I’m Kaori, and I live with my husband, Shinichi, and our 3-year-old daughter, Karin. My husband’s parents and his grandmother all used to live together in the family home. My grandmother-in-law was always meddling in our business, but my mother-in-law was the one who always stepped in to shield us—even though she was constantly taking heat and verbal abuse from the old lady herself. After four years of this, my father-in-law suddenly passed away. Right after that, my mother-in-law filed a “Declaration of Termination of Matrimonial Relationship” and moved out! When she came to our place, she revealed the truth: she had endured all that mistreatment as part of a long-term revenge plot against the grandmother. I didn’t quite get it at first, but seeing her so happy and laughing now… I guess that’s all that matters.
It looks like the grandmother-in-law has been feeling a bit down after being rejected by all the relatives at once. Whether she actually realizes this is karma for how she treated everyone is anyone’s guess, but since she’s in a nursing home so far away, almost no one can even go to visit her. I’m not sure if my mother-in-law planned for things to go exactly this far, but either way, she’s busy working her part-time job at a fast-food joint today. She still stops by our house every now and then to hang out. Seeing her enjoy her independence and her job so much, I just want to keep cheering her on.