"Tiger," he says.
Every pencil pauses as if the word holds the chalk still.
"Boar." He keeps his palms open, fingers quiet. "I thin chakra along the skin so it doesn't snag. Like water on a brush—no dry drag."
He lets the clone unfold to his left. Not pop—unfold. The second Izayoi arrives as if the space had been waiting for him all morning.
"Ox." He shifts weight. The chair to his right becomes the reminder of where he isn't, not the evidence of where he was. Substitution lands with no more sound than cloth breathing.
Iruka steps close enough to count the stitches on Izayoi's sleeve. "Again," he says. "Same pace. Narrate."
"Tiger," Izayoi repeats, voice even. "I decide the after before I begin. Boar—breathe where the movement will end, not where it starts. Ox—move the weight inside the step before the step."
He lets the clone arrive on the and of his sentence. He trades places with the empty space between two desk legs. A boy in the back whispers something that sounds like no way and then pretends he didn't.
Iruka doesn't blink often. "Now with a moving reference," he says. He taps the chair at the front row with a toe, nudging it an inch to the left, then another inch back. "Keep the pace. Keep your hands visible."
Izayoi nods. He doesn't say "Yes, sensei" because the nod carries less weight. He watches the chair drift and meets it in the gap between its positions, a clean exchange with a thing that can't consent. The chair ticks and stops. He is where a seat expected a body and a body refused to be expected.
Iruka's mouth makes the shape of a small approval without opening. "Good. Last time with me pacing." He steps a measured line along the front aisle, five paces right, five paces left, cadence like a metronome that learned manners.
Izayoi keeps his palms out. "Tiger," he says, so the room sees the rhythm, and then he trades with the air behind Iruka's right heel, an edit to a frame rather than a trick to a person. No collision. No flinch. Iruka stops, turns, and finds Izayoi already waiting at conversational distance.
"Thank you," Izayoi says, stepping back into neutral space. Politeness files edges off talent.
A chair foot squeals three rows back. Naruto is half-standing on hope and momentum. "Let me try! C'mon—teach said practice!"
Iruka checks the room's corners, then makes the choice teachers make when energy wants a job. "Fine," he says. "Awareness drill. Safe. No collisions. Naruto, you attempt substitution to touch Izayoi's shoulder. Izayoi, you do not flee the room; you adjust in place. Both of you will call seals out loud. Slow."
Naruto bounces like a spring left in the rain. "I got it! I mean—I'll get it."
Hinata lowers her eyes to her page and still misses two lines of whatever she meant to write.
Iruka sets the parameters with his hands—palms out, spacing measured. "On three," he says. "One: you see each other. Two: you choose a place to appear. Three: you commit. No running. No ramming. Words before will. Understood?"
"Yes, sensei," Izayoi says.
"Y—yeah," Naruto says, already vibrating at the count he hasn't been given.
Iruka lowers his hand. "Wait." He looks at Izayoi. "Before we begin, Transformation. Once. Minimal. No need to impress—just demonstrate."
Izayoi doesn't sigh. Sighing is a confession you can hear. He faces the class, tips his chin, and says, "Ram." His face itches like memory. He lets the skin over his nose shift fractionally, the bridge sharpening, the scar over the nasal ridge mirroring exactly the one in front of the room. The rest of him does not change. He holds it for the space of a count, then releases. Iruka's own hand goes there, reflexively checking the scar he knows is his.
"Details matter," Izayoi says, and he makes the sentence sound like it belongs to the room, not to him.
A ripple of quiet travels the benches. Naruto's eyes shine like coins. "Teach me that. I'll—uh—I'll practice."
"You will," Iruka says. He doesn't look away from Izayoi when he says it, but the promise hangs over Naruto just the same. "Back to the drill."
Hinata's whisper leaves her like a feather someone meant to keep. "When you—thin it," she says, and then steadies. "The chakra. Do you breathe before or after?"
"Before," Izayoi says, because that's the part that isn't secret. "It's easier to aim a calm thing."
She nods once, small and exact, as if that one sentence paid for all the noise in the morning.
Iruka raises his hand for the count. He speaks to the class without taking his eyes off the two boys. "Watch the feet. Loud feet make loud mistakes. Watch the shoulders. Shoulders tell on decisions."
Naruto leans forward. "I'm ready!"
"Words first," Iruka says to both. "Name the seal even if your hands do not move."
"Tiger," Izayoi says.
"Tiger!" Naruto echoes, too big for the room.
"One," Iruka says, and lowers his finger.
They face each other. Naruto's heel jitters. Izayoi's weight sits quiet over the balls of his feet.
"Two."
Naruto's gaze jumps to Izayoi's shoulder like a sparrow to bread. Izayoi's attention spreads, soft and wide, until it includes the grain in the floorboards and the length of Hinata's breath and the way Iruka's hand rides the air like a level.
"Three."
"Boar," Izayoi says, even.
"Boar!" Naruto blurts, and the room tilts around his will, eager, messy, honest.
"Commit," Iruka says. "No collisions."
Naruto pops Substitution like a cork from a bottle, a meter too far and a beat too early. He appears at Izayoi's left and grabs air where a shoulder would have been if shoulders were polite. Izayoi doesn't vanish; he adjusts—a half-step that begins in his ribs, a tilt that occurs under the skin first, then in space. His palm brushes Naruto's wrist in that nice, accidental way that says "I'm here" without turning contact into a lesson about who owns what.
"Again," Iruka says, as if praise and punishment share a room. "Slower. Words before will."
Naruto's grin eats half his face. "I can do slower."
"You can," Izayoi says, and the sentence lands like a small promise neither of them cashes yet.
They reset. Iruka's count runs. Words first. Movement second. Naruto shaves the mistake by a finger's width. Izayoi lets him learn without letting him land.
The class learns how to watch. Shoulders tell; feet confess; breath is where decisions touch the world. The room quiets into the kind of silence that holds pencils off the page on purpose.
"Good," Iruka says finally. "Enough for now." He addresses the class again, shoulders squared to the rows. "Foundation takes boredom seriously. You'll pair off later. For now—eyes forward."
Naruto drops back into his seat with the sigh of a balloon remembering gravity. He doesn't look crushed; he looks hungry in a direction that has a map now.
Izayoi returns to his chair. The wood recognizes him the way a place recognizes a familiar weight. Hinata's pencil scratches a line that might be a note or a way to occupy hands she doesn't want to fold again.
Iruka walks the front aisle and stops near the chalk. "Transformation is not a party trick," he says. "If you can't notice a scar that is not yours, you cannot wear a person long. Clone is not a mirror—if you cannot stand with your copy without tripping over your own breath, you cannot stand with a teammate. Substitution is not escape. It is choosing where a mistake lands and paying it yourself."
He lets the words sit. Good words need to be furniture before you sit on them.
"Questions?"
A boy in the back asks if you can substitute with a cat. Iruka says not in this classroom. A girl asks whether clones sweat. Iruka says they do if you panic enough. Naruto asks if shouting the wrong seal makes the right thing happen faster. Iruka says, "Try it once," and waits.
No one tries it.
Quiet returns without sulking.
Iruka caps the chalk and sets it down with the precision of a man who knows where things live. Then he looks at Izayoi again and chooses the next rung. "One more live demo," he says. "Naruto, substitution tag, same rules. Izayoi, you will either allow the touch or deny it with the smallest possible adjustment. No new tricks. No showing off. Words first. On my count."
Naruto is already half up. "Yes!"
Izayoi nods. Nods cost less than sentences.
"Class," Iruka says, and his tone becomes rope, "eyes on feet and shoulders. Narrate what you see to your notes—quietly."
He raises his hand. The room inhales on the habit of counts.
"One," Iruka says, finger dropping a fraction. Naruto's weight settles, just barely.
"Two." Izayoi's breath anchors.
"Three."
"Tiger," they say together, and for once the word sounds less like a seal and more like a rule.
Iruka opens his hand in the air same as he did for the first count, but this time the gesture ends in a thin slice of command.
"Go."
Izayoi chooses in the time between the word and the move whether he will be a door or a wall.