Synopsis
Kouichi Sakakibara's aunt, and a teacher at Yomiyama North Middle School, Reiko takes her nephew in after his mother's death and gives him a set of blunt rules for surviving in the town of Yomiyama, insisting he keep her school role and their home life strictly separate. At school she is addressed formally, at home simply as his aunt.
Fifteen years earlier, Reiko was a student in the same Class 3-3, living through an outbreak of the calamity herself and losing her closest friend to it, an experience that left her determined to understand how the curse actually works. She is openly fond of alcohol and just as openly refuses to explain the class's history when Kouichi first starts asking questions.
Her true situation is one of the story's central twists, tied to the death of her sister Ritsuko years earlier and to events that Kouichi and Mei ultimately have to confront directly rather than simply be told about.
