Sae

Sae (沙英) is an upperclassman (later graduate) of Yamabuki High School, the tenant of Hidamari Apartments Room 102, and one of the series's original four cast members.

Physical Attributes
Sae has boyish-looking short hair of a purple hue with matching eyes, which are unique comparably to most other girls as they are tsurime style. She is noticeably taller than the rest of the main six. She wears rectangular glasses that she clearly needs due to an exaggerated poor sight. Her combination of physical traits effectively gives her a more "masculine" look compared to the others, and is a source of (playful) teasing by Miyako. Sae is not especially comfortable with her appearance and has frequently been known to wish for a larger bust and "more feminine" proportions.

Sae is known to be athletic as well and is an adept swimmer and runner.

Character Specialties
Sae's artistic specialties focuses more on photography than traditional drawing (although she is also adept in that field). She prefers working with film over using a digital camera, and at one point obtained a used Polaroid camera (knowing that the film for it would be very difficult to obtain). She chose Plane as her elective.

Sae's more noticeable skill lies within writing, where she can be seen in most scenes busy at her desk. She intends to try and make a living off of her works, and currently writes for Kiara Monthly, a magazine that hosts fiction writing aimed at teenage girls. She is paid for her writing, but not enough to be completely self-supporting. She claims she only draws to help illustrate the pictures for the stories the way she envisions them to be, which is why she is enrolled at Yamabuki High School.

Her college choice was driven by the need to finally choose one or the other to focus on, and she ended up enrolling at an unnamed liberal arts school that happens to be a short distance from the campus of Ama Art University.

Social Demeanor
Sae is known to be a "cool" and mature person and prefers to look like one appropriately. She often helps Yuno with her wisdom and even motivates the others simply by being Sae. This occasionally causes conflict whenever her sincere relationships with other characters arises to a point of interest.

She does have a playful side to her personality: She could tease Yuno by giving her enough "warnings" that the latter does notice, but fail to avoid (harmless) danger.

She has a hard time maintaining a collected demeanor due to her desire to play as a respectable character: She has difficulties clearly expressing her care of her younger sister and has difficulties admitting to her strong attachment to Hiro. This is often ridiculed by others (namely Miyako) and is even the topic of specific chapters/episodes.

Her profession as a romance novelist serves for others as a reason for Sae's stress and occasional fatigue. She becomes easily irritated when she is busy with her work. Her experience with romance novels also calls into question of her love life, which she often invents numerous stories of her success being popular with the boys (usually resembling hyperboles rather than plausible stories) whenever asked (alongside with obvious blushing and nervousness).

Subtext with Hiro
Sae's relationship with Hiro borderlines a romantic two-girl friendship or even blunt Yuri subtext. The jokes played on Sae and Hiro often bring up this matter, and some scenes even reference the growing suspicion of their fondness with each others - to the point that the others call the senior class trip to Hokkaido a "honeymoon" and almost everybody at one time or another refers to Hiro as Sae's "wife". Sae is more dependent upon Hiro than she will admit - often Hiro's intervention is the only thing that saves her for working herself into exhaustion and failing to take proper care of herself. Sae will return the favor when Hiro has problems, such as one of her numerous diets going badly wrong or the occasional difficult and life-altering decision. She does, however, tend to get jealous over her at times (as illustrated in the infamous "love letter" incident).

After graduation,.Sae moved in with Hiro, sharing a two-bedroom apartment at the Hinata Heights complex. They did visit Hidamari on occasion afterward, including an episode where Sae fled their apartment for a night because she was jealous of Hiro's new friends from her university.

Relationship with Natsume
Natsume is basically very obvious with her crush on Sae, even having her own friends urge her to be more direct with her feelings for Sae. Their relationship started out promising, but due to the noticeable subtext between Sae and Hiro, Natsume quickly became jealous of the two and fabricated a somewhat hostile rival masquerade with Sae whenever they encounter each other.

Normally, their interactions are brief (if not curt), but whenever a scene demands more of Natsume's involvement, Sae is mature and friendly enough to set aside personal hostilities and give Natsume friendly interactions (such as social invitations), much to Natsume's flustered excitement. Over time, their interactions softened as Natsume started to come out of her shell and accept her situation.

Relationship with Chika
Sae's dealings with her younger sister Chika are at times difficult. Chika frequently manages to talk her way into an invitation to visit the Hidamari Apartments, often without asking Sae first, much to her annoyance. As with her other friends, Sae has some difficulty expressing her affection for, and communicating with, her sister.

Although many of their arguments are mainly out of Sae's annoyance, there is some genuine tension in their relationship: Yamabuki is significantly more expensive than Chika's school, yet Chika resented it when Sae tried to partially base her college choice on relieving some of that burden on the family.

Miscellaneous Information

 * Sae's symbol is her glasses.
 * Her birthday is on November 3rd.
 * Her pseudonym as an author of her romantic works is "Aya Tachibana" (橘 文, Tachibana Aya ?).
 * She prefers traditional dictionaries and writing compared to digital means, unlike Nori. However, she does use a fax machine to communicate with her editor, and she frequently uses a cellphone for e-mails and texts.