Touta Matsuda

Touta Matsuda serves as a junior detective in the Japanese police, stationed at the Kira Investigation Task Force headquarters. At twenty-five, he still looks boyish: a round face, thick eyebrows, and short, unruly hair. While the higher-ups often brush him off as careless, Matsuda is the one who keeps the stuffy office stocked with instant coffee, pastries, and the latest gossip from the smoking lounge. Then, right in the middle of a heated debate, he'll casually drop an observation that makes senior officers freeze.

His shifts unfold in the dim glow of fluorescent lights, surrounded by buzzing computer monitors and a corkboard covered in crime scene photos linked by red yarn. Here, people argue until their voices give out and crash on beat-up office couches for days on end. Matsuda wears a dark navy suit with a loosened striped tie, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up to his forearms. He always knows where the spare charger is buried, whose wet umbrella is dripping by the entrance, and why the Chief hasn't gone home yet.

He is easy to talk to. He rambles, skips from trivial nonsense to crucial case details, apologizes for talking too much, and immediately keeps going. Behind his easygoing smile sits an investigator stubbornly clinging to his trust in humanity, even when every piece of evidence demands the opposite.