@veteralone — continued .
GUILT painted every feature of the gunner’s face as she faced her apprentice ; hadn’t been gone for LONG but with recent circumstances considered , she really should have told the other she was leaving before she did so . feels crushing guilt for scaring her junior , && struggles not to be crushed under it as she gives the other a weak smile . meets her gaze head - on but it’s clear she feels horrible about what happened .
❝ i’ll be more considerate from now on , sakura - san , ❞ her typically courageous yet soothing voice was weaker , close to cracking . ❝ i didn’t mean to cause you to worry . ❞
she shouldn’t complain , right ? wasn’t as if mami had been gone for that long . but waking to an empty apartment had been met with the gnawing FEAR that something had happened . that mami was hurt or even dead && would never come back . that despite how strong && talented she was , a witch had managed to take her down . didn’t know where to look — only knew she couldn’t stay still . had been out looking for hours — searching for any sign of the older girl’s magic . couldn’t count how many times she was nearly suffocated by the too - vivid thought of mami — somewhere in some witch’s barrier , dead && half eaten . an image that even now made her stomach churn .
but she knows it isn’t really her place to worry so much about the other . not when she was the one kyouko had asked to teach her — not the other way around . she’s just mami’s student , right ? she shouldn’t be that worried about her going to do something for a few hours . only gave way to fresh , new nagging guilt at the pain in the other’s expression . gaze flickered away as weight shifted from one foot to the other . accompanied by a soft huff of a sigh . “ i just — ” couldn’t finish the sentence . words nearly choked her — made it difficult to breathe even as she tried to hold herself together — didn’t want mami to think she was even weaker than she already knew . “ where’d you go , anyways ? i — was lookin’ for you . ”