Iruka's hand cuts the air. Naruto moves.
Palms up. Ribs first. Ankles honest. The chalk door by the back aisle accepts him if he earns it. He narrows two heartbeats early and refuses to brag about the timing. The jamb is only chalk and still the body believes in it. He treats it like wood anyway and passes.
Iruka stands at the far wall with the patience of a level. His eyes do not chase feet. They read whether choice arrived before motion or tried to ride it. He does not blink to be kind. He blinks to be accurate.
Between chalk doors there is an aisle that forgets it was a corridor this morning and tries to be classroom again. A pencil thinks about rolling. It trembles against the groove and decides to behave. Naruto lets the almost-event belong to wood and not to him.
Hinata waits opposite at the second chalk door, palms up, no words. She carries calm like a bowl. She does not tilt it.
Izayoi keeps the middle uninteresting. A bag strap that drifted wrong meets the back of his knuckles and remembers where base lives. He does not take credit. He gives the moment back to the room.
Naruto breathes where the second door will end, not where it starts. Pride arrives like a cat - soft, opportunistic, sure it was invited. He does not kick it. He does not pet it. He lets it pass and become air. He narrows again and moves through the second chalk without letting shouldered habits tell stories.
Iruka does not move. Distance tests honesty. From across the room, decision looks like a twitch if it comes late. He watches for twitches. He watches ankles first because ankles confess before the rest learns to lie.
A chair foot near the center line migrates the width of a coin because someone forgot to push it home. Naruto sees the wrong at the last thickness where seeing still buys cheap. He chooses a stop that is smaller than a nod. Then he goes. The chair learns nothing. The room pays nothing.
Shikadai's breath is a small wind in the row to the right. He says nothing. He watches. That is the job.
Mizuki leans at the frame with a clipboard that has decided silence is the correct grammar. He watches wrists and shoulders. He writes nothing because paper should not be asked to carry what a room is already remembering correctly.
Naruto crosses the room's middle where loud boys usually grow. He shrinks on purpose. He refuses to audition for the part of himself that would rather be bright than useful. Izayoi slides past him in counterflow with the measured absence of a shadow. Their elbows do not gossip. Their sleeves do not meet. Two quiets fit in one aisle and remain themselves.
Hinata's hands lower one finger width and rise again. The adjustment is not a signal. It is a reminder to herself that calm is a place you pay rent for.
The third chalk door waits by the board rail. Chalk dust glows where the window rectangle leans across the floor. The room is so quiet the dust imagines it is snow and then remembers it is chalk and stops pretending.
Behind Naruto, a desk leg scrapes on the wrong rhythm. Not collision - a near stumble paid at a good price. The boy who made it pays five fast and clean. The sound wants to buy the attention of the person in front. Naruto does not sell. His eyes stay on the seam where chalk meets light. His breath stays where the movement will end. He narrows. He passes.
Iruka sees the shoulder consider pride and decline. He sees the ankles tell the truth. He sees the center stay small. He sees nothing arrive late. That is the point.
Naruto reaches the empty pocket of floor beyond the third chalk and lets his palms remain visible for the count of a heart and a half - promise paid in full - then lowers them to a height that still reads honest. He does not grin. He allows the room to keep the moment.
Izayoi receives the near brush of a sleeve from a boy breaking from five to rejoin. He meets it with the soft part of his forearm and returns the boy to his own lane without writing any of it down in anyone's posture. The boy mouths thanks no one needs to hear.
Hinata does not clap with her face. She lets relief be a kept thing.
Iruka leaves the wall by exactly one pace. Distance collapses with the authority of a count. He stops where words can land on the group without wind. He looks not at Naruto but at everyone. News belongs to the room before it belongs to a name.
"Eligibility," he says.
The word hangs. It buys both attention and silence and leaves change on the desk.
He opens his mouth to finish it.
He closes it again. One finger lifts - not a threat, not a delay for drama - a tool. The room holds the ledge because the finger asked it to. He looks left to right once, measuring whether anyone's chest has decided to breathe for two. No one cheats the air.
Naruto looks at the floor because floors are safe. Small. Small. Small. He repeats it without moving his lips.
Shikadai does not step on the moment. That is also a skill.
Mizuki's clipboard does not dare click.
Iruka lowers the finger half an inch. The decision is ready to land.