Hina Tachibana

Hina Tachibana (橘 陽 菜 Tachibana Hina) is the sister of Rui Tachibana, stepsister and teacher of Natsuo Fujii.

Personality
Hina is a pure-hearted, gentle young woman. Though a little bit clumsy and helpless at cooking, her cheerful attitude mixed with her naivety gives her an aura of tenderness impossible to go unnoticed, which actually caused her some distress back in her second year of high school when her female friends out of jealousy decided to shun her. That was the time she met Shū Hagiwara, a third year Biology teacher back then, who after noticing she was crying while eating left alone in the science lab, used a hand puppet and a trick on ventriloquy to take her out of her sadness. It turned out that she became a regular there, until the teacher left the school by the end of that year. That experience is likely to have pushed her into pursuing the career of teaching.

Being a teacher, she is very committed to her students. At both schools she worked, she was praised for the increase in the grades of her students. Not only did she kindly encourage them to keep on studying, but she was understanding, and even met them outside to provide counseling on any matter. In fact, it is clearly stated more than once that all of her students were fond of her.

On a more personal insight, it is noticeable she has that of her father's personality, in her sense of even going to a stoical behaviour in order to avoid troubling others as well as to protect them from any harm, even by putting them aside or better putting herself out, for which she usually bottles up her true feelings. Early in the series, she is used to escaping during the breaks to the roof of the school, to cry alone when something is conflicting her.- In turn, leads her to cross paths with Natsu, who ends up cheering her up or at least truly trying to.

This way of being has put her through two major conflicting situations to note. The first one is when she realized she was trapped in an affair with the man that she used to admire back from high school, Shū Hagiwara - she told Natsuo she had been struggling for six months not knowing how to put an end to that relationship, until she was confronted by Rui and him, after which she could come up with a resolution. The second one is when she tries to discretely handle the increasing harassment of Kengo Tanabe, until his former fianceé opened her eyes and finally recurred to the police for assistance. Moreover, believing that was enough to settle things, she let her guard down, resulting in him chasing Hina a week later with the intention of stabbing her.