I was okay with being his “mistress”. It didn’t bother me that he spent most of his nights out of the apartment, or that the most I got some weeks was a reassuring text message. I wasn’t bothered when I had to hide in his office while he made love to her in the room down the hall - the room she referred to as ‘his’, and the one I called ‘ours’. I wasn’t heartbroken when he couldn’t make it to our anniversary dinner because she had a work party he was to attend. A little sad, but nothing I couldn’t get over. My expectations for the extent of our relationship were low from the start. They’d been dating for two years, and I’d moved in for only the sake of convenience. I played the role of the roommate when she was around, and the role of a secret lover when she wasn’t.

I remember the time she was in America for two weeks, and he held me so proudly. We laughed, we kissed, and we made love to each other in such a shameless way. We looked at each other in the dark, nothing but a sheet covering our bodies, and the window letting in a cool summer night’s breeze. Like a scene from a movie, but just a midsummer night’s dream.

I never lost my cool. I had gotten used to the way it worked. By 5 o’clock I would know if he was coming home, and I always had my phone by my side, waiting for a text. Though, it was more often than not that my phone screen did not light up my heart. Most nights I was left with a silent phone, and an empty apartment. But I was okay with that. When he was around, it was worth it. The rough warmth of his hands, and those eyes of his that shone like they were made of diamonds. I was always okay with whatever I could get, because even the smallest moment with him was worth more than I could ever express in words.

I think the worst was when they revealed their engagement to me. His smile was brighter than a thousand suns, and the ring on her finger had the same effect on me as Medusa’s stare. We fought that night, when she went home. It was the first time I had ever yelled at him in my time with him, and he had yelled back, as if my words weren’t true. I was never bothered by just being a side dish for him, but I was bothered by the fact that he had expected me to be happy for them. That he had completely underestimated and overlooked my feelings for him. That was the only thing I could ever be upset with him about, but even that faded, and I let him win.

I knew what I was getting myself into. When we first started to get to know each other, he had given me a double confession. A) Kibum, I love you. B) I’m already seeing someone. It had taken me by surprise, and while I had expected him to leave her for me, he made it clear that it wasn’t an option. From then, we dated secretly. He treated me so preciously for the first while. He stayed with me almost every night, and surprised me with flowers, and other little gifts. He visited me at work, and we talked on the phone until ugly hours of the morning. Slowly, though, our nights together became less. He stopped coming to my work, and my phone rarely rang. The gifts kept coming a while longer, but even then, it wasn’t what I had been hoping for. The last gift I received was a key, and a suggestion that I move in with him so our time together could be more plentiful. The idea was nice, but even that didn’t do much for us. I eventually came to the conclusion that the excitement had worn off, and I accepted my place.

The morning she came over unannounced was the day it started to tumble down. Her intentions had been pure; to come over and prepare breakfast for her fiancée after the ‘work load’ he had used as an excuse the night before. What she had not expected was to find me in the bed she had spent so many nights of her own in. I had tried to cover it up - he was in the shower, and I had tried an excuse, a lie to veer her mind from the truth, the obvious truth before her. Even if the lie had been working, he soon found his way out of the bathroom, and I witnessed an argument that had broken the decibel scale. I heard a door slam, and silently watched as the towel-clad man of my dreams rushed back in to dress himself before following suit.

Where I had thought that the event would lead to their downfall, and he would land himself in my arms, the opposite had happened. I truly learned my place when he told me he would be moving out. I could keep the apartment, but he would move out. I wouldn’t have to pay the rent, but he would move out. He would do his best to continue seeing me when he could, but he would move out. I stayed, only for the reason that he still had a key, and could come when he pleased to visit me. But he didn’t.

I tried to wait. To see if he would contact me first - to see if I meant anything to him. He did contact me, but I had waited three weeks by that point. He took me out on a date, and fed me words of reassurance. He told me he would leave her, that it was suffocating, and that he loved me. He promised me. He gave me his word. I was overjoyed. I was wrong. He was a liar.

I waited again. I waited only a week, figuring it was enough time for him to have broken it off, to have left her, and to work on coming home to me. By the end of the week, the wedding invitations had been mailed out, with a date only a few weeks away. Not only had he gone against his word, and not only had I been mailed an invitation, but I had been requested to act as his best man. I remember tearing up the card, and knocking a picture of us from the wall. I didn’t clean the shattered glass for days.

She met with me herself a week before the wedding, a smug look on her face that I so desperately wanted to wipe away. She told me things that I had wished I’d lived without knowing; that she’d known about our affair since the beginning, that he had even talked to her about me before the day she found us, and that the reason she had been mad was not because he had cheated in the first place, but that he had kept me around after he had promised to get rid of me. She told me of the times they had laughed about me, about how pathetic and pitiful I was to have lived for those two and a half years as a toy on the side and not come to my senses. She told me that she had found it hilarious that I thought I meant anything to him. She left me alone in that cafe, and I sat there until my steaming cup of coffee turned cold and the sun that had been high in the sky started to fall.

The smallest hope left in me was crushed when I called him that night. I prayed that he would answer, prayed with all that I had. The first words out of my mouth when I heard his voice were questions, desperate questions, pleading for reassurance once more - to hear that she had been lying to me. I felt my heart crumble when he couldn’t give them to me, when he apologized for leading me on. I don’t think I’d ever heard such half hearted words in my life.

When the wedding day fell upon us, I found myself at the church dressed in a suit I had ordered, made specially for the event. I blended with the crowd of happy, excited faces buzzing about the soon-to-be newlyweds, winding my way through them to the wing of the building designated for just the bride and the groom to prepare. With barely a half hour left before the music would start, and the ceremony would officially begin, I lost my mind. Their words, the memories, the lies I had believed, and the pain I had been through circled through my mind. The chatter from down the hall faded away, replaced with only the sound of my footsteps.

They didn’t deserve to be happy after what they had done to me. They didn’t deserve the love they had robbed me of.

So, I conclude, your honour.

The defendant pleads guilty for the murder of Kim Jonghyun and Jung Soojung.