Things were just not going Sakura's way today.

First, her laundry had still been wet when she'd woken up, forcing her to dress without the skirt she usually wore over her shorts. Not the worst thing ever, she guessed, but it was apparently just the start.

Then her landlady had stopped her to chat about something that Sakura did not have the patience to listen to. By the time Sakura realized she had agreed to have Ms. Fujita over for tea, the woman had disappeared back into the building, and Sakura was still running very late.

Sakura rustled with the rough bandages around her right thigh, reflexively tightening them and her shuriken holster before she jumped onto the roofs of Konoha, running towards Tsunade's office at full tilt.

After a long night in and out of some of Konoha's finer gambling establishments, the Hokage herself didn't seem to be having the best morning either. Even with the most advanced medical ninjutsu ever developed floating around in her brain, there was nothing she could do if that brain was muddled in a hungover fog. It wasn't as if she would allow anyone around her to help and risk just making it worse. She settled for a few weak headache pills while the rice wine oozed its way out of her pores.

Instead, Tsunade preferred to suffer with very little dignity, barking orders at any person that unfortunately happened to find themselves in her line of sight. Sakura didn't fare any better once she entered the blonde woman's messy office.

"Good morning, shishou," Sakura said, only half as brightly as she had hoped to.

"And what's good about it? It's barely even morning anymore." Tsunade groaned, her forehead buried into her palms. Shizune stood behind her, sending Sakura an apologetic, and silent, look. Arriving late while Tsunade was already in this bad of a mood wasn't one of Sakura's best moves.

"Well, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining," Sakura knew it was weak and glib as soon as it left her lips, but her own morning had been just a little too frantic to have any real positivity. Tsunade's answering grunt wasn't any more optimistic.

"I'd much rather they stopped. All of them. Forever."

"I wouldn't bet on it."

Tsunade's eyes narrowed as she looked up at Sakura.

Okay, too glib. This Tsunade was just as dangerous as she normally was, if not more so. The friendly jibe didn't land as well as intended. Sakura smiled sheepishly and shrugged her arms in a pathetic apology that the Hokage wasn't inclined to accept.

"For that, you get to spend a week with the genin squads. Maybe you can teach them some chakra control while you learn to control your mouth. You can come back once my headache is gone."

From anyone else, it would have sounded harsh. Had Tsunade said it to anyone else, it would have been harsh. Luckily, Sakura knew the simmering rage sitting behind the desk was mostly just a vicious headache and dehydration. The fifth Hokage just put a very high value on tough love. She backed away towards the door carefully, waiting until she was almost out of the door before saying her goodbye.

"Drink plenty of fluids, Tsunade-shishou! Just for your own sake!"

The door clicked safely shut behind Sakura, just as something heavy collided with it. The door rattled dangerously in its frame, but Sakura had already darted down the hall and back onto the roofs of Konoha. She wasn't willing to risk today being the day Tsunade actually followed her out of the office.

It had been several years since Sakura herself had been a genin, but she was still quite familiar with the training grounds they frequented for training. As a chūnin, she had access to more demanding, dangerous training grounds, but all shinobi made their way back to the more level training grounds at some point. After all, the charm of the Forest of Death and its blood-sucking leeches really only lasted for so long.

She was crossing the bridge on the way to the training grounds as she thought about how she would manage to stay busy while she spent a week following around the genin squads. It wasn't a vacation from her usual missions and hospital rounds, after all. Tsunade wasn't exactly a vindictive woman, but she would certainly stand behind her little punishment. Annoying her was a dire sin, and it would fare far better for Sakura to just do as she said. But that didn't mean she had to rush or anything.

A slight wind wound its way along the path and through her hair. The pink strands danced merrily in the breeze, tickling Sakura's chin and nose. The birdsong that surrounded her was actually quite nice if you weren't hearing the Hokage complain about it. Even the sunlight that dappled the ground beneath her feet seemed to be humming pleasantly as she walked towards the training grounds.

As a kunoichi, Sakura sometimes forgot to just stop and enjoy the small pleasantries the world could offer. War could ravage every last village on earth, but the birds would still sing, and the sun would still shine. Even a path as familiar as the one she was following now was beautiful when she thought of it that way.

She passed a sun-faded sign or two on her way through the training fields, but she didn't pay them very much attention. Like most Leaf Village shinobi, she already knew these overgrown woods like the back of her hand. Sakura was wandering now, only half-hoping to eventually run into one of the several genin teams that went careening around the city streets these days. The woods and training grounds were relatively quiet, compared to the village. She was enjoying her walk more than she'd expected. Maybe she could wait until tomorrow to find a squad…she still had laundry to finish and her bed was calling her name.

CR-RRRACK!

Okay, maybe not.

Sakura leapt back just in time to avoid the tree that nearly exploded to her left. Splinters of bark whistled past her as she managed to whirl her way behind another tree trunk. Sawdust rained down while the higher branches crashed down across the path.

"Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry!"

Sakura peeked her head back around the trunk warily. Her senses were on high alert now, as they should have been the entire time. She'd gotten too comfortable on her walk to the training grounds and hadn't noticed that she had actually managed to stumble across some of the very genin she was supposed to be looking for in the first place. Amidst all of the splintered wood was a boy with a hitae-ate tied securely around his left sleeve.

"My paper bomb went way too far, Sakura-sensei! My aim was off, and I didn't know anyone was out here besides us!"

Sakura smiled gently at the genin in front her, it wasn't as if he'd actually come close to hurting her anyway. If anything, he'd made her job easier at this point. At least she wouldn't have to actually look for a squad anymore, this kid had found her and finished that particular task on her behalf. She remembered him vaguely from the academy, on one of the occasions she'd been called in to demonstrate for the class. Sakura held it as a point of pride that Iruka-sensei kept asking her back to help teach the finer points of chakra control and manipulation; nothing gave her a feeling of self-satisfaction like being recognized for her talents and hard work.

"Don't worry about it," she said with a cheery smile. She'd probably have to dodge some more badly-aimed weapons before the week was through, anyway. "I'm actually here on the Hokage's orders. Tsunade-sama wanted me to see how her favorite genin teams were doing with their training."

"Oh! Sure! Sensei's out here with us to train, follow me!" Like most kids, he was nearly out of his skin with excitement at the idea of someone new around the training pitch. Sakura could remember all too easily how bored she used to get on these same training grounds after spending two days running and hiding through the brush.

"Which…team are you on exactly?" she asked, following through the trees. He hurled along at a breakneck speed, barely allowing her to keep up.

"Team 4! We've already been on three missions, even if one was just rescuing a cat from the woods. It really seemed like that cat needed to be rescued from that crazy old lady, though."

Sakura wracked her brain, trying to think of who was assigned to mentor this year's Team 4. It couldn't be Shikamaru; she did remember that he'd managed to end up with a squad of all girls. The academy had had a record number of female graduates that year. It was perfectly likely that she'd organized the team herself and just forgotten the second she gave the paperwork over to Tsunade, making it even more annoying that she couldn't remember who it was.

But as she and the young genin broke through the tree line and Sakura's eyes landed on the figure currently under a barrage of young feet and fists, she wasn't surprised that she'd completely forgotten who ran this particular team.

Sakura did not usually do things like this. Sure, she enjoyed hanging out with her friends, but she wasn't generally acting as Ino's support man in a carefully designed operation to get Shikamaru's undivided attention. She wasn't generally all dolled up to the nines like this, having to use way more of her shinobi training to totter along in these borrowed heels than she would really like to admit.

"Ino, is this really necessary?" Sakura whined. Managing her way through the village streets in these shoes wasn't exactly how she had wanted to spend her evening.

"Yes, Sakura! I'm telling you! I barely managed to get Shikamaru to come to this party at all! I've spent the last week getting Choji and Naruto to think it was their idea to have the party in the first place! Even if it just a bar! They were supposed to get everybody there, so it's not weird, and you're there to make sure nobody else gets in the way!" Ino's strides were stronger and surer than Sakura's in the dusty village streets, surer in her high heeled shoes.

"Is it really worth it if you need to try this hard? Shouldn't it just happen if it's meant to be? And shouldn't I be allowed to show up in my normal clothes for a normal friendly gathering? Like a normal person?"

"You should, but you aren't. And get over it, Forehead! You look hot!"

Sakura heavily doubted that. She hadn't been as blessed as Ino in the breast department, and any gratuitous curves she could have developed were long since hardened into lean muscle by her rigorous training. Her icy blond hair floated down her back in a way that made Sakura feel thoroughly plain in comparison. Ino's dress was snug and black and velvety and…complemented her assets to their very best. She was dressed to impress, for damn sure. Sakura didn't even own anything so slinky and flattering, her own dress being something Ino had foisted on her with absolutely no sympathy. The forest green dress was silky, but a too loose around her chest and pulled slightly too taut around her hard-muscled hips and thighs. Sakura had to restrain herself from taking too long of a stride or risk popping the delicate seams that held the fabric against her thighs. She felt awkward and uncomfortable, and like she didn't pull off the look Ino had been hoping for.

"I don't know…"

"Look Sa-ku-ra," Ino said, enunciating each syllable to emphasize her impatience. "I promise you look hot. But even if you didn't you aren't trying to pick anyone up, so does it really matter? You're here to make sure nobody else takes his attention for too long! C'mon, you know I'd do it for you if you asked." Ino chose not to mention that Sakura would almost certainly never ask, as she didn't exactly participate in the dating scene. Ino almost had a monopoly on the whole thing now, and Sakura didn't have the confidence to break into the market this late in the game. She didn't even think there were any cute, eligible, single boys left around, now that they had managed to survive into their twenties.

"Ugh. Fine. But you owe me, Ino-pig."

"Great! Now let's go!"

Sakura let Ino drag her the rest of the way to the dimly lit but jovially loud shinobi bar in a dustier part of town. Even from the sidewalk, she could hear Naruto's obnoxious laughter rolling through the air inside, infectious with its excitement. Sakura couldn't help the smile that reached her face- she may be in a ridiculous outfit, but these were all of her dearest friends.

Inside, Shikamaru leaned against a wall, looking thoroughly unimpressed with a beer loosely held in one hand. Naruto was to his left, already through at least one bottle of sake. The kyuubi's awesome healing powers didn't do anything to help metabolize alcohol, they had all long since learned. Naruto was known, on occasion, to destroy whole bars after a "friendly" round of arm wrestling with Rock Lee. Sakura could see that Choji and Naruto had more or less executed Ino's plan to its fullest extent, as she could recognize several people. Even Sai had shown up, probably after hours of begging from the orange fiend. He wasn't the most social of people, but Sakura was glad that at least this small effort to socialize had been made on his part. The recluse could use it almost as much as he could use some real sun. Choji was demolishing a platter of rice balls, sitting in a booth with Kiba and Shino, who seemed to be making some sort of bet of how long it would take him to finish. Even a few of their old sensei were there, if she could believe the green jumpsuit in a distant corner of the bar. Sakura supposed that made sense. Their old mentors would do the honor of arriving to "celebrate Shikamaru's first squad assignment as a jōnin" but they couldn't usually be pressed into drinking with their juniors. She couldn't help but wish that the old sensei would be a little more present, somehow.

Ino almost immediately sauntered up to Shikamaru, Sakura well in tow. His eyes lazily slid from Naruto and towards the blonde, and Sakura was sure she saw the faintest glimmer of interest spark beneath his carefully controlled face. Maybe Ino wasn't doing something completely crazy with this after all then, Sakura thought, as his eyes dropped over Ino's chest for the smallest of a second.

Okay, definitely not crazy, her mind whispered, as her own stomach muscles clenched in response to that quick flash of desire that crossed his eyes. Plenty of boys looked at Ino like that, and it was recognizable now that Shikamaru had had a drink or two. Ino's plan had worked perfectly, with almost no one the wiser.

Sakura took the opportunity to slip away towards the bar and order a drink, slinking away awkwardly in the strappy sandals Ino had forced her into. She could use some of that saké Tsunade was so privy to.

Once she'd gotten her hands on her own porcelain vessel and cup, she visibly relaxed. She slipped into casual conversation with her friends, hours passing as they drank and reminisced about the times when they were the genin, getting assigned a jōnin leader for the first time.

"We thought he was such an idiot! The eraser dropped right on his head the second he walked in! What kind of elite ninja falls for crap like that?" Naruto all but yelled across from her, while Sakura collapsed into breathless giggles against Hinata's side. Hinata politely covered her laughter with a ladylike hand in front of her face. They were a few rounds deep now, enjoying the sake to its fullest. Sai sat on Naruto's other side in the booth, stone-faced, but the mirth in his eyes and the slightest blush of red on his cheeks proved the joke, and the alcohol, had struck him too.

"I thought I'd earned at least a little bit of your respect since then."

Both Naruto and Sakura's laughter died in their throats like crushed ants. Now it really was Hinata and Sai's turn to laugh, seeing Naruto and Sakura scared into silence as Kakashi himself approached from behind the boys' side of the booth. Sakura, only slightly buzzed, snapped to attention when she saw him. Old habits die hard for good students, and she was trained to respect her seniors. She moved so fast that the thin strap of her dress floated down off of her shoulder. She didn't notice how Kakashi's one visible eye followed her fingertips as they brushed the fine silk cord back into its proper place on her pale shoulder.

"How do we respect someone who is constantly nose-deep in erotica?" Sakura asked sarcastically. She only half-meant it though. As a kid, his constant reading had been the single most annoying thing she'd ever dealt with. Now, she appreciated that he actually read anything at all, unlike most of the men she knew. Not to mention that she'd broken down and read Icha Icha out of curiosity. The old sage Jiraiya wouldn't be winning any awards any time soon, true, but he was gifted as far as writers go. Sakura usually finished the books in one sitting, captivated and flushed as she took in everything on the pages. She couldn't exactly fault him for it anymore, but she definitely wouldn't be caught dead reading it in public the way he did.

However, he wasn't aware of any of that, and his eye sharpened its focus on her just slightly.

"I could beat all of you in battle, no matter what I'm nose-deep in." His tone was joking, but something about the gaze he had locked onto Sakura with was just serious enough to catch her attention, although it still left her confused. Something in her belly responded to it, and without thinking, she issued her former mentor a challenge.

"I bet you can't beat me at arm wrestling, Kakashi-sensei," she said teasingly, lips spreading back dangerously over her teeth. A chorus of mocking "Ooooos" floated into the air around them as the crowd quieted and watched the two of them lock eyes. This wasn't the first time she'd challenged a fellow shinobi to arm wrestle, or even the first time she'd challenged Kakashi himself. The crowd knew they were being served some free entertainment and watched expectantly. Sakura was confident in her strength and ability to beat him, but something about the mocking crowd and sharp look in his eye sped up the nervous pace of her heart. She could admit that she may have misjudged and made a teensy tiny mistake.

"Hm…Challenge accepted."

Naruto scrambled out of the booth, shoving Sai off the vinyl as he cleared the space for Kakashi. Hinata followed suit, giving Sakura room to ground herself. She was just a little dizzy from her sake and decided to remove Ino's ridiculous sandals as to ground her feet onto the floor firmly. As she planted her feet into their stance, she felt the smallest pop of thread against her left hip as her muscles strained against the unforgiving stretch of silk. She figured Ino's dress was a worthwhile sacrifice in the name of dignity.

Sakura's knuckles cracked threateningly as the world-renowned Copy Nin took the seat across from her. Her goading smile was met with a humored gaze from Kakashi's one visible eye. He didn't take the precautions Sakura had, and she realized that he thought she was much more hindered by alcohol than she really was. He didn't think she was sober enough to still manipulate her chakra as usual, and as she realized that fact her smile brightened even more. If he had dropped his guard that much, he was probably just as inebriated as she was.

They both rooted their elbows firmly on the table. Kakashi's gloved hand closed all the way around Sakura's smaller, naked one. The grip was strong and warm, and Sakura wondered if maybe she was unwarranted in her confidence.

"Okay! Three!"

After all, he was one of Konoha's most feared and elite shinobi. He'd trained her, he'd trained Naruto and Sasuke, and none of them were threats to be taken lightly.

"Two!"

His hand squeezed around hers, and her unfocused gaze in his direction quickly centered onto his eyes in response. She squeezed back, threateningly, shooting him a smirk she felt being mirrored back under the black mask that clung so deliciously to his strong jawline-

Wait. Deliciously? Did she just think of Kakashi-sensei as delicious?

"One!"

In her surprise, she threw a lot more force behind her arm than she initially meant to. Kakashi held his own for about a second before Sakura overwhelmed him. The back of his hand smashed through the wood table, and both of them tipped over to the floor with the force of her fist.

Even as everyone around them erupted in cheers, Sakura's face blanched as she heard and felt another soft pop pop pop along her hip.

She stood up stiffly, trying to keep her legs as close together and level as possible. If the seam of her dress ripped any higher, most of the bar would see the thong Sakura had been forced into ("No panty lines, Sakura. Absolutely not!") by Ino. She couldn't hold back the smile though, as she leaned to offer a hand to Kakashi, using the other to hold her ripped skirt in place. He was smiling sheepishly, after all, nobody in the establishment had ever expected Kakashi to have a chance in hell of winning. They also hadn't expected for her to absolutely destroy one of the roughhewn tables, but that was neither here nor there.

She grasped Kakashi's arm and pulled him up, noticing the strained pop of his wrist as she did so.

Well, oops.

"Oh god, Kakashi-sensei I'm so sorry, you to let me heal that for you right now-"

Sakura's apologies and the laughter of everyone around them was cut short when the owner began yelling over all of their voices, something about getting that pink-haired menace out of his dignified establishment. Sakura had to bite back peals of laughter as he approached.

"Now, now, it's my fault, of course," Kakashi began to interject, causing the owner to whirl around and demand to know just how he planned to compensate him for his table. "Ah, yes about that. Well, in fact, it just so happens that…"

POOF!

The owner's jaw dropped, aghast as Kakashi seemed to disappear into literal smoke. Tears pooled in Sakura's eyes and a snort escaped her nose as she tried and failed to check her laughter. Skipping out in the middle of being asked to pay for something was a very Kakashi-sensei thing to do. And it was about to be a very Sakura thing to do if she didn't make her way out of there very quickly.

Sakura glanced at Ino, who was very busy with Shikamaru's attention by now. She'd never notice that Sakura was slipping out on her own, and that suited Sakura just fine.

Sakura was still barefoot when she exited into the fresh night air, but she wasn't bothered. It was better than the shoes…which were abandoned somewhere among a couple dozen drunk shinobi.

Oh well. Couldn't be helped.

The night air leaked its way through her dress, cupping her skin and making her shiver. It was cooler outside, free from the heavy warmth of a crammed building. Sakura began to hum quietly to herself as she started the walk home.

"You shouldn't walk around alone at night. Could be dangerous, you know."

"Anyone who thinks about being a danger to me should just ask you how well that would go over," Sakura said with a smile. For a moment, she was speaking to herself, replying to an invisible voice in the air. Then with a small pop and puff of smoke, Kakashi appeared in front of her, leaning against a dim streetlight as she got closer to him.

"I meant dangerous for whoever it is you stumble into, obviously. You're the scariest thing on these streets." Kakashi's tone was light, joking with her, and Sakura smiled in response.

"That's me, bad to the bone. Now let me see your arm."

The two fell into step next to each other, a comfortable pace set by years of traveling together on missions. They had worked together more often than many of the others; Naruto, Sasuke, and Sai weren't exactly normal shinobi after all, and much of a ninja's work had to be done discreetly.

Kakashi held out his right hand to Sakura, pulling out Icha Icha with his left. His face betrayed no hints of pain as Sakura slipped off his glove and rolled the joints of his wrist tentatively. She took the opportunity to trace her fingertips along the defined muscles of his forearm, under the guise of inspecting the injury. The "delicious" thought from before was still rolling around in her brain, trying to find somewhere to land. The more she thought about it, the more she could see where such an unexpected thought had come from. It was pretty much accepted throughout the Leaf that Kakashi was an exceptionally attractive man. Sakura assumed that as a grown woman, she had just begun to agree.

Completely objectively, of course.

"Oh hell, I did more damage than I meant to. I thought you would hold up better against me than this," Sakura said.

"I thought I would too," he replied. If his voice seemed thicker than usual, more strained, Sakura didn't notice. She had brought them to a stop and stepped off to the side of the main street, having found it necessary to focus more seriously on his wrist. Kakashi leaned back against a nearby wall, letting Sakura grasp his wrist in both hands and concentrate while he watched her.

Sakura's eyes slid closed as her consciousness flowed along her chakra network. Her hands began to glow a soft green, emitting an effervescent hum that could not be heard, but that Kakashi could feel reverberating into his own chakra network and along the wrenched bone and muscle of his wrist. Sakura did not see but felt her chakra mesh around Kakashi's bone and knit the cells back into place.

Sakura retreated her chakra, and it flowed out of Kakashi's palm like cool water back into her own skin. Her fingers gently probed the muscle again, rolling the wrist one, two, three times, checking that all was in working order. For some reason, she was forgetting to let go of Kakashi's hand. Probably because it was so much warmer than the night air that curled around her own skin.

Her fingers just kept trailing delicately over his exposed knuckles.

"It's ripped."

"Huh?" Sakura nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of his voice, and his hand fell from her grasp. His hand dropped, almost in slow motion, to the ripped seam of Sakura's dress. She had completely forgotten that she'd popped the hem, and as she'd walked with Kakashi the split had only unraveled higher and higher. The split rode high on her hip, just barely revealing the milky slope hip meeting thigh. The tips of Kakashi's fingers ghosted over the exposed skin, stopping when they touched the taut black lace of Sakura's thong. Sakura seemed to be watching from outside of her body as they rested there, almost lazily. Then Kakashi did the unthinkable, so slowly he barely seemed to be in control of his hands at all.

His fingers curled around the elastic, a simple pull and release.

Sakura's thong snapped back against her skin with a sharp thwack. The sensation of it ignited molten lava deep in the pit of her belly. Instinctively Sakura pushed her hips forward, positioning herself flush against Kakashi, one of his knees between both of hers. With his back flat against the wall, her body pushed into his in a way that made her knees buckle. His skin was so much warmer than the night air, his body firm and tight and hard in all the right places. His hand was still on her hip, it was moving, it was gripping her ass and pushing her harder against him. Sakura's hips rolled down against his, and she released a breathy moan into his ear. With his free hand, he gripped a handful of her silky pink locks and forced her head back. At first, she couldn't understand why, until the divine and wholly unexpected sensation of Kakashi-sensei's bare lips against the base of her throat drove the warm pulse between her legs into a scream.

Sakura barely registered the sound of the dress's seam ripping even more as Kakashi's hand slipped between the lace of her panties and her hypersensitive skin.

"Ah, fuck, Sakura…" he managed to say, the words falling out of his throat rougher than gravel, as his fingers met with wet, hot skin that clenched dizzyingly in response.

Sakura's breath was ragged as she dragged air into her lungs, all of her muscles tightening into a frenzied ball at the base of her body, right beneath Kakashi's fingers. Sakura's head was swimming deliciously, begging for more, overwhelmed with the smell of sake and ginger root. She couldn't get enough. One of her hands clenched into a fist in his silver hair, the other had found its way under the hem of his shirt to feel the hard, defined muscles of Kakashi's abs and hip, dangerously close to the throbbing erection she felt against her stomach.

"Ka- Kakashi-sensei-"

And then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Her body felt freezing in the sudden absence of Kakashi's body heat, the night air whipping the split silk hem back and forth and allowing the cold to settle uncomfortably on the wetness that dripped between her thighs.

"What?"

Sakura was stunned and spun in a confused circle. She was completely alone in the dark street now, with only the whistle of the wind keeping her company.

"Excuse me?!" Sakura groaned, glaring accusingly down both directions of the shadowy street.

Whatever…that was that had happened, had stopped with as little notice as it had begun. She didn't exactly have the most experience with anything like this, but she assumed that being literally left out in the cold was not the ideal end. Ideally, she would be being pinned against this wall, still riding the waves of pleasure Kakashi sent rolling through her hips.

"ASSHOLE!" She shouted, directing one last frustrated insult to the shapeless darkness of her surroundings, before turning to huff her way back home, too annoyed to bother holding the edges of her dress together.

A single, tired gray eye followed her from the shadowy roofs as she walked away.

Sakura's stomach flip-flopped when she realized that it was Kakashi in the center of the training field. The obnoxiously bright Icha Icha cover flashed in and out of sight as he maneuvered around the two students attacking him. He never looked up from the pages as he gracefully flitted in and out of sight, deflecting and tripping them at every turn.

"I'll tell him you're here! KAKASHI-SENSEI, YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO'S HERE!" The boy leaped right into the scuffle with a loud yell before Sakura had the chance to grab his collar and tell him no thank you, not today, she did not have the energy to deal with any of this right now and she would very much like to try again tomorrow morning, please.

Sakura's face began to burn as the jōnin in question stopped his teaching and turned to face her.