When I get nostalgic, elementary school inevitably comes to mind. Because back then I felt like an ACG protagonist. People like to reminisce about when they were hot shit, not when they were a dumbass—totally understandable. But my so-called “protagonist” days weren’t about going to Beijing for some “X-Fusion” to brag about “this is so fucking insane,” or riding a bike to get Heytea and chafing my ass, or constantly tearing down laptops and fiddling with Raspberry Pi while saying “how how how amazing I am” in a Shonan accent, or juggling a female teacher, a pigeon girl, and a student I met in Japanese class. It was just that in elementary school my grades were okay, my looks were okay, my conversation was okay—enough that some girls would voluntarily get close to me. But what does an elementary school “protagonist” actually get? You don’t know shit in elementary school, and I didn’t either.