Of course Dakota advanced ahead of her in curses class. After only three sessions he could cast, and release, all the curses in the textbook with a half-conscious wand flick, while Minh, who had held the valedictorian title unchallenged until he transferred in, was stuck on the on indigestion spells in chapter three.
Minh sat two tables behind him. Ever since she read his name above hers on the test results bulletin at the end of fall semester, she had watched him closely.
There was a certain role Minh wanted to play, a certain image she wanted to project, which he threatened: that of perfection. If she graduated as valedictorian with no close contenders, broke the soccer team's score record, and maintained an appearance attractive enough to distract anyone in her presence, she had a chance at projecting to others the full realization of all cultural ideals.
Unlike most people, who at a young age have to make peace with their inferiority to some peer in looks, intelligence, or some other good trait, Minh had, at twenty-two, avoided such lessons. She retained her naive and uncompromising drive to collect and maintain all available symbols of status.
It was deep in the winter semester when the class turned to language curses. Students paired up to curse each other with, and release each other from, speechlessness. Because the students were odd in number, the professor asked Dakota, who had become something like his unofficial assistant, to walk around with him and release any curses a student couldn't.
It must have seemed to Dakota, when he passed by Minh's desk, that she could not release her practice partner from the curse, because suddenly he put a hand on her lower back and grabbed her wrist didactically.
"Like this," he said. He stood close behind her, articulated her arm for her.
"You should help someone who needs it," Minh said, and stepped out of his reach.
"You're someone who needs it."
"I don't."
"Then go ahead, release her."
Minh flicked her wand, said the words. Everything, from the timing to the pronunciation was identical to the professor's demonstration.
Her partner moved her mouth but no words came out.
Before Minh could comment, Dakota released the curse himself, then gently squeezed Minh's shoulders. "Relax up here. Tension is affecting your form."
Minh recoiled. "I don't need your advice."
He raised his hands in surrender, then smirked and moved on to the next pair of students.
There was no question anymore that Dakota needed to be put in his proper place, and for that Minh needed a forbidden scroll. Back in the dorm common area that night, Minh waited for her ex Henry to pass through so she could request a favor. It was awkward to ask him. They had been a couple all of second year and half of third year, but now, in fourth, they rarely spoke. But no one else she knew had the right connections.
"The red scroll?" he said, when she posed her request. He smiled at her. "Shouldn't you be asking someone else, if you want to use that against me?"
The red scroll, in the library's restricted section, was the life's work of a perverted wizard from fifteenth-century Vietnam. They contained a general theory of aphrodisiac spells and a long list of sexual curses for harem building and revenge against exes. It was that latter category, the humiliations on offer, that interested Minh in her campaign against Dakota.
"Can you get them or not?"
Henry laughed, the way he did when he mocked her earnestness while they were dating. But by midnight he knocked on her door with the goods. After locking the door, she unrolled the parchment over her desk. She skipped past the general theory to the humiliation curses.
One at the end, named _Tình Thế Tuyệt Vọng_--Desperate Position--piqued her interest. In a single recitation, she could lay two curses on Dakota and intertwine them. First, he would be cursed to nakedness. Any clothes he wore, or later attempted to put on, any blanket or towel he tried to cover himself with, would vanish. Second, he would be brought to the edge of orgasm, but cursed to never to reach it and never regress to a calmer state. His arousal would only ever increase or plateau.
Alone these curses were formidable. But they would be short-lived. Any second year could release them. That's why the author interwove them in a third clause, binding the two curses together and attaching a condition to their release. The curses would lift when, and only when, the one cursed swallowed the come of the spell caster. In other words, only if she let Dakota go down on her and he licked her clean.
Minh practiced the incantation and wrist motions every night for the next week, then felt ready to move. Dakota always ran warmups before the rest of the men's soccer team arrived for practice, so she knew she could find him alone in the locker room at 4pm.
"Whoa there," he said when she cornered him with her wand. He was in the middle of changing, and wore only athletic shorts. The dim overhead light showed the contours of his muscle. "You look like you're about to make a mistake."
"Now's not the time to condescend me," Minh said.
"Oh? Well when's a good time? I can pencil it into my calendar." He reached into his locker for his agenda.
Was he really not threatened by her at all? "You should be afraid," she said.
He held his pencil against the notebook, ready to write. "Tuesday evenings are usually free for me."
Minh kicked a bench over, and that finally cracked his smug demeanor, if only for an instant.
When he recomposed into another smirk, Minh was too angry to speak. She raised her wand up to his face, and delivered the incantation.
While she spoke, his face contorted into genuine fear. He knew enough to recognize it was a spell from the red scroll. But then for some reason, when she finished, he returned to that terrible smirk.
"Oh dear," he said, for some reason still clothed in shorts. "You used a translation spell on the scroll, didn't you? You didn't read the original Vietnamese."
"What?" Minh said. A heat was building inside her body, and she could feel herself beginning to sweat.
"The author wrote the curses the way he would recite them, if speaking as himself to a younger woman, making his term of address 'anh' and the victim's term 'em'. But in this situation, since I'm the older man and you're the younger woman, you should have flipped them. You did it backwards. You'd have known that if you translated properly."
Usually this kind of critique from him made Minh tense up and visualize smashing his face into a wall repeatedly. But this time, what she wanted seemed not to follow from the situation. Her anger transmuted into intense craving. She wanted to kneel down in front of him, yank the waistband of those shorts to his ankles, take his cock in her mouth.
