Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 3 2018 | Page 277

Journey to the West
St. Margaret's Co-eduational English Secondary and Primary School, Ho, Matthew - 12
Journey to the West: A Short Story on What Happened Before the Journey (set in modern time)
31/12/2004
Friday
ello new diary friend! I’m going to be writing a lot in you soon, since my new semester of magic
school is starting in a few days! Let’s hope this year won’t be as bland as the last.
H
I almost forgot, I should probably introduce myself to you. My name’s Xuan Yu Kong, but people tend to
call me Monkey King. I don’t really fancy any of the names since both of them sound uncomfortable to me,
but i can’t really think of any other name for myself; but i can think of a name for you, dear friend. I’ll name
you… Diary. That sounds like a nice name.
Anyway, i’ve got to celebrate the New Year with my monkey neighbourhood now. See you tomorrow!
Monkey King
1/1/2005
Saturday
Happy new year dear friend! The little festival my fellow monkeys put up was nice. Now I’ve got to revise
for school. Bye for now!
Monkey
4/1/2005
Tuesday
The school committee added a couple of “interesting” subjects; Human Knowledge (everybody in the
school is a monster or animal), Meddling with Magic, Arithmancy and other subjects I’m not certain of in
addition to the millions of subjects we already have. Terrifying, it sure is.
Aside from that, there’s still some actually interesting news; rumor has it that there’s a legendary monk
named Xuanzang who’s in search for 3 disciples to accompany him on his journey to India in order to
recover ancient sacred texts from the gods; now I’m not a big fan of religion, but it’s also rumored that
there’s a reward for accompanying him. Nobody knows what this reward is, but it seems like something
worth going through near-death experiences and long hardships. Now that’s something I’d want to do.
But I should probably consider the huge workload of school I’ve got on my hands.
Your Best Friend
6/1/2005
Thursday
Apparently the rumor has spread like wildfire; all the students in our school (and I believe the whole world
at this point) know about this Xuanzang rumor. It’s been the hottest topic to talk and debate about; yet
nobody is willing to be his disciple, the only thing they are willing to do is talk about who would want to be
his disciple. I sure do, but i can’t confess to anyone, else the next hot topic would be “Monkey King.. of
Stupidity”.
However, 2 of my friends, “The Friar” and Zhu Ba Jie (preferably known as “pig”) are surprisingly also up
to the task. Coincidence or not, I doubt us 9th graders like us would even be able to do such a difficult task.
Xuanzang might not even be real! But if school goes terribly wrong, I might ask them to leave school and
set out to find this Xuanzang man. Anyway, onto more annoying school work.