Chapter 44: Win-Win

"See you tomorrow, Ms. Enomoto."

Azusa Enomoto pulled back her worried gaze from the attic, looked at Toru Amuro, and let out a sigh.

"You two had a fight today, didn't you? Karasawa wouldn't even come down for dinner. You should talk things through with him properly later, Mr. Amuro." She wasn't foolish, so she could naturally tell that the atmosphere between the two of them had been stiff during the day. However, it was awkward for outsiders to meddle in most conflicts, so she could only pin her hopes on her handsome, articulate, and reliable colleague to handle the communication properly. "See you tomorrow, Mr. Amuro."

Once Azusa Enomoto left, Toru Amuro slowly changed out of his uniform and stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at the tightly shut door with a headache.

He could neither expose the Organization's information nor reveal his own identity, and he also had to dispel Karasawa's hostility and fear. It was truly no simple task.

A "knock-knock" sound echoed. Karasawa, who had been sprawled out on the bed like a salted fish, suddenly flipped himself up into a sitting position, quickly struck a pose, and straightened his expression before replying, "The door isn't locked."

When Toru Amuro pushed the door open and entered, what he met face-to-face was the dark muzzle of a gun.

With calm and ashen eyes, Akira Karasawa cowered in the corner of the bed, holding a pitch-black handgun and aiming it straight at the doorway.

"You're all liars. My mom and dad were, and so are you." Karasawa no longer had the intense emotions he displayed during the day; his eyes were merely hollow. "'What a guardian is supposed to do'... It's so pathetic."

Looking at Karasawa's appearance, Toru Amuro felt a softening in his heart.

This child's guardians had indeed consistently failed in their duties.

Taking in the hands with which Karasawa gripped the gun, he did not respond to Karasawa's sarcasm. Instead, he took a step closer and said, "You've never fired a gun before... Put the weapon down. You'll hurt yourself this way."

"Don't come closer!" Karasawa immediately clenched his teeth, lifted his upper lip to bare them, and forced a ferocious and menacing expression. "Stay away from me."

His arms were extremely tense, and the veins on the back of his hands bulged as he gripped the weapon tightly. Seeing the bandages exposed at Karasawa's wrists and recalling the scene of bandaging his wounds in the attic a couple of days ago, Toru Amuro felt even more helpless.

"Relax, Karasawa. I have no intention of harming you." Toru Amuro raised his hands to show he was harmless and took another step forward, preparing to step in and snatch the gun from his hand. "I apologize for not telling you about your parents' deaths sooner, but please believe that I harbor no malice toward you whatsoever."

"I told you, stay away from me!" Karasawa shouted, his finger tightly hooked around the trigger. Toru Amuro was forced to halt his steps to avoid further provoking him.

Although he could guess from the posture that Karasawa did not know how to hold a gun correctly, the safety of the weapon in his hand had indeed been disengaged, and it could fire at any moment. Toru Amuro needed to avoid such an extreme situation from occurring as much as possible.

Did Karasawa know how to use a gun? Of course he did.

However, when it came to acting, Karasawa was dead serious. The acting skills that had gone unused during the day were now starving for action, and naturally, he had to play his role flawlessly without a single flaw.

"You're in cahoots with those people, aren't you? Framing me, forcing me to confess, and then arranging for you to monitor me... Watching me turn to you for help and pour my heart out to you, do you find me hilarious?" Karasawa then let out a genuine chuckle. "Just spell out what you people want from me. Cut the act."

Watching his agitated appearance, Toru Amuro quietly weighed his options internally.

Karasawa's emotions were clearly out of control right now. If he were to acknowledge Karasawa's suspicion from Bourbon's standpoint and directly demand answers with pressing questions like "Hand over the data" or "Tell me what your parents were researching," he could probably get the answers he wanted very quickly, and perhaps even acquire the object the Organization had been constantly pursuing.

However, this would also completely destroy the trust between Karasawa and himself, making it impossible to obtain any further information regarding Karasawa's case. In Karasawa's eyes, Toru Amuro would simply become one of the participants in the frame-up.

Therefore, he chose to proceed according to the prepared plan.

"...I am indeed monitoring you, but those people and I are not partners." Toru Amuro imperceptibly shifted a little closer. "Your parents were just as helpless as I am; neither of us are qualified guardians. But our desire to protect you is the same. Your parents entrusted you to me. I'm sorry, I can't take you away, but I won't let them hurt you."

This was a lie.

Toru Amuro merely guessed that Karasawa knew his parents had a secret contact, but he did not know who that specific person was.

He had to attempt to usurp this identity and package that morning's conversation as part of the message delivery. This was the optimal strategy to maintain Bourbon's operational needs while also lowering Karasawa's guard.

"I don't believe it." Karasawa's tense arms showed no sign of relaxing. "If that's true, why didn't you explain it clearly sooner?"

Karasawa indeed knew that a contact was communicating with his parents, and he did not know the person's identity; otherwise, his response would not have been "I don't believe it," but rather a denial such as "You're lying."

Believing his gamble had paid off, Toru Amuro breathed a sigh of relief.

"I told you, we are equally helpless." Toru Amuro sighed with well-feigned sorrow. "I'm not the only one keeping watch; they don't trust me. Telling you directly would only put both of us in danger."

His words were half true and half false. Furthermore, considering that the head of the other surveillance team was Rye, he felt not a single pang of guilt in shifting the blame—only regretting that he couldn't pass off an even bigger burden.

Karasawa stared into his face, as if waiting for something.

Toru Amuro gazed into his eyes, sensing a trace of hesitation and laxity in his expression, and realized the conversation had reached its most critical juncture.

Karasawa had never made direct contact with the secret contact, yet a regular exchange existed between them.

Based on this conjecture, after concluding the conflict with Karasawa earlier in the day, Rei Furuya had swiftly contacted the Zero Section, instructing them to check all of Akira Karasawa's communication methods—whether telephone, email, SNS, or forums. Any account that engaged in a stable, periodic dialogue with Karasawa, or one that was checked periodically, had to be investigated.

In the end, his exhausted and overworked subordinates helped him lock onto a suspicious account on an anonymous forum.

Earlier today, this account had once again posted a meaningless thread on the anonymous forum, which drastically escalated its suspicion.

Toru Amuro now had to say something—something that would make Karasawa believe he was that very person.

"'The weather is fine, I like spring, I hope everything is well, I am truly sorry.'" Toru Amuro repeated the content of the post they had tracked down, and then added a form of address with mild uncertainty, "Akira."

This was the romanization of Karasawa's given name, Akira, and it was also the signature used for every post made by that account. This was precisely the reason they had further zeroed in on the individual.

Having spoken those words, Toru Amuro raised his vigilance to the absolute maximum, awaiting Karasawa's reaction.

If he failed to secure his trust, the loaded weapon poised in Karasawa's hand would deal him a devastating frontal blow.

Karasawa slowly lowered the muzzle of the gun.

The fraction of a second before Toru Amuro prepared to break into a smile, Karasawa abruptly raised the gun once more, pressing it directly beneath his own chin.

"Goodbye." Karasawa wore a triumphant smile and pulled the trigger.

Toru Amuro felt his heart contract violently, his blood freezing for a fleeting instant at the motion.

"Don't!" Toru Amuro lunged toward Karasawa almost reflexively, attempting to push aside the hand holding the weapon, with no regard for the possibility that a close-range gunshot might injure him as well.

Yet the moment he grasped the gun in Karasawa's hand, Toru Amuro froze.

Knocked backward by Toru Amuro's tackle, the back of Karasawa's head struck the wall. He let out a hiss of pain and hastily released his grip to cradle his head.

Toru Amuro looked down at the gun he had just snatched away.

It had undergone a certain degree of modification with a flawless paint job. Without holding it up for close inspection, even Toru Amuro, who had handled numerous firearms, hadn't noticed. But no matter how convincingly it mimicked a real weapon, this was merely a toy gun that could only fire BB pellets.

"...Akira Karasawa!" Uttering Karasawa's name one syllable at a time, watching Karasawa begin to laugh with unbridled abandon, Toru Amuro felt as though he was about to be driven to fury.

The damn kid had clearly believed him, yet he still had to fire a blank at himself just to test his reaction!

"Hahaha, were you scared?" Karasawa grinned boyishly. "You're the one who scared me first. I spent the whole afternoon terrified that a few people would suddenly burst in, drag me off directly, or simply sink me into Tokyo Bay..."

"Slap!" Irritated, Toru Amuro brought a hand down sharply on the top of Karasawa's head, causing him to wince and clutch his head again, cutting off the impudent remarks spilling from his mouth.

...Did a so-called "middleman" exist? Of course not.

Karasawa's source of information was none other than Shuichi Akai, who had appeared right before his eyes.

The account Toru Amuro had tracked down was actually a burner account used by the original Akira Karasawa on an anonymous message board. It was hosted on a server using a dedicated timed program, automatically sending a letter he had written to his parents—one that could never be mailed—at a fixed time every month.

With the triumphant smile of someone who had pulled off a successful prank, Karasawa straightened up once more.

Now that Toru Amuro had a new cover identity and he himself had a new role dynamic, they could finally begin exchanging deeper information.

No one lost; it was a total win-win, right?