Rose tried to hide her excitement when she heard Nani's phone go off. She kept looking at her magazine with a deliberately casual air, as though Nani's 'Bolero' ringtone couldn't be nearly as engrossing as the latest antics of Prince George and Princess Charlotte. But she couldn't stop herself from glancing excitedly out of the corner of her eye at Nani as her best friend got a perplexed expression on her face, like she just remembered something she forgot, in the instant before she reached for her phone and hit 'Accept'.
"Hello?" Nani said, her voice sounding confused as she put the phone to her ear. She looked quickly down at the display, her forehead wrinkling in bewilderment as if she was trying to recall who the caller was and how their number got into her contacts. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't...don't...oh." Her expression went suddenly slack, and her eyes lost their focus and began staring vacantly into space. "Ohhh," she said again, this time with a thoughtless pleasure in her voice. That was when Rose slowly set her magazine down and began to watch Nani in earnest.
Rose tried to tell herself not to feel guilty as Nani gently sank back into the couch cushions and whispered, "Yes Mistress. I need to obey." It wasn't like there was anything she could do about it. Nani's wide, brown eyes were open, but they didn't really see anything anymore. She wasn't paying attention to anything except the voice on the other end of the line, nodding absently along to someone only she could hear. She probably didn't even know that Rose was in the room; or if she did, she certainly didn't react to Rose's presence.
Every single time, it was the same. Rose didn't know how long this had been going on, but it must have been ages by the time Rose saw it because Nani didn't seem like she was fighting it or anything. She started spacing out as soon as she heard the ringtone, and she responded to the woman on the other end with that same reaction every time. Surprise and confusion melting into that same dreamy bliss. Waving a hand in front of Nani's face did nothing, snapping fingers in her ears didn't even make her flinch. She was gone, and she wouldn't come back until the woman she called Mistress brought her back.
"My mind is open to your commands," Nani muttered, her fingers sliding gently over her bronze skin as she idly caressed her belly. Rose knew from experience that Nani wouldn't get naked right away. She would sit still, her body becoming more and more relaxed as the woman on the other end talked to her for several minutes, occasionally interjecting random statements like the one she'd just made. Rose suspected that the other woman was telling her what to say, but she would probably never know.
Rose had tried to find out once. They'd been hanging out in Rose's dorm room, watching a little television and pretending to study, when the strains of 'Bolero' rang out over the sound of Eileen and Erika dishing out gossip about Lisa Vanderpump. That was probably the fourth or fifth time it had happened around Rose, and she had decided to just snatch the phone right out of Nani's hands and give the mystery Mistress a piece of her mind.
It had been more than a little embarrassing. Nani had to be giving up forty pounds to Rose, most of it muscle, but the other girls on Rose's track team would probably have been pretty amused to see their fellow Rainbow Wahine yanking ineffectually on the tiny native girl's arm in an utterly useless effort to get her to surrender the smartphone. Rose had actually lifted Nani clean off the ground, but her arm remained locked in position the whole time. That was when Rose pretty much gave up trying to snap Nani out of it.
"It feels so good when Mistress erases my will." Still, Rose felt like she should be doing...something. Hide her phone, or tell a doctor or something. At the very least, she should probably slip out of the room and give Nani a little privacy before her friend started slipping her clothes off. She came up with the same vague, half-formed plans that she came up with and discarded every single time, each one dumber and more useless than the last. Rose felt like her mind was running through circles, frustration and guilt chasing each other around the same way they always did whenever Nani spaced out like this, until she just gave up and let it happen. Just like always.
