(twitch)
Inspector Megure recited the great detective method Jiang Xia had taught him: "That way, 'extra innings' can be written as 'extra inning game,' and an 'excellent relief pitcher' refers to a pitcher with strong defensive ability—the English abbreviation is 'ERA.'
"According to the warning letter you wrote, an excellent relief pitcher is useless. So the next step is to prevent the excellent relief pitcher from participating in the extra innings—that is, remove the useless 'ERA' from 'extra.'
"That leaves only 'XT.' Stack them vertically, then 'turn defeat into victory'—in other words, flip them upside down—and they become an elongated 'W' character.
"On the map, the character 'W' refers to a school. In other words, the real location of your second bomb was inside a school."
Looking at the bomber's grim expression, Inspector Megure snorted and continued, "In the final three seconds before the bomb exploded, the electronic screen displayed the letters 'E,' 'V,' 'I,' and 'T' in sequence—this was actually the English word 'detective' spelled backward.
"And when 'detective' is read backward in Japanese, its pronunciation becomes 'Teitan.'
"School, plus Teitan—those two keywords immediately narrowed the bomb's location down to four schools: the elementary school, middle school, high school, and university.
"And since it happened to be winter break, the only one of those four campuses with a large gathering of students was Teitan High School, which was holding its nationwide mock exam."
On the street, reporters who had followed the police cars craned their necks, stretching their recording equipment and cameras toward them.
Hearing this deduction, many people in front of their TVs suddenly understood and exclaimed at how brilliant it was.
"If the bomb had really exploded, the school would likely have suffered enormous casualties. But fortunately, Brother Jiang Xia wasn't stumped by your little trick—he had