After University I worked for a few years in a law firm in Tokyo and this I how I got to know Shiori.
She was my colleague at the office, and because we were the two youngest employees we were naturally drawn to each other.
We used to have a drink after work, and I felt very proud to have the company of such a beautiful, refined woman.
If it was not for the fact that we shared the job, there was no chance I could get to know someone like her, so distant from my world of outcast Japanese and foreigners.
In the beginning, she was very reserved, but after a while, I was able to acquire her trust.
Once we were sipping a whisky in a shot bar in Ginza when she started talking about her University's boyfriend.
It seemed that she hadn't been able to get over him and to understand why she had written a memoir of their story, hoping that this could help to put a distance between her and those events. But, even if they were frozen in writing and stored in a drawer, they kept haunting her.
"Can I read it?" I asked suddenly.
She blushed and looked deep into my eyes.
"Maybe it will be easier for you to forget..."
I admit I was simply curious to know her more intimately.
That evening she didn't say anything, but the next time we went drinking, in the end, she gave me a large, thick envelope.
"This is what happened between me and him...please don't judge me..."
I rushed home, and I opened the envelope. There was a stack of sheets, with the pre-printed grids that help writing kanji neatly, filled with precise, pencil-written characters.
Even if my Japanese reading skills were not so good, I was determined to make all the effort needed to go through them, even if I wasn't expecting much more than a young woman's sentimental outpouring.
What I read, instead, at first shocked me, and then made me excited, and finally angry.
What follows is my translation of Shiori's pages.
Shiori's story
I met my boyfriend when we were in the same class at the university.
I didn't know most of the other students, because I didn't spend there much time apart attending lessons, but for some reason, he often took the same courses as me, and we gradually became friends.
Especially when we were researching for a group presentation, I searched for books and prepared handouts with him in the library, so we ended up talking a lot and going to the cafeteria together.
His name was Tadashi Iio and by the time I was a sophomore I called him Iio, and he called me Shiori.
I started to really like him.
One Sunday before the summer vacation of my sophomore year, I went to visit his house.
I was surprised to see that it was a big, old, magnificent mansion.
I was told that his parents were away for work a lot, so he had spent a lot of time alone in this big house since he was little.
And so I naturally fell in love with him. It was in his room, on his bed.
He was gentle and good at sex. I was very happy.
It wasn't until a while later after I started going to his room regularly, that he took out the collar.
As usual, I was in bed, naked and messing around with him, when he pulled it out from under the bed.
"What's that?"
He told me it was a collar of a dog he used to have and loved. He loved it so much when he was a lonely child; he told me how he cried when it died.
Then he took the collar and whispered in my ear.
"Get down on all fours," he said, and without understanding much of what was going on, I got down on all fours from his bed with my hands and knees, naked but for my shorts.
He brushed my hair out of my face and put the leather collar around my neck and locked it.
It smelled like new leather, and I thought it was a lie that it was from an old dog.
I felt ashamed with the collar on and had a very weird feeling, but I didn't dislike it.
"How do you feel? Are you in pain?"
"No."
"You don't like it when I do this?"
"What do you mean, like this?"
Suddenly, he slapped me lightly on the buttocks, just above my shorts.
"Oh..."
I was so startled that I let out a yelp. It didn't hurt, but I felt ashamed, and yet it felt very sexy...
For some reason, I didn't feel like getting angry.
"So this is SM? Do you like SM, Iio?"
"Not exactly. I want to treat you, Shiori, like a dog."
"Dog? I'm not sure..."
He got up from the bed, took out a thin lead, and attached it to my collar.
"Shiori, walk like this... on all fours..."
I felt the leash being pulled and of course, the collar pushed against my neck.
I started crawling slowly around the room on all fours while he pulled the leash. It was hard for me to raise my head, so I kept my head down.
"No, no, no. Keep your head up and look straight ahead!"
His hand slapped my hips, very hard this time.
Instead of saying, "What are you doing? You're hurting me!" for some reason, I couldn't help but reply: "Yes!"
As he had ordered, I looked up and ahead.
It was very tiring and painful to walk on all fours with my head up in that position, but I persevered and went around the room with him pulling me.
With the collar and leash pulled on me, I felt as if I was being held down tighter than I thought I would be, and I had no freedom.
I was made to crawl on all fours, changing direction as he wished.
I didn't know what was going on, and I was very confused. I was ashamed, I was in pain, but I felt like I couldn't stop...
I crawled on all fours in a circle around my boyfriend's feet.
Eventually, my shorts started to get cold. I could tell that I was getting really excited.
I felt like I had never experienced anything like this before, and my breath started to come in gasps. My nipples started to ache and poke.
"Ha ha ha!"
He finally stopped and started stroking my head as if he were petting a dog.
"Good! Shiori is cute! Shiori is a cute dog!"
I was enraptured by this sweet feeling. I felt a sense of security, as if I were a small child again, being held by my parents.
"How is it? "Didn't you feel good, Shiori?"
"Well... I don't know... I guess it felt good..."
"You didn't mind? You don't have to force yourself on me."
"Yes, it felt good..."
"So... do you want to continue doing this?"
"If you want to..."
"No, I mean, do you want to do it?"
"Yes, I want to..."
I answered without really understanding myself.
"Well then. I'm going to train you as a dog from now on."
"Yes... I see... But what will you do to train me?"
"I can't tell you yet, but if you really don't want to, I'll stop at any time."
"Okay..."
"Also. You can call me Iio in college, but you have to call me by my honorific during training."
"If not Iio, what will I call you?"
"Master."
"Master"... in my head, I laughed, It sounded like a line from a manga.
"Yes. I understand..."
"You don't get it, isn't it? It's Master, right?"
I was a little pissed off when he slapped me on the buttocks again.
