The Key, the Promise, and the Secret
It was fire. All he remembered was the scream of the butler rushing towards him. Kenchi was only four or five then when his house in Hong Kong was burned to the ground by a freak fire. His father, Shaoran Li, of the Hong Kong Li's, along with his mother and grandparents had perished in the flames. He was saved by his maid and butler who were out on a date when the fire happened. The building was ablaze but apparently no one, had felt the commotion brewing inside. It was extremely queer. The butler was able to break the front door of the house open, which was only when the people in it had started waking up.
He was out of his bed and was in the kitchen, he remembered that he felt really thirsty, so he went across from the quarter's wing into the kitchen. Because of that he was saved. The building which separated the main hall and the sleeping quarters had now burned into a bright red flame imprisoning the Li's into a sure death. The butler upon seeing his young master, rushed towards him and grabbed him, passing him to the maid. The butler then tried to rush in to his master's in the quarters but it was too late. The fire had consumed everything and was burning.
50 years have now passed and Kenchi had now succumbed to his age. But even then, the memory of the burning mansion still haunted him. He had taken on the legacy of the Li's without the old family since he had no one left to teach him those. He went on life as any billionaire heir would. He traveled, studied, fell in love and had a son, a beautiful boy, Damien. He would have wished to see his son grow into a man, but again, his body had won over him. He lay in his bed about to take his last breath. Damien sat beside him in tears, holding his father's hand. His father then proceeded to tell him a poem that his mother, Damien's grandmother, had told him when he was a child – one he had told his son multiple times before.
“The stars shine with true power.”
“As the child sleeps in the tower.”
He stopped, and a tear fell both on Kenchi's and Damien's eyes.
“Awake the boy with the key.”
“So the child will finally see.”
“The true beauty of a free tomorrow.”
“Without any fear of impending sorrow.”
“Let a pure heart set the unlocker on paper.”
“Let the pure heart sing the most secret, sacred prayer.”
Then, as his mother did to Kenchi, he took his son's hand and pressed down on it a key tied to a neck chain. “Damien, my mother, the night the fire occurred had given me this key. She told me that this key would reveal the truth of my family – our family, my son.”
“Everything we had had been lost in that fire, so whatever secrets this key holds, it has gone with them that night. But have this in memory of your family, of me. And promise me you will never forget.” Damien took the key, and with that his father took his last breath and finally fell into eternal slumber. “I promise.”
His father was Half Chinese and Half Japanese, apparently, this grandmother of his was Japanese and Damien had been told that he looked very much like her. Kenchi married an Irish woman he met in one of his travels, their yearlong rendezvous brought about a child of vaguely Eurasian features, brown hair, eyes as brilliant as garnets, soft feminine jawline. Now, Damien is 16 and is every bit as beautiful as he was when he was born, now he sported straight hair which fell lightly on his neck, a good athletic build – this owed to his swimming fanaticism – and a very light disposition. He was a lovable child, who lived mostly with servants.
Because of some very serious threats to his company and him, shortly after his father's death, he was advised by the Li Industries board to move to the USA to study until he is old enough to take over. Armed with his sheer beauty and determination, he was rushed to the airport soon after his father was buried.
On the plane, he then began to soak in everything. The promise he made to his father, the key, his grandmother, everything was still a blur. He decided to take a look at the key. He has never been permitted to see it, but now it is in his hands. He unfolded the silk wrapping and it revealed a very curious piece of metal work. It was a very oddly shaped key. It had a star at one end and two square stubs at the other which he presumed were the teeth of the key. He finally grasped the thing and from nowhere, turbulence took hold of the plane. But as if nothing was happening around him, Damien was still staring at the key. Only when the stewardess approached him to have him fasten the belt, did he snap out of it all. Then he noticed that the length of the key had grooves, dents and engravings. He wasn't able to make out the whole thing, but he knew it had to be important. By then the turbulence had stopped and everything was back to normal. Just when the normalcy was settling in, his and his father's last talk just flashed. The poem. How could his father have missed this? The unlocker. The key.
He called for paper and from his pen he inked the sides of the key. He then damped off the excess liquid and proceeded to roll the key unto the paper. When the full girth was rolled, an clear message laid before him. It was written in such an ornate way, one might think it was old English. The words were clear enough though. “key that holds the power of the stars, show your true form, release”.
“Let the pure heart sing the most secret, sacred prayer.”
The plane went through another turbulence, and then the worst had happened, the plane's system apparently shut down sending the whole metal mass diving into the ocean below. By the time the plane started dipping, a bright, blinding light engulfed his body and the key had suddenly become a staff of some sort. When the key settled into this form, the plane got wind and stabilized. No one noticed the flashing and the transformation particularly because of the hell which broke loose when the passenger's and everyone else on the plane thought they were going to die.
The plane landed safely on the JFK in New York, and Damien, after overcoming the shock, now felt at ease. This was the secret, magic.
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