start fires

Lying just because it's April Fools' is so dull. Honestly painful to watch. Lying in general doesn't do you any good. In my younger days, I told every lie I could, saying some genuinely insane stuff about being a supreme leader of evil and whatnot, and thanks to that, now that I'm in my thirties, I got famous for all the wrong reasons and can't find a stable job because people think I'm associated with the yakuza... Sigh, I wanna deck my cringe younger self's face. Quit lying for fun while you can.

My classmates aren't doing great either. Thinking you're hot shit during your school days always comes back to bite you... My advice to my past self: slow and steady effort is worth more than any talent. Also, the part of life you spent larping with that silly horse laugh is not going to be one you'll want to remember later. I wish I could make that clear to him. White lies aren't a thing. Talent is never enough. My class is proof of that. Wanna know what my classmates are like now that we're in our thirties?

Akamatsu became a piano teacher. Her player skills capped off in her teens, it seems. But she's not that good at teaching so she's considered kinda mid at her job. And now she's struggling with the father of a student incessantly hitting on her. Tough world to live in.

Toujou opened a housekeeping company but she was too strict with her employees so everyone quit. And now she's doing everything on her own. Sucks to be in your thirties without any successors or employees. She's a prime example of how being so much better than anyone else doesn't do you any good. Well, she's always working for celebrities, so she's doing well financially, but I heard about some major court fight about a missing item under suspicion of theft from one of her clients. That can't be nice.

Yumeno got to her thirties still saying magic is real, so she's past the point of no return. She agrees that's an unhinged way to live, but she's too old to suddenly change gimmicks. Work takes her all over the country, but her gimmick doesn't allow her to publicly drink, so she has to get plastered alone in her hotel room after shows. I wish she could fix her life with real magic.

Harukawa? ...Haven't heard that name in a long time. Now she was a living edgy fantasy. The past tense was because I hadn't heard of her in a long time. I don't know the details, but apparently, she went to some war zone outside of Japan because her first love didn't want to date her. Takes some real edgelord to react to a broken heart like that, but if she's still alive, I have no idea how her thirties are treating her. My personal guess is that she's a mother of many.

Chabashira opened her Aikido school but is having a hard time attracting students. So she had the idea of starting an anti-sexual-harassment campaign that could double as advertisement, but thanks to her cluelessness when it comes to romance, she got canceled for mistakenly tossing men in regular couples. She's still doing the "degenerate males" bit in her thirties. Girl really needs to get on with the times. Rumor goes that she still downs huge packs of tequila bottles with Yumeno every now and then. Really don't think there's any salvaging her reputation.

Shirogane is an office lady still continuing her cosplay hobby on the side. She could be doing well if she knew how to keep her mouth shut but frequently rambles about cosplay history and etiquette, so no one likes having her around. Stay emotionally dependent on a single hobby long enough and your passion starts to close you off to others. That's her problem.

Angie was the most successful in the class! She made big money both on the art and the religion fronts. However, there were some controversies about her devotees selling counterfeits of her paintings at exorbitant prices and one magazine made a huge news coverage of it, which resulted in her catching the police's attention. She's been recently untraceable, with the rumors saying that she'll never be back to Japan.

Oh, and Iruma... Up until some point, she had the best life of all of us. She made big money off of her inventions' patents. So far so good. Things only started going off-rails after she married an ex-stripper. The two started a YouTube channel together. And later, her husband ran in last year's elections and lost big time. They got an awful debt from his election campaign and she had to get into side jobs to pay it off. And her husband? Disappeared. No word from Iruma herself about what happened. Tough world to live in.

Momota... You've all heard this one before, but he's still on his delusional ramblings about going to space as he constantly switches between low-paying jobs and uses that money to drink in broad daylight. I ran into him the other day and he kept pestering me for money. He lost all his hair and his facial features are almost unrecognizable. He fell as low as a person can fall. I wish I could say it's a lie.

Amami lived as an adventurer going from country to country until a few years ago but had to stop because of covid, and the nail salon he had as a side business also fell away because, well, it was Amami's popularity with the customers that held that establishment in place, so with him reaching his thirties, he lost clientele to places with younger men and fell under. He now works as a hired manager at a bar. Most of his money was spent on his overseas trips, but he's living with the 40-year-old owner of his bar and she pays his bills.

Shinguuji is a regular college professor. So regular that you practically can't recognize the person he was in his school days. He got married, had children, rented a house, and is living what's pretty much the very image of the unbelievably ordinary life of a happy family. But lately, murdered bodies of young women have been popping up in the town where Shinguuji lives, and they all have their hands cut off. Perfectly suspicious. I'm considering selling the info to Saihara. I need the money to buy a new fridge.

Hoshi was already out of options since his student days. His life teaches that there's generally no rehabilitation for people who made a mistake once. He now works for the organized crime in a job completely unrelated to tennis. Last I met him, he said he worked with moneylending... Despite being in his thirties, he looks like a fat 50-year-old with missing teeth. That's one classmate I seriously don't want to see ever again.

Gonta is... as famous as ever in the entomologist community, but a few years ago, he left in search of a not-yet-discovered bug and we never heard from him again. What's he doing nowadays? Is he even alive? By the way, I'm often seeing a strange bug I never heard about before flying around me. Could be me... No, never mind me. A man in his thirties shouldn't be spouting delusions like this.

Ki-bo is the same as always. The exact same. Never grew up from how he was. While we all became adults and grew estranged from each other, this one guy still interacts with us with the same sense of distance and temperature we had back in the day. Words can't describe how unpleasant this is. Eh, not that I can expect any better from a machine. The rumors say he got into a super hard physical labor job to buy a smartphone. Which is the way to go, robots should indeed be doing harder physical labor than humans can. But I wonder what it feels like to buy a machine smarter than yourself. Doesn't it make him feel dead inside?

🎲🚀 GUEST SPOTLIGHT 🌟🏁

Another Oumota legend for you here -- Arsons' flawless characterisation and witty, charming dialogue are going to make her piece one you'll remember!

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