Miss Aum

Aum is the protagonist and Nanno's target of the episode *Thank You, Teacher*.

## Description

Aum is a mixed race half-Thai, half Italian woman in her late thirties. She has brown eyes, and light brown hair usually tied back in a ponytail.

## Personality

Aum is very strict, with a no-nonsense attitude towards just about everything, especially her teaching. She is annoyed easily, snapping at whoever aggravates her. She is also very traditional, believing that children should always respect adults no matter what, and to uphold manners at all times.

Despite her intimidating outward personality, she has a soft side for certain people in her life, namely her son, Atom. Although frustrated with him sometimes, she is shown to genuinely care for him, being kind but also firm with how she raises him. She seems to want what was absolutely best for him until her absolute breaking point.

Aum is shown to be highly resilient, not giving up on her goals until the very end. She is smart, and doesn't accept other peoples' substandard attitude or performance, and can be kind to those she loves.

She is shown to be insecure, and sometimes unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. She also is reluctant to accept when she has done something wrong.

## Biography

Aum was likely born and raised in Thailand, judging by her proficiency in speech. She became a teacher as a profession. She got married to Jade, and they had a son together, Atom. They lived happily for several years. One day however, Jade groomed and impregnated one of his students, later revealed to be Nanno herself. Forced to accompany his mistress while she is in labor, he leaves Aum and Atom, where Atom screams that he would rather live with Jade than Aum. Devastated and in a fit of rage, Aum suffocates Atom with a pillow.

Trying to continue work through her bitterness and grief, Aum tries stifling all emotion with her work. Already strict and uptight, she becomes even more so as she teaches, due to the stress of her divorce and her son's death. To further distract herself, she makes it her goal to become the deputy director of the school, blaming her misfortune on bad school policies. One day, Nanno arrives as the new student, and Aum recognizes her as the girl that Jade had groomed. During her class that day, she is strict and snappish as usual, but Nanno enthusiastically participates. The school director later inquires about her strict teaching style and mental well-being, but Aum denies both.

After her stressful day, Aum clicks on her pen as she grades papers, a coping mechanism for her stress. Nanno tries talking to her, but still uncomfortable around the girl that resembles her ex-husband's mistress, Aum brushes her off. Over the next few days, Aum hallucinates her son at home and interacts with him, believing him to be real. Several times, her idea of a broken society where people have no manners or moral compass is reinforced, determining her even further to become the school's deputy director so she could reform the school and raise better students.

One day, everyone in her class receives a text at once, and believing it to be a prank, she confiscates one of the students' phone and looks at what was sent: a news article about Jade impregnating one of his students. Shocked and confused, Aum faints, only to wake up later. After making sure she was alright, he informs her that she didn't receive the position of deputy director, and recommends that she take a few days off work to relax after fainting. Distraught about not receiving the position as deputy director, Aum refuses and insists that she continue working, despite being a thread away from a mental break.

Going about her next few days in a daze, one day, while trying to calm herself by clicking her pen, realizes that the coping mechanism no longer works to soothe her, and snaps. She hallucinates the whole school, even the faculty, mocking her for having "failed her marriage." In a fit of desperate rage, she stabs a hallucination of her husband with her pen, which in real life was one of the students.

Aum is fired, and over the following days, her mind deteriorates completely. She finally reaches a psychotic break when she decides to return to the school with a gun and shoot up the establishment. She gleefully shoots at students and teachers, killing many of them and injuring others. Nanno approaches Aum calmly, and chats with her while Aum continues to hold the gun. Eventually, Aum points the gun at Nanno, insisting that it was because Nanno resembled Jade's mistress too much. Nanno taunts her, telling her that although she was wronged and had the right to be angry, she couldn't blame the whole world and become a bad person because of it.

Aum, horrified at the idea that she isn't a good person, yells and cries at Nanno. Nanno continues to insult her, and realizing that she had destroyed her life when she could have healed from the trauma inflicted by her unfaithful husband, takes her own life.

### Trivia

~It is likely that she suffered from at least one mental illness prior to meeting Nanno, as she displayed several hallucinations and was unaware of murdering her son.

~In the episode *Trap*, Aum is referenced when Suer mentions that he saw a news report about a teacher stabbing a student with a pen.