Palms rise. The room becomes a corridor that remembers it used to be desks. Izayoi lets the first step be smaller than the thought that wanted to own it. Ribs only - ankles honest - hands where the room can see them.
"Front row - left aisle," Iruka adds, tone even. "No shoulder edits yet. Eyes on feet and shoulders. No one plays hero."
Izayoi takes the left aisle because the left aisle offers the least noise to owe later. A satchel strap snakes into the walking line from a desk where its owner forgot the difference between corners and edges. He does not step around it. He edits at the ribs and lets the strap belong to its desk without becoming his story.
Naruto starts one row over with a whisper that becomes air instead of sound. "Ribs," he tells himself. "Ribs." Shikadai says nothing and still makes Naruto quieter by existing next to him like gravity.
"Palms up," Iruka reminds the entire class. "Palms promise the room you are not about to make it pay for your choices."
A chair angles wrong near the end of the row - one back leg out a half inch where fatigue made someone careless. Izayoi glances at it only enough to be polite. His breath arrives at the place his body will be and then his body arrives as if breath had already paid. The chair learns nothing. That is the point.
"Quiet," Hinata says, not activating, only naming what exists.
Iruka slides from the door to the front wall as they pass, measuring the class with peripheral vision the way a carpenter reads a level he trusts. "Pairs - speak three words only when you see them," he says. "No sentences. Words must fit a footstep."
Shikadai says, "Angle. Elbow. Drift." Naruto says, "Feet. Feet. Feet," and then laughs softly at himself for being right and wrong at once.
"Better," Iruka says. "Next row. Center aisle. Ribs only. Keep your ankles home."
The class ripples forward. Paper on a desk lifts a corner in the window's weak breeze and then decides not to be trouble. Izayoi moves through the wobble of attention that follows it - eyes that want to watch problems more than they want to watch their own shoulders.
"Chair," Iruka says, and his toes flick the front leg of the nearest empty seat so it slides two inches into the path.
Izayoi does not change his feet. The ribs take the debt. He becomes exactly the shape of the air that remains when wood is rude by a finger. His sleeve brushes the idea of the chair and not the chair itself. The brush earns no sound.
"Receive," Iruka says for the class. "Dodge makes noise. Receive makes less. You will learn the difference or the mission will teach you."
A boy in the far right lane over-corrects for a backpack and clips his knee against a desk. The thud is honest and small. Iruka points without looking. "Five. Pay in place. Then rejoin." The boy pays, grateful the tax is cheap this time.
Naruto approaches an outstretched foot that belongs to a friend who forgot where his body ends. He starts to hop like a child who trusts legs to fix headwork. Shikadai murmurs, "Ribs." Naruto remembers - ribs - and the hop vanishes into the torso like a lesson hiding inside a more expensive lesson.
"Good," Iruka says, and the word is a plank the room can step on.
They reach the gap between benches where the light falls dirty and desks pinch the aisle narrow. Iruka steps into Izayoi's lane without touching him and holds up two fingers. "Two people at once. No collisions. Ribs only. Ankles home. If you cannot do it, stop instead of being interesting."
Izayoi adjusts by nothing a camera could love. Iruka exists as weather rather than obstacle. They pass each other as if passing had always been a plan written down in a book no one needed to read aloud.
"Class," Iruka says for everyone else's benefit, "you are allowed to stop when you are wrong. Stopping is cheaper than what comes next if you pretend."
Hinata carries her cup back to the bin, hands steady now. She stands just at the aisle edge without intruding on it and watches where shoulders tell the truth and feet try to.
"Three words," Iruka calls. "Pairs."
Hinata says, "Choose. Before. Place." Naruto says, "Quiet. Try. Again." Shikadai says, "Angle. Breath. End." A girl on the far side says, "Hands. Honest. Helpful."
The class believes language slightly more when it fits inside breath.
Iruka drifts to the front row again and drags a chair foot another inch with a sound the room does not like. His eyes stay on the group behind that problem to make sure the problem does not become a story. "Front - break your line for someone else," he says, and he means courtesy as much as geometry.
Izayoi shifts his hips the width of a coin and lets a younger student with too much backpack pass without learning new physics. The backpack knocks its owner in the spine for decisions made earlier in the morning. The student says "ow" without being angry at anyone.
"Note that moment," Iruka says. "There was contact. There was no event. That is what we buy."
They loop the left aisle to the front wall and turn along the chalk rail where the board meets room. Iruka picks up a stick of chalk that has already lived other lives and draws a small white square near the teacher's desk. He leaves it there and does not name it yet.
"Row change," he says. "Now shoulders only - ribs quiet - palms up. We will test whether your shoulders know when to grow smaller."
Izayoi lets his scapula sink the distance a breath can carry. He becomes the answer to a question the desk did not ask. Naruto copies, overdoes it by a loud inch, then dials it down until the inch is a polite idea rather than an announcement.
"Better," Iruka says. "Again."
They move through an alphabet of small wrongs that Iruka writes into the room with objects rather than speeches. A pencil on the floor. A canteen that will fall if stared at. A book overhanging a desk edge by a nail's worth. Izayoi's body reads each letter without trying to publish anything. He lets the paragraph stay room shaped.
"Pairs - another three words," Iruka says. "No repeats."
Hinata says, "Center. Thin. Return." Naruto says, "Shoulders. Smaller. Work." Shikadai says, "Edges. Choose. Pay."
A soft knock comes at the open door and does not enter. A teacher from the next room peeks in with a question in the posture more than in the hand. Iruka nods without breaking cadence. The teacher nods back and withdraws. The door learns to be a boundary again.
"Last lane," Iruka says. "Desks to door - no ribs, no shoulders - head only. If your head moves, your body will follow the quiet inside it."
The class tries. A few heads duck like people walking under branches. Iruka says, "Not ducking - deciding," and a correction travels the room that does not require more words.
Izayoi picks a line in the air and lets his skull be a compass that never shows off. The rest of him obeys as if obedience is cheaper than invention. He reaches the threshold and waits with palms still visible because this is not done until Iruka says done.
"Stop," Iruka says, and the room enjoys how cheap that command can be when you train for it.
He gestures them in a small gather near the board without destroying the shape of the aisles they just taught themselves to respect. He touches the little square of chalk he drew earlier.
"Three lines each," he says. "One on ankles. One on shoulders. One on centers. Speak them aloud to your partner while you write. If your words make your partner smarter, you use fewer next time. Begin."
Pencils whisper. Pairs murmur without letting sound become a shield against thinking. Izayoi writes for Hinata to hear, not to impress a page.
"Ankles tell," he says. "Shoulders confess. Centers lie if proud."
Hinata writes: "Choose after first. Breathe before. Place ends."
Naruto speaks his into Shikadai's ear as if the ear were a jar that can keep words fresh. "Feet are honest. Shoulders get loud. Head is a leash." Shikadai grunts approval without giving away his own three. He writes them slow and exact because he prefers words to behave.
Iruka takes a slow walk along the board rail while they whisper and write. He listens for words that hurt and words that heal. He writes none of them down because today is about the room learning how to hear itself.
"Time," he says after not long. "We go again. This time - the room stays a room and you stay smaller. If something falls, you let it land unless it will break. Then you receive. If someone stumbles, you do not perform. You choose how their weight meets the floor and you do not make it a story."
He plants the chalk in that white square so the square becomes a place with a reason to exist. He looks at each bench and gives the same sentence a different face for each listener.
"We are going to build mistakes now," he says. "On purpose. Cheap ones. If I see you pretend you did not make them, we will build more expensive ones later."
Naruto glances at his own feet with uncharacteristic respect. Hinata sets her pencil down and sets her breath where she will need it in one minute. Izayoi lifts his palms one finger width higher - honest hands buy cheap quiet.
Iruka taps the chalk against the rail once and lets the room hear the sound it makes when rules pick up tools.
"On my word," he says, tone thin as a blade and as patient. "You will cause an error and catch it in the same breath."
He lifts his hand.