Uttered quietly to the door, only the dark was her witness. She tried again.
“Ahem. Sensei! It’s Sagiri. I’m sorry I’m late.”
Gingerly, the girl pushed open the door set into the side of the passage. The dusty blue of the tunnel’s crystals crept into the workshop first, mingling with her shadow second.
Her teacher’s laboratory was an undeniably eerie place to the layman. She passed by several spaces filled with apparatuses and specimens, her own eyes following her through the glassworks.
Sagiri set down her basket on an unclaimed table. “I have the herbs you requested. Some of them I wasn’t familiar with, so I hope I got them right. Um…”
She did talk a lot when nervous. “Yozei and I went on that first mission to the rice paddy, so I couldn't get here on time…”
The doctor stood in front of his desk, clawed hands resting on his hips as he surveyed the small room set aside to serve as his 'office'. It seemed that those who came in to his clinic as patients weren't too comfortable having meetings in the same space where his less than friendly experiments had occurred in the past. It wasn't exactly the most friendly looking space, or something like that. So he set off to create a more 'friendly' space, one that was devoid of churning concoctions and sharp torturous tools.
But all of that would have to wait, as a familiarly soft voice would catch the doctor's ears. They perked up a bit at the sound, steps immediately leading them toward the office door. It seemed that the girl hadn't completely forgotten about her task, which was certainly in everyone's best interests. The jonin opened the door and stepped out of the office into the laboratory proper, attention quickly falling to the much younger shinobi. "My dear Sagiri. You really had me worried there. I would've been so disappointed if you had forgotten about me." Their voice rang out in a slight trill as they stepped closer, attention turning to the basket that had been brought along.
Before the girl could be given any more attention, her work had to be appraised. Sharp nails carefully picked up the harvested plants like a pair of tweezers as he carefully arranged them in the table's empty space. "So, tell me about this mission of yours. I trust you and Yozei did me proud in your efforts?"
✉ tag -- ( Sagiri ) ※ the doctor is always happy to have some company
[attr="class","giritext"]His voice held the kind of timbre fueled by an extraction simulated by intense emotions. That sterile, familiar manner made a bead of sweat trickle down her neck.
Sensei wouldn’t be like them.
His fingers drifted and set aside her collection. Ginseng and peony bark, wormwood flowers and kudzu. Some held obvious, if minor, tears and blemishes as they were pulled from the world. But he would find no material missing, even if they weren’t quality grade.
“Um, we just had to find a kind of rotting thorne in Ikeda-san’s rice paddies. It was a lot of busy work. I’m not sure if we can pick our missions, but I have this feeling Yozei tried to get that one for me…”
She wondered if Kobashigawa had his own pharmacopeia. She would like to make a drug book, some day. Until then, she didn’t know enough things to start forgetting them. “Are you working on something specific, Sensei?”
