[RO]Aldric —Episode 1 | East End, London. 1983.

The record shop smelled like dust and decades.

Aldric had decided this was acceptable. Most things about his current life he had decided were acceptable — the narrow flat above the Pakistani grocery on Whitechapel Road, the intermittent boiler, the radiator that clicked through the night like something trying to communicate. He had decided all of it was acceptable and then quietly stopped thinking about it, which was as close to contentment as he had ever needed to get.

He worked Tuesdays through Saturdays. The shop was called Groove & Co., which he found mildly ridiculous, but the owner — a broad Jamaican man named Curtis who wore the same green jacket every day regardless of weather — had inherited both the name and the jacket from his father and considered neither negotiable. Aldric respected this. There was something to be said for a man who knew what he was keeping and why.

His job was simple. Organize. Recommend when asked. Handle the till. Don't talk too much.

He was good at all four.

The customers came in waves that Aldric had learned to read like weather. Morning brought the serious ones — older men flipping through jazz and blues with the focused silence of people conducting research. Afternoons brought younger ones, louder, handling the punk and new wave sections like they were looking for something they couldn't name. Saturdays were chaos he had learned to stand slightly outside of, present enough to be useful, removed enough to remain himself.

He knew the stock better than Curtis did. He knew that the copy of London Calling in the second rack had a hairline scratch on side B that wouldn't affect play but would bother someone who cared about such things. He knew which Beatles pressings were worth the price and which weren't. He knew, though he had never mentioned this to anyone, that the small collection of classical records gathering dust in the back corner contained three pieces he had grown up listening to in rooms considerably larger than this entire building.

He did not mention this to anyone.

He walked home the same way every evening. Left on Commercial Road, right on Cavell Street, past the pub he had never entered, past the launderette where Mrs. Okafor always seemed to be regardless of the hour, up the stairs that creaked on the third and seventh steps, key in the door.

The flat was small in the way that felt chosen rather than imposed — which, to be fair, it was. One main room that served as everything except sleeping. A kitchen that was technically a separate space if you accepted that a counter and half a wall constituted separation. A bedroom with a window that looked onto the brick wall of the building next door, which Aldric had decided he preferred to a view. Views invited you to look outward. He had found looking inward more productive.

The books were organized by subject rather than author, which certain people apparently found unusual. He had discovered this from the one occasion he had allowed someone to see the flat, three years prior, an experience he had not repeated not from any particular wound but simply because it had felt like unnecessary exposure.

He made tea. He sat. He read.

On the small table beside the door — not hidden, not displayed, simply placed — sat a stack of envelopes. Eleven of them. Twelve now, he noticed. Someone had pushed a new one under the door while he was at work. The paper was the same as always. Heavy stock. Cream colored. The kind that announced its own importance before you'd read a word.

The return address was a street in Kensington he no longer thought about if he could help it.

He looked at the envelope for a moment the way you look at weather through a window — acknowledging it, assessing it, deciding it has nothing to do with you.

Then he made a second cup of tea and went back to his book.

The letter sat where it was.

It would still be there tomorrow.

So would he.

This is the first episode of an ongoing story. More coming.