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# Chapter 127: What I Saw from the Witness Stand
The fluorescent lights of the courtroom were nothing like those in a hospital. Hospital lights were the lights of preparation for death—cold, merciless, stripping away all pretense. Courtroom lights, on the other hand, were lights that exposed truth. Seo-ah felt the difference the moment she took her seat in the witness stand. A brightness that was cold yet fair. A brightness that hid nothing from anyone.
“You are Na Seo-ah, correct?”
The judge’s voice was gentler than she expected. Seo-ah couldn’t look up. Her hands were trembling. Four days since she’d set down the lighter, and her fingers still wanted to strike it. Whether that was addiction or a way to steady herself, she couldn’t say. But they trembled.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“What is your relationship to the defendant, Kang Ri-u?”
The lawyer’s question landed like a blow to her chest. Defendant. That word transformed him into something legal, official, irreversible.
Seo-ah swallowed. Her throat was dry. She should drink the water provided in the courtroom, but raising her hand would only make the trembling more visible.
“We were in a relationship. And then… we weren’t anymore.”
It was the most honest answer she could give. And yet the most incomplete. In a relationship—those words were too light to describe how he’d treated her. But courts move only in light language. Heavy truths must be translated into lighter words.
The lawyer raised a document. Seo-ah knew what it was. Hospital records. Documentation of contusions. A catalog of every wound she’d sustained in the emergency room. Reading them and experiencing them were entirely different things. Reading them was objective. Living through them was absolute.
“According to these hospital records, you sustained six contusions and two fractures. These came from the defendant?”
“Yes.”
“When did it begin?”
Seo-ah tried to calculate. When did it start? The first time he hit her? The first time he strangled her? The first time she resisted? The first time she stopped resisting? The moments overlapped. There was an hour of it, a month of it, a season of it.
“It’s difficult to say exactly when. It started slowly. At first it was the way he spoke—correcting me whenever I said something wrong. Then it became physical. Pressing on my shoulders, grabbing my arm. But it intensified. Like… like the temperature was rising.”
“What do you mean by the temperature rising?”
For the first time, Seo-ah looked directly at Kang Ri-u. At him sitting in the defendant’s chair. His fingers weren’t trembling. He seemed composed, or perhaps medicated. Seo-ah couldn’t tell. But when their eyes met, she recognized something missing from his. Life. Or guilt. Or something else entirely. Perhaps the capacity to ask himself what he was.
“At first, I thought his attention was love. His control was protection. His violence was passion. But the temperature kept rising. And at some point, I realized I was on fire. Slowly. That I was burning.”
The courtroom went silent. While the lawyer prepared his next question, Seo-ah looked at her hands. They weren’t trembling. They remained still as she spoke the truth from the witness stand.
“Did you ask the defendant for help?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Seo-ah recalled those moments. The times she’d asked him to let her go. The times she’d told him to just leave. The times she’d said she didn’t love him. But Ri-u had interpreted all of it as expressions of love. If she truly loved him, he believed, she would try to leave. So the more she tried to escape, the tighter he held her.
“I told him. I kept telling him. But he wouldn’t listen.”
“What do you mean, he wouldn’t listen?”
“He interpreted my words the way he wanted to. When I said ‘leave me alone,’ he thought I meant he needed to try harder. When I said ‘I don’t love you,’ he thought I was afraid. When I said ‘please let me go,’ he saw it as an opportunity to make me love him more.”
“In other words, your rejection only intensified his obsession?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
The lawyer raised another document. This one was unfamiliar to Seo-ah. Kang Ri-u’s history. His past. Perhaps previous relationships. Perhaps previous victims. Seo-ah realized she wasn’t his first. His “salvation” had been offered to many. Many had burned in his hands.
“Did the defendant ever force you into psychological treatment?”
Seo-ah remembered the first time she’d met him. In the dim lighting of a club. He’d said he would “save her.” With his warmth. With his hands. And she’d thought it was love. How long had it taken her to realize that salvation and love were different things? Too long.
“Yes. Many times. He said I was mentally ill. That I had trauma. That I needed his help. And at first… at first I believed him. That I was truly broken. That I truly needed him.”
“But you weren’t?”
“No. I wasn’t sick. I was just with him. And being with him is what made me sick.”
The courtroom fell silent again—a deeper silence this time, as if everyone paused to absorb the weight of her words.
“Have you forgiven the defendant?”
Seo-ah had anticipated this question. But anticipating and answering were different things. Forgiveness. What did that word mean? What did it mean for a victim to forgive her abuser?
“Not yet.”
“When do you think you will?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if forgiveness is a matter of time, or his change, or something else entirely. But right now, I think I need to forgive myself first. For accepting it. For not stopping myself from calling it love. For burning for so long.”
The judge made a note. Seo-ah couldn’t tell if it was about her or about him. But it didn’t matter. Her words were being recorded now. Her truth. Someone was listening.
“Does the defense have questions for the witness?”
The defense attorney rose. His face was one Seo-ah had already seen a thousand times. The face that wanted to say “this is a misunderstanding.” The face that wanted to say “you’re misremembering.” The face that wanted to insist “his love was real.”
“Do you acknowledge that the defendant provided you with material support?”
“Yes. He did.”
“And you never refused it?”
“I refused at first. But each time I refused, it got worse. So eventually I stopped refusing. But that doesn’t mean I wanted it. It was a matter of survival.”
“What do you mean by survival?”
“When I refused, the violence escalated. So accepting was safer.”
“So you’re saying you accepted his provisions to avoid violence?”
“Yes.”
“Then can we really call it violence? Or is it simply the dynamics of a relationship?”
Seo-ah took time with this question. It was carefully constructed—an attempt to reframe his violence as a normal part of their relationship. But she had already learned the difference. Relationship dynamics and violence were not the same. When one person submits to another out of fear, that wasn’t a relationship. That was domination.
“It’s violence. Violence dressed up in the name of a relationship.”
“Might there not be some subjectivity in your interpretation? For instance, might the defendant have been trying to protect you, which you interpreted as control?”
“No. I was clear about what I wanted. I expressed my feelings about his behavior. But my words were ignored. That’s domination. That’s violence.”
The attorney didn’t ask anything more. He simply sat down. It wasn’t defeat. It was strategy. Silence could be more effective than more questions. Let her words hang in the air long enough, and someone would begin to doubt them.
But Seo-ah wasn’t afraid of her own words falling. They were true. And truth, no matter how far it falls, never changes shape.
“Witness, is there anything you’d like to add?”
Seo-ah looked at the judge for the first time. His face was gentler than she’d expected. And tired. He’d probably seen many cases like this. People slowly catching fire. And a courtroom watching it happen.
“Yes.”
“Please proceed.”
Seo-ah looked at Kang Ri-u again. This time longer. His fingers. Still not trembling. Perhaps he’d set down his own lighter. Perhaps he’d realized he no longer needed to strike the flame.
“Everything he did to me was wrong. But not because he’s a bad person. He’s someone who can’t control himself. And people who can’t control themselves try to control others. That’s the root of all of this. So I testify to this: what he did to me wasn’t love. It was his own desperation. And I refuse to carry it as my own anymore.”
The courtroom fell silent once more—a different kind of silence. For the first time, a silence that held truth. And in that silence, Seo-ah looked at her hands. They were perfectly still.
“Thank you, witness. You’re dismissed.”
Seo-ah stood. She left the witness stand. The courtroom’s fluorescent lights were still bright. But now they didn’t feel cold anymore. They were fair lights. Lights that illuminated everyone equally. And in that light, Seo-ah understood for the first time that she was not invisible.
Hae-neul was waiting on the courthouse steps. The moment he saw her, he said nothing. Instead, he opened his arms. Seo-ah stepped into them. His dark tattoos wrapped around her. Each one was someone’s decision. Someone’s permanent mark. Like her testimony. Like the words she’d just placed into the court record.
“You did good. Really.”
Hae-neul murmured close to her ear.
“Yeah.”
“What now?”
Seo-ah looked down at the stairs. Below stretched the streets of Seoul. Cars. People. The ordinary pulse of the city. As if what happened in the courtroom existed in an entirely different world.
“I don’t know. But… four days since I set down the lighter. My hands aren’t shaking anymore.”
“Is that… good?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel like nothing. Like I’m not burning to do something. Like maybe I’m burning to become something. That’s what it feels like.”
Hae-neul laughed. It was a sad laugh. But it was a laugh.
“Then that’s enough. Then this is just the beginning.”
Together they descended the stairs. Seo-ah looked at her hands. They weren’t trembling. Not at all. Just like the hands of someone who had finally set down her lighter.