He felt his heart beating harder, faster. She said, “I hoped the first time you spank me you would use your hand. Chiaki says that feels much more … intimate. Then you should use the wooden spoon, because that’s exciting. And then…”

She looked at the cane, on the desk between them. Then she raised her eyes, to look directly at him. “I hoped, no, I hope that you would fakku me.”

“So what you’d hope for is the same as Chiaki. And Yua.”

“Oh, no. They want it for play. To feel sexy. To come nicely.”

She smiled, thinking she’d said something silly. “Of course I want that too. It sounds lovely. But what I want is for it to be real. I want you to be in charge of me. Look after me, but make me serve you, and keep me strictly disciplined. I’ve always wanted to be someone’s, and I want to be yours. Just you.”

Seamus shook his head. He’d learned that what she said wasn’t wrong by local workplace standards. But to make that offer, or perhaps it was a demand, after being in his house for only about half an hour: was she mad? He said, carefully, “Asuka, we met last night. We’ve never spoken before, or not personally, like a conversation. How do you know that even if that’s the relationship you want, I’m the right man?”

“Sensei, I’ve watched you since you arrived. You’re honourable, you work hard but you still smile and, well, you’re nice to people. I’m glad you’re handsome, but even if you weren’t… Well, even last night, when I was disappointed: I hoped you’d want all of us, but I understand why you didn’t take us. You were mistaken, I think, but you were doing what was honourable as you saw it. Even though I hope you were very tempted.”

Seamus sputtered. “Oh god yes, I was tempted. I think you have no idea how much. I wanted all of you, but I think you know that I wanted you the most. You have something special about you.”

She crossed her legs, somehow managing to hitch up the skirt without touching it. “Oh? And what would that be? What makes me special?”

Seamus looked at her. “Chiaki and Yua, they’re very sexy, and any man would be happy to have either of them or both in his bed. But they are a little obvious, and no less sexy for that. But you, you’re more reserved. And I sensed then, and I still do now, that you hold yourself in reserve but that when you let go you’d be like a volcano.”

Asuka smiled, delighted, then made a sort of rushing sound with her mouth. He took it that was her impression of a volcano. He smiled back at her, but he was aware that his cock had responded to that.

He added, quickly, “And you’re very pretty, no beautiful, and you’re elegant. Elegant and sexy is an unusual combination in my experience, but you manage it.”

Asuka stood. “May I?” She picked up the cane without waiting for him, and touched it to her bottom. Then she gave it a swing of no great force, and yelped. “Hmm. While you have that I’d best be extra good, hadn’t I? Very good to my man.”

Seamus couldn’t help but imagine her doing that naked In his apato. It occured to him that he should say, “But I’m not your man,” but he couldn’t. Instead he said, “Put that down, Asuka.”

She nodded. “Yes, Sensei. You’ve just given me my first order. And … see? I do as I’m told, if it’s you who tells me.”

She put the cane down on the desk. “And you’re right. Only my Sensei should hold that. I should only be allowed to feel it. Would you like me to call on you tonight? Make you your dinner and eat with you? I’m very good in the … kitchen.”

“Christ, Asuka, you’re very good at all this. Have you done it before?”

“No. I think I was waiting for someone like you. Gentaro is a nice man too, and very handsome. But he’s not thoughtful like you. I know that you’re the one. May I please visit you at home tonight?”

“I will warm the sake.”

“I’ll bring the champagne. I hope we’ll have something to celebrate. Sensei.” She poked her tongue out at him.

Seamus stood, knowing she would notice his erection, and put his arms on her shoulders. Then he drew her in and kissed her, letting his hands slip down to hold her firm little buttocks. She let her body relax against his. They stayed standing like that for a long time, then, because it felt exactly the right thing to do, he smacked her bottom.

She said, “Ooh. That’s the first.” She was laughing at him.

“That’s enough for now, Asuka. I’ve got to get to work. And so do you.”

As she had done when she left her apartment, she swung her hips for him as she left. Seamus closed the door and went back to sit at his desk. He would see Asuka, and Chiaki and Yua, at their lesson at two that afternoon. He knew things were happening that he was likely to have little control over. He found it impossible to regret that.

The next morning Seamus arrived at the Higashi Corporation early. He wanted to talk to Nakanishi Gentaro, who was just a couple of years older than him, and had shown him how to work the coffee machine, and turned out to interested in English soccer. They’d discussed soccer over beer after work, and Gentaro had astonished him by having heard of, and knowing something of, the Birmingham Legion FC. He supposed Gentaro counted as his best friend in Japan.

Gentaro was hanging up his rain-soaked coat when Seamus arrived. Gentaro looked at him, surprised, then invited him in. So Seamus shut the door behind him and sat in Gentaro’s guest chair. He told Gentaro, speaking in his best Japanese, about the odd visit last night.

Gentaro laughed, loud and enthusiastic. “So did you pick one, or have all three? They do enjoy rolling around male bodies together. Well, Chiaki and Yua do, anyway.”

“What about Asuka?”

“I’ve never had the pleasure, with Asuka. Not sure any of us have. I’d say you’re honoured, there.”

So, Seamus thought, Yua and Chiaki have done this before. And they’ve had Gentaro, who was a good-looking young man with a quick wit. “You don’t have rules against, well, sex with other staff?”

“We have a rule that if a pretty girl wants to fuck you, you’d be a miserable bastard if you didn’t let her.”

“What if you’re senior to her?”

“If she wants you, then you lie down in a bed. You’re equal in bed.”

“Un-n. Well, it was very tempting, but I didn’t have any of them. I wasn’t sure what the rules were.”

Gentaro was scornful. “You turned them away? All of them? You must be made of iron. Also, very stupid. The last Englishman to come and teach Business English didn’t hesitate for a moment.”

“Chiaki tried to suck my cock and undress me.” 

Gentaro shook his head in wonder. “And you stopped her?”

“Well no, I didn’t. Asuka stopped that. She smacked Chiaki’s bottom, then told me to spank her with my wooden spoon. Chiaki was very keen on me doing that. Insisted it had to be on the bare. Actually, Yua wanted to be spanked too.”

“I’ve had both over my knee. Put them over my desk, a few times. They get very …” – Gentaro used the English word – “horny.”

Seamus thought about Yua with her hands on her bottom, her tongue just protruding at him. Many girls in Birmingham , in his experience, had liked to be dominated, so long as they knew they were safe and respected. He said, “They enjoyed that?”

“They’re very happy over a knee. Or showing off by bending over. You’ll find that if you don’t make them, Chiaki and Yua anyway, and some of the others, they’ll provoke you until you do.”

“In front of the others? The men students watching?”

“There’s a storeroom off the classroom. That’s what it’s for, in practice. Oddly, there’s a bed in there. If you want to fuck them afterwards, and they make it clear want to fuck you, you make them wait till the end of the lesson, so you’ve got time and privacy. God, the last Englishman here didn’t even hesitate.”

“Why did he leave, anyway?”

“He married one of his ex-students. Turned out she came with a lot of money, and she wanted to live in London.”

Seamus nodded. That made sense. Gentaro continued, “He had been known to take some of the girls over his knee in front of the others – the male students watching – if they hadn’t done their lessons. Not even sending them to the storeroom. He caned male students too, but he didn’t desire men. I’ve heard he was lusty when he did take a girl in there. He was a popular teacher. I think last night, you were … disappointing. And word will have got around.”

“Kuso,” said Seamus, which means something like ‘bloody hell’.”This is pretty strange.”

“Not really. When the company started running language lesson courses, it took high schools as the model. So corporal punishment – there are other options, and any student can opt out – seemed natural. Corporal punishment is technically illegal in schools now, though in reality it still happens. But in the company, any student who hasn’t opted out has consented. That’s made clear. As for the fucking, well, we’re  not kids. It’s a matter of choice.”

Gentaro said, “What about Asuka? She wanted you to fuck her, or she wouldn’t have come with Chiaki and Yua. But did she hint that she wanted supankingu?”

Seamus wasn’t sure he knew how to assess that. “She brought out my wooden spoon. But I thought she meant I should spank the other two with it. Now you ask, I have to say I don’t know.”

Gentaro smiled. “I hope you enjoy finding out. You will find out, so long as you stop being so very English and do what we do in Sapporo. You lost some reputation last night. But I’m sure you can get it back.”

“Christ on a bike,” said Seamus, very much in English.

“We’d never accuse Buddha, say, of cycling. Or Fujin. You English are rude to your gods. So, would you like to borrow my cane? Chiaki and Yua have seen it, in fact both have felt it, before.”

“Well, I don’t know that I’ll need it.”

“But you do. Not necessarily to use it, though …” Gentaro spread his hands. “But it will do your reputation good if you wait till your students, your fellow employees, arrive, and let them see you carry it into the storeroom. You can buy your own later.”

He opened a cupboard and passed a slim piece of rattan to Seamus. It felt hard, strange in his hand. He wondered if some time he’d get used to using it. He’d spanked Birmingham girls when they asked him too, and he’d found he enjoyed that, but he’d never used a cane.

He thanked Gentaro and left him. His first class was in an hour. But when he reached his office, he saw Asuka there, standing, waiting for him.

In the kitchen Asuka was busy with the expresso machine. Chiaki and Yua were looking through the kitchen draws, but since he’d bought most of his cooking and eating utensils from the Mitsukoshi department store near his work, they didn’t find it quite as hilarious as the contents of his bathroom.

Chiaki saw him first and bent at the waist, her face near his penis, which he knew was now visibly erect. She said, in Japanese, “Sensei, we didn’t come to make you a cup of coffee. We came here to make you very happy.”

“I’m pleased to see you three, so of course I’m happy.” Seamus hoped that was right, in not accepting their offer without being impolite. He wondered if they meant to climb on him all together in his bed; he frowned, knowing his cock had just got harder at that thought. He sensed he was walking across a minefield.

Chiaki leaned forward and kissed his cock through his pants. It moved at the contact, and she opened her mouth to hold it. Yua stepped forward and kissed his mouth. She reached her arm round his neck and pressed against him. Chiaki bit his cock very lightly. Yua murmured, “I’m sure you’re tired, Sensei. Teaching is such hard work. Perhaps you’d like to lie down?”

Chiaki rose and kissed his mouth as well. Then she reached for the top button of his shirt.

Asuka, carrying her cup of coffee, smacked Chiaki’s bottom with her left hand, though through the many layers of that skirt it cannot have hurt. She said, “The Sensei chooses what he wears, and when he goes to bed. Remember that.”

Yua and Chiaki kissed him again but backed away. Asuka had seemed to him to be both younger and shyer than the other two, but it seemed she was actually the senior here, in authority at least. She held out her hand, “Your coffee, Sensei.”

He accepted it and smiled at her. “Thank you.” She bowed at him, looking at the floor, her hands clasped in front of her thighs.

She said, in English, “Just a moment, Sensei. Chiaki touched you, intimately, without your permission.” She took a wooden spoon from one of the kitchen drawers and held it out to him. “Chiaki, do you agree that the Sensei should punish you?”

Chiaki pressed forward again, her body pressing against his aroused cock. “I think you should, Sensei. Nice and hard. But only on my bare bottom. And the backs of my thighs: they’re sooo sensitive. Should I take my skirt off, Sensei? Though really, I should take off everything?”

Seamus hesitated. He couldn’t help thinking about how deliciously squirmy Chiaki would be, if he took her over his knee. And how prettily pink and sensually warm her bottom would be against his skin when he took her afterwards.

Yua caught his eye and nodded. “Chiaki needs a firm hand, Sensei. But we’re all equally at fault. So…” She put her hands on her bottom and rubbed, her tongue protruding between her teeth.

Somehow the magnificance of that offer was what decided him. He pushed Chiaki back, though he noted and regretted the sorrow on her face. He felt like a hypocrite, and wondered at himself: he’d never in his life turned down a sexual offer from an attractive woman, let alone three.

But at university and in his jobs in Birmingham the rules were clear about having sex with people with lower status and authority. He had no idea what the local rules were, but he wasn’t going to risk his job, or doing wrong. He said, in Japanese, “Thank you for warming my house with your presence. You are all three very beautiful young women. But I have a meeting I must attend.” This was not true, of course. “And I shall see you at work tomorrow.”

He took Yua and Chiaki’s hands and led them to the door. Behind him Asuka called, “Sensei?”

.”Yes, Asuka?”

“I’m sorry we embarrassed you. We did mean it. I mean we were teasing you, but we were serious. Please forgive us.”

Seamus shook his head. “Not necessary. There’s nothing to forgive. I will see you, all of you, tomorrow. I look forward to it.”

As she was leaving, a couple of yards behind her friends, Asuka breathed a sigh into his face. Then she kissed his cheek and touched his hand.

“I hope you will change your mind, Sensei. When you know Japan, and us, better.”

Then she smiled at him, turned her back and wiggled as she walked out his door. Seamus shut the door, and resumed his place on the couch. He couldn’t return to Shusaku’s novel. His heart was pounding, and his cock ws signalling its need for relief. Solitary masturbation seemed a poor substitute for three lively and willing girls. He hoped his virtue was worth it. 

(To be continued.) 

Seamus Mulligan lay on his Japanese-style wood and vinyl couch, reading Shusaku Endo’s new novel, Samurai, when he heard a knock at the door. He also heard, disconcertingly, what sounded like laughter. He frowned and put the book down on the little black lacquered table. The book had been a sensation when it was published the year before, in 1980. He thought it deserved its reputation, but his Japanese was still too rudimentary to follow Endo’s writing with ease or comfort, and he was finding it hard going.

His apartment, or apato,  was in the Japanese style, a small, white bedroom and living room, and a bathroom and toilet. The walls were wood, not paper, but they offered little more sound insulation than paper. The knock sounded again, this time without giggling. He put his bare feet on tatami matting, crossed the living room floor and opened the door.

Three girls stood grinning up at him. Apparently this was superior mischief. He looked down at them. “Hello?”

Chiaki, Yua and Asuka from his work chorused, “Good evening, Mulligan-Sensei”, in English. Yua wore skirts of multiple layers and multiple colours with a crimson corset, cat’s ears and clumpy boots, while Chiaki wore a simpler version of Yua’s costume.

The look would later be known as Goth Lolita, but in 1981 it was still something startling 

Yua tried to look solemn.  “This is your housewarming, Sensei! It is an old Japanese custom.” She slipped past him into his apato, followed by Chiaki.

Asuka hesitated for a second, then joined her friends. She wore the sailor suit of a schoolgirl, something she must have been just a couple of years ago. By the time he’d shaken his head tolerantly and shut the door the three of them were in his bathroom, opening his cupboards and drawers and laughing delightedly at the strange, English items they found.

Seamus had been in Japan for just three weeks, after getting a job teaching Business English to typists and junior sales staff at  Higashi Corporation in the City of Sapporo, on Hokaido, Japan’s northernmost island.

The nights there were cold even by English standards, but the land was beautiful. He knew that Japan was changing. It was the 1980s, after all. But was this odd invasion really a custom? Or were the girls being inappropriate? He had no idea.

He walked to the bathroom. Asuka was on her knees, after rummaging in his bottom drawer. Her posture raised her little sailor dress at the back so that she presented him a view of her slim and golden-brown bottom and thighs, with her white panties riding up between her buttocks so she was mostly bare. He wondered if that was innocent or deliberate.

Yua, perhaps the oldest of the three, saw him in the bathroom mirror, and turned slowly, eyes downcast. She spread her legs as she slowly raised her face, and put her finger in her mouth, staring into his eyes.

Chiaki, plumply pretty, laughed and breathed him a kiss. Deliberate, then.

Seamus had only recently passed his twentieth birthday, so despite the difference in their status (they took his Business English course and generally addressed him as Sensei) he was only a year or two older than them. He was tempted by them, as they obviously intended. But he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Asuka turned and scrambled up to her knees, so her eyes were level with his crotch. She didn’t look at his face. Seamus could feel the early signs of excitement. He hoped the swelling of his penis wasn’t visible, but he couldn’t risk looking down to check. Asuka said, “That’s very kind, Sensei, but I will make you coffee. It’s a woman’s task.”

He nodded. In his native Birmingham any girl who said that to him would be being sarcastic, but here such things could be said as if they weren’t embarrassing. He held out his hand. “Then thank you.”

Asuka took his hand, squeezed it and touched it to her bowed forehead, then pulled herself to her feet.

“Women have many tasks, Sensei. I hope you let us show you.” Then she grinned, delighted with her own mischief. 

She went to the kitchenette in one corner of the living-room, no bigger than his mother’s pantry, and turned on his Expresso machine. while he still stood in the door Cjhiaki pressed her bottom against his cock while Yua passed behind him, so there was no longer any doubt about their intensions, or that he was aroused.

He was determined that he would act properly, not that he knew what the rules were. But he followed them to the kitchen. 

[To be continued.]