The highs and lows of life were just too intense.
That was Amuro Tooru's main takeaway from today.
In the morning, he was in Gunma, exchanging gunfire and speeding through the mountains with Akai Shuichi, chasing down fleeing FBI agents; by nightfall, he had witnessed a protected minor being brutally murdered. Overwhelmed with sorrow and rage, he stormed back to Tokyo, only to find, just as he pointed a gun at the supposed killer, that things were not at all what he had imagined…
Right now, his emotions were surging chaotically. That fierce drive to take on a new blood feud had faded, leaving behind dizziness and exhaustion.
After a long pause, he suddenly recalled and agreed with something Furuya Yuya had once said in frustration:
"Kazawa Akira is just way too hard to catch and way too much of a handful! Where the hell does he come up with all these ideas?!"
Amuro lowered his gun and looked around the attic, which only had a single chair. He didn't answer Kazawa's earlier question right away but instead followed his own instincts. He reached out and, with a loud clap, grabbed Kazawa's face and started forcefully squishing and rubbing it.
"Let go—mmph!" Kazawa's face was twisted from the pressure as he clutched at Amuro's wrists, grumbling in muffled protest.
There were no wounds, no disguise—Kazawa really was fine, standing there in front of him.
Only after truly confirming this did Amuro let him go with a disgruntled look, scanning him up and down. "You're really not hurt?"
Kazawa, now holding both his sore cheeks with a pout, grumbled that Amuro was just venting on him. "No, really, I'm fine."
"Looks like we've got a lot to talk about," Amuro folded his arms and nodded toward the floor below. "Let's sit down. I ask one, you answer; then you ask one, I answer."
Kazawa smoothed down his hair—now sticking up from the face-rub—and followed him downstairs. The two sat across from each other at the innermost table in the dining room.
Amuro flipped on the hanging lamp above the table. A warm cone of light spread across the tabletop, illuminating both their faces.
Kazawa glanced at the lamp and thought that if it were a bit brighter and whiter, the mood would be just like an interrogation room.
Amuro stared directly at Kazawa, realizing this might be their first truly equal conversation.
In the past, one of them was always behind the bar, the other in front—or one in the loft bed while the other was in a chair. There was always some kind of physical or emotional gap in their interactions. He had never really seen Kazawa as a comrade on the same side, but more like someone he needed to protect as an older, more experienced figure.
Kazawa had kept many secrets from him—and he'd done the same. They had never really talked properly.
With that in mind, Amuro started: "Just now, you called me Mr. Public Security, and you didn't hide that you faked your death. You trust my position and stance against the organization. Why? What did you discover?"
"Mm… let's start with the public security thing." Kazawa coughed a couple of times, trying to hold back a laugh. Although his intel came from a spoiler-filled meta-perspective, his recent disguise-hopping misadventures were enough of an explanation. "Yesterday, Mr. Furuya staged a fake attack scene. I guess he was trying to lure me upstairs, then take advantage of the chaos to 'accidentally' whisk me away… Honestly, it wasn't hard to piece things together. You said you had plans to help me leave, then the moment you left, strange events conveniently popped up around me to catch my attention… If someone said you two weren't linked, nobody would believe it."
Amuro pinched his brow in frustration.
He hadn't expected his alias to be cracked by Furuya Yuya of all people—and without even a heads-up after the plan failed.
"Don't blame Officer Furuya," Kazawa couldn't help but chuckle in a low voice. "After all, he probably never imagined that Kazawa Akira and the up-and-coming high school detective Goro Akechi… are the same person."
Amuro didn't need Kazawa to say more—he could already imagine the embarrassing moment when Kazawa didn't fall for the bait, and a random detective showed up instead, seeing right through all the undercover agents.
He sighed. Maybe next time he should just keep Furuya out of the planning stage entirely. Even if the plan was solid, the guy's bad luck was legendary. Who could predict that the target would be in disguise and even have a whole other public persona?
"My turn," Kazawa said. "So you are with Japanese Public Security. You know Furuya, you're an undercover agent. Amuro Tooru isn't your real name, right?"
Amuro looked into Kazawa's clear blue eyes. After only a few seconds of consideration, he made his decision.
"Nice to meet you again—Rei Furuya, from the National Police Agency's Security Bureau, Public Security Planning Division."
Just as Kazawa had suspected, looking back calmly over everything from his own perspective, it was clear how much trust he had placed in Amuro. Revealing his identity hadn't been strictly necessary, and could've been dangerously reckless.
If Amuro hadn't been an undercover agent—or if he was, but not truly on Kazawa's side—then exposing this much could have spelled the end.
But at this point, showing sincerity was the right call.
…Besides, his cover was already blown. Better to be honest.
Now it was Kazawa's turn to be thrown off.
That was way too straightforward. What happened to your pride as a master of false identities?
With the hardest part out of the way, Amuro pressed forward more easily: "Kumel… What's that all about? Is that really your codename? And what about Goro Akechi—did you make that up, or are you impersonating a real organization member?"
Kazawa rubbed his nose and looked down at the wood grain of the table, slowly beginning, "Well, that's a long story…"
Everything started after Akai Shuichi appeared.
Once Akai told him that Kazawa's existence was far more important to the organization than he had originally believed, and that both of his parents were dead—making him the only remaining vulnerability—Kazawa realized how urgent it was to initiate his identity-splitting plan.
He had to find a way to escape this passive role. Just running or changing his name would only make him more of a target. Sitting on all this power yet still tiptoeing around felt suffocating.
As mentioned before, after awakening due to the Marudenjiro case, Kazawa could freely use the Otherworld Navigation App.
Let's be honest—if someone gave you an app that could check whether Conan characters had their own "halls of fame," wouldn't you try entering every name you could think of?
Kazawa couldn't resist.
He didn't just try names—he kept notes too. His notebook started looking like the Death Note.
Turned out, a lot of people had these halls. If they weren't in separate spaces, the otherworldly version of Beika City would look like a neon-colored hellscape.
Among them, Kazawa found one hall owner who was connected to the organization and basically confirmed he didn't have long to live.
Diet member—Shigeyoshi Tōguchi.
In the early storyline where Pisco discovered Haibara's transformation and was then shot by Gin before he could talk, Haibara had to revert to Shiho Miyano temporarily using a sample of the original drug.
Pisco got executed for botching the job. The person he failed to silence?
That was Shigeyoshi Tōguchi.
Kazawa, desperate for an angle, immediately saw potential. After a few days of deduction and some trial-and-error, he succeeded in entering Tōguchi's hall.
He had to admit—it was insane that the guy imagined the Diet Building as a night club. Even Shidou Justice would've dropped dead on the spot.
Kazawa wasn't interested in reforming this kind of scum, nor did he want to make some dramatic announcement. What's the point? Organization members who "change" just get killed the next day anyway. Total waste of effort.
Instead, he explored the hall carefully, especially focusing on identifying fake people—those false constructs of memory. Through that, he could analyze the man's interpersonal network and search for exploitable weaknesses.
And he did find one.
Shigeyoshi Tōguchi had a hidden illegitimate son, raised in secret and placed within the organization from a young age.
Of course, Kazawa wasn't about to tell Amuro every detail. He kept it vague: "The organization's power runs deep in Tokyo—political and business spheres alike. Tōguchi, a Diet member, was one of their mid-level assets. No code name, but enough influence locally. He had an illegitimate son, Tōguchi Hayato. Eighteen years old."