Devon: RED ALERT! The MM posted on Instagram . . . weren’t you guys there??
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.
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 dark 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.”
They both returned to their phones to find Riley adding rapid-fire messages in the forum.
Riley: Meiji Jingu, maybe???
Riley: It’s a shrine. I remember reading that it’s really popular for weddings.
Riley: Ugh I just tried going there in VR mode, the line’s already long.
Devon: 15 minute wait!
Andy groaned. To try to keep things as fair as possible between VR and AR players, OlympiFan made VR players wait in line based on the distance from their last destination. After all, AR players couldn’t just magically pop up in a destination halfway across the city. Although right now, Andy wished desperately that he could. No two teams had the exact same collection of clues, which meant they all had different parts of the photo. If this many VR players were trying to get into the Meiji Shrine, then Team MADR wasn’t the only team to suspect this was where the Bronze medal was hidden.
“Andy.” Mika looked up from her phone, her eyes wide with excitement. “That shrine is really close to the stadium where we watched the handball event. It’s only three subway stops away!”
Andy sat up straighter. “Really? Let’s—wait, we can’t go. Dad’s working until lunch.”
“So let’s ask him if we can take the train by ourselves!” Mika was already standing and picking up her tray. “The rule was no public transportation unless it’s a route we’ve done with him or Mom already, right?”
Half a minute later, Andy and Mika burst into the business room across the lobby from the breakfast area. Dad looked up from his laptop, startled.
“You guys okay?” he asked, and Andy and Mika explained everything as fast as they could. Dad leaned back in his chair, frowning. “You think you remember how to get there?”
“Yamanote Line, three stops, get off at Harajuku Station,” Mika recited immediately, and Andy gave her a grateful look. Knowing Mika, she’d probably taken notes on the route the day before.
“Still have your metro cards?”
“Yes!”
Dad nodded. “Okay, let’s go over the rest of the rules one more time.”
“No talking to strangers, and no splitting up,” Andy said quickly.
Mika patted her little blue backpack. “Always have yen on us.”
“Basically, no doing anything dumb,” Andy finished. “Can we go now? Please?”
“All right.” Dad glanced at the clock on the wall. “Text me when you get there and keep me updated. Be back here in time for lunch, okay?”
“Thanks, Dad!” Andy was already sprinting from the room, Mika on his heels.
The train ride was short, but Andy couldn’t stop checking the OlympiFan app. The first few players were about to enter the shrine—and of course, TilerMyths was one of them.
Devon: Are you guys going?
ANDY: YES!
Devon: YESSSS!!!
Riley: Awesome! I just added a bunch of clues and I think the couple in the photo is standing in front of the torii.
Andy: What’s that?
Riley: The gate! I looked it up, and it’s HUGE—you can’t miss it. I bet the medal is there!
Andy: Thx!
Andy’s palms began to sweat as the train slowed to a stop at Harajuku Station. The moment the doors slid open, he and Mika rushed toward the stairs. Above ground, they stopped on the street, panting, and looked around.
“There!” Mika pointed to a sign. Below the Japanese letters, it read MEIJI JINGU, and beneath that was an arrow.
Andy and Mika took off again, and a few seconds later they were crossing a stone bridge. Massively tall trees lined either side of the wide path, which was crowded with people strolling leisurely in and out of the park.
“Whoa!” Mika gasped as the torii came into view. Riley was right, Andy thought—the gate was huge, a beautiful wooden structure with two pillars supporting crosspieces that towered almost as high as the surrounding trees.
Andy slowed to a quick walk, opening AR mode in the OlympiFan app. The footprints glowed yellow . . . no, not yellow. Bronze. Andy let out an excited yelp.
“Riley was right! The medal’s somewhere around the gate!”
Before he could take another step, Mika grabbed his arm. “Do you hear that?”
Andy was about to ask what she meant when he heard it: the unmistakable whoops and shouts of Team SuperFan. Turning around, Andy saw the group of teens sprinting across the bridge.
“Hurry!” he yelled, and he and Mika rushed toward the gate. Andy watched the bronze footprints turn yellow again once he had passed under the crossbeams and stood on the other side. Gasping for breath, Andy whirled around and stared through his screen. He could see SabineTheGreat’s avatar among the others as Team SuperFan drew closer. But where was the medal? Andy doubled back and stopped directly under the gate, turning full circle and trying to spot it around all of the people passing in and out of the park. His footprints stayed bronze, but he couldn’t see it anywhere. Nearby, Mika was doing the same thing. Team SuperFan was only a few yards away—and they looked ready to plow right over Andy and Mika.
Suddenly, Andy had an idea. Tilting his head back, he held up his phone and stared through its screen at the horizontal beam high overhead. His heart leapt when he caught a flicker of something, and he zoomed in with shaky fingers.
A Bronze medal hung from the lower beam of the gate.
Andy blinked, stunned. As determined as he’d been to find one of the medals, part of him hadn’t actually expected to win. He started to tap the screen to claim the medal, but a passing tourist jostled him and he nearly dropped his phone. Quickly, Andy zoomed back in on the spot.
The medal was gone.
Andy’s confusion only lasted a moment. Because then his screen changed to an explosion of confetti. A message appeared, and Andy’s heart plummeted.