Kummel—an intense, sweet liqueur made primarily from spices like anise and dill. Due to the calming effect of its main ingredient, anise, it's often used as a digestif.
The same day he received his codename, Kazawa spent quite a while researching it, trying to figure out just what kind of liquor he was supposed to be.
And what he found was a colorless, sweet herbal liqueur—fairly obscure, fairly strong—but that wasn't the point.
The point was...
Kummel, mixed with gin and lemon juice, formed the classic cocktail: Silver Bullet.
Kazawa's hand trembled slightly. He almost emailed the boss right then and there to ask for clarification.
"What do you mean by this? Is this some kind of foreshadowing?"
"Does this organization have some weird ceremonial obsession with fake liquor or something?"
Thinking that far, Kazawa frowned and muttered, "Weird codename. Not a fan."
But at this point, wasn't it already too late to complain? Amuro glanced at him, choosing to set aside the strange high schooler logic for now, and went back to pressing: "That video—was it a collaboration between you two?"
"That video, huh..." Kazawa chuckled awkwardly and looked up at the sky.
No way that was just a collaboration.
Using only makeup effects or post-editing tricks wouldn't fool someone like Gin. And while Hikari Hoshikawa was trained by the organization, she was still too young to pull off such a disturbingly lifelike performance.
So Kazawa, naturally, donned the disguise himself.
As for the props used, it was pretty clear now—it was none other than Amuro's Palace.
Once again referencing the P5 "Escape from the Shell" scenario, what Kazawa needed was a cognition dummy of himself—someone with the exact same appearance, someone who could bleed on command and convincingly embody a righteous persona.
The most likely match? Of course, it had to be Zero's Palace.
After all, Amuro was the one Kazawa had interacted with most since arriving in Tokyo. His impression of Kazawa had always been that of a "decent youth," more than good enough to qualify.
If that hadn't worked, he would've had to resort to camera trickery—chopping up scenes with Hikari's help, and then stabbing himself a few times. He had passive skills that could keep him alive at 0 HP, after all. Getting stabbed wasn't a big deal. No way he was stabbing Hikari.
Thankfully, he managed to find a cognitive Kazawa in Amuro's Palace, in an attic space that perfectly mirrored reality—exactly what he had imagined.
Faking it with a Palace was so much easier. After the job was done, he simply shot the cognitive Kazawa, and within moments, the body dissolved into black sludge and evaporated. Clean and harmless.
And that's how the perfect "I killed myself" video came to be.
Kazawa kept dodging the question, saying ambiguously, "Yeah, something like that... pretty convincing, huh?"
"Convincing" didn't even begin to cover it. The video had zero signs of digital manipulation—every wound and blood spatter looked disgustingly real. It was shot in a single take, no cuts, no edits. The only reason Amuro didn't receive the full video was likely because Gin had filtered it. The original timestamp ran for several uninterrupted hours.
Was this really just a staged performance...?
Amuro glanced at Kazawa, who was clearly hiding something. But when his eyes landed on that smooth, untouched face, the questions he wanted to blurt out suddenly got stuck in his throat.
That video had left a deep impact on Amuro. The entire trip back, those images kept flashing in his mind—Kazawa, bloodied and barely breathing, his face slashed and ruined.
So instead, what came out was:
"You're really okay? The whole thing was fake?"
"...Of course." Kazawa nodded, flashing a sly grin.
...Was it really fake? Not entirely.
Kazawa hadn't sustained any real injuries. He had been the one doing the stabbing, using Akechi's disguise. Even the blood on him vanished after the cognitive Kazawa disappeared—he didn't even need a shower.
But even as the one holding the knife, it wasn't an easy job.
"Well, that's a wrap for today's shoot. Gin-senpai, don't forget to check your inbox."
Kazawa leaned in close to the camera, his bloodstained cheek pressed against the lens, then hit "stop recording." Calmly, he transferred the footage to his laptop and sent it to Gin's email.
Then he suddenly doubled over, clutching his throat, dry heaving violently—as if trying to cough out something stuck deep in his esophagus.
"...Hey, Kazawa!"
Hikari, who had been fiddling with a strip of plastic nearby, was startled. She shot up and rushed to support him.
Kazawa's body was trembling. Feeling Hikari hold him up, he clutched her wrist tightly.
"You're hyperventilating," she muttered, her fingers turning pale from the strength of his grip. With Kazawa's current strength—amplified by combat buffs—his grip was no joke. Still, she helped him straighten up and guided his breathing. "Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale... calm down, Kazawa. What's wrong?"
Kazawa took deep, ragged breaths, his face drenched in cold sweat.
He had been an undercover agent in that twisted organization for six years, even serving as middle management. A dramatic scene like that should've been nothing to him.
But he'd clearly underestimated the trauma that interrogation had left behind.
By the latter half of the shoot, his performance had grown increasingly deranged—not just for Akechi's insane persona, but also to mask his own growing distress.
The pain, the blood, the feeling of having chunks of flesh torn from his body, knees shattered with rods—just thinking about it made his stomach churn.
"Why go so extreme? You could've just filmed a simple interrogation scene and called it a day," Hikari muttered, shaking her numbed hand as Kazawa slowly steadied himself.
You're going way too far.jpg
"A simple interrogation? That's not worthy of a codename," Kazawa said, brushing the sweat-drenched hair from his forehead and peeling off his disguise. He slumped into the chair that moments ago had been soaked in blood. "And hey, I told you—use my codename when we're in here."
"Alright, alright, Joker," Hikari replied with a massive eye-roll, dragging out the katakana: ジョーカー.
"Now that's more like it." Kazawa finally pulled himself together, stood up, and said, "Let's get back to the real world. This gig's exhausting."
Hikari stretched her hand and nudged aside the blood-soaked plastic wrap with her foot. "If something like this comes up again, let me handle it."
Kazawa paused, then reached out and smacked her on the side of the head. "You looking down on me? Your leader can do anything, okay?"
Hikari felt the chill of his palm but didn't talk back. She just clenched her fists silently.
"I'm fine. Not a scratch on me," Kazawa said, pulling down his lower eyelid and making a face at Amuro. "Bet I scared you, huh? You can just admit you were worried."
"It's your turn to ask questions now," Amuro said, ignoring the smug brat's antics and jumping right back to business.
"Cool, my turn." Kazawa shrugged and thought for a moment. "You're not actually some 'secret contact of my parents,' are you? You found out by other means, didn't you... Can you tell me how exactly?"