My Brother's Plaything

Chapter 2

My Graduation Day

The auditorium was loud with celebration, but it felt distant to me, like I was standing underwater watching everyone else breathe.

Rows of families filled the seats: parents clutching phones, siblings waving wildly, someone’s grandmother crying before the ceremony even began. Names were called, and loud cheers followed each one, especially the popular ones in school.

The school representative kept announcing each student's family member that would walk up with each graduate.

“Accompanied by her mother.”

“Joined by his father.”

“With her aunt and older brother.”

These were the words from the invited dignitary who handled the names calling.

Every student's name had someone who was there with them in that joyous exceptional moment.

Except mine.

I sat still in my seat, cap resting heavy on my head, gown too loose around my shoulders. My phone buzzed once in my pocket. I didn’t check it. I already knew no one was coming. My roommate had promised, then gone quiet.

Messages unread. Calls unanswered. She was another quiet disappearance, but I didn’t have the energy to care about her whereabouts because I was already used to her appearance and disappearances.

I was still lost in thought when my name echoed through the speakers, “Alina Georgewill” the applause was polite, thinner than the rest.

I stood.

Each step toward the podium felt deliberate, though my chest ached. I thought of my father, how he never got to see this day. How there was no one left to clap for me, no one to stand beside me and smile for the camera.

I reached the microphone.

The school representative smiled warmly. “And will any family member be joining you on stage to receive the diploma with you?”

I swallowed.

“No one—”

“I will.”

That voice.

It was a familiar voice that reminded me of a possible nightmare of a life awaiting me after today. The voice cut through the hall.

I turned slowly towards the audience, and my heart dropped.

Dr. Jethro stood up from the audience.

For a split second, the room buzzed with surprise, then softened into approving murmurs. A well-dressed man stepping forward for a lone graduate looked generous from the outside. Just that I didn't understand why everyone was murmuring.

He smiled as he walked up to the podium.

To everyone else, it was a proud smile.

To me, it was a smirk. More of an evil smirk that aims at hunting my mind.

My fingers tightened around the edge of the podium as memories surged back, my father’s burial, the envelope pressed into my hands, the paper I had never opened since that night. The promise I gave.

The thought of the promise made me imagine what could be the agreement in that envelope I was about to sign after today.

Dr. Jethro climbed the steps and stood beside me, close enough that I could smell his cologne.

“I’m her family,” he said smoothly to the representative. “I’ve supported her through her education.”

The words landed like chains. I shot him a hard glance that showed my contempt and disagreement to his last statement.

The school official beamed. “That’s wonderful. Please join her.”

Applause rose again, louder this time. Cameras flashed. From the outside, it must have looked perfect but inside, my stomach twisted.

As the diploma was placed in my hands, Dr. Jethro leaned slightly closer and whispered, low enough that only I could hear.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Now, it's time for you to stick to your end of the deal.”

My smile for the cameras felt foreign.

When the ceremony ended, I walked away alone again with my diploma clutched tightly to my chest. He had left immediately after the paparazzi he came for on the stage ended, but somehow I was grateful he was present for me that day.

The thought of the agreement suddenly filled the soft part of my heart that was grateful to him with loathe.

That night, back in my empty room, I finally pulled the paper from my bag. It was still in the envelope and just as neat as I got it. This time, it felt heavier.

I sat on the bed and unfolded it.

Whatever my future held, whatever control I had unknowingly promised, it was time to face it.

My graduation was the beginning of the debt coming due.

The paper shook in my hands as I finally opened it. My heart thumping fast as my eyes set on the timeframe of my agreement.

2 years!

Line after line. Legal language.

Cold. Precise. Merciless.

It wasn’t a job contract. It wasn’t a loan agreement. It was ownership written in ink instead of chains.

Two years?

That was the first thing that stood out, before I noticed every other bondage my life was about to be wrapped in.

Two years of complete submission of my body and physical existence to Dr. Jethro’s authority, under the guise of “repayment?” During that period of 2 years, I would live in his isolated estate, cut off from outside influence unless permitted. My movements, schedule, and decisions would require his approval.

I read on, my throat tightening.

In exchange for settling my father’s debt, I was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement so absolutely, it erased my voice entirely. I could not speak of the arrangement. Not to friends. Not to authorities. Not to anyone.

Violation meant consequences. The debt would return.

Tripled.

$225,000.

My hands went numb.

He hadn’t just paid the loan sharks. He had trapped me between silence and ruin.

Another section detailed my “duties.”

I would also work at his family’s hotel as a room service and administrative errands, and my wages were to be seized in full to offset for the debt.

Ownership alone, as the document stated, was insufficient to compensate for $75,000.

“How evil can this man and the world be to me”? I thought to myself, tears already forming at the corners of my eyes.

So I would pay with my time. My labor. My obedience.

There was a clause about clubs and parties, where I would be required to attend at his side, smile when told, stand where instructed, and never contradict him.

I was not only going to pay with my time, but I was also his tool. He was going to have full control of my existence.

At the bottom, the words blurred as tears finally spilled from my eyes.

“Two years. Then freedom.”

That sentence was written like mercy.

It felt like a lie.

I folded the paper slowly. Graduation robes still hung over the chair.

My diploma lay untouched on the desk.

This was what it had all been for? I thought.

Not success.

Not independence.

Just survival.

So I went through all the suffering just to live in survival under a wicked man's wings?

Dr. Jethro hadn’t shown up to my graduation out of kindness.

He had come to collect.

“Ding” the notification sound on my phone distracted my thoughts. It was a message from our class group. My colleagues were having a celebration party that night and people were already dropping videos of their outfits for the night.

I watched every video with admiration and pain. My colleagues will be having a good time of their life henceforth, while mine has just turned into every human worst nightmare.

I sat alone, the agreement pressed to my chest, realizing too late that the worst debt my father had left me wasn’t money.

It was my time. And someone else now owned it.

The room was silent except for the sound of my breathing.

I stared at the agreement again, hoping, stupidly, that if I read it one more time, the words might rearrange themselves into something kinder. Something survivable.

They didn’t.

Two years.

Isolation. Control. Silence.

I pressed my palms to my eyes, but the tears came anyway: hot, relentless, blurring everything. I thought of the loan sharks. Their threats. The way fear had lived in my chest since the letter. I thought of my father’s handwriting, shaky and apologetic.

“I'll try my best.” I laughed weakly through my tears.

This was my best now.

I picked up the pen.

My hand hovered above the signature line for a long time. Long enough for my mind to run through every alternative: running away, begging strangers, calling people who had already abandoned me.

There was no one.

If pain was the price of freedom, then I would pay it.

“I can survive two years,” I whispered to the empty room. “I can survive anything for two years.”

The pen touched the paper.

My signature looked smaller than usual. Fragile. Like it already knew what it had agreed to.

When I finished, my chest felt blank, as though something essential had been carved out of me and left behind on the page.

I folded the agreement carefully, and wiped my face. Tomorrow, I'll go give him the agreement.

***

The hospital had a different energy today—sterile, cold, uncaring.

Walking down the corridor toward Dr. Jethro’s office felt like walking back into a past I had never escaped. Nurses passed me without recognition. Lives moved on. Mine had stalled completely.

I knocked.

“Come in.”

He was seated behind his desk, relaxed, scrolling through something on his tablet as if this were just another ordinary afternoon. When he looked up and saw me, his lips curved slowly.

“Well,” he said, leaning back. “The graduate returns.”

I didn’t sit.

I walked up to his desk and placed the folded paper in front of him.

“I’ve signed it,” I said quietly. “I’m in.”

For a moment, he didn’t touch it.

Then he laughed.

Not loudly, just enough to make my stomach turn.

“Of course you did,” he said, finally picking it up. “You always were practical.”

He skimmed the pages, nodding as if reviewing a routine report, then glanced up at me with open satisfaction.

“You see?” he said lightly. “All that anxiety for something inevitable, it wasn't that hard at all, was it?”

I clenched my fists. “It’s only two years.”

His smile widened.

“Still counting already?” he asked. “That’s adorable.”

He stood and walked around the desk, circling me slowly, hands in his pockets, completely at ease.

“You should be thanking me,” he continued. “Most people don’t get an opportunity like this. A clean slate. No loan sharks. No fear of late-night knocks.”

I swallowed hard. “When do I start?”

He stopped in front of me, studying my face like he owned the expression on it now.

“Immediately,” he said. “I’ll have arrangements made for you to be brought to me this evening, so stay prepared.”

He turned back to his desk, already dismissing me, already done.

As I reached the door, his voice followed me.

“Oh, you haven't dropped your address darling,” he said mockingly.

I walked up to his desk, picked a pen and a paper he tossed at me and scrambled my address, then immediately, I made for the door

“Your father would be so proud.” he said after me.

The words hit harder than any insult.

I walked out without looking back.

As the hospital doors slid shut behind me, I felt the weight of what I had just done settle fully into my bones.

Two years.

Every possible pain. Then freedom.

I repeated it like a prayer as I stepped into the fading daylight, hoping that when the time came, there would still be something left of me to set free.