Spoilers follow for Japanese episodes 1164–1166, including the chess-tournament solution and major revelations in the Rum storyline.
The 17-Year-Old Truth (The Bloody Knight), Japanese episode 1164 (international episode 1222), opens a manga-based story from Volume 104. At a chess tournament, Naoto Kishitani is found dead and a knight-shaped charm links Ninzaburo Shiratori to the scene. This installment sets up the murder mystery and the connections to a crime committed seventeen years earlier.
The tournament case is resolved in Japanese episode 1165 (international episode 1223), revealing Kinji Ohgawara as the killer. Japanese episode 1166 (international episode 1224) opens with Hyoue Kuroda seeking Conan’s advice about a similar dying message from the old case. This guide includes those later developments as follow-up context for episode 1164.
A lucky knight places Shiratori under suspicion
Conan, Haibara and the Detective Boys accompany their teachers, Sumiko Kobayashi and Rumi Wakasa, to support Ninzaburo Shiratori at a chess tournament in Haido. Kobayashi gives Shiratori a knight-shaped key chain as a good-luck charm. Conversation among the players establishes that other competitors also have habits or superstitions around the game.
Shiratori’s first opponent is Kuroda of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, who defeats him. A much worse surprise follows when the knight charm appears at a murder scene. A personal gift that should have helped his confidence instead becomes a reason to question whether he is involved.
The dead competitor is Naoto Kishitani, found in a restroom after apparent crossbow attacks on tournament participants. The principal suspects are fellow players Kinji Ohgawara, Kunikazu Kisaki and Kurumi Shiroi. Shiratori is also drawn into the inquiry because of the charm, but the key to the case lies in how the attacks were staged and how Kishitani used the knight.
Follow-up spoilers: Japanese episode 1165 (international episode 1223). The next three sections explain the tournament case’s solution, following the setup in episode 1164.
Ohgawara pretends to be another target
Before the murder is discovered, Ohgawara appears to be attacked while drinking iced tea. His glass shatters and his arm is injured, creating the impression that a crossbow bolt has just struck. He has actually prepared this incident himself.
The breaking glass comes from a Prince Rupert’s drop placed in the drink. Breaking the drop makes the glass burst; a bolt already planted in his bag supplies the apparent projectile evidence. The visible injury and wreckage persuade the witnesses that he has narrowly escaped the same attacker who is threatening the other players.
Ohgawara deliberately loses his match and summons Kishitani to the restroom by email. He also stages an attack on Kisaki near a vending machine: a recorded impact sound plays from a phone, Kisaki’s jacket is cut, and another bolt has already been placed beside the machine. These incidents make a single murderer’s preparations look like a series of attacks by an unseen outsider.
A false cleaning sign keeps people away from the restroom while Kishitani waits inside. Ohgawara kills him there with the crossbow. The apparent earlier attack on Ohgawara helps him pose as a fellow victim and gives the police a misleading framework for interpreting the sequence.
The fountain pen used to break the glass drop becomes a possible physical link to the deception. The deduction identifies blood on that pen as potentially decisive evidence. It is a proposed evidential test, rather than a laboratory result already reported in this account.
The knight turns a crossword into a chessboard
Kishitani leaves a bloodied handprint on a crossword puzzle, with the knight resting on it. The grid has to be read as a chessboard. His habit of turning the knight toward himself establishes the board’s orientation, even though the piece has reached the far side.
Once that orientation is understood, the bloody handprint indicates the king’s side. The name clue depends on Japanese wordplay: the king’s side can be expressed as ō-gawa, which points toward Ohgawara. The message is not a simple English rebus; the direction, the victim’s habitual placement and the Japanese reading have to work together.
Amazing Grace reveals the grievance behind the murder
Ohgawara’s motive reaches back to a chess player who died the previous year. During a match, Amazing Grace had sounded, and the player looked toward his own bag before checking that his phone was not ringing. He was nevertheless suspected of having switched the sound off himself.
The accusation devastated him, and he later died by suicide. His note denied that he had played the tune. Ohgawara believed the denial and used the same music at the present tournament to expose the person responsible for the earlier setup.
When the melody plays again, other competitors look around for its source, but Kishitani looks toward his own bag. Ohgawara takes that distinctive response as the sign that Kishitani had engineered the original incident. The murder is his revenge for what happened to the other player.
The repeated tune is therefore doing two different jobs in the story. It recalls the humiliation behind Ohgawara’s motive, and it is the behavioral test he uses to identify his target. Explaining that reasoning does not turn his private judgment into a justification for killing Kishitani.
From the opening episode to its continuation: The character discussion below connects episode 1164’s clues with later developments in Japanese episodes 1165–1166 (international episodes 1223–1224).
Why Wakita, Wakasa and Kuroda matter together
The opening at the Mouri Detective Agency plants the older case before Conan begins investigating the tournament. Kanenori Wakita delivers sushi to Kogoro and Ran in the rain. Hearing that Conan has gone to a chess event triggers an image of the dead Koji Haneda and Wakita’s earlier appearance in a dark suit and hat.
Wakita has already been revealed as Rum by this point in the story. His memory directly connects that identity with Haneda’s death. The monocle over his left eye also draws attention to how he looked in the past, although this brief scene alone does not explain the eye’s full history.
The three characters once treated as Rum candidates are thus present in different roles. Wakita is the revealed Organization member; earlier events suggest Kuroda’s connection to the Public Security Bureau; Wakasa’s unresolved background is now tied to Amanda. Their shared appearance matters because the story begins to explain why all three had seemed connected to the same mystery.
Wakasa is Asaka, but her questions about Haibara remain questions
Kuroda and Wakasa speak again, and the accompanying recollection shows a younger Wakasa acting as Amanda Hughes’s bodyguard. This connects the teacher to Asaka, who disappeared after the American case and had long been an important person for investigators to locate. Identifying the missing bodyguard does not itself make her the murderer.
Wakasa also keeps testing Haibara. When Haibara demonstrates chess knowledge, Wakasa asks whether her parents taught her. Later, Haibara’s recognition of the Prince Rupert’s drop prompts another challenge about whether she is really an elementary-school child. The questions focus attention on Haibara’s knowledge and family.
These exchanges suggest that Wakasa suspects there is more to Haibara than her apparent age allows. They do not, by themselves, confirm exactly what Wakasa knows about Shiho Miyano. Haibara’s composed response makes the scene tense, but her lack of panic is also not a complete statement of what either woman knows.
Kuroda remembers another marked knight
The knight in the tournament case brings back Kuroda’s memory of another crime scene: a chess knight marked red around the eyes, with a wristwatch hanging from it, beside the dead Amanda Hughes. The younger Kuroda was present there. His connection to the Haneda case does not depend merely on speculation about his guarded behavior.
Kuroda has both eyes in that recollection. The contrast with his present appearance raises the possibility that the old case was connected to his later injury and long period of unconsciousness. At this stage, however, the image does not establish the full sequence of that injury.
In the follow-up after the tournament case is solved, Kuroda calls Conan into a private room and shows him photographs of Amanda’s dying message. Red marks appear around both eyes of the knight, and the accompanying watch bears a lipstick mark. Those details belong to Amanda’s message; they do not belong to the present-day crossword clue that identifies Ohgawara.
The two knights give the story its transition. Conan has explained a fresh murder through the arrangement of a chess piece, and Kuroda now asks him to consider an arrangement left seventeen years earlier. The tournament case closes while a much larger account opens: what happened to Amanda, Haneda, Asaka and Kuroda inside that hotel?
The appeal of this opening and its continuation lies in that overlap. A gift from Kobayashi first becomes suspicious evidence, then a solved clue, then an echo of a different death. Wakasa’s identity and Kuroda’s firsthand knowledge move the Rum storyline forward, while the unanswered questions about their knowledge and injuries preserve the need to hear the rest of the history.
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