The classroom receives them. Desks square themselves without asking for praise. Chalk waits like a tool that remembers its job.
"Self audit," Iruka says. "One minute. Aloud. While moving. Three lines only - what you did loud, what someone did small you learned from, where your ankles lied. Palms where I can see them."
They flow the left aisle, then the center, then the right, speak while feet remember home, and let words fix posture instead of proving it.
Hinata: "Stopped early. Learned stop polite from Izayoi. Ankles lied at the turn - left."
"Good," Iruka says. "Keep it small in the mouth so the body believes it."
Shikadai: "Shoulders bragged once. Learned smaller from the rail. Ankles lied when thinking for Naruto."
"Better," Iruka says. "Thinking for someone else is a heel tax."
Naruto glances down at his own shoes like they might answer back. "Head got proud on tread five. Learned small from the bowl. Ankles lied when I liked myself."
Iruka doesn't smile. "Liking is fine. Don't hire it to drive."
A girl near the window: "Breath left me on the landing. Learned to borrow tone from Hinata's one word. Ankles lied when the group arrived fast."
"Borrowing tone is legal," Iruka says. "You return it by paying attention."
They loop once. The room reclaims the shape it likes when it is being watched properly. Paper sighs. Someone's chair considers a squeak and thinks better of it.
Naruto raises a hand without letting the arm become a flag. "For the parent day," he says. "Door and rail only - what do I say if they ask me what the trick is."
"You say there isn't one," Iruka answers. "You say palms up. Ankles honest. Ribs before shoulders. You say we kept it boring." He lets the last word be praise and warning both.
Naruto nods, relieved by the narrowness of the path he's allowed to walk.
At the back row, a small bottle of ink tips. No one kicks it. Gravity has better manners than that. It leans, slides, and chooses the long side of the desk for its first story.
Izayoi does not snatch. He moves the exact distance between not enough and too late and lets the bottle meet the place his hand already is. A soft click - glass against skin via air - and the bottle sits the way it had always meant to. The ink that has already escaped writes a short, sharp comma on the wood and stops.
Naruto's palms rise by a finger just in case the story wants to try again. They do not turn it into a show.
"Receive," Iruka says for the room without aiming it at anyone. "Dodge makes noise. Receive makes less."
Hinata: "Cloth," she says, a single word that buys more than it costs. The nearest cloth arrives from the front because a desk learned earlier to keep one folded under the slate for this very job. Izayoi uses the clean edge first, then the rest. The comma becomes a lighter comma and then a rumor that will dry into a lesson.
"Thank you," the boy at the desk says to the cloth, to Izayoi, to gravity. The thanks is small and survives.
Mizuki steps one pace into the frame. Clipboard stays low. "Administrative," he says in the tone the room recognizes as the kind that does not ask for attention it does not need. "Tomorrow - Kenta's five minute no seal check. Before lunch. We begin at the bell and end at five. Gauge on substitution and one small detail of transformation, Izayoi speaking only seal names if requested. Hands visible."
Iruka converts it into a rule the room can own. "Izayoi," he says. "You will be boring at a professional level. If breath gets proud, you make it small. Naruto - you are a student tomorrow, not a shadow. Hinata - if your head hurts at any point today or tomorrow, you say stop."
"Understood," Izayoi says.
"Yes," Naruto says, and sticks his hands at chest height because the word almost made them want to perform.
"Yes," Hinata says. She does not touch her temples. She's already learned not to check for pain like it's a ritual.
Iruka lifts a sheet from the pile and holds it up so light makes it thin. "Paper corridor," he says. "Closing drill. Each of you will carry one sheet from desk to desk along the aisle and return it uncreased. If you owe the room a stop, you pay. If the paper creases, you pay five and you speak the three words that would have saved it afterward. Palms visible. Ankles honest."
Sheets whisper into hands. The first pair sets off. The paper wobbles once in a weak draft and finds stability between fingers that treat it like something purchased, not owned. A bag strap that remembers its job stays inside its desk. Naruto's sheet threatens to become a bent spear when he decides to be generous to someone else's pass and then remembers ribs exist. It comes back flatter than his pride.
"Three words," Iruka says to each pair that returns.
Naruto: "Choose. Before. Place."Shikadai: "Angle. Breath. End."Hinata: "Hands. Smaller. Continue."A boy who nearly turned his sheet into a flag: "Stop. Then small."
Izayoi brings his sheet back like a mirror that refused to notice faces. He does not speak unless asked to. Iruka asks.Izayoi: "Less. Quiet. Close."
"Good," Iruka says. "Again. With the shorter aisle. If you think the second time buys you speed, you are wrong."
They do it again. The second time tries to be a shortcut and is taught politely that it is not. A girl lets her paper touch the corner of a desk and does not pretend it was fine. She pays five - quick, clean - and says, "Lift. Then place." The lesson sticks in the air longer than the crease stays on the sheet.
Mizuki checks the room for heat - posture heat, not air - and finds it right on the line where learning can keep without burning. He clears his throat as if the clipboard had asked him to. "Parent committee also asks for two sentences tomorrow to frame the safety module at the start," he says. "Iruka will give them. Students will not interrupt."
Iruka translates. "At the demo I will talk. You will behave. Parents are not the mission. Teaching them to not be the mission is."
The room accepts this with the relief of being told it can do less.
The last sheet comes home. Desks breathe like furniture that has earned a break.
"Water," Iruka says. "Two sips. Then we move through the corridor rectangles. The light changed while we took the stairs. If you rely on the old map, you will lie to your ankles."
Cups appear. Paper shrugs into stacks. The cloth at the back stops being a story and goes back to being a cloth under a slate.
Naruto slides next to Izayoi, voice tucked small. "When Kenta's gauge grabs the wrist," he says, "does it feel like being measured or like being asked a question."
"Like a question," Izayoi says. "You answer with less than you want to say."
Naruto nods, satisfied by the kind of mystery that isn't. "Less," he repeats to make it his.
Hinata sets her cup down and looks at the floor where the chalk door used to sit. The ghost of it remains in her head. "For the parents," she says to no one, "maybe they need to see a stop."
"They will," Iruka says, catching the thought and filing it. "We sell them the cheap stop. They do not need to see what happens when you don't buy it."
Mizuki angles the clipboard toward the window long enough to see the rectangles move. "The noon light shifted," he says, not as an order, as a fact the room can become smarter by hearing.
Iruka takes up a stick of chalk, knocks it once against the rail so the sound says begin without writing the word. He draws a small rectangle near the door frame - not a door, a reminder that space makes rules whether people love them or not.
"We'll pass the corridor to the first landing and back," he says. "Hands visible. Ankles honest. No words unless they buy. Hinata, eyes stay ordinary. We don't pay for vision when light can teach."
Naruto looks like he wants to ask if he can be first and then decides to like being second again because second makes him smaller without insulting him. Shikadai reads that decision and gives it no applause, which is a kind of gift.
Izayoi checks the line where floorboards meet sliding door rail - where a foot could catch if pride borrowed it for a mistake - and chooses to be the same size as that problem.
Iruka sets the chalk down on the rail like a metronome no one needs to watch. The room leans toward motion the way a body leans toward a step when it already knows where the floor will be.
The sliding door breathes. The corridor light writes new grammar on the boards.