[The start might be slow pace and mostly smut but later on it's gets more interesting]
---
I couldn't believe what I saw to the extent I couldn't sleep at all.
Every time I closed my eyes the blue screen flickered behind my lids like a bad afterimage, with the words SSS-Rank Talent: "Hypnosis" repeating themselves in perfect glowing letters. I kept replaying the description in my head, picking it apart sentence by sentence the way you'd pick at a scab you know you shouldn't touch — implant commands, alter perceptions, rewrite memories, control actions and desires, with no known upper limit if I practiced it continuously.
By the time the basement window turned pale gray with dawn I was sitting up on the mattress, my back against the cold concrete wall and knees pulled to my chest, staring at nothing.
My heart hadn't really slowed down since the chime. It felt like someone had poured hot oil into my veins and left it there to simmer.
I whispered, "Status," half expecting nothing to happen.
The screen bloomed instantly, soft blue light washing over the damp walls.
[Host: Kai Voss]
[Talent: SSS-Rank Hypnosis (Level 1)]
[Range: 10 meters]
[Daily Quest: Perform your first successful hypnosis – 0/1]
[Draw Tickets: 1]
[Proficiency: 0/100 (next milestone unlocks subtle suggestion layering)]
I exhaled through my teeth and decided the smartest thing was to treat it like any other tool I'd never used before: figure out how it worked before I pointed it at anything that could bite back.
The first test had to be the safest one I could possibly perform, something with zero consequences if it went sideways.
I stood up, legs shaking slightly from lack of sleep and the slow crash of adrenaline, and shuffled over to the cracked mirror leaning against the far wall. The glass was spotted with black mold at the edges and my reflection looked like shit — dark circles under my eyes, a split lip still swollen from Rex's last "lesson," hair sticking up in greasy spikes. It would do.
I met my own gaze in the mirror and spoke quietly.
"Raise your right hand."
My right arm lifted smoothly and quickly, like someone else was puppeteering it, with no conscious effort and no resistance. The muscles just obeyed. I stared at my own floating hand for a long second, then said, "Lower it." It dropped, simply, without ceremony.
I licked dry lips and tried again.
"Forget that you just raised your hand."
A blink. A tiny mental stutter. My arm was already down and I had no memory of lifting it, only the vague after-feeling that something had happened, like waking from a micro-nap.
My pulse kicked up another notch.
I kept going, layering small things, testing how deep the hooks could sink. "You feel completely calm right now." The constant low-grade panic that lived in my chest — the one I'd carried since I was six — simply unraveled. My shoulders dropped and my breathing evened out. For thirty glorious seconds the basement didn't feel like a cage. Then I added the counter: "The calm fades in exactly thirty seconds." The anxiety flooded back on cue, sharp and familiar, pressing against my ribs like it had never left.
I could time it, shape it, make my own mind lie to itself.
Next I pushed a little further. "Your right pinky itches." Instant scratch reflex — I watched my finger twitch toward my palm like it had a mind of its own. "You're thirsty." I turned, grabbed the half-empty plastic bottle of water from under the bed, and drank without thinking. Only after the last swallow did I realize I hadn't actually been thirsty until the words left my mouth.
One more, darker.
"You feel aroused. Right now. For ten seconds."
Heat slammed low in my gut so fast I almost staggered. My cock twitched hard against the worn sweatpants, thickening in an instant, pressing against the fabric. Ten heartbeats later it faded just as suddenly, leaving me breathing ragged and cheeks burning, sitting back down hard on the mattress.
It wasn't just control over the body — it was control over feeling itself, over want and need and the raw, wordless places in the mind that a person never thinks to guard because they never imagine anything could reach that far in.
I spent another hour testing my skill, the commands worked fine in the quiet basement.
I decided to test on animals next. I cracked the back door to the tiny fenced yard, where the mangy gray tabby that sometimes begged for scraps was curled on the concrete step, tail flicking lazily. I focused, met its yellow eyes, and pushed the same mental shape I'd used on myself.
'Come inside. Now.'
The cat blinked once, stood up, stretched, and padded three steps toward the door before it froze, shook its head like it had water in its ears, and bolted over the fence. I tried again with a verbal command but it was the same result, just a blank stare, then disinterest. Non-human minds didn't register. That narrowed the danger zone to people only.
---
By late morning the house was quiet. Clara had left for her "spa appointment" — code for drinking mimosas with her gossip circle while someone else paid — and Elise was out with whatever clique she was currently ruling. Mia had some mandatory Tier 1 orientation at the community center, which meant I had the place to myself for a few hours, more importantly I had the chance to run a real test before anyone came back.
I sat on the basement steps and thought about it carefully. Testing it on myself was one thing. Testing it on a stranger carried too much risk. But Mia was a known quantity. She was predictable, she already viewed me as invisible, and the suggestion I had in mind was small enough that even if something went sideways, the worst outcome was that she'd look at me strangely and walk away. The soda incident from yesterday was still fresh too — she'd knocked a full glass off the counter in my direction and laughed when it soaked through my shirt, watched me clean it up without a word of acknowledgment — which made it perfect. A genuine apology from Mia would be so out of character that I would know beyond any doubt whether the ability had actually worked.
I just had to wait for her to come home.
An hour and twenty minutes later the front door slammed hard enough to rattle the pipes. Mia's voice floated in from the hallway, complaining to no one in particular about the wasted Saturday, about how pointless the orientation had been, about how she could have spent the morning doing literally anything else. I listened to her drop her bag and kick her shoes off, and then I came upstairs and appeared in the kitchen doorway like I'd simply been passing through.
She spotted me immediately, and the familiar look of mild contempt settled across her face.
"What are you lurking around for, zero?"
"Getting water," I said.
She pulled her jacket off and tossed it over a chair, still venting about the orientation under her breath. I crossed to the counter, filled a glass slowly, and turned back to face her. She wasn't paying attention to me anymore, scrolling her phone with the automatic ease of someone who had already forgotten I existed. I kept my voice flat and even, completely unremarkable, the kind of tone that didn't invite scrutiny.
"Mia."
She glanced up.
I held her gaze and pushed with the same mental shape I had been practicing all morning.
"When you think about the soda from yesterday, you'll feel a strong urge to apologize to me for it. You won't know why. You'll just do it, and you'll feel strange about it afterward, but you won't question it."
Mia blinked. Her brow furrowed very slightly, the way someone looks when they briefly lose the thread of a thought they weren't aware they were having. Then her expression cleared and she looked back at her phone, already gone, already bored.
I took my water and went back downstairs.
---
I sat on the mattress and waited, turning the glass slowly between my palms. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. I heard her moving around upstairs — the creak of the floorboards, the muffled noise of music from her room, the bang of a cabinet — and I kept waiting. There was a possibility it hadn't worked. The delay component was more complex than a simple command, more layered, and I had only been practicing for a few hours. Maybe I'd overreached too soon. Maybe the suggestion needed reinforcement. I was running through contingencies when the basement door creaked open.
Mia's head appeared in the gap. She was still chewing gum, expression already halfway to annoyed, like coming down here had been an involuntary inconvenience she couldn't fully explain to herself.
"Hey."
I looked up from the mattress, said nothing.
She hesitated. Frowned. Shifted her weight from one foot to the other like something was crawling under her skin, like a word was sitting wrong in her mouth and she couldn't decide whether to spit it out or swallow it back down.
Then, in a tone that sounded genuinely confused, almost embarrassed:
"Uh… sorry about the soda yesterday. I didn't mean to — whatever. It won't happen again."
She blinked twice, like she couldn't believe the words had come out of her own mouth, then spun on her heel and disappeared back upstairs without waiting for me to respond.
I sat perfectly still for almost a full minute.
The system chimed softly, the sound now familiar, almost comforting.
[Ding!]
[Daily Quest Complete: First successful hypnosis.]
[Rewards applied:]
— Hypnosis Range increased to 15 meters.
— Minor stamina boost (fatigue resistance +10%).
[Proficiency +10/100]
[New milestone approaching: 5 successful uses → Unlock subtle suggestion layering.]