The Students I Once Tutored As Part-Time Home Tutors During My Student Days Had Suddenly Achieved Excessive Success In Their Careers. - Chapter 4: Sae’s POV

Sae’s POV

“…I’ve had enough…”

It was well past 11 PM, a time when the night had fallen silent. In her room, the girl with fluffy bobbed silver hair muttered softly.

Throughout the day, she had been diligently working on illustrations for a request from a company that handled romance simulation games on her LCD tablet. She was very close to completing the illustrations. However, it seemed like her concentration had snapped, and she leaned her delicate upper body on the desk, feeling drained.

But this couldn’t be helped. She had been working for over 12 hours today.

“…”

The remaining work needed to be finished, a final touch-up. It required meticulous checking, but doing it in her current state would be challenging even from a quality standpoint.

The deadline for this task was 2 PM tomorrow. There was enough time for her to sleep and then work on it, but…

“I wanted to finish it today…”

She muttered softly once more.

She was still a student, after all. Which meant that if she didn’t complete it today, she would be late for school on Friday.

If she hadn’t overloaded herself with work during spring break, this situation might not have arisen. But the desire to excel as much as possible and show herself in a good light had driven her—Komachi Sae—to this point.

“Tomorrow, I’ll wake up earlier… and do my best.”

She whispered her determination in a low voice, then raised her upper body. With her semi-closed yellow eyes fixed on her PC, she gracefully put it into sleep mode with practiced movements.

Today’s work was done.

Rubbing her tired eyes, Sae turned off the room light and collapsed onto her bed. She reached for her smartphone by the bedside, checked the chat app LINE, which she hadn’t opened since the morning.

There were numerous notifications from the class group on LINE. As she skimmed through them, she realized that the conversations hadn’t changed much from yesterday or the day before.

“Man, seriously, our homeroom teacher is like a god, isn’t he? Isn’t it amazing?”

“Totally. He’s too kind.”

“Listen to this, I went to the staff room to hand in a late assignment, and the club advisor came in and was about to kill me. But Sora sensei covered for me and said the assignment wasn’t past the deadline!”

“That’s insane, lol.”

“Yeah, right? He told me that he can’t cover for us every time, so make sure to submit on time. But seriously, who says that? Lol.”

“They say that if a kind person gets angry, it’s scary, so how scary must Sora sensei be if he ever gets mad?”

“He’s such a caring teacher that you wouldn’t want to do anything to upset him.”

“True.”

There were about thirty messages exchanged in this manner.

Since the opening ceremony, their new homeroom teacher had become a major topic of discussion in the class.

Sae, who hadn’t attended school yet, couldn’t keep up with the conversation, and she didn’t even know what their teacher looked like. All she knew was what had been written on LINE.

In broad strokes, what she understood was that he conducted easy-to-understand classes, had a kind personality, and was accommodating. His name was “Sora.”

“…”

As she once again saw messages praising their teacher today, Sae furrowed her delicate brows, her expression clouded.

“You’re such a good teacher, so why?” she couldn’t help but wonder. However, this was for personal reasons.

The kind teacher was indeed what Sae wished for, but they shared something else in common—their name.

It reminded her of her cherished memories and, in particular, one person she couldn’t thank enough.

“Sora-kun…”

Sae couldn’t help but think. The many similarities between the kind teacher and her cherished memories of her tutor were causing her treasured recollections to fade, threatening to overwrite them.

In middle school, when she had become a recluse due to certain circumstances, her tutor had saved her from despair. He had not only done that but had also helped her develop the academic skills needed to attend high school. He was also responsible for introducing her to the joys of life.

Her tutor was the reason she had gotten into her current job as well. Besides her family, he was the only one who had supported her without ever asking for anything in return.

Even when he should have been struggling financially, he had taken up tutoring jobs to make ends meet. Her mother had initially hesitated, but he had smiled warmly and said, “Let me support you.”

“If I hadn’t met him, I’d probably still be a shut-in like I was in middle school,” she thought. “I wouldn’t have developed the academic skills needed to attend high school, and I wouldn’t even be thinking about doing what I love for a living.”

Back in middle school, she had been bullied after her love for drawing 2-D art became known, which had led to her becoming a recluse.

“I can’t thank him enough,” she whispered to herself. “No matter how kind our teacher is, in my heart, Sora-kun is the best.”

Sae powered off her smartphone and pulled her blanket up to her eyes. It was a voice no one could hear, but she felt embarrassed, and her cheeks turned even redder.

“I need to sleep soon…”

As a third-year high school student who had taken on the Komachi surname due to her parents’ remarriage, Komachi Sae, who mainly posted her artwork on the Twitter social media platform, had over 400,000 followers. She was responsible for model illustrations for trending Vtubers, game illustrations, and light novel artwork.

Despite still being in the early stages of her career, her work spanned various genres.

Her pen name was SaKu, a combination of her name and his. The reason for using the english alphabet deliberately was so that it won’t be detected as “secretly.”

With him, she had made many promises. One of them was to share her famous social media account.