At Jiang Xia's words, Inspector Megure really did wave a hand on instinct and call out to the junior officers who had just received his orders, "Wait!"
But the moment he shouted, he regretted it. The bomb countdowns were ticking away without pause, and there was no telling how long it would take for the order to reach everyone. One second later could mean warning one less person—what if someone happened to pass by a trash can and got blown up?
Just as he was about to shout again and tell the junior officers to carry on, Jiang Xia's voice came through the receiver. "Those bombs are all fake."
Inspector Megure froze, then was immediately overwhelmed with joy. "Fake?"
Jiang Xia gave a quiet acknowledgment. "They're the kind of misleading option commonly found in Brain Teasers. Hirukawa placed them there only to make you think that 'the exact middle of 7' referred to those locations, thereby drawing the police's attention away."
Inspector Megure's excitement subsided somewhat. "But what if—what if there are real bombs among the misleading options too...?"
Jiang Xia said, "You still have the phone that was mailed together with the Picture Book sample, right? Is that Bomber still sending you messages?"
Only then did Inspector Megure remember it. He took out the phone, quiet as a dead mouse, and found that its messages still stopped over ten minutes ago. "No new messages. The last one was when we were at Tortoise and Hare Park: 'The final clock is to be sent to the exact middle of seven.'"
Now that Jiang Xia mentioned it, he belatedly found it strange. "Those newly discovered bombs only have a few minutes left on their countdowns... Why isn't that Bomber rushing me like before?"
—If he remembered correctly, when Takagi had carried