He chooses in the dark whether he will be a door or a wall.
Air moves first—shirts whisper, chalk dust breathes, twenty heartbeats mistake themselves for quiet. Izayoi keeps his palms up and lets Hinata's presence be a fact instead of a shape. Ankles on chalk. Knees honest. Breath where it belongs.
Iruka's voice does not enter the moment. That is the point.
Hinata steps nowhere and still arrives. The change begins in her shoulder, a small permission that tells a wrist what kindness looks like. Izayoi answers with the answer he was asked to give: he accepts the softest version of contact and sends it home intact. Her palm lands on fabric without claiming it. The chalk under both their heels stays a line, not a story.
A knuckle taps Izayoi's left deltoid—pressure the size of a thought. He lets the idea pass through him without asking his feet to translate. The touch enters, finds no purchase, and leaves clean. Ankles un-migrated.
Iruka says nothing. The room learns to listen to what is not said.
Hinata withdraws her hand as if replacing it exactly where she found it matters as much as the touch. Izayoi keeps his hands high enough to be boring. He could move them. He does not. Hands keep you honest when honesty is the curriculum.
The back mat grunts—Naruto's pair discovering that enthusiasm is a kind of gravity. A chair foot squeals. Paper sighs. Izayoi balances those sounds against the weight in the floor, the line of chalk, the little wind of a sleeve that intends to be near. He answers none of it with his feet.
Iruka taps the other shoulder, even lighter. A suggestion, not a request. Izayoi meets it the way a river meets a leaf—by being what it is until the leaf changes its mind.
Hinata lets the next reach be slower by a half-breath. He registers the micro-delay and places his inhale where her exhale will land. They make a hinge out of silence and turn it together.
"Good," Iruka says, and the syllable is measured so it does not count as weather.
He kneels without creak and slides a thin chalk rod under Izayoi's right heel. It is not a trap. It is proof. If the heel rolls, chalk will speak. Izayoi does not let it.
"Again," Iruka says, quiet as a second hand.
Hinata does not speak. She lets her forearm write a line into the room. Izayoi answers by filing himself a fraction thinner where that line wants to live. The rod under his heel remembers what being unbroken is.
From the rear: "Two—Boar!" Naruto counts for a drill that does not require it. Shikadai says, "You can count in lowercase, you know," and Naruto answers, "What?" much quieter than he intends. The class swallows a laugh; the moment does not burst.
Iruka's fingertip flicks Izayoi's sleeve—not a tap this time, a mistake-sized brush designed to wake a flinch. Izayoi gives the flinch nothing to wear. His wrists stay where the room can see them. He lets breath be narration.
The breath says: before.
Hinata reaches. He permits the weakest version of arrival again. Her palm lands a degree lower than last time. He imagines he can hear her pencil later underlining before. Imagination is free; using it costs nothing yet.
Iruka raises one palm between them, a flat stop—then lowers it. There is no verbal cue. That too is instruction. He drifts one knuckle down Izayoi's spine the length of a coin, then away. Izayoi does not chase the wake.
"Now," Iruka says, "a visitor."
Fabric scrapes the floor at the rear mat. Naruto's steps try to be quiet and succeed at being enthusiastic. Iruka allows him exactly three paces and then says, "Stop there. Hands visible. No collisions. You may attempt a soft tag at your discretion. No count."
Naruto's whisper could be a shout wearing manners. "Okay."
Izayoi keeps his eyes closed. He does not open them for mercy. He maps the air with what is left to measure: the shadow of a boy who forgets his own elbows, the way an eager chest compresses breath, the way shoes think too loud. Naruto vanishes with Substitution and reappears a foot to Izayoi's left. The arrival carries a smell of chalk and soap and pride.
Izayoi does not take the bait of speed. He edits, smaller than a rule could find fault with. Naruto's fingers brush the sleeve, not the shoulder. Pride still gets paid; geometry gets the receipt.
"Again," Iruka says.
Naruto tries the right. Izayoi meets him with absence that reads as kindness instead of escape. Hands still up. Ankles still home. The chalk rod never complains.
"Enough," Iruka says. "Naruto—back to your mat. Thank you."
"Yessir!" Naruto says, when what he means is thank you for letting me try.
Hinata waits for the air to settle before she withdraws another inch. Good habits do not argue with their own patience.
Iruka draws the rod from under Izayoi's heel with two fingers, checks it, and sets it aside without comment. "Eyes open," he says, the way a teacher says pencils down.
Izayoi opens them. The room returns to drawing lines and being a room. Hinata's face is composed and a shade pink. Iruka's expression is the same careful furniture he uses to keep mornings upright.
"Note," Iruka says, loud enough for the row behind them to steal the lesson. "If you can keep your feet honest, your head will learn to copy. If you can keep your shoulders honest, your hands will stop lying. If you can breathe where a move ends, you will stop making noise where it begins."
He gestures to the chalk circle. "Switch again. Hinata—anchor. Izayoi—receive. Same rules. No seals. Hands visible."
Hinata's palms rise to match his. Her eyes steady. He meets them with the quiet that says I will not make this heavier than you can carry.
Iruka does not count. The room finds its own count. Hinata reaches, patient as paper learning ink. Izayoi lets the softest touch arrive and depart without paying rent. Ankles solid. Chalk whole.
"Good," Iruka says, and he almost smiles. Not a reward. An acknowledgment. "We'll build from here this afternoon."
The door slides.
Every head in the room pivots by instinct and training and curiosity. Mizuki stands in the frame, flak vest neat, a pale slip of paper tucked under his thumb the way a person holds a fact when they are about to share it.
"Apologies," Mizuki says to Iruka with the tempo of someone who knows how to be polite on short notice. "Staff office."
Iruka holds out his hand. Mizuki crosses the threshold exactly one pace, delivers the note, and retreats to the jamb. Iruka reads without giving the room any part of his face to borrow meaning from. Then he folds the slip once, and only then looks up.
His gaze lands not on Izayoi but on Hinata. Something in his shoulders becomes more exact.
"Hyuga Hinata," he says, tone even. "A request from the office."
Hinata straightens by degrees. "Yes, sensei."
Iruka's eyes test the air and decide it is clear. "Byakugan," he says. "Activate."
The room forgets how to blink. Hinata's fingers waver, then steady. Izayoi keeps his hands up because honest is still the rule, and he does not open his mouth because words spend more than they buy.
Hinata inhales once. The space behind her brow tightens like a door frame considering a guest.