Chapter 935 - 935: Hiiragi Kawanokuchi Wants Some Rest

Outside the window, the sky had already taken on the colors of dusk. Standing at the podium, Hiiragi Kawanokuchi glanced at the clock and saw that there were only three minutes left before class ended.

Considering that her students had all taken a mock exam today and were undoubtedly exhausted, she decided to let them start packing their schoolbags now. That way, she could dismiss them a few minutes early and allow them to go home and rest sooner.

"All right, that's it for today's lesson. You can start packing your schoolbags now. We'll finish class a few minutes early. Please don't chat while you're packing. Keep the noise down.

"When you get home, remember to review the questions you got wrong on today's exam. There will be two more exams this Friday, the English and Japanese mock exams. I hope everyone achieves excellent results.

"The high school entrance exams are only a few months away now. I hope you'll treasure these final few months of middle school. And for those of you who are already exhausted from studying, I hope you can hang in there just a little longer. Once the entrance exams are over, you'll have several months of vacation to look forward to."

"Okay!"

With such a considerate homeroom teacher, the students were naturally happy to cooperate. They immediately began packing their schoolbags as quietly as possible.

"We'll be leaving the classroom early today, but remember to keep your voices down when you leave. Some of the other classes are still having lessons. If your footsteps or conversations are too loud, you might disturb them. And even if you don't, the moment the students in those classes hear you leaving school early, they'll probably become too restless to concentrate."

Hiiragi Kawanokuchi reminded them once again with a cheerful smile.

After briefly reminding the students to stay safe on their way home, Hiiragi Kawanokuchi sat down again. Although she had decided to let her students leave early today, that didn't mean she could finish work early herself.

Quite the opposite. When Hiiragi Kawanokuchi thought about the pile of work waiting for her in the faculty office, she realized that even if she didn't finish everything and merely dealt with the most urgent tasks, she would probably have to work overtime until eight in the evening.

By the time she got home, it would already be around eight forty or eight fifty.

After throwing together something for dinner and taking a shower, it would practically be ten o'clock.

Thinking about this, Hiiragi Kawanokuchi couldn't help sighing. Looking at it carefully, after an entire day of working, she really didn't have much time left for herself.

During a previous hospital checkup, her doctor had also advised her to maintain a regular sleep schedule and try to be in bed with her eyes closed, ready to sleep, by ten o'clock.

But Hiiragi Kawanokuchi simply couldn't accept that! If someone woke up every morning only to go to work, then returned home only to sleep, without even the slightest amount of personal time or any opportunity for entertainment and relaxation...

Sure, they'd have a regular routine, but could someone who followed that kind of routine even be called a human being anymore?

How could people possibly live without even the slightest bit of entertainment? If they genuinely had no leisure time and spent every day endlessly cycling between work and sleep, it wouldn't take long before their mental and psychological well-being began to deteriorate.

That was precisely why Hiiragi Kawanokuchi stayed up until midnight every day before going to sleep. Her preferred form of entertainment was very simple. She would lie in bed and scroll through short videos on her phone or spend a little time reading novels.

There were undoubtedly countless forms of entertainment in the world that were far more interesting than playing with a smartphone. But for teachers and ordinary office workers trapped in the corporate grind, what did any of those exciting activities have to do with them?

Even if they could afford those activities, would they actually have the time and energy to enjoy them?

Whatever little physical strength and mental energy they possessed had already been completely drained by work.

As a result, staying up late and playing with their phones had become a common form of entertainment for many adults. It wasn't necessarily because they were particularly addicted to their smartphones. Rather, after spending every day being squeezed dry and exploited by their jobs, the late hours of the night had become the only time adults could truly control and call their own.

And so they started staying up late. Even though they knew it was bad for their health, they simply couldn't bear to go to sleep so early.

Sometimes, when Hiiragi Kawanokuchi looked at the students beneath the podium studying so diligently, she couldn't help feeling a trace of sorrow.

So what if they achieved excellent results on their high school entrance exams? Would they be able to achieve equally impressive results on their university entrance exams? And even if they did manage to perform well enough to enter an excellent university, what then?

Would they successfully get into graduate school? Would they successfully gain admission to a doctoral program?

Not many people could make it into doctoral programs. For countless individuals, a master's degree was already the highest academic qualification they could hope to achieve. In fact, for most students, even obtaining a bachelor's degree was already their limit.

But in modern Japan, what kind of job could someone find with merely a bachelor's degree? A university degree was no longer some highly coveted qualification. Instead, it had become the most basic requirement imaginable, little more than an admission ticket that allowed someone to submit a résumé and qualify for an interview.

Yet obtaining that supposedly basic qualification required more than a decade of exhausting study!

More than once, Hiiragi Kawanokuchi had wanted to tell the students sitting beneath her podium this cruel truth. But whenever the words were about to leave her mouth, she hesitated.

The reason for her hesitation was simple. She was afraid that if she actually said those things, she would lose her job.

In a major city like Chiba, someone like her, who came from another region and didn't have a wealthy family to support her, would need to work hard for at least a dozen years to purchase a house outright!

If she didn't pay the entire amount upfront, she would instead have to shoulder a mortgage lasting ten or twenty years.

Setting aside the question of whether she should buy a house at all, if Hiiragi Kawanokuchi lost her teaching position, she couldn't guarantee that she would find another job within three months. And if she failed to find new employment within those three months, her current savings would only be enough to support her for another six months at most.

Hiiragi Kawanokuchi loved reading martial arts novels. When she was young, she had believed that she would become someone who drew her sword to help whenever she witnessed injustice. Only after becoming an adult did she discover that something as simple as a poorly paid job was enough to make her keep her mouth shut.

"Forget it. What's the point of thinking about all that? I just hope I can work a little more efficiently today and at least get home before seven. And I really hope some stupid meeting doesn't ruin my weekend again.

"All I want is to finish work on Friday, stop by a convenience store, and buy some discounted frozen steak that's about to expire. Then I'll go home, fry the steak, cook a couple of eggs, boil some instant noodles, scoop the noodles out and put them beside the steak, eat until I'm completely full, and spend the next two days sleeping in."

Hiiragi Kawanokuchi muttered quietly to herself. Last weekend, the school administrators had insisted on scheduling meetings for Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon. As a result, her entire weekend had been torn to pieces, and she hadn't managed to get any proper rest at all.

While Hiiragi Kawanokuchi sat at the podium staring blankly into space, the students who had finished packing their schoolbags began leaving the classroom relatively quietly, just as she had instructed.

...

"Iroha, do you have any plans for this weekend?"

On their way home from school, Aimi Izumi curiously asked Iroha Isshiki.

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