The Youthful You Who Was So Beautiful

Twenty Nine

Patrick swiftly sat in front of Sebastian, but the youth still insisted on one condition, "The would inflicted by Eliza onto Lily is not deep. Lily was murdered by Will, so Eliza should not be convicted of any crime."

Before Patrick could even formulate a response to Sebastian, Sebastian's lawyer interjected, "I understand your concern. Don't worry, if the police officers do level charges against Eliza and attempt to prosecute her, I guarantee that I would be more than capable of mounting a successful defense for Eliza."

Patrick hesitated before caving, "What I'm about to disclose is not appropriate given my role as a police officer. However – I just wanted to let you know that we do not, at present, have any evidence on hand which proves that Eliza had injured or murdered Lily. In particular, we are especially lacking in physical evidence."

Upon receiving Patrick's confirmation, Sebastian nodded.

He wasn't responsible for Lily's murder.

By the time he had arrived at the hill behind the school compound, Lily was already dead.

He conducted a quick check of Lily's corpse, and saw that there was only one single wound which had been inflicted onto Lily. It was a very deep cut. Aside from that, he was simply unable to locate any other cuts or open wounds on Lily's corpse. If Eliza had used a knife to stab Lily, the necessary inference to be made was that Eliza had, whilst tussling with Lily, unintentionally murdered her.

There was a bloodied hand print on Lily's shirt. Stretching out his hand, Sebastian compared the size of the bloodied hand print against his, and immediately concluded that the hand print belonged to Eliza.

Curious, Patrick asked Sebastian what he felt upon making such a discovery. Sebastian responded,

He was extremely calm. For the minutest second, Sebastian wanted to lodge a police report, but that idea was quickly overturned. Involving the police officers meant that Eliza's action of bringing a knife to meet Lily would be placed under extreme scrutiny – the police officers would investigate whether, from an objective point of view, Lily evinced any intention and/or inclination of wanting to murder or cause grievous harm to Eliza, and the police officers would, more likely than not, conclude that there was no such intention and/or inclination – so the argument of 'self-defense' is unlikely to work. Regardless of whether the police officers discovered that Lily was the mastermind behind Eliza's bullying incident, or questioned Eliza's motives in bringing a knife to meet Lily, both of these clues would cause irreparable damage and harm to Eliza's credibility.

Sebastian hurriedly concocted a plan – to disguise himself as the raincoat man. Without a moment's hesitation, Sebastian returned home and retrieved the vibrator which his mum had left in the drawer, and utilized the vibrator to create a false image of Lily having been sexually assaulted. Will possessed numerous raincoats which were near identical to each other; coincidentally, Sebastian had earlier borrowed one such raincoat from Will, and simply hadn't found the time to return it to Will. Sebastian decided to put this particular raincoat to good use, and pressed Lily's fingernails against the raincoat, causing several scratch marks to be left on the raincoat.

Having created sufficient "evidence" of a struggle between the raincoat man and Lily, Sebastian proceeded to transport Lily's corpse to the upper reaches of the San Shui river, and buried Lily within the marsh – he had hoped that the marsh would assist to preserve Lily's corpse, so that in the event Lily's corpse was discovered in the future, the police officers would be able to quickly discover that the murderer was a male. However, he had little choice but to strip Lily naked – the shirt had to be removed, as it contained Eliza's hand print.

He knew that the torrential downpour that night would cover his motorcycle tracks; he also knew, that there was little to no human traffic in the area surrounding the marsh – the best outcome of his plan was that, Lily's corpse would remain quietly hidden forever.