Rectangles lay across the corridor like thin mats someone had moved while they were gone. The sliding door whispered shut behind them, and the school took a breath it meant to hold.
"Hands where I can see them," Iruka says. "Ankles honest. Rectangles are time, not place. No words unless they buy. We pass to the first landing and return the same."
Palms rise a finger's width - promise, not pose. Izayoi takes the center line where problems like to live and be forgotten. Hinata stands two back with eyes ordinary and awake. Naruto chooses second because second is hard in a good way.
They move. The first rectangle receives their feet and gives nothing back because nothing expensive has been asked of it. A cabinet door sits open a finger - gap that wants sleeves. Izayoi becomes the size that gaps cannot love. The cabinet forgets.
"Ribs before shoulders," Iruka says for the air, not for anyone.
Naruto edits early. The rectangle after this one already has weight in his ankles. Shikadai ghosts the opposite lane as ballast. Mizuki leans inside the classroom frame with a clipboard that knows when to be furniture.
At the tall window, noon rewrites light in new grammar. A flat cloud walks across the sun and the rectangles pick up their edges and set them down a hand to the left. Two students read yesterday's map. One steps long. One drifts late.
"Choose," Hinata says, just the one coin.
The boy who stepped long finds a stop that costs less than apology. The girl who drifted late finds ribs first and then the floor she meant. Izayoi meets the small wake each leaves with an elbow that refuses to be proud. The corridor eats both mistakes and stays thin.
"Paid cheap," Iruka says, which is praise shaped like policy.
A teacher emerges from the staff room with chalk dust on his sleeve and the kind of problem on his brow that belongs to paper. He sees the line and makes himself smaller without being told. The class does not congratulate him. Quiet is contagious, not ceremonial.
The corridor narrows not in inches but in opinion where two posters have been tacked too low and a broom handle wants to see the world from a terrible angle. Izayoi adjusts by the width of a coin inside his shoe. Naruto feels the coin and answers with the other. Hinata doesn't speak because she doesn't have to buy anything.
"Intersection," Iruka says softly, looking ahead with the ears. From the side hall a low rack rolls with scroll tubes nested like fish in a crate. The junior aide pulling it looks at the list, not the world. The rack's wheels make polite complaints that think no one hears them.
"Paper current," Iruka adds. "We go through - we do not crease. If you must pay, you pay with waiting, not speed."
The rack enters the main lane at a sighing angle. Izayoi doesn't claim the middle like a deed; he lends it. His hand stays high where decisions can see themselves coming. Naruto offers sleeve, not arm, and turns raw geometry into a graceful almost. Shikadai shades the far side of the current so there is no suction for anyone to get proud about.
A tube shivers near the top of the rack and thinks about being a lesson. Izayoi sets two fingers where gravity expects a friend. The tube believes it is held because of the kindness and stays. The aide never notices he has been saved from carrying a story.
"Receive," Iruka says without looking back. "Dodge makes noise. Receive makes less."
They clear the intersection. Light shifts again - cloud moves on - rectangles regain a crisp edge like thin doors laid flat. A boy two places ahead tries to win at edges by going faster. His ankle lies about the price. He nearly snags the threshold rail that separates wood from the sliding track.
Izayoi's voice is a thread and not a rope. "Stop."
The boy stops and discovers no one dies from stopping. He goes again smaller and learns how not to owe his future a bruise.
The quiet wants to break when the elder visitor arrives - cane, soft shoes, gaze that looks everywhere like he lost something and will not find it on purpose. He pauses in the worst span - right where two rectangles kiss and forget which one they belong to.
Iruka owns the landing with tone. "We buy with waiting," he says. "If you must move, your first answer is smaller shoulders, not faster feet."
Naruto wants to show he knows this and almost shows off about not showing off. He remembers the bowl that isn't there and keeps it level. Hinata watches the elder's ankles the way gentle watches water. Izayoi becomes a useful piece of furniture - shelf, not shield. The elder's cane taps once in the exact center of the wrong square, his heel wobbles, and then he chooses flat wood because the world has been taught to be patient.
"Thank you," the elder says to a corridor that answers by existing.
Mizuki tips his clipboard a degree. It is the size of a note that will be written later and does not need to be today.
They reach the first landing where the rail begins a sentence and decide not to read it out loud. Iruka touches iron anyway because ritual makes air cheaper. "Reverse," he says. "Same rules. No words unless they buy."
On the return, the room behind them exhales - a bell somewhere far down the hall rings a minor hour - and a draught picks up a sheet of someone's work from the floor. The paper flutters at shin height in precisely the lifespan of a misstep.
Naruto sees it at the last possible cheap moment. He refuses to kick it - which would be interesting - and refuses to step over it - which would be generous but loud. He lifts a toe the amount a breath weighs and lets the paper pass beneath him like a good rumor. Izayoi's sleeve bars the paper from the girl behind without being a bar.
"Three words," Iruka says quietly for those two as they pass.Naruto: "Lift. Then place."Izayoi: "Less. Quiet. Close."
They enter the long straight where light skews into trapezoids. The floor's seam changes direction there - wood boards half-length, laid long against habit. Feet that love rhythm more than truth often trip right in this patch.
Hinata doesn't talk to anyone in particular. "Boards turn," she says. It is a gift to ankles regardless of owner.
They adjust. No one announces the adjustment. That is part of why it works.
From the far end, sound arrives like a mistake auditioning. A runner - student age, pouch at his hip, permission stamped on his wrist - barrels along the rectangles with a speed that believes in itself and a plan that doesn't extend one person wide.
He sees the line late but not too late to be saved. Panic in the eyes wants to buy a collision. The pouch slaps his hip and insists it owns the hallway.
Iruka does not raise his voice. He speaks where decisions learn to obey. "We will take him through us," he says. "Hands visible. Shoulders smaller. No one sells their ankles to his speed."
The class changes shape like a net making its own holes. Izayoi eases left one coin without enlarging himself. Naruto inches a shoulder in without become interesting. Shikadai gives away an inch of air as if inches were currency owed to common sense. The runner commits to speed because that is all he has bought.
"Hold," Iruka says, which is to the urge to impress, not to any body. "Then receive."
The pouch knocks once against its owner's ribs and thinks about trying the world. The runner's foot extends over the wrong seam. His balance tilts toward story.
Izayoi's palm is already level with the air where the pouch will swing. He does not catch it. He meets it and makes its circle smaller without turning circle into line. Naruto lets his elbow refrain from being helpful. The runner threads the space that wasn't there a moment ago and acts as if of course it was.
"Good," Iruka says. "Do not chase."
The runner blurts, "Thank y—" and then remembers breath is for running and spends it on that. He becomes distance and then silence.
A teacher with a tea tray appears just in time to learn the benefit of another person's lesson and crosses the same place quietly. The tray remains tea and not floor.
They reach the classroom door. The sliding rail whispers. Rectangles wait outside like ideas that can be taught again later.
Iruka does not release them yet. He stands in the doorway so his back is in the corridor and his face is for the room. "Three lines," he says, only to the pair that worked the runner. "Not now - later - written. You will say how you knew when to be smaller instead of faster."
Naruto nods because he already borrowed the sentence inside the task. Izayoi nods because paying after is cheaper than pretending you paid already.
A ripple of voices moves in the far hall - unrelated class dismissed a minute early - shoes multiply. Iruka feels the change in density before anyone sees it.
"Inside," he says to the line at his back, and the corridor obliges by letting itself be closed.
The door slides. The room takes them. Chalk does its useful click against the rail - a sound that makes order without writing the word.
"Izayoi," Iruka says, turning the chalk into policy. "At the staff office tomorrow - you will treat Kenta's gauge like the pouch in that boy's hand. You will meet it; you will make the circle smaller; you will not turn it into a line. Naruto - you will not be there. You will be in this room. Hinata - eyes remain ordinary unless a person says help. Mizuki - log that exactly."
"Logged," Mizuki says, and the clipboard enjoys being necessary without being loud.
A boy from the second row raises a hand half and lowers it because he has learned that some questions are better later. Iruka grants him mercy. "Write it. Ask after lunch."
He sets the chalk on the rail where it can pretend to be a metronome no one needs to watch. He looks over the desks as if they were a landscape under light.
"We will read the room for a page," he says. "Then we will do it again with chairs one finger wrong to see if you learned the person or the furniture."
Before the page can be opened, the shadow of the runner's speed returns at the far end of the corridor as a last echo. The pouch pops once against a doorframe and laughs like a mistake that got away.
Iruka glances over his shoulder, not alarmed, simply attentive. He places his palm against the doorframe so wood knows whose day this is.
"We'll take him again if he returns," he says, half to the room, half to the hallway. "You will not chase. You will invite wrists."
The class waits in that balanced place a moment longer - between breath and action, between rectangles and chalk - already smaller than they were when the door first slid.