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

Maybe I was paranoid. But two days later, when Kenji said he was going to a friend’s place to watch the game, I followed him.

I’m not proud of that, but I needed to know.

He drove straight to Bianca’s apartment.

I sat in my car staring at his in that same visitor spot, and I actually laughed, because of course he did. Of course she won.

When he came home that night, I was waiting on the couch with his things already packed.

“I saw you,” I said.

He didn’t deny it. Didn’t make excuses. He just sat down heavily and put his head in his hands.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m so confused. I feel so guilty about everything.”

“Do you have feelings for her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she understands what I’m going through because she’s going through it too.”

“She’s going through it because she chose to harass me for months, and we chose to destroy her life.”

“We embarrassed her at a party,” he said.

“She destroyed her own life by being awful to customers for weeks.”

But he wasn’t really listening anymore. The guilt had taken over, and Bianca had positioned herself as the only one who could relieve it.

He moved out that night. Not to Bianca’s place, but not to a friend’s either. He got a small apartment and said he needed space to figure things out.

For the next three weeks, I threw myself into job hunting. Every morning I updated my resume, sent out applications, and tried not to think about the fact that Kenji hadn’t called once since moving out.

Sarah kept me updated whether I wanted her to or not.

“His car was at Bianca’s again yesterday.”

I would stare at those messages and feel nothing, or maybe everything at once until it all flattened into numbness. Eventually, I stopped responding.

The restaurant scene in our city wasn’t big. Word about the birthday party spread fast, and at every interview, I could see the recognition hit the manager’s face as soon as they connected my name to the story.

Some of them were polite about it. They’d go through the motions and then never call back.

Others were more direct.

“We heard about what happened at Yamamoto’s,” one manager told me without even bothering to look at my resume. “We can’t have that kind of behavior here.”

I wanted to explain. I wanted to tell the real story. But the truth was messy, harder to summarize, and I was exhausted from trying to defend myself.

Six weeks after the incident, I was down to my last few hundred dollars. My parents lived across the country, and I was too proud to ask for help. I had started applying for retail jobs, literally anything that would pay rent, when my phone rang from an unknown number.

“Is this the girl who worked at Yamamoto’s?”

The voice was older, female, with a slight Japanese accent.

My stomach dropped. “Who is this?”

“My name is Yuki. I own Kiku, the restaurant on Fifth Street. I heard about what happened.”

Great, I thought. Another person calling to tell me I’d never work in this town again.

Instead, she said, “I want to offer you a job.”

I nearly dropped the phone.

The next day, I sat across from Yuki in her immaculate little office. She was probably in her sixties, with sharp eyes that seemed to see through every excuse before it was spoken.

“I know the real story,” she said immediately. “My nephew works at Yamamoto’s. He saw this Bianca girl harassing customers for weeks. He told me what really happened.”

The relief hit so fast I almost cried.

“Thank you. Really, thank you for believing me.”

She cut me off. “I don’t tolerate bullies in my restaurant. And I don’t tolerate people who refuse to take responsibility either. You played a stupid game and it backfired. Can you admit that?”

I nodded.

“Yes. It was stupid. I was angry.”

“Anger makes us stupid,” she said. “The question is whether you learned.”

I started at Kiku the next week. It was smaller than Yamamoto’s and more family-style than upscale, but the staff was kind and the work was steady. I kept my head down, did my job, and slowly started to feel like myself again.

Kenji texted me two months after moving out.

Can we talk?

I stared at the message for an hour before replying.

Okay.

We met at a coffee shop downtown, neutral territory. He looked terrible. Dark circles under his eyes, weight loss, clothes hanging looser than I remembered. A small, ugly part of me felt satisfied, but mostly I just felt sad.

“I made a mistake,” he said before I even sat down.

“Which one?”

He flinched.

“All of it. Everything. I’m sorry.”

“Are you with her now?”

He shook his head. “No. I mean, we tried. I thought…” He rubbed his face. “She’s not who I thought she was.”

I almost laughed. “Really? What gave it away?”

“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Please. I know I deserve it, but just don’t.”

So I didn’t.

I listened while he told me about the previous two months. At first Bianca had been everything he thought he wanted. Sweet, vulnerable, needy. She cried in his arms about the trauma of that night, and he felt like her protector, like he was saving her.

Then it got weird.

“She’d get upset if I didn’t text back immediately. She’d show up at my apartment without calling. And she kept talking about you. Constantly. Everything was about what you did to her and how you ruined her life.”

“At first I thought she was just processing,” he said, “but it never stopped. Even when we were together, she would bring you up.”

That made me laugh, bitter and short.

“So she got what she wanted, and it still wasn’t enough.”

He continued. Bianca had started applying to restaurants again and got an interview at a nice place downtown. The night before, though, she called him crying and said she was too traumatized to ever work in restaurants again. He told her she had to try, that she couldn’t let one bad experience define her.

“She hung up on me,” he said.

The next day, she called the restaurant herself and told them Kenji was her ex and that he was stalking her, and that he might show up and cause problems. The restaurant called his workplace to verify he wasn’t dangerous.

“My boss had to get involved,” he said. “It was humiliating.”

“Jesus.”