Irina Jelavić

Irina is a striking, fair-skinned young woman, her wavy blonde hair falling to her hips and parted down the center above large pale-blue eyes. Her long-legged, curvaceous figure is a working tool as much as a feature, deployed to lure and manipulate the marks she is paid to kill. She dresses in designer labels and revealing, flattering outfits, her nails kept long and painted pale pink or occasionally red, a wardrobe that regularly earns her scolding from Karasuma for being unfit for a teacher.

She debuts as cold, calculating, and arrogant, contemptuous of the Class 3-E students and quickly saddled with the label Bitch-sensei. Her long record of kills and glamorous looks feed a confident, worldly, almost black-widow air. Once that facade cracks, however, a very different person shows through: childish, socially clumsy, and quietly insecure since childhood, yet earnest and unexpectedly humble. Her youth lets her bond with the students once her pride is set aside, and it is their influence that draws out her gentler side.

Born in a small Serbian village, Irina lived alongside her parents until age twelve, when the Yugoslav Wars reached her home and a militia razed it. Armed men killed both parents in front of her, and she seized her father's rifle to shoot the killer dead, then hid in the cellar with the corpse until the raiders left. Found as the lone survivor by Olga and Lovro Brovski, she was offered a choice between a haunted life in a refugee camp or training that would make killing routine. She took the latter, learning seduction from Olga and assassination from Lovro, and her first contracts, beginning with the commander behind the attack, launched a career as a renowned hitwoman.

Sent undercover as Class 3-E's English teacher, Irina first approaches Korosensei as a helpless woman in trouble, then springs a shed ambush that fails badly when her accomplices fire live rounds and the target easily disarms them. Humiliated but slowly won over by how much purpose Korosensei gives the class, she settles into teaching language and conversation while still scheming to collect the bounty. Her mentor Lovro later arrives to pull her off the job, and only a staged assassination attempt on Karasuma, which she barely pulls off, convinces him she has grown as both killer and teacher.

Her lowest point comes during the Reaper incident, when the true God of Death kidnaps her and she appears to betray the class, only to turn on him once she realizes the students genuinely value her and that he merely used her. Over time her failed seductions of Karasuma curdle into real love. As the government's deadline nears, she smuggles explosives to the imprisoned class and clears their escape route before returning to him. Her craft spans peerless infiltration, a taught Kiss of Death technique, meticulous backup planning, fluency in ten languages, and concert-level piano, all tools she has used to charm her way past the tightest security. Seven years on she is married to Karasuma, works at his side within the Ministry of Defence, and the two are raising a daughter, her brash personality no less intact.