Kudo Kids--The Mystery of the Masked Medalist

by Maia Shibutani

  “Thanks!” she exclaimed, her voice high and bubbly, waving the Canadian flag.

  Andy elbowed Mika in the side, and she swiveled around, feeling guilty for no reason. “What?”

  “You’re going to miss it!”

  Mika looked down at the floor just as the second gymnast sprinted across the mat. The crowd gasped as she launched off the vault and performed a complicated twist—then groaned when she landed and stumbled forward a few steps before raising her arms. Even with the mistake, the applause was still deafening, and Mika cheered with everyone else as the gymnast walked toward her coach. Turning, Mika looked at the two little girls again.

  They were examining one another’s flags, both babbling away. Neither girl seemed to mind that they couldn’t understand each other.

  Casting a quick glance at Dad and Andy, Mika pulled out her phone and opened the camera. She held it at her side and watched as the next gymnast, this one from Brazil, took her place.

  The gymnast raised her arms. When she began sprinting across the mat, Mika turned away and framed the two little girls in her screen. Both were waving their flags frantically as they stared intently at the gymnast. The Canadian girl grabbed the Chinese girl’s hand, and Mika heard the gymnast’s palms hit the vault.

  The hairs on the back of Mika’s neck stood up during the brief moment that followed as the gymnast flipped through the air. Time seemed to slow as Mika took the photo—then there was a light thump as the gymnast landed and the crowd went wild.

  Dad and Andy were both cheering, and Mika whirled around to face forward before either of them noticed she’d been turned away for the whole thing. “That was so cool!” Andy said, grinning at her.

  Mika nodded enthusiastically but didn’t respond. Although she was dying to check out her photo, she didn’t want Dad and Andy to know she’d taken it. Not that there was anything bad about taking a picture. Mika hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Yet.

  After the Brazilian gymnast’s scores were announced, the music returned to full volume and the level of chatter rose as everyone discussed the rankings so far. Mika sat back in her chair and, after a quick glance at Dad and Andy, opened the photo. She stifled a gasp.

  It was perfect. Both girls were sharply in focus, their eyes shining, their mouths open in expressions of pure amazement. Their fingers were laced together tightly, each girl clutching her country’s flag in her free hand. Quickly, Mika opened her photo-editing app and made a few small adjustments, bringing out the stadium lights reflected in the girls’ eyes and brightening the colors on their flags. Then, glancing nervously at Dad and Andy, she opened Instagram and pulled up the edited photo.

  “Oh boy. That’s a fantastic photo!”

  Mika jumped at the sound of the voice behind her, nearly dropping her phone. She and Andy turned to look at the man sitting behind them. He gave them a friendly smile.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to snoop,” he said in a Southern accent. “But that’s professional quality, in my opinion.”

  “Thanks,” Mika said, flattered. Then she noticed his T-shirt: DRISCOLL PRODUCTIONS. “Oh, we saw you in Shinjuku!” she exclaimed. “You had that giant camera, right?”

  “That sounds like me,” the man responded cheerfully. “I’m—”

  “Gavin?” Dad leaned back in his seat to better see the man. “Gavin Driscoll, right?”

  The man’s face lit up. “Tom Kudo! Oh man, I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you sooner!”

  Both men half stood in their seats to shake hands, then settled back down. “We met back when I took that trip to Argentina a few years ago,” Dad explained to Andy and Mika. “Gavin makes travel documentaries. Gavin, these are my kids, Andy and Mika.”

  “Great to meet you both!” Gavin said, beaming at them. “Tom, I was just telling your daughter she could be a professional photographer. Did you see this shot she just got?”

  Mika’s face burned. A strange mix of guilt and pride flooded through her as she quickly switched back to her camera roll and held out her phone for Dad and Andy to see the photo. Dad let out a whistle.

  “Mika, that’s really impressive!”

  “Did you take it during the Brazilian gymnast’s turn?” Andy asked, and Mika nodded.

  “I saw these girls before she came out,” she explained. “And I thought . . . they were cute.”

  She wasn’t sure how to explain the real reason she’d taken their picture. She’d been struck with a sudden desire to capture the anticipation and thrill on the girls’ faces as they watched an amazing athlete do what she did best.

  “You’ve got a photographer’s eye,” Gavin told her, and Mika flushed again from the praise.

  “Thank you,” she said, pocketing her phone.

  “So, Gavin, I’m guessing you’re here covering the Games?” Dad asked.

  “You bet,” Gavin said, pulling out a package of gum and unwrapping a piece. “I’m working on two documentaries. One’s about the impact the Olympic and Paralympic Games have on tourism in host cities.”

  “Nice! I wish we could stay in Tokyo for the Paralympics,” Dad said. “They’re so inspiring! My wife, Karen, will be covering them, but the kids and I will have to watch from home. What’s the other documentary about?”

  “This new game that’s apparently all the rage right now. OlympiFan?”

  “Oh, awesome!” Mika blurted out, at the same time as Andy exclaimed, “We’re playing OlympiFan!”

  Dad shot Gavin a rueful grin. “You’ve opened the floodgates now, I’m afraid. These guys haven’t stopped talking about that game all summer.”

  “Really?” Gavin looked delighted. “Well, maybe I should interview you two sometime! With your dad’s permission, of course.”

  “Yeah, cool! That’d be awesome!” Andy said eagerly. “Do you have any idea who the Masked Medalist is?”

  “I’ve heard a few names, but it’s all just speculation,” Gavin said. “Chiang Li’s come up more than once. He’s a table tennis champ and he’s got a bunch of degrees in software development and programming. I saw him out in the lobby, actually, so I guess he’s in here somewhere . . .”

  He trailed off as the crowd fell silent again, and all four of them looked down at the floor, where another gymnast was taking her place on the mat. “Well, we can chat about that later.” Gavin winked, then leaned back in his seat.

  Mika watched as the gymnast prepared for her turn. She was still glowing from Gavin’s praise. A professional filmmaker thought she was a good photographer! And Dad and Andy had been really impressed by her picture of the two little girls, too.

  Maybe Mika actually did have a talent for photo-graphy. Didn’t she deserve the chance to show it off?

  After the gymnastics event was over for the day, Dad led Andy and Mika outside. The afternoon sky was a blazing blue. “Are you guys up for a little walk?” Dad asked.

  “Sure!” Andy already had his phone out. “Bet I can find a few more clues. No one’s gotten the Bronze medal yet!”

  Sighing, Dad shook his head. “You’re not going to have your eyes glued to the screen the whole time, are you? We’re here to explore Tokyo!”

  “But OlympiFan is great for exploring Tokyo,” Andy told him eagerly. “Watch.”

  Mika trailed behind them as Andy showed Dad how little facts popped up about the locations they passed. She thought about her photo, and about Gavin’s praise, and her fingers grazed her pocket. Before she could take out her phone, Dad turned around and held out his arm. A moment later, a taxi pulled over and the doors clicked open.

  “I thought we were going for a walk?” Andy asked, confused.

  Dad smiled. “Just wait.”

  A short cab ride later, Mika and Andy climbed out of the cab and stood on a boardwalk. After Dad finished paying, he joined them.

  “I thought you might like to wa
lk across Tokyo Bay!”

  He pointed, and Mika and Andy turned to look at the enormous white bridge that crossed the water. On the other side, Mika could see the Tokyo skyline.

  “That view is amazing!” she said excitedly.

  Dad looked pleased at her reaction. “This is the Rainbow Bridge. It has solar-powered lights that get energy from the sun all day, then come on at night in all different colors!”

  “Ooh, we’ll have to come back at night to see it!” Mika already had her phone out, and she took a few pictures, balancing on her toes to get the best angle.

  She kept her phone out as they started walking, and soon Dad and Andy were back in conversation about OlympiFan. Mika gazed at the bridge, but her thoughts were back on the gymnasts. She pictured their determined expressions, the way they had launched themselves full speed at the vault without hesitation or fear. And then she made a decision.

  Mika swiped to the last page on her phone, where just one app icon waited. She’d downloaded Instagram after seeing that Enspire commercial during the opening ceremony, and with Riley sending her encouraging texts, she’d set up an anonymous account: bluedreamphotos. She’d never broken a rule this big before. Sure, she’d slipped table scraps to Lily and Po during meals, but this was different.

  A photography contest was a big deal, and Mika felt she deserved a chance to share her photos. Fingers trembling slightly, Mika pulled up her edited photo of the two little girls. She added #TeamWorld to the caption, then tapped share on the top right of the screen. Moments later, her photo appeared in her feed. A wave of giddiness passed over her as she closed the app and stuffed her phone back in her pocket.

  Done, she thought, pulse racing. And there would be plenty of opportunities for more photos while she was in Tokyo. After their trip, Mika would delete the account so her parents would never have to know. With a little luck, millions of people might see one of her photos.

  Mika felt a little thrill at the thought, and she smiled to herself as she hurried to catch up with Dad and Andy.

  TilerMyths

  Team: Cryptic

  AndyK has sent you a friend request. Accept?

  YES NO

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ANDY

  THE WEEK FELT like it was flying by. Andy was having a blast: he and Mika spent hours exploring the area surrounding their hotel while Dad wrote, and in the evenings they got to attend the Olympic Games with Mom and her staff. Andy and Mika had visited an origami museum, tried more food (karaage was just as tasty as Dad had promised), bought manga books and figurines for Devon and Riley, and watched archery, diving, and taekwondo.

  Somehow during all of that, Andy’s team had managed to collect two hundred and three clues! Their total was now over three hundred, but Andy still hadn’t figured out what the color squares actually meant. He checked the OlympiFan scoreboard several times an hour, and he and Mika had both friended lots of players. Several teams had fizzled out after the first few days, probably because there was so much to see and do at the Olympics. Now Team MADR was hovering around fifteenth place. Team SuperFan stayed in the top ten. And Team Cryptic had been in first place for almost the entire day—thanks mostly to TilerMyths, who’d somehow collected almost four hundred clues by himself (and finally accepted Andy’s friend request).

  Even with all those clues, TilerMyths obviously hadn’t figured out what the color squares meant, because Team Cryptic hadn’t found the Bronze medal yet. Andy didn’t care if he didn’t have as many clues; he was going to figure out where that medal was first.

  He studied the squares over breakfast Thursday morning. The hotel’s buffet was huge, and included all the breakfast foods Andy and Mika loved, like scrambled eggs and French toast. But there were lots of other choices too: miso soup, grilled fish, rice, tofu, and tamagoyaki, a sweetened omelet that Andy really liked.

  French toast was Mika’s favorite, but she’d decided to try one new thing every morning along with it. She placed her tray down across from Andy, and he peered curiously at the small bowl of white rice topped with what looked like slimy beans.

  “What’s that?”

  “Natto,” Mika announced. “I looked it up—fermented soybeans.” She pulled apart her chopsticks and scooped up a little bite, her brows immediately knitting together.

  “Don’t like it?”

  Mika swallowed, then took a sip of milk. “It’s . . . interesting. It’s an acquired taste.”

  Andy laughed. “Acquired taste is exactly what Dad said about Brie, and you haven’t acquired that yet.”

  “Okay, but this is way better than Brie.” Mika pretended to shudder. “Old socks probably taste better than Brie.” She ate several more bites of natto before putting the chopsticks down. A message notification popped up in the Team MADR chat room, and Andy tapped it while Mika began drowning her French toast in maple syrup.

  Devon: RED ALERT! The MM posted on Instagram . . . weren’t you guys there??

  A link was included under Devon’s message. Andy opened it, stopping with a bite of tamagoyaki halfway to his mouth when an Instagram post filled his screen. “Mika! The Masked Medalist posted!”

  “Ooh!” Mika leaned across the table, and Andy showed her the photo of a gymnast, arms raised in victory after her landing. “Wait . . . That is the same event we saw!” Mika said excitedly. “That’s the gymnast from Team USA!”

  “The Masked Medalist was there.” Andy couldn’t believe they’d been so close to the mysterious creator of OlympiFan. Then he remembered something. “Hang on—what was the name of the table tennis player Gavin told us about, the one a bunch of players think is the Masked Medalist . . . Something Li?”

  “Chiang Li!” Mika said immediately. “And Gavin said he saw him there!”

  The siblings exchanged a grin. “I guess Chiang Li’s at the top of our list so far,” Andy said excitedly. He scrolled down so he and Mika could read the post below the picture.

  I have been enjoying the Games, and I hope you OlympiFans are enjoying our game just as much! Although an impressive number of clues have been found, the Bronze is still hidden. If you want to win, you’d better start looking at the big picture!

  “Big picture,” Andy said, his heart pounding in his ears. “Maybe . . . maybe that’s a hint.”

  He opened OlympiFan again as Mika pulled out her own phone. Andy stared at his team’s collection of clues. He’d already noticed that when new color squares were added and they all reshuffled, similar colors would land close to each other: a dark blue square would move near the other blues, while the only pink square would zoom over to the reds. Most of the squares were some shade of green, brown, or blue, along with a lot of black, gray, and a pearly sort of white. He’d tried zooming out, so that more of the squares filled the page. When they’d realign again, just a little, he couldn’t figure out why. Very few squares were the exact same color; the shades were always a little different.

  While Mika replied to Devon’s message, Andy zoomed out and watched the squares shimmy around. He zoomed out more and more as the squares grew tinier and tinier until they started to blur together. Kind of like . . .

  “Pixels!” Andy cried, and Mika jumped. “They’re pixels—this is a photo!”

  “Seriously?” Mika stared when he showed her his screen. “Okay, but we’re still missing a lot of clues. If you’re right, it’d take us forever to get every single pixel in that picture.”

  “We don’t need every single one.” Andy was already back in their team chat room, typing a message to Devon and Riley.

  Andy: The squares are pixels, and the photo is a picture of where the Bronze is hidden. Zoom out and see if you recognize anything!

  Quickly, he opened the clues again. This time, he zoomed out as far as he could go. Mika was right: so far, their photo had more white space than pixels. But most of the black and dar
k gray pixels were on the left, and the pearly white ones were on the right. The greens, browns, and blues seemed to be part of the background, while the black and white shapes were in the forefront. Andy thought something about it looked familiar. He blinked, and a moment later, it hit him.

  “It looks like a wedding photo.” He placed his phone flat on the table and turned it to face Mika. “Look—think about that photo in our living room, the one of Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day. It was outdoors, there were trees behind them, right? And they’re both wearing kimonos.” Andy jabbed the picture twice. “Black for Grandpa, white for Grandma.”

  “Oh.” Mika’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, I think you’re right! Except . . .” She paused, chewing her lip. “The Bronze medal can’t be at an actual wedding.”

  “Right.” Andy felt momentarily defeated. Then he opened the chat room again and messaged Devon and Riley.

  Andy: It’s a wedding photo! Where do people like to get married in Tokyo?

  Mika read the message and frowned. “There’s probably a gazillion popular places for weddings,” she groaned. “There’s got to be a bigger clue in this photo.”

  Andy was already doing a Google search. His stomach plummeted when he saw how many results came up. Hotels, chapels, shrines . . . He thought of the trees, and added outdoors to his search, but it didn’t really help.

  “The brown pixels,” Mika was saying slowly. “The ones on the left look like part of a tree trunk. But the ones on the right are horizontal, and kind of curve up.”

  Andy glanced at her screen, then did a double take. He’d just been scrolling through pictures of buildings with that exact same shape in their design! “It’s a shrine or a temple or something!” he exclaimed, thumbs flying over his screen. “I bet that’s it—see? Shrines all have gates just like that! Now we just have to figure out which shrine.”