The Story of How I Lost My Engagement, Lost the Lawsuit, and Was Left with 715 Yen to My Name

When I was 29, I broke off my engagement one week before the wedding.

Since we had even bought a condo together and were living there, breaking up was quite a ordeal.

I was the one who initiated the breakup.

I hadn't realized it while we were dating, but once we were actually about to get married, I discovered that he was incredibly codependent on his mother, and something just snapped inside me.

I thought everything was finally over after dealing with the wedding cancellations, explaining things to both families, and handling all the various procedures, but the story didn't end there.

Believe it or not, my ex-fiancé's mother accused me of breaking off the engagement because I was seeing someone else.

I received a call from a lawyer demanding I pay compensation for hurting her son, and when I refused because I was innocent, it turned into a lawsuit.

Wait, really? They'd go that far just because they hate me?

I was shocked at what a terrifying mother she was, but since I wasn't seeing anyone else, I had no choice but to go to court.

Being naive, I had assumed that in a court of law, the person in the right would win, but the actual outcome was completely unexpected.

The trial dragged on for about a year, and when the lid was finally lifted, it was my total defeat.

The other side was more cunning than I had anticipated.

It seems they had hired a private investigator to follow me without my knowledge, and they submitted numerous photos as circumstantial evidence.

They were photos of my male boss driving me home late at night when I was working at a real estate company, and photos of me with a male senior colleague at work whom I had been consulting about the breakup—brilliantly captured shots that, if you cropped them just right, made it look like we were entering a love hotel together.

I had no idea I was being followed and photographed, and I can only say that I was naive for facing the trial without any preparation for a fight.

Everyone, listen—circumstantial evidence can be fabricated as much as you want if you put your mind to it. And,

proving that something 'didn't happen' is extremely difficult.

Since it was my first time ever experiencing a trial, time passed while I didn't really know what to do, and eventually, I couldn't take the mental strain anymore, so at one point I just thought, 'Whatever,' and accepted almost all of their claims.

After paying the compensation, forfeiting the down payment on the condo, and paying the wedding cancellation fees, I had almost no money left.😱

When I opened my wallet, there was only 715 yen inside.

That was my entire fortune at the age of 29.

*Some details have been slightly altered to prevent identification.

[Afterword] Some time after this happened, it was turned into a book.

▼Here it is

My editor told me that readers would be put off by a story that was too messy, so the parts I wrote in this article were cut during editing. 💦

[Life lessons learned from a painful experience]

This is the kind of person Hanako Aoyama is.

*If you empathized with this, please follow, like, or leave a comment. 💖

It encourages me to keep writing articles. 😊