Chapter Text
Everyone’s hand shot up, all racing to answer the easiest question of the day. Mr. Townsend, the English Literature master, spoke with a smile.
“Let us exclude the obvious answers that everyone knows, like Hamlet, by way of a start.”
Oi, that ‘everyone’ doesn’t include me! You should’ve said that before we raised our hands — this isn’t bloody fair! Come on, sir!
Fortunately, Toby got called on instead of me, having only read Hamlet half-asleep.
“Lucifer from Milton’s Paradise Lost is an antihero who surpasses Hamlet, despite appearing some sixty years later, sir.”
“Oh, a somewhat controversial but intriguing response. Would you care to elaborate on that controversial aspect, Mr. Goldstein?”
“Look at the famous fallen angel scene. When the angels rebelled against God, incurred His wrath, and were cast out of Heaven, they lost not only their wings but also their beauty and power. They became demons, plunged into grief, weeping like infants.
“Only Lucifer remained unyielding in the face of adversity —he transmuted it into pure rage. His message was simple: How could even God be so cruel to us! And yet, you do nothing but weep instead of fighting against this oppression? Rise, for we shall be strong again.
“The sheer eloquence of the speech he delivered to his fallen brethren transformed those wretched beings—tumbled from the apex of their destiny—into the very demons that roamed the earth.
“It was a magnificent, and deeply sensual, speech. A man who refused to break even after falling into the abyss of Hell, reborn as Satan himself—he is, quite literally, Eros and Thanatos incarnate.”
Toby was a genius, sure, but he was bloody obsessed with that ‘sensuality’ of his. How could anybody feel sensual when their school records and scholarship were hanging on every word they said?
But nobody here could beat Toby in English Literature, except Mr. Townsend—please, sir, prove you know more than Toby, so the rest of us don’t have to.
“On the other hand, Hamlet never demonstrated leadership. He agonizes alone, acts alone, and fails alone. Because he insists on carrying it all, his agony feeds his suicidal impulses—to be or not to be.
“He fails to protect his lover, fails to protect his mother, and ultimately fails to protect himself. Of course, I find his particular agony sensual as well.
“Instead of showing why an antihero is a force to be feared, he evokes the audience’s pity—showing why an antihero collapses. I believe the true antihero is Lucifer.”
Wait—wasn’t that just describing what an antihero is?
The thought flashed through my mind. Yet the master merely smiled. But the smile didn’t prove Toby was right, either.
In this place, you were praised even if you were wrong, so long as your opinion was intriguing and challenged conventional wisdom. But if I went head-to-head with Toby in English lit and got utterly crushed, my scholarship would be toast. My tutor tracked my academic performance so closely it felt like getting a report card every single day.
“Fascinating. What does everyone else think?”
Mr. Townsend scanned the room. Nobody raised a hand.
Instead, they all stole glances in my direction. Simply because I was a literature scholarship boy, they were slapping a moral imperative on me to face off against Toby. The boy had read every author on the planet, while the rest of us were still drowning in English lit, ancient Greek, and Roman texts.
I wanted to pivot to drama as quickly as possible, just to shake off this ‘literary nerd’ label, but Toby had already staked his claim there too.
Above all, Paradise Lost wasn’t even included on the reading list for this class. It was classified as English poetry, yet it was plagued with Latin, and the footnotes dwarfed the actual text.
I had attempted to read it myself, but that sort of stuff belonged in graduate school. Anyone who managed to read it to the bitter end deserved a bloody doctorate.
This class was already brutal. It wasn’t my fault Toby had just cranked the difficulty up a hundredfold. As the unprecedented anomaly of a literature scholarship boy, was it my duty to handle Toby whom other students had endured for years or not? But I’d barely arrived. Since when was I some literal prodigy?
See, with so many unanswered questions, I was already running my own internal debate, putting everyone else’s logic and moral imperatives on trial.
While I remained silent, Mr. Townsend looked at me with an encouraging gaze, as if he assumed I knew the answer but was too shy to speak.
Just as a cold sweat broke out along my spine, my eyes somehow locked with Henry’s. Henry must have been studying me the whole time. I immediately snapped my eyes away.
I didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of Henry, who had kept his promise and helped me study Latin, but opening my mouth would only make me look like a bigger fool.
Henry raised his hand. He was brave. He was kind. He was handsome.
“Mr. Lecertone?” the master called.
“I am rather inclined to agree that Lucifer serves as a better antihero than Hamlet, sir,” Henry said. “However, Mr. Goldstein’s judgement appears to be utterly obscured by emotion.”
“Because despising emotion is just the usual prejudice of rationalism?” Toby shot back.
But the master intervened. “Mr. Goldstein, let us give Mr. Lecertone the opportunity to speak.”
“Shall we coldly analyse that infamous fallen angel speech by Lucifer—the very one Mr. Goldstein just gushed over? He was the instigator of the rebellion. The rebellion had utterly failed, leaving everyone ruined. The other rebels might well have criticised him, even held him to account.
“Had they lamented their fall and looked for the architect of their ruin, they need only have looked to Lucifer himself. They might have ousted Lucifer, repented, and begged God for salvation. Perhaps that was precisely God’s intention when He banished those angels.”
“And what, exactly, is your point?” Toby asked.
“If Lucifer were truly intelligent, he could not possibly have failed to foresee that. His action was a calculated defiance of the divine will—he denied them the very opportunity to repent. Lucifer was a revolutionary challenging the established order.
“Mr. Goldstein is free to view that as sensual, but it does not alter the fact that he was a cold-blooded politician. A politician powerful enough to turn a moment of political ruin into an opportunity to establish absolute dominance.”
Blimey. He’d actually just won that.
Paradise Lost—that monstrous doorstop of a book that had intimidated me on sight—actually sounded interesting like this. Honestly, I liked Henry’s argument far better than Toby’s sensual claims. Henry didn’t fall in love with his own rhetoric the way Toby did, but he might be sharper.
Right then, Henry turned to look at me.
“You share my view, do you not, Mr. Carter?”
It felt like an ambush. In group debates, lads sometimes form alliances beforehand, but nobody had asked me to team up. While it was common for debaters to attack each other and pull in allies along the way, I hadn’t said a single word yet.
But was this really something to be angry about? Henry knew I lacked confidence, and perhaps this was just his charitable imperative—giving me a free pass to score some easy points.
Not only that, he had practically rescued me when everyone else was staring at me. Here I was, treating a lifeline like a betrayal. Total jerk move.
I opened my mouth, intending to agree with him. But right then, my eyes caught his again. Henry’s eyes locked on mine, unblinking, and I froze under the weight of it
As the heir to a dukedom, manners were bred into his very bones. Far from being uncouth, he never stared at other boys like that.
At first, I let it slide since I wasn't familiar with Henry or the school yet.
But after a while, I noticed he treated only me differently. I couldn’t just let this go on forever. Rather than kicking that ‘eventually’ down the road, I figured I might as well draw the line right now.
“Mr. Carter?”
When the master called my name in that characteristically encouraging voice of his, I hesitated no longer.
“Um... I... I’m not sure if Lucifer counts as an antihero. At the end of the day, as Toby—Mr. Goldstein—mentioned, he is Satan, isn’t he?”
“And?”
Keep calm, sir. I haven’t even read Paradise Lost. Talk about lazy logic—assuming I’ve plowed through it just because I’m chums with Henry and Toby. Prejudice!
“...Lucifer is striking, but he is just a villain. Granted, using any means necessary to achieve an end and being selfish are indeed traits of an antihero.
“However, when you get down to it, antiheroes are basically stuck to a grand cause—whether it’s avenging their family or an objective that stays good even if the methods are wicked.
“They risk ruin, sometimes even tossing away their own souls in the process. Therefore, they aren’t evil like Satan. They aren’t perfect like saints—they slip up, they’re only human—but that doesn’t make them evil.”
“Lucifer had a grand cause too,” Toby shot back instantly.
“He rebelled against the divine hierarchy and fought for the free will of the angels. That’s why so many angels flocked to his side.”
Sure. You’re right. Whatever. Fortunately, the master intervened.
“Yes, Mr. Goldstein’s point merits consideration as well. However, now that we comprehend the respective antiheroes of Henry and yourself, I am quite curious to know who Mr. Carter’s antihero might be.”
You should’ve shut him down just like you did for Henry! I’ve already choked out one massive speech, and now you’re demanding an encore?
Looked like I had no choice but to push forward with Hamlet. Bluffing about a book you’d never opened in front of everyone—that’s trench-level stress.
“Mr. Carter’s antihero might precisely be Hamlet,”
Henry spoke up. The lads let out a collective chuckle. I blushed. Was Henry angry with me after all?
But Henry’s expression or his gaze was unreadable. That impenetrable mask was, in a way, the most aristocratic thing about him. Because I could never pull off that kind of self-possession.
“Hamlet is an acceptable choice, Mr. Carter,”
The master smiled.
“So long as you deliver an interpretation as stimulating as Mr. Goldstein’s.”
Once again, Henry had rescued me. I had doubted him, yet he had shown me a favorable path just as he had before. He did it so easily, so naturally, that all my anxiety and worry looked ridiculous.
However... Was my hesitation just me acting like some rabbit spooked by nothing? Or because I was like Lucifer, sabotaging my own future?
Or, quite simply, did I just want to prove that I was capable of my own independent thoughts? That I wasn’t some cookie-cutter boy just going along with everyone’s expectations, but someone who could surpass, no, somehow surprise them? Not so much, just a little.
“Certainly, Hamlet is one of my antiheroes, sir. However, for me...”
And just like that, the name slipped out. A character from the very root of Paradise Lost — the Bible, the book I’d actually read. The oldest and most famous book in existence—the safest choice to keep my literary ignorance from getting exposed.
“Cain?”
The master’s eyes widened. Blimey, I messed up.
Mr. Townsend, a middle-aged man, was the sort of master who’d smile and listen with attention no matter how stupid you sounded. He’d just give you a terrible mark later. Surprising a man that calm wasn’t an achievement. In literary terms, it was a total Don Quixote move, tilting at windmills.
“Hmm, fascinating. Are you quite fond of Demian?”
“Pardon? Who?”
“Ah, never mind. Do continue, Mr. Carter.”
It finally clicked that the master might mean Damian Lewis—the bloke who played Henry VIII in Wolf Hall—but why on earth would his name pop up here? Had he been cast as Cain?
“Then what exactly is the grand cause of Cain, history’s first fratricide, the world’s first murderer?”
Toby cut in with lethal speed before I continued.