Conan and Ran are visiting Heiji and Kazuha in Osaka when the four come across a trio of kids while touring the city. These children, who look eerily similar to the Detective Boys but with different personalities, are looking for their friend who has gone missing—and the two young detectives agree to help find the vanished boy.

Mori Kogoro was invited to make an introduction in an episode of a popular detective TV serial. The star of the show revealed himself to be very disagreeable with the rest of the cast, one of whom, Ruri Amaki (雨城 琉璃, Amaki Ruri?) turned out to be a fellow classmate of Kogoro when they were children. Ruri revealed to Ran and Conan who were present that she, Kogoro, and Kisaki, were classmates since kindergarten. Ran and Conan learned that the brainy Kisaki and the underachiever Kogoro seemed inexplicably drawn to each other, to quarrel. As the other classmates suspected, time showed that the arguments were intended to disguise their mutual attraction. The star challenged Kogoro to solve the mystery of the murder scene being filmed. To prevent Kogoro from embarrassing himself, Conan used the tranquilizer dart on Kogoro and cracked the puzzle with the clues present. During a break in the filming, the star was discovered with his throat slit, with Ruri over the body and her hands bloody.