Justice Is Served hr607

The world has come to where Mr. Trump is the President of the United States of America and a villain smiles with the joy of victory even in the movie ‘Avengers Infinity War’. As for me, I had lived this desperate time while I held onto hope by watching ‘Star Wars The Last Jedi’ repeatedly. In the days like that, something huge  has finally occurred. Although it is unthinkable and significant enough to be the top news of the world, I’m sure no media reports it and I will take the honor to proclaim the news to the whole world here. The apartment building that I live in has a small gym for the residents. It’s called gym nominally, but in effect, it’s a space with a couple of massage chairs, few exercise machines most of which are outdated, a square exercise mat, and a TV set. Although it’s not a sufficient facility as a gym, I exercise there three or four times a week since it’s free for the residents. The biggest problem is a combination of the TV and the exercise mat spread in front of it. There are residents who are just watching TV lying down on the mat without exercising. Families are watching TV with the kids and let them play around there. They use the space as their second living room or a playground. They almost always set the TV volume so loud. To make things worse, Japanese TV programs are atrocious. Dramas are actors’ shrieking only without content, game shows are babble about nothing, and commercials are all close-up of young women. It’s nothing but a torture to ride an exercise bike engulfed by the picture and sound of those. Even when I exercise alone in the gym quietly without TV, someone who comes in after me walks straight towards the TV set and turns it on without hesitation. They don’t have minimum courtesy to ask if it’s all right to turn it on. I think they regard it as a TV room not a gym. To lessen my discomfort, I had started bringing my smartphone and earphones. I have to listen to music at max volume to compensate the loud TV. One day, a man came in when I was exercising alone. As usual, he turned on TV and began to watch it lying on the exercise mat. That’s the cue that I got used to now. I turned on my smartphone and began to play music in my earphones. On that particular day, I became really indignant at what he was doing because he was a regular and had annoyed me with the loud TV for a hundred times. I unconsciously muttered, “How dare you turn on TV?” The thing is, I was listening to the music at max volume and forgot to control the volume of my own voice. I didn’t mutter, but almost shouted the sentence. The man looked back at me with sheer terror on his face. I was as surprised at myself as he was. Those unpleasant gym days had been my norm for years because of the TV watchers. The other day, a man was watching TV as usual when I came into the gym. A familiar sight. But what happened next was completely different from the usual. As soon as he saw me coming in, he jumped up as if he got startled, and he turned off TV right away and left the gym. I wondered how angry and intimidating my look was. I started riding the bike peacefully without TV and noticed something below the TV screen. There was a sign. I got closer to read it. It said in big letters, ‘This TV is for an exercise video only. To watch general programs, use TV in the lobby. Management’ A miracle happened. Someone who understands what is right exists in this apartment building other than me. It was literally too good to be true. The existence of my kind of person was so hard to believe that I briefly thought that I sleepwalked to the gym one night because of excessive anger and put the sign by myself. I rubbed my eyes to see if it was an illusion. No. The sign was real. For the first time in a long while, I did a pleasant exercise at the gym. It was a refreshing, clean time in which I had all smile on my face...