Seeing the awkward look on Inspector Megure's face, Shirakawa Noriyuki understood the answer to that question. He clenched his fists.
"What the hell have you cops been doing?! The first attack was reported so long ago, yet you still haven't caught the culprit?!
"If you'd caught that bastard sooner, Tae wouldn't have suffered something like this!—Her death is entirely your fault! You useless idiots!"
Seeing that he was going too far, his female confidante hurriedly stopped him. "Noriyuki, calm down!"
Inspector Megure, however, did not get angry. Listening to those all-too-familiar insults, he froze in place as a beautiful, youthful face quietly surfaced from the depths of his memories.
She was a long-haired high school girl. Holding her friend's corpse, tears in her eyes, she had shouted angrily:
"Useless!"
"Good-for-nothing!"
"You police are nothing but a bunch of idiots!"
After a while, the expression on that face gradually turned into a brazen smile. "What's so surprising about that? Didn't you hear me? I'm going to be the bait."
Later still, the high school girl was covered in blood. As he lifted her from the ground, she muttered intermittently, "I guess it really didn't go as smoothly as it does in the movies..."
"..." Inspector Megure hissed and clutched his head through his hat.
Jiang Xia turned to look at him. "What's wrong?"
The female confidante was also startled. Insulting the police was one thing, but if they actually angered these overworked civil servants into dropping dead, that would be troublesome. She hurriedly apologized for Shirakawa Noriyuki.
"Noriyuki only said those awful things because he's overwhelmed with grief... Please don't take them to heart. We all know you've already done your best."
Inspector Megure shook his head tiredly. "It's nothing. Besides, he wasn't wrong."
Shirakawa Noriyuki snorted and turned away.
Seeing