Miyawaki Sakura has announced graduation from the group during the recent HKT stream on the 15th of May, 2021. She has also announced that she will be having a graduation concert on the 19th of June this year.
Her announcement:
(You can skip to 5:40 where she starts announcing it)
Well, I do agree with Murashige that we are still lucky that Sakura is still staying in HKT for another month. I think that this is a good thing and that Sakura has worked hard. Being in the entertainment industry for 10 years is a very long time and she must've have been tired out. Being called HKT's ace and AKB's next generation ace must've have been very pressuring for her. We can see that she has strived hard to keep up to her seniors and in her Sousenkyo speeches, we can see how much passion and ambition she had put to go to where she is now. She also confessed that she had cried in the bathroom inside the bath, thinking that her loneliness and the pressure will go away along with the water because of how pressuring it is to be called a next generation's ace. It must've been very tiring for her. 卒業 おめでとう、さくら!!!