Intentional Homicide

Ishikawa's expression stiffened again.

Lin Xinyi's earlier performance had given him the feeling that his mind was transparent before this man, that he simply could not hide any secrets.

Even so, Ishikawa forced himself to look at Lin Xinyi again.

This concerned the rest of his life. Even if there was a tough opponent constantly disrupting things, he had to keep acting:

"O-of course."

"Anyone could tell that killing Uchida would only bring me trouble."

"How could I possibly kill him on purpose?"

"Not necessarily."

Lin Xinyi refuted him without hesitation:

"People sometimes lose sight of reason. It's perfectly normal for them to decide to kill."

"And as long as you clearly knew at the time that your harmful actions could cause death, it could not be considered negligent homicide."

"B-but..."

Ishikawa craned his neck and stubbornly argued:

"I accidentally killed Uchida!"

"Can you find any evidence proving that I did it on purpose?"

"Of course I can."

Lin Xinyi answered calmly and steadily:

"Because I can sense exactly what kind of pain the victim suffered."

As he spoke, he crouched beside the corpse again.

Everyone's eyes gathered on Lin Xinyi once more.

Even Miyano Shiho, who had initially shown no interest in the case at all, was unconsciously drawn in by Lin Xinyi's performance.

"Let me boldly reconstruct what the victim experienced before his death."

"First, we can see obvious restraint marks on both of the victim's wrists."

"To some extent, this shows that Ishikawa may indeed not have intended to kill at first. He merely wanted to teach Uchida a lesson."

"So, after bringing Uchida into this deserted alley, at the beginning of the bullying, the culprit's accomplice tightly gripped Uchida's wrists and restrained him so he could not move."

"If I'm not mistaken, while Uchida was restrained, the culprit bullied him."

"And in order to keep their bullying from being exposed, bullies generally avoid attacking their victim's exposed areas, where injuries would be impossible to conceal."

"They only strike places that clothing can cover, such as the victim's chest, abdomen, and back. So, if we cut open the victim's clothes..."

Lin Xinyi paused his explanation and reached into the toolbox Officer Komatsu handed him for a pair of scissors.

Then, with practiced ease, he cut open the victim's clothes, exposing Uchida's chest and abdomen.

"This..."

The onlookers cried out in alarm.

There were simply too many bruises across Uchida's chest and abdomen.

His body was densely covered in irregular abrasions, intradermal hemorrhaging, and subcutaneous hemorrhaging. From his neck down, there was not a single patch of uninjured skin.

No forensic knowledge was needed for anyone with eyes to see what kind of violence this poor young man had suffered before his death.

For a moment, everyone looked at Ishikawa with disgust.

Mouri Ran, with her strong sense of empathy, clenched her fists tightly, her eyes full of sympathy.

The remorseful, anguished image Ishikawa had created instantly collapsed.

He simply threw caution to the wind, gritted his teeth, and shouted at Lin Xinyi:

"S-so what?"

"Didn't I admit that I bullied Uchida?"

"You said yourself that Uchida died of suffocation, not from being beaten to death."

"Don't argue with me."

"I'm merely stating the facts."

Lin Xinyi paid no attention to Ishikawa's shouting and merely continued in an even tone:

"Uchida's chest and abdomen were subjected to repeated, continuous, multiple violent blows."

"Injuries of this severity were highly likely to cause internal chest bleeding and organ damage, seriously impairing his breathing function. This was also one of the important reasons the victim later died of suffocation."

"During this time, as the victim of bullying, Uchida should have begged the culprit for mercy, pleading with him to hold back."

"But the culprit did not let Uchida go."

"Not only did he refuse to let Uchida go, but because of certain reactions from Uchida, coupled with his own impulsiveness and escalating emotions, he intensified the bullying."

"So at that point, the culprit stopped punching and went further, grabbing Uchida's neck with one hand."

"..."

By then, Ishikawa's expression had become extremely ugly.

Only now did he understand what Aoki had meant when he said, "That man saw everything."

Everything Lin Xinyi said was correct:

At the time, he really had been giving Uchida his usual lesson. Of course, in order to force Uchida to sign the settlement agreement, Ishikawa had hit him a little harder than usual.

But Uchida had been very uncooperative.

He insisted that he had already forgiven Ishikawa and the others, and that the settlement agreement had been submitted to the principal.

Naturally, Ishikawa did not believe such an utterly clumsy lie:

What a joke.

I haven't even come to beat you up, and you already obediently forgave me?

This is nothing more than a delaying tactic. If I believed him that easily, he would probably run to the police and complain again after getting away.

Besides, so what if he really had forgiven us?

He still hadn't paid for going to the police last time!

If I didn't beat this rebellious thorn into submission and use Uchida as a negative example to scare the others, how could I, Ishikawa, continue getting by at school?

Only by making Uchida hurt could I make him recognize his "mistake," obediently become a slave in the future, and stop running to the police like last time.

So, just as originally planned, Ishikawa gave Uchida an exceptionally profound "lesson."

After a round of violent beating, Ishikawa discovered that although Uchida had been beaten to the point where he could barely speak, he was still struggling to reach into his pocket.

Ishikawa stopped punching, grabbed the hand Uchida had slipped into his pocket, and pulled it out to look.

It was a cellphone.

Uchida had been reaching for his phone.

He was obviously trying to secretly call the police for help.

Thinking of Uchida's prior offense of going to the police, Ishikawa became even angrier.

He felt that the lesson he had given Uchida was not deep enough. Only by beating him even harder could he cure Uchida's bad habit of running to complain whenever something happened.

So Ishikawa grabbed Uchida's neck with his hand, intending to let Uchida experience the terror of what it meant to disobey and die.

"At that moment, the victim's neck was gripped by the culprit with one hand."

While Ishikawa recalled what had happened, Lin Xinyi reconstructed the scene:

"Pressure on his neck, combined with his previous injuries, immediately made it difficult for him to breathe."

"Like all victims of suffocation, Uchida began instinctively struggling and resisting."

"During the struggle, his hand caught Ishikawa's arm, leaving a deep scratch on it."

"And that was where things completely spiraled out of control."

As he spoke, Lin Xinyi looked at Ishikawa:

"Bullies usually have the arrogance of seeing themselves as 'higher animals.'"

"They simply cannot tolerate resistance from the weak, much less accept being injured because of it."

"So, he released the hand gripping Uchida's neck and switched to an even more brutal method of abuse."

"Hm?"

Kudo Shinichi, standing nearby, immediately caught on:

"You mean the victim did not actually suffocate to death because his neck was strangled?"

"That's right."

Lin Xinyi nodded:

"The ligature marks on his neck are not very obvious, which shows that Ishikawa's force and the duration of the strangulation were relatively limited."

"Of course, that alone cannot fully prove it. What matters is..."

"Look at the outside of Uchida's right forearm."

He lifted the victim's right arm so everyone could see the wounds on its outer side:

"From the elbow to the wrist, there are continuous, extensive bluish-purple bruises along the ulnar side of the entire forearm."

"Such continuous, extensive, strip-shaped injuries are extremely rare."

"How do you think they were formed?"

"Uh..." The crowd hesitated, but Mouri Ran was the first to react.

This beautiful companion of the great detective was always more perceptive than the detective himself when it came to feeling the victim's pain:

"The outer ulnar side of the forearm is often used to block outward during a fight."

"But injuries caused by blocking could not be continuous and extensive like this. This shape looks more like it was caused by being pressed against some hard flat surface, so I think..."

"Uchida may have been pushed to the ground by the culprit before his death."

"And he braced himself against the ground with his forearm, trying to get up, which was why the outer ulnar side was injured like this."

Mouri Ran hesitantly voiced her thoughts:

"But simply getting up from the ground would not require much force, and it would not be enough to injure someone."

"So I think, at that time..."

"Someone probably stepped on Uchida's back, holding him down and preventing him from getting up."

"Uchida tried again and again to rise, but the culprit stomped him back down every time. Because he kept struggling in pain, the bruising on the outer side of his arm became so obvious."

By this point, as if she could feel it herself, Ran's expression had grown heavy.

"That's right."

Lin Xinyi looked at Mouri Ran with appreciation.

This girl was much easier to teach than Officer Komatsu. She had real talent:

"The culprit held Uchida down on the ground for a long time. The bruising on the outer side of his forearm proves it."

"But considering that Uchida died of suffocation, what the culprit stepped on was probably not Uchida's back, but..."

"His far more lethal neck."

As he spoke, Lin Xinyi gently turned the corpse over, revealing the victim's nape.

The victim's hair was not short, and his nape had been covered by it, so nothing could be seen.

But when Lin Xinyi reached out and brushed aside the victim's hair—

Another cry of alarm immediately rose from the crowd:

"T-this is a shoeprint?!"

Yes. An incomparably clear shoeprint remained on Uchida's nape.

The shoeprint had been stamped into the victim's flesh and blood.

As a result, the entirety of Uchida's nape showed extensive skin loss and subcutaneous hemorrhaging. It was a horrifying sight.

"The tread mark on the nape is clearly more severe than the strangulation mark on the front of the neck."

"And the bruising on the outer side of the forearm further proves that the victim was held down on the ground for an extended period."

"So even without an autopsy, I can infer that the victim died from mechanical asphyxiation caused by pressure on the back of his neck."

Lin Xinyi calmly stated his conclusion.

Then he stared straight at Ishikawa, his gaze turning sharp:

"A person's trachea is in the front of the neck, not the back."

"Grabbing someone's neck from the front kills them faster."

"But if you step on someone's neck from behind, Ishikawa, do you know how long it takes to kill someone?"

Ishikawa's face went pale, and he remained silent.

"You should know."

Lin Xinyi said coldly:

"Because you stepped on his neck for several full minutes."

"That was long enough for you to recognize the consequences of your actions, long enough for you to know that you were killing someone."

"But you never lifted your foot. Never!"

"Because you had already formed the intent to kill."

"Perhaps it was because of anger and impulse, perhaps because of the pleasure of killing. In the end..."

"You killed him—intentionally!"