Cast a Shadow [My Stand In]

let me live every day

The first time anyone at Bright Fields met Ming's father was right after Tong's graduation. Ming wasn't an exceptional student who'd required celebration and he wasn't troublesome enough to grant his parents a summons to school.

On the day of Tong's graduation, Ming had reported to Tong's room door, giddy with excitement, knowing that this would be the last day. The seniors always finished their external exams a month before other students even started exams, so they always graduated and left the school under the charge of the juniors for the next four weeks.

Ming was looking forward to those four weeks being a new beginning. He'd been praying the graduation day would come and go without a hitch because he needed it to. He needed some peace and quiet.

So when he submitted himself to Tong that morning, it was with more enthusiasm than he ever had, in their time together. He'd laid in bed and taken it all, almost to the point of unbridled passion, clutching at Tong as his lips bit back prayers of gratitude. And when Tong was done with him, he'd taken a bath, gotten dressed, and left for the hall for his ceremony.

As usual, Ming had been allowed to sleep it off. It was Tong's room and when he fucked Ming and left him there, no one was ever allowed in. Not until Ming was dressed and had left the room.

Unfortunately for Ming, on that day, Tong had packed his bags and gone to the hall... never to see Ming again. And while he'd previously thought that that was a good thing, it didn't take five minutes for Ming to realize how much trouble he'd gotten himself into.

"Get up, you whiny bitch!"

Smacked across the face, Ming barely had time to react as several hands set upon him, dragging his naked body from the bed as his back scraped across the ground. He reached for the bed, for the door, for anything, to stop his assailants, but they were too many. By the time they pulled him out into the open, their faces were nothing but shadows against the bright sun, as they kicked and punched and hit Ming while he begged for them to stop.

"Where is he now?" they taunted.

"Tong's dirty whore," they said.

"How dare you sleep in a prefect's bed?" they asked.

Varied voices, coming at Ming from multiple directions as he struggled to block their blows and woefully failed. It could have been one minute, it could have been ten. It could have been hours, but Ming was never really sure. On and on, they went, until their hands and feet started to tire.

Even with all the dormitory wardens who were on shift, none of them came to check. It was almost as if no one heard Ming's screams. As if nothing was going on in the quadrangle, in the most public place in the dorm, as Ming cried his heart out, bleeding and naked.

When they eventually stopped, Ming lay in place, his body feeling like a pin cushion. He couldn't move and the few students he could see hiding to watch from the colors above were younger students, people who would never challenge the bigger boys who'd done Ming in.

As the world darkened around him, Ming could not believe that he'd somehow traded in seven months of Tong, for another year of Juniors who hated him more.

-

Ming was jerked awake by his father's thunderous voice.

"Calm down, Honey," his mother was saying as she sat on the arm of the chair he was sitting in, while Ming's father stared up at the young doctor with murder in his eyes.

He'd seldom heard his father that angry, but as recent events came flooding back in, Ming's heart swelled with joy to hear his father getting on someone for what happened. He couldn't move his left arm because it was strapped down. The right had more movement but he kept it still when he saw the IV was still in. He was covered by a hospital duvet, but he could feel that he was clothed beneath it. One of his legs was in a cast and the other was free but there was a simple bandage around the ankle.