Just one more body man, no biggie.
This manga becomes so much better with kyoichi around, why even try and play it like he was out of the picture?
As i see it Kanai's death was not kyoichi's fault, Kanai was killed by the author, his writing skills lacked so he sacrificed the nicest bro just to get kyoichi back into the plot, and he did it by having kyoichi acting out of character by having him fall into a "moment of weakness".