Kimono Code (2 page)

That afternoon in class, Emma was still annoyed and finding it hard to concentrate, even in her favourite subject—maths. Usually, Emma loved maths: she liked its patterns and how it all made sense. It was logical and you could predict it, unlike, it seemed, everything else in her life at the moment. Maths helped Emma to calm down, but today as she tried working through the sums on the board, she couldn't concentrate. The real problem she wanted to work out was why Hannah wasn't in
SHINE
.

Hannah would be perfect,
thought Emma.
She'd be better than me! She's always so calm and patient.
Emma remembered how Hannah had taught her budgerigar to talk. She had spent hours standing next to the cage, saying, ‘Good morning, gorgeous!' over and over again to her budgie, Sunny. Sunny, named for her bright yellow feathers, would just cock her head and chirp happily, but Hannah persisted. She kept saying, ‘Good morning, gorgeous!' in the same perky voice until the whole Jiang family couldn't get it out of their heads. They were all saying ‘Good morning, gorgeous!' while Sunny just stood on her perch, tweeting. That is, until one morning when Hannah came into the kitchen for breakfast while her mum was unpacking the dishwasher.

‘Good morning, gorgeous!'

‘Morning, Mum,' Hannah had replied sleepily.

‘Oh, morning, darling!'

‘Mum, you just said that!'

‘Good morning, gorgeous!'

Hannah and her mum had both spun around as Sunny chirped her morning greeting again. From then on, Hannah had taught Sunny lots of words. She stuck with it. That was Hannah, she stuck with things and she was patient. After her success with Sunny, she had even trained Isi's rabbit, Choccie, to come when her name was called.

Hannah loved animals. Emma knew her friend wanted a dog most of all, but Hannah's mum had said that their flat was too small. Hannah loved Sunny, but having a budgie wasn't the same as having a dog. Birds couldn't cuddle you at night, or shake hands (although Hannah had taught Sunny to lift one foot) or eat your broccoli under the table. Hannah had pictures of dogs all over her school folders, including pictures of the Jacks' dog, Pip. And when Emma told her about the Jacks' new puppy, Beret, Hannah had looked genuinely happy for her friend. She told Emma she was going to an open day at a dog-training centre and she couldn't wait. That was typical Han. She never said anything about being disappointed. She always found something positive to say.

Why doesn't A1 see that?
thought Emma.
She usually sees everything! I wonder if I can talk to her about it.

Emma's thoughts were interrupted by a buzz in her right ear. Emma put her finger to the stud in her ear and pressed. She didn't have her ears pierced: her mum said she had to wait until she was in high school for that, but she was wearing
SHINE
-issue alert studs. The stud at the front was held on her ear by a tiny magnet at the back. Inside the stud was a receiver that sent a buzz into the agent's ear when there was a
SHINE
mission alert.

SHINE
realised that its school agents couldn't take their spy-phones to class, so this was the perfect solution. When the agent heard the buzz, they could excuse themselves from class, get their phone and make their way to their
SHINE
Mission Tube access point. Isi had improved the studs a little and they were now available in a range of colours. Emma's aqua studs were currently transmitting a mission alert. She put her hand up, and at almost exactly the same time, so did Isi and Elle.

‘Yes, Emma?' asked Ms Tenga.

‘Please, can I be excused to go the toilet?' asked Emma.

‘Me too, please!' said Isi.

‘Um, Ms Tenga, I need to go too,' said Elle.

‘Right,' said Ms Tenga. ‘Well, you'd all better go.'

The girls were lucky they were in Ms Tenga's class. Ms Tenga also worked for
SHINE
, in Agent Support Services, so she acted as if it were completely normal for three students to want to go to the toilet at the same time.

Emma, Elle and Isi stood up and left the classroom. They went to their lockers, collected their spy-phones and CHARM bracelets (which were stored in a secret compartment in their lunchboxes) and made their way across the courtyard to the girls' toilets. They were relieved that Hannah was in another class; heading off without her would have been awkward. Emma went in to the toilet first. She checked that no one else was in there and turned to give the thumbs-up to Elle and Isi. The three girls walked in. Emma went to the last cubicle on the right, Isi to the one next to it and Elle to the one next to Isi. Emma looked wistfully at the first, empty cubicle as she shut the door, at exactly the same time as Elle and Isi shut and locked theirs.

Emma lowered the toilet-seat lid, sat down and took out her spy-phone. Under the toilet-roll holder was a small socket to which Emma now connected her phone. The phone flashed, and Emma keyed in her pin code. The phone flashed again.

‘Here we go, guys,' whispered Emma. ‘Good luck!'

‘You too!' whispered Elle.

‘You three!' giggled Isi.

Emma held on tight as the toilet and the wall it was attached to spun around. On the other side, EJ dropped down onto a beanbag and the wall moved back again. EJ heard the cubicle door unlock. She was expecting to see IJ and EK on the other side, but she was alone.
The others must be in another tube
, she thought.
That makes sense. I am going to the Code Room, but IJ must be off to the Science and Invention Labs and EK to Transport
. EJ pushed the beanbag off the landing, and
she sped down the Mission Tube until she came to a stop at a platform with a small keypad. EJ stood up, keyed in her pin code and waited for the agent recognition test.

‘Breathe deeply,' a digital voice announced as a thin rod, with a small glass circle on the end, ejected out and up from the base of the keypad, right in front of EJ's mouth.

What?
wondered EJ.
Is this preparation for the test?

‘Five deep breaths in and out, please.'

EJ took a breath, her breath clouding the glass, then another, then another and was just breathing out again when the digital voice spoke once more.

‘Re-start the test, please. Five slow, calm, deep breaths.'

Arrrrgghh!
thought EJ.
This just isn't my day. I can't even breathe properly!
But she stood still and took one long, deep breath and then slowly exhaled before taking another. It seemed to be taking longer than it needed to, but EJ didn't want to start the test again: she knew a code would be waiting for her and she wanted to get working on it.

‘Agent's DNA confirmed in breath,' said the voice, as the door behind the keypad slid open. ‘Enter the Code Room, Agent EJ12.'

EJ sat down at the table in the middle of the Code Room. She looked up at the clear tube that came from the ceiling above the table and waited. Seconds later, a small canister whizzed down the tube and fell out onto the desk in front of her. EJ opened the canister and took out a tightly rolled sheet of thick parchment paper. As she unrolled the sheet, a twig fell out onto the table. The twig that looked as if it had been snapped from a tree.

‘That's strange,' said EJ, picking up the twig as she held the paper. ‘What does this stick mean? Is it something to do with the message?'

EJ looked at the paper. It was covered in beautiful black strokes that almost looked like a drawing.
Was it a picture code?
EJ re-read the top lines from
SHINE
.
Hmmm, the message was found in Tokyo,
she thought as she looked at the writing again.
Is this drawing really Japanese writing?

EJ took a photo of the paper with her phone, and then opened her writing analysis app. She opened the photo in the app and pressed ‘GO'. Words flashed onto the screen.

EJ smiled.
This will be my fastest code-crack yet,
she thought as she pressed YES. Her screen flashed again, and the translation appeared. It was then that she realised her work had only just begun.

I can't send the code back to
SHINE
like this,
EJ decided.
Anyone could have translated the message from Japanese. A1 must want me to work out what it means. But what's
Konohanasakuuyahime?
What's
hanami?

EJ clicked on the word
Konohanasakuuyahime.
An entry flashed up on the screen telling her it was the name of a Japanese goddess who, according to legend, lived on Japan's most famous mountain, Mount Fuji, and made the blossoms appear in springtime.

‘Okay,' said EJ. ‘So this message is saying someone else is now controlling the blossoms. With the help of
kunoich
i. Let's see who or what they are.'

‘Wow,' said EJ. ‘Nema would be a perfect
kunoichi
!' She read on.

‘Well, now we know they do,' said EJ, ‘and it looks like they are holding someone or something called
hanami
to ransom. I need to check that word as well.' She clicked on
hanami.

EJ clicked on the images and saw parks and streets packed with crowds of people walking under trees bursting with pink and white blossoms.
Springtime is starting in Japan now,
thought EJ, picking up the twig that had fallen out with the message,
but this doesn't look like it's about to bloom.
The small buds dotting the twig were tightly closed. ‘Is this the work of the
kunoichi
?' EJ wondered out aloud.

Hmmm,
thought EJ.
So someone, the
kunoichi,
under instruction from someone else, who is calling herself the new
Konohanasakuuyahime,
is going to stop the cherry blossoms from blooming unless they are paid 400,000,000 yen. And they have sent this twig to prove they can do it. But who is the
Konohanasakuuyahime
instructing the
kunoichi?

It was then that EJ noticed a small stamp in the corner of the note. She squinted and leant forward to try to see it.

‘It's too small. I'll need to magnify it,' said EJ. She took her phone and pressed on the zoom app, holding the phone over the paper. Now she could see that it was another Japanese symbol.

‘
Kitsune
, fox, fox-spirit from Japanese legend,' said EJ, translating the characters. ‘That doesn't explain anything but I need to get what I do know back to A1.'

Quickly, EJ wrote down everything she had learnt on the back of the paper. She rolled the paper up again and placed it into the canister and back into the tube, where it was sucked up and away to the Operations Room. A1 would be there, waiting for both it and EJ—and EJ had a lot to tell her.