He had deep cuts that stretched from the ends of his lips to his cheeks.
So last Monday, a 14-year-old accompanied by a 17-year-old, also with injuries in the same places and much less serious, showed up at the hospital in Cernusco sul Naviglio, in the Milanese area.
"They attacked us", the teenage couple tried to explain, but the boy, heard by investigators in greater depth, spoke of a disturbing attempt to defy the pain.
"We did this test, you and I to verify how long we could resist, our pain threshold," the teenager told the Cassano d'Adda carabinieri who are conducting the investigations, coordinated by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office.
The cuts, especially those on the girl's face, were similar to the grin of Joker, the Batman antagonist recently brought to the cinema with the interpretation of Joaquin Phoenix.
In this case, however, as the prosecutor Ciro Cascone clarified, it is not possible to know whether or not there was a model to imitate in the intentions of the boys and it is not right either to "make these associations, because in this way a story that is of pure human suffering ".
It is, Cascone specified, "of two suffering boys, who must be helped, the association with Joker is deleterious, it is about self-injurious thrusts that have always existed among the boys and that in general can also be exacerbated by the lockdown, of wounds that are evident here and that children often do in silence ".
In any case, it is important not to "trigger emulation mechanisms - he added - here there is pure suffering and the need for help".