Kimono Code Read Free

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’

    â€˜Wow,’ said EJ. ‘Nema would be a perfect kunoichi !’ She read on.

    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.

    â€˜ 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.

 
    â€˜It’s good to see you, EJ12,’ said A1 as EJ entered the Operations