Chapter Text
I was not very clear, how he ended up here. Thinking. Reading. Hearing people voices in the wood-and-paper library. He was sitting on a sofa, in a corner, hidden from the usual muffled fuss of the library, a book on his lap.
He could not read the book. Somehow it was impossible for him to read it, to focus, to remember. The hero had his name and it was a play, by Shakespeare, not one of the best-known.
But he could not focus on the story. It was like a hole. Not a problem of language or style, or that the plot was too complicated for him to understand, no; Richard was clever enough to get all this stuff. However for some reason, he just fell asleep and forgot.
* * *
A bit puzzled by his unexpected nap, he stood up and stored the book in the first place he found. It was beautiful, covered with leather and a golden title. This hole was not its place but it was a secret corner Richard always chose when he went there; by this little trick he made sure to be able to find it next time.
Even the richest students are summoned to a limited number of borrows at the school's library.
Richard Langley had a good life but not a happy one. He was the grandson of president of King&Langley's company, specialized in nothing and owner of multiple others specialized in everything from toothbrushes to Chinese food, from insurances to cars. The man died of cancer at the healthy age of 83, and his eldest son got the cake and would have ruled the whole kingdom built by his father if he had not hanged himself after the death of his own eldest son, Matthew.
Facing this succession of men buried in the family's mausoleum, Richard. He held his name and surname from his great-grandfather, whose marriage with Margaret King had started to make their name stand. It was a lineage of strong, virile and sensible men. But Richard held everything from his mother.
He had been left with her, a slim and soft-spoken woman. Those losses had filled her heart with tears and grieves; his, only with anger.
Years after years he would keep vivid memories of himself in mourning black, standing, his feet making the dead leaves crack, in front of this three-times warm grave, of this lineage of first-borns.
-You still had me.
He whispered it between his teeth.
-You have lost him. But you still had me.