April in the Leaf smells like chalk, oiled wood, and nerves. Izayoi palms the doorframe the way he tests river stones—quick read, light touch, move on. The corridor hushes behind him; ahead, the first-year classroom waits with long benches and tall windows that make morning feel taller than it is.
He breathes once and calls the screen.
[HOST: Izayoi][POINTS: 25][TALENT ENTRIES: Otsutsuki Bloodline (RED), Super-Kage Aptitude (GOLD), Kekkei Genkai · Byakugan (PURPLE), All-Element Affinity (PURPLE), Chakra Control (BLUE), Medical Prodigy (BLUE)]
It fades like breath off glass. Learn loud, move quiet. Show the tool, never the grip.
Entry Orbs float above heads like small moons with text inside, the letters drifting as if written in water. Most glow white. A few green. Blue is rare. No purple except where it ought to be.
Hinata Hyuga sits alone at a three-seat desk, notebook centered, hands folded on top. She feels him look, startles at her own reflex, then almost smiles. The orb above her carries weight:
[KEKKEI GENKAI · BYAKUGAN (PURPLE)][CHAKRA CONTROL (BLUE)]
He doesn't stare. Habit becomes tell. He takes the left seat. Three rows back, a shock of blond tries to fit inside a chair and fails; Naruto radiates the kind of energy that gets accused before it earns anything at all.
The door clicks. A man with a clean headband and an old scar over the bridge of his nose steps in, chalk box under one arm.
"Good morning," he says, warm enough to keep spines straight without scaring them stiff. "I'm Iruka Umino. I'll be your homeroom teacher."
Chalk kisses the board. The orb above him is a calm blue:[CHAKRA CONTROL (BLUE)]It fits a shinobi who chose classrooms over headlines.
Roll call moves in stutters. Hinata's voice is a moth at a lamp. Naruto answers for someone else by accident and for himself twice on purpose. Iruka lets the second echo die before he lets the smile sharpen.
"Uzumaki, let your classmates find their own voices."
Naruto scratches his cheek and grins like a scold fed him. The room breathes together—first mornings teach you how big your space is and where the edges are.
Iruka claps once. "Basics. Transformation. Clone. Substitution. If you can do them, show me. If you can't, try. We start today."
Hands rise slow as grass. Izayoi doesn't raise his. He stands.
Eyes turn with him. Weight settles that has nothing to do with mass and everything to do with measuring sticks.
"Name?" Iruka asks.
"Izayoi."
"Show me, Izayoi."
He doesn't weave a seal.
He lets chakra slide the way water chooses what's already open. A second Izayoi peels from his left like a card off a deck. The original flicks his weight and trades places with the empty chair to his right—short, neat, no theatrics. The chair legs tick the floor and stop.
Naruto gasps as if he swallowed a spinning top. Hinata's hand flies to her collarbone. Iruka's chalk snaps between fingers.
Izayoi releases both jutsu as if he'd mistaken them for blinks. He meets Iruka's eyes not to challenge him but to prove he can.
"No seals," Iruka says. Not a question—an index card for later.
"Control," Izayoi says. "Sir."
Iruka nods as if they've agreed on weather. He points down the row. "Uzumaki."
Naruto practically climbs over the desk to say yes. "Transformation!" he declares, and the jutsu splashes over him like paint. The result is Iruka with all the wrong details, half a head short and twice as loud.
The class laughs. Iruka does too, with affection hiding under the correction. "Scar goes on the other side," he says. Naruto drops the jutsu and laughs because laughter is the right way to stand after you trip over your own idea.
Pressure leaves Izayoi's shoulders and parks in the aisle for the next volunteer. He sits. He levels his pencil along the desk's edge because straight lines calm rooms even when rooms don't know they're being calmed.
Hinata's whisper barely makes it out of her throat. "You didn't—use seals."
He turns just enough so she won't have to repeat it. "I practice control," he says. A truth in small pieces is still a truth.
Her cheeks warm quick as a secret. "I—see."
Iruka moves the class like a careful carpenter—measure, cut, sand. A boy with ink-stained fingers shakes through a clone; a girl with runner's calves nails substitution but trips Transformation. Above them, orbs mark what they don't yet know how to say out loud:
[NINJA APTITUDE (WHITE)][CHUNIN APTITUDE (GREEN)][CHAKRA CONTROL (BLUE)]
Izayoi keeps his hands still. Entry Orbs are labels, not loot. Copying an entry demands a win, and winning too early just mails your existence to the wrong address.
Iruka finishes the circle and returns to the front. "Good. Now I know where to start. We'll build from there." He glances once, then decides. "Izayoi."
Every head pivots as if the name were a hinge.
"Yes, sensei."
Iruka steps into the center aisle and balances like someone on a line no one else can see. "Again," he says. "But slow. Call the seals aloud as if you were making them. Step by step so everyone can follow. If you can't, we'll begin with seals and return to your method later."
Naruto perches on his toes. Hinata's pencil hovers above paper, unsure whether to write or listen harder.
There are three ways to answer: pretend to need seals and own the lie later, refuse and become the problem, or walk the thin rope between them. Izayoi stands. Movement is a decision you make with your whole body.
He raises his hands only to his waist, fingers relaxed and visible. "Understood."
"Begin," Iruka says.
The room tilts toward him.
"Tiger," Izayoi says, and does nothing with his hands at all.
Silence makes space for belief. He feels the hot attention of twenty pairs of eyes and the cool logic of the thing he refuses to name.
[KEKKEI GENKAI · BYAKUGAN (PURPLE)]stirs behind his forehead like a lens choosing focus. He does not flare it. He keeps the world ordinary.
"Boar," he says, voice even, and shifts his weight no more than a breath. Chakra thins and obeys. The second Izayoi unfolds to his left, neat as before, but slow enough for Iruka's eye to catch the edges.
A couple of kids clap before they realize class isn't applause yet.
"Ox," he says. He doesn't touch the chair this time. He steps into empty space and lets the substitution occur with the smallest betrayal of air—cloth sighs, wood clicks, he is elsewhere by the time the idea finishes. Still no seal.
Iruka's brows draw, not disapproval but study. "Hands," he says softly, "where I can see them."
Izayoi keeps them up, fingers open. He lets quiet do the rest. If you treat an act as normal, some people will meet you halfway.
"Again," Iruka says. "All three. Slow."
He obeys. Clone arrives as if he had spoken it into the same sentence as his name. Transformation he leaves alone; some tools only muddy the point. Substitution he performs with smaller and smaller footprints until the room has to imagine the edges he refuses to show.
Naruto whistles through his teeth. "Teach me that," he says, like a promise to himself. "I mean—I'll just do it." He bites off the last word like he caught himself.
"Later," Iruka says, not unkind. "Everyone learns a foundation first."
Izayoi sits because sitting is the correct answer when your pulse wants to stand on a table and prove a thing twice. Hinata studies the wood grain between them a beat too long.
"How did you—" she starts, then clips the question. "Do you get dizzy?"
"Sometimes," he says. When I act faster than my own story can keep up. "Drills help."
She nods as if he's given her a secret recipe she promises not to spill. Her orb doesn't flicker, but he imagines the weight of it anyway. Purple means heritage. Blue means she will do the work.
He pinches his pencil between thumb and forefinger to ground himself. When rooms tilt, it helps to touch something that doesn't.
Iruka paces once more. "Here's what I saw. Some of you push chakra like fire you have to blow on. It isn't. It's ink and brush—pressure, angle, patience. You will memorize seals, and you will learn control. Both matter. We'll split into pairs and—"
He stops. He doesn't look at Izayoi when he stops, but the moment still has Izayoi's name on it. A small muscle in his jaw writes a sentence it doesn't say. He scans the room again, slower.
"Change of plan," he says. "Today we observe. We watch how people work. Izayoi, demonstrate substitution one last time—but narrate what you're doing. If you cannot name a thing, you do not yet understand it."
Attention skates the benches. Naruto leans so far forward his chair squeaks. Hinata's pencil finally touches paper. Izayoi feels the demand for specifics creep toward the edge of what he keeps folded. Words are a different danger than hands.
He stands anyway. He doesn't like the word can't.
"Stand by," he says, catching Iruka's eyebrow before it becomes a question. "Hands where you can see them."
He closes his eyes for a blink. Pressure. Angle. Patience. He lets Iruka's metaphor fit like a coat.
"First," he says, "decide where to be after—chair to my left. Then thin chakra along the skin, like wetting a brush so it lays smooth. Weight through the balls of my feet. I—move."
He moves. Not far. Not flashy. Just an edit to where he is, results only.
The chair to his left ticks the floor and becomes the place his body isn't. The place his body is doesn't make a sound. He turns back so they can see he hasn't left so much as re-ordered the room.
Iruka's mouth makes the shape of a small yes. "Again," he says. "With the chair behind Naruto."
Naruto's grin goes feral. "Do it! Make me jump!"
Izayoi does, and Naruto does. Chairs skid. Laughter cracks and heals in the same breath.
Iruka waits for quiet. He doesn't wait long. "Good. Now we have a baseline and a hypothesis. Practice won't be show. Practice will be boring. Boring is how skill becomes yours." He looks at Izayoi. "One more. All three basics in sequence. Narrated. Then we break."
Three choices again. He makes the one that leaves him smaller than the moment and sharper inside it.
He lifts his hands just enough to prove they're empty.
"Tiger," he says.