My Co-Worker Tried to Steal My Boyfriend and Get Me Fired, but Her Obsession Blew Up in Front of the Owner’s Japanese Mother

The next morning, I woke up to dozens of messages. Bianca had posted on social media about being victimized and set up by jealous co-workers. She didn’t use names, but everyone from work knew she meant me.

Around noon, Kenji texted me.

“Bianca’s really struggling. I’m going to check on her.”

I told him not to go. We were supposed to talk about us, figure out where we stood after what had happened, but he said he felt responsible and needed to make sure she was okay.

He was gone for three hours.

When he came back, he looked guilty.

“She’s a mess,” he said. “She can’t stop crying. Her cousin had to fire her too. Company policy after what happened.”

“Good,” I said, but the word felt hollow the second it left my mouth.

Kenji looked at me like I was someone he didn’t recognize. “How can you say that? She lost her job because of us.”

“She tried to get me fired first.”

“And now you’re even,” he said. “Except she’s completely humiliated, and the whole Japanese community is talking about it. The owner’s mother told everyone at her temple. Bianca can’t show her face anywhere.”

Over the next few days, he kept texting Bianca to check on her. He would show me the messages like that was supposed to reassure me. They were all things like, “How are you doing?” and “I’m so sorry about everything. Let me know if you need anything.”

Her replies were always long, emotional paragraphs about how hurt and betrayed she felt, how she thought Kenji was different, how she couldn’t trust anyone anymore. Every message was written to make him feel more guilty, and it worked.

A week later, our mutual friend Sarah called me.

“Just thought you should know,” she said, “I saw Kenji’s car at Bianca’s apartment complex yesterday.”

My stomach dropped.

When I confronted him, he admitted he had gone there to apologize in person. “She wouldn’t stop texting,” he said. “I thought if I apologized face to face, it would help her move on.”

“And did it?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “She was really upset. I stayed to calm her down.”

“How long?”

“A couple hours.”

Later, Sarah told me his car had actually been there for five hours.

When I brought that up, we had another huge fight. He accused me of being paranoid and jealous. I accused him of falling for Bianca’s manipulation.

“She’s not manipulating anyone,” he said. “She’s genuinely hurt.”

“People are harassing her for insulting an elderly woman on her birthday with words we taught her,” he added, practically yelling now. “We did this to her.”

That was when I realized the guilt was eating him alive, and Bianca, whether consciously or not, was feeding it every chance she got.

Two weeks after the incident, Kenji’s mother called me. She had heard about everything through the Japanese community grapevine, but by then the story had already been twisted.

Now I was the jealous girlfriend who had destroyed an innocent girl trying to learn Japanese.

“I’m very disappointed,” she said in heavily accented English. “Kenji tells me this Bianca girl just wanted to connect with her culture.”

“She’s not even Japanese,” I said.

“Half Japanese,” she corrected.

“No. Kenji is half Japanese. Bianca isn’t Japanese at all.”

There was a pause.

“That’s not what Kenji said.”

After we hung up, I confronted him about lying to his mother. He got defensive and claimed he hadn’t lied, he had just “simplified” the story because it was too complicated to explain over the phone.

But I could see what was happening.

He was rewriting the story, little by little, making Bianca more sympathetic every time he told it.

Three weeks after the incident, I came home and found Kenji packing a bag.

“I need some space,” he said. “This whole thing has been too much. I need to think.”

“Where are you going?”

“My friend’s place.”

But he wouldn’t look at me.

That night, Sarah texted me.

I don’t want to start drama, but Kenji’s car is at Bianca’s again.

I drove over there myself. Sure enough, his car was sitting in the visitor’s spot. I sat outside for an hour debating whether to knock, then finally called him.

“I’m at work,” he said.

“No, you’re not. I can see your car.”

There was a long silence.

“Then this isn’t what it looks like,” he said.

“Then what is it?”

“She was having a panic attack. She called me crying. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not lie to me about it.”

He came downstairs twenty minutes later. We sat in his car while he tried to explain. Bianca was struggling, he said. She couldn’t find another job because word had spread through the restaurant community. She was behind on rent. She felt suicidal.

“She’s playing you,” I told him.

“Not everything is manipulation,” he snapped back.

“Sometimes people use their hurt to manipulate others.”

We went in circles for an hour until we were both completely drained. In the end, he said he would come home, but I needed to stop being so suspicious of Bianca. I said I would try, but he needed to stop seeing her.

He came home that night, but nothing felt the same after that.

He was distant. Always on his phone. Whenever I asked who he was texting, he would say, “Just work stuff,” but I knew it was her.

A month after the incident, I ran into Bianca at the grocery store. She looked perfectly fine. Not like someone having panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. She was with a friend, laughing at something on her phone.

Then she saw me.

Her shoulders dropped, her face fell, and she quickly walked away like she was terrified of me. But I had already seen the truth in those first few seconds before she noticed me. She was fine. More than fine.

That night I told Kenji what I’d seen, and he accused me of stalking her.

“I was buying groceries.”

“And you just happened to run into her?”

“Yes, and she was fine until she saw me. Then suddenly she’s the victim again.”

“Or maybe,” he said slowly, like I was stupid, “seeing the person who orchestrated her humiliation triggered her trauma.”

Trauma.

That was new.

“When did this become trauma?” I asked.

“You’re rewriting history,” I told him. “We both did this, and she’s not traumatized. She’s manipulative.”

“Listen to yourself,” he said. “You sound paranoid.”