Aiko Hatayama/Biography

Biography
Aiko grew up in a small town to a family of farmers on her mother's side. When she was young, she was framed for stealing a bicycle by one of her classmates, who was the son of one of the town's wealthy and influential families. The only person who stood by her side, other than her family and friends, was her teacher that all the students despised for his strict attitude. He managed to clear Aiko's name through his efforts, but was forced to retire due to angering the boy's family. His willingness to stick up for Aiko inspired her to become a teacher that would always support her students. She eventually grew up to become a high school social studies teacher.

When Aiko and her class were summoned to Tortus, they were told about humanity's war with the demons by Pope Ishtar Langbard of the Holy Church. Aiko wanted the students to abstain from fighting in the war against the demons, but gave up when Kouki Amanogawa rallied the rest of them to help the people of their new world. When the students obtained their status plates and learned of their stats, many of them were making fun of Hajime Nagumo for his low stats. Aiko tried to console him by showing that her stats were not that strong as well, but only to have the opposite effect as her magic power was still higher and she had more skills than him. Furthermore, she also possessed an extremely rare vocation of "Farmer" and was immediately sent away to help with the Heiligh Kingdom's agriculture.

After Hajime was believed to be dead while exploring the Great Orcus Labyrinth, most of the other students were traumatized by the turn of events. Aiko confronted Ishtar for trying to get them to fight again, and threatened to cease using her skills as a farmer for the Heiligh Kingdom. Ishtar compromised with Aiko and agreed to let the students continue to fight if it was their choice.

Aiko left the Kingdom to begin her task of improving its crops. She was accompanied by several of her students and templar knights from the Holy Church. While she and the others were visiting the lakeside town of Ur, one of the students that escorted her, Yukitoshi Shimizu, disappeared without a trace. Aiko was concerned for his safety and wanted to search for him. She would later discover that Hajime was still alive after hearing his name in a conversation that he was having with his companions Yue and Shea at the Water Sprite Inn. Aiko was shocked by the sudden changes to Hajime's figure and attitude and tried to get him to explain what had happened, but he was uncooperative in his answers. This prompted one of her templar knight guards, David Zahler, to confront him for his rude attitude. After he made Shea scared of him because she is a beastmen and after he threatened Yue after being called a small man, Hajime shot David in the head with a rubber bullet and left his classmates by claiming that he wanted nothing to do with them anymore and that he had his own objectives.

That evening, Aiko was in her room at the Inn and couldn't stop thinking about Hajime and how he had changed so much. Hajime suddenly entered her room by using his transmutation skills to break the lock on her door. Aiko was shocked by his actions, and was concerned about what his intentions were. Hajime calmed Aiko down by telling her about all the things he had learned while exploring the abyss after everyone believed him to have died. He explained how that the god of Tortus were just using him and everyone else as pawns for his twisted game and how he was searching for a way to get home. As he was about to leave Aiko's room after telling her this news, Aiko told Hajime that his classmate Kaori still believed him to be alive and that she never stopped looking for him in the Great Orcus Labyrinth. Hearing this prompted Hajime to tell Aiko that the reason he fell into the abyss in the first place was the result of another classmate intentionally aiming a spell at him while making it look like a random shot, and that the only reason this happened was due to Hajime's friendly relationship with Kaori. This further shook up Aiko and she was unable to sleep for the whole night.