Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 561

The alchemist
Ying Wa Primary School, Chau, Yat – 10
I
n 1845, after the opium war in Shanghai enabled waves of British missionaries onto Chinese territory, a lot of
Shanghai teenagers had become orphans as their parents were killed in the war. One such teenager was Bao. He
had to work very hard just to have three meals each day. He was famous for being nosy about any strange things.
Bao worked in the shipyard moving goods, always smelling the faint scent of tea leaves and herbs. At that time, tea
was a commonly traded commodity like silk. These days, he kept seeing a frail old British man sitting alone on the
deck of a wooden boat. Seeing how bad the man’s condition was in, he always shared half the food he got to him.
Today, there were rumors about a man acting strangely around the neighborhood. Bao asked his friends,
“Have you guys heard about the strange man who now lives near here?”
His friends, willing to answer, quickly said, “Yes! He’s from England and his work is something very secret.
Remember to update us with any information you find!” But Bao was not listening to their last sentence. What
really made him interested was when they said the word ‘secret’. He was not going to stop investigating this man
until he was able to obtain some really useful data about what he was doing in Shanghai, but what he desperately
wanted to know what his real job was. He quickly followed the man to his home and memorized the address. The
stranger never saw Bao’s face.
At night, Bao swung into action. He flung his long braid to one side and jumped from the window and
landed on the ground as planned. But what he didn’t know was that someone had put a pail on the ground right in
the spot he jumped on. It took him a few more minutes and more noise (cursing, to be exact) to get it off his leg.
Eventually, he got the pail off by smashing it on the ground continuously. After Bao got into the strange man’s
home, it took him a lot more time to climb into a chimney he found on the roof.
As he was dropping in like Santa, he found a pot of boiling water under him and he quickly skid to a halt
using his limbs. Then he climbed down and dropped next to it, barely missing,’ some sort of security system’ he
thought. He stood in awe as he saw the perfectly designed home, completely different from the outside which
looked shabby but blended in perfectly, the inside was like a piece of artwork. He momentarily dreamed about
living in this sort of house, until he got a glimpse of something silver, a tripwire of some sort in the doorway. Bao
knew he must always be alert to avoid the man from waking up and discovering he had broken in. Then, he saw
the pile of beautiful tools, arranged in perfect order, but it was somewhat obviously strange to have one of those at
home. Bao thought to himself. There was also a mound of rocks of some sort, some like coal, some like …gold? It
was shimmering like a little star. At once, Bao started to feel his sixth sense tingling, as to alert him of what that
was going to happen. But he did not mind. He could already feel that this man was no ordinary guy. He must be
up to something!
Then, he scolded himself for not noticing it. There was a bit of the wall on the left side of him that was
slightly loose from the other parts. He gently pushed it and a part of the wall turned around to reveal a secret room,
hidden between the kitchen and the living room. He thought: Aha, there must be something important hidden
behind this wall! He quickly ran into this space. There was a bookshelf jammed with gigantic books and also, a
diary. Bao quickly opened the diary and found only a pile of golden dust in it.
Then, the powder seemingly sprang to life and showed him the story of the man he was investigating. It
showed images of alchemists, the formula to make gold, attacks and more. The man was the greatest alchemist
ever, Alexander! He was the first person to discover the formula to produce gold from a pile of other stuff, which
Bao realized that the pile of rocks he saw just now in the other room. The next images showed some greedy