Synopsis
Tatsuji Chibiki works as the school librarian at Yomiyama North Middle School, but twenty-six years before the story's events he was the homeroom teacher of the original Class 3-3 in 1972, when the calamity connected to the class first began. Guilt and fear over that year drove him to leave teaching rather than face the class curse again directly.
Stern, private, and rarely warm even to students he clearly cares about, Chibiki nonetheless becomes an essential source of information for Kouichi Sakakibara and Mei Misaki, explaining the class's history and countermeasures in more detail than anyone else is willing to. He also quietly counsels students such as Izumi Akazawa when they come to him for advice.
Despite choosing to keep his distance for over two decades, Chibiki proves willing to act decisively once lives are directly at stake, personally stepping in to save students during the class trip and pulling several survivors from a burning building. His reserve, it turns out, was never indifference.
