I was wondering why we hadn’t seen her master in quite a while. It seemed like Uruchika had taken over as guardian at some point. It does feel a little weird to kill a main character’s (essentially) parent completely off screen. You think that something like that happening would impact her daily life for a period of time.
I suspect that that was a retcon - that the author wasn’t satisfied with the master character for whatever reason, or maybe just preferred Uruchika (as do I), so just ended up shifting the focus to Uruchika. And then had to do… something. And this was it.
It is sort of odd, but there jave been periods during which Chikagecwas basically incommunicado so it’s not entirely out of line. I think it’ll work out, and if the series runs long enough, the master will get a chance to be a recurring character.
Yeah, I think this is the most likely answer. She seemed like a cool older lady, but I can understand how Uruchika serves the story and the younger characters better as she can more easily relate to them. I am at least glad that we got to see the master’s backstory to better understand her relationship with Chikage, even if it was brief.