Guide to tamming vilanesses-Chapter 69: False accusation

Checking her phone, Tomoko saw she had received an email from school.

It was a warning about her behavior in her last math class. Apparently, the school intended to call her parents in for a meeting to discuss her conduct.

"Good luck trying to convince my mom to show up," she muttered as she put her phone away. "It’d be easier to bring my dad back from hell than to get her back from one of her trips."

She was clearly frustrated, annoyed with the email, with school, with her mother, with everything. And the way Tomoko dealt with her anger was simple: she either lashed out at other people... or she trained.

This time, she was at the gym.

It was back day. She gripped a metal bar and began doing pull-ups, her muscles tensing sharply with each repetition.

She was good at it, very good. Without any additional weight, she performed the reps smoothly and effortlessly.

That was when she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, someone else training nearby. A heavyset man was walking on the treadmill. His body wobbled slightly with each step.

He hadn’t done anything to her. But for some reason, his presence annoyed her instantly.

He reminded her of her brother and sister... Two useless nerds who never wanted to play with her or do anything remotely fun.

Her grip on the bar tightened. Her irritation, already heightened by her period, suddenly flared up inside her.

She glanced at the man again. He was just trying to exercise, breathing heavily as he pushed himself.

And yet she felt irritated just looking at him. He didn’t belong in a gym like this.

Just like she didn’t feel like she belonged anywhere...

"Fuck..." she murmured. Training wasn’t cutting it today, so she decided to lash out at a random observer instead.

Her eyes darted to the random man once again. She wasn’t willing to tolerate his presence. She dropped from the bar and walked straight toward him.

The man noticed her approaching and slowed the treadmill slightly.

"Is something wrong?" he asked politely, slightly out of breath.

Tomoko crossed her arms.

"Why were you staring at me?"

The man blinked. "I... I wasn’t staring..."

"Yes, you were," she snapped. "You’ve been looking at me this whole time."

"I swear, I was just watching the timer on the machine..."

"Don’t lie to me," she interrupted, her voice rising enough to draw attention.

A couple of people nearby turned their heads.

"You think just because I’m a girl you can stare at me while pretending to work out? Look at you, we all know you don’t even work out anyway, so why are you here?"

The man’s face turned red, from a mixture of embarrassment and rage. Going to the gym was already hard enough without being humiliated like that.

"I wasn’t staring at you," he insisted weakly.

A gym employee hurried over after hearing the raised voices.

"Is there a problem?"

Tomoko didn’t hesitate.

"He’s been staring at me and making me uncomfortable."

The employee looked at the man, who looked completely shaken.

"I didn’t do anything," he said quickly. "I swear."

But Tomoko’s expression was firm and unyielding.

"I don’t feel safe training while he’s here."

The staff exchanged uneasy looks. The gym took complaints like that seriously.

"Sir, we’re going to need you to step aside for now while we review the security footage," one of the employees said carefully.

"What? But I didn’t..." the man began, then stopped when he noticed the eyes on him.

Defeated and humiliated, he stepped off the treadmill. As he was escorted toward the office area, Tomoko turned away, grabbing her water bottle as if nothing had happened.

Ana, who had also been training nearby, saw the entire situation unfold and approached Tomoko with concern. But the moment she noticed the smug smirk on her friend’s face, a bad feeling settled in her chest.

"You were telling the truth... right?" the blonde asked cautiously.

"Yes... of course," Tomoko replied in a tone that made it painfully obvious she was lying.

Even Ana, who had her own reckless tendencies, knew better than to pull something like that. It might seem easy in the moment, but it was just as easy for the staff to check the security footage and prove her wrong.

And beyond that, it was wrong on so many levels.

"You shouldn’t have done that," Ana said under her breath.

"Come on, it’s nothing important," Tomoko shrugged dismissively. "That guy shouldn’t even be here anyway... I hate it when people like him come to this place."

Ana frowned.

People like him? Hearing it annoyed Ana more than she expected. Maybe because she saw it in that random man. Or because she was getting fed up with Tomoko.

"By the way, do you want to come run with me after the gym?" Tomoko asked as if everything was perfectly fine.

She had these hopeful eyes. After all, Tomoko was constantly trying to get Ana’s attention. The blonde knew about it, and mostly ignored it.

The annoying thing was that even though Tomoko looked up to her, she would never actually listen to Ana.

"Pay attention to what I’m saying!" she snapped. "You shouldn’t be doing things like that. And don’t try to change the subject," the blonde said in a stern tone.

"Why are you getting angry out of nowhere?" Tomoko asked, suddenly looking scared. "Did I do something to upset you?"

She stepped closer and hugged Ana tightly, repeatedly saying sorry without giving her any chance to respond.

But today, Ana really didn’t have time for that.

It was almost time for the date she had arranged, with Aiko, Ange, and Shin. And she still wanted to go home, take a good shower and put on her best clothes and makeup.

"I need to go," she said briefly. "We can talk later."

"Where are you going?"

"To hang out with Ange," Ana replied simply, already slipping out of her best friend’s embrace.

"Can I come too?" Tomoko looked up at her with exaggerated puppy eyes.

Ana didn’t even need to think about her answer.

Not only would bringing Tomoko ruin the mood, but she also couldn’t just walk away from the situation she had caused. The blonde tilted her head toward the staff members still speaking to the heavyset man.

"They won’t let you leave until this is resolved," Ana said with a faint smirk. "Oh... I think they’re coming to call you."

Right on cue, a female staff member approached Tomoko. By her look, Ana could tell things wouldn’t go so well for her best friend.

"Miss, could you come with us for a moment?" she asked politely but firmly.

Tomoko’s expression stiffened for just a second before she forced a confident smile. She really didn’t want to go, but she didn’t have any choice.

"Of course," she said.

She shot Ana a quick look, half annoyed, half betrayed, before following the staff member toward the office.

As she walked away, the earlier smugness slowly faded from her face.

Inside the small office room, the heavyset man was sitting nervously in a chair, his hands clasped together. He avoided eye contact when Tomoko entered.

The manager cleared his throat.

"We’re going to review the security footage," he said calmly. "If there was any inappropriate behavior, we’ll take the necessary action."

Tomoko crossed her arms, trying to maintain her composure.

However, once the footage contradicted her accusation, Tomoko slowly began to lose her composure. The fat man, whose name she found out to be Tema, didn’t even look in her direction.

Actually, during the whole exercise, he was so breathless he was looking down almost all the time. Besides, it was easy to notice how exhausted the exercise got him. It was very clear he wasn’t pretending to exercise, but actually giving his all.

In the end, she managed to avoid a harsher punishment by claiming she had been mistaken. She insisted she genuinely thought he had been staring at her.

Still, she was forced to apologize to the man. She hated the idea, but being expelled from her favorite gym would have been even worse.

After a long lecture from the manager, they finally let her go with a warning. The next time she caused a commotion without proper evidence, she would be the one removed from the gym.

Furious and humiliated, Tomoko went straight home.

She couldn’t understand how she was the one in the wrong. She was a regular at that gym. That man clearly wasn’t. She was—

Well... she didn’t actually have many arguments to defend herself.

Not even in her own mind.

So instead of thinking about it, she chose not to think at all.

She grabbed a large tub of ice cream, sat on her bed, and ate it straight from the container. The cold sweetness numbed her frustration as she stubbornly repeated the same thought over and over:

She was right.

Even if she obviously was wrong.