Pages lie open. The room reads itself - corners, rails, the way light lands on desk edges like a rule written in powder instead of ink.
Iruka lets them look long enough to stop pretending. Then he nudges three front chairs a finger into the lane, drifts two in the center the other way, and leaves one back leg proud where laziness usually lives.
"Hands where I can see them," he says. "Ankles honest. Ribs before shoulders. If you must pay, pay with stopping. If the room tries to sell you a shortcut, do not buy it."
Palms rise a finger's width - promise, not pose. Izayoi takes the middle where mistakes like to blossom into stories. Naruto chooses second because second makes him smaller without insult. Hinata stays three back, eyes ordinary and awake.
They move. First crooked chair tests thighs and tempers. Naruto decides too late and then stops smaller than a nod. He goes again. The chair learns nothing. That is the point.
"Three words," Iruka murmurs as he passes Naruto's shoulder."Stop. Then small," Naruto answers, keeping breath cheap.
A middle desk slews its back leg into the lane like a joke that wants to be repeated. A girl almost laughs at it and then catches her mouth because laughter spends steadiness when you have not bought enough. She stops, places, goes. Shikadai's hand hovers near a strap and then does not fix it because not touching is also a skill.
Iruka clips one more chair a coin outward with his toe. "Ribs," he says for the air. "Not knees."
Izayoi takes the new wrong with his torso and lets feet tell the truth. The lane remains a lane instead of an opinion.
They enter the long center aisle. Rectangles from the corridor leak under the door and lie on the floor like thin lakes. The misaligned chairs make banks where there should not be banks. The class learns to treat them like water you cannot own.
Mizuki stands in the frame again - clipboard low, weight on heels - present without asking the room to rearrange itself around him.
At the back, a boy who loves rhythm more than truth tries to make the crooked aisle straight with speed. His ankle lies and then corrects before the lie writes itself into his knee. Iruka's look arrives faster than his voice. The boy stops. He goes again. The floor remembers who is in charge.
The corridor answers with speed of its own.
Pouch slap - fast shoes - breath spent on the wrong thing. The runner returns, permission stamp still bright, plan still one person wide. He hits the far rectangle like water that thinks doors should be rivers.
Iruka's voice does not get large. "We will take him through us," he says. "No one sells ankles to his speed."
The class becomes porous. Shoulders smaller, not wider. Izayoi loosens the middle by one coin without consenting to be interesting. Naruto gives away an inch of air the way decent people give up a seat and then stop talking about it.
The pouch arcs wider than last time, proud of its own circle. Izayoi meets the circle where it will be, not where it is, and makes it smaller without turning it into a line. He does not catch. He receives. The runner threads the hole that arrived on time and believes he created it. Belief is harmless when it keeps the hallway moving.
From the opposite lane, a teacher with a tea tray appears and learns to borrow someone else's good decision in the exact second she needs it. The cups go by as if they were part of the drill. A single surface ripple travels the tray and dies.
"Receive," Iruka says, for the teachable moment's corpse. "Dodge makes noise."
Hinata: "Choose," she adds softly, a coin in the same purse. It lands where a pair in the far lane almost invents collision out of politeness.
The runner's "Thank y—" abrades the air and then quits because running needs breath more than gratitude needs grammar. His shadow leaves a shape that resolves back into classroom edges.
Iruka allows himself one nod the size of a syllable. "Paid cheap," he says, converting luck into policy. "Again."
They finish the crooked loop without buying drama. The line turns itself and returns - front to back, back to front - as if flipping a page.
At the board, Iruka plants a small rectangle of chalk beside the rail - not the door game, another shape - and sets a second three paces away. He lets the class settle around a quiet demonstration because large speeches make students think they can afford to stop moving.
"Two doors," he says. "Naruto will perform a cheap stop. Izayoi will perform a receive that makes the circle smaller. No words. Hands visible. Class - you will name the difference with three words only."
Naruto approaches the first chalk. The chair one finger wrong in his peripheral tries to sell him narrative. He declines. He stops smaller than the blink he is allowed. He goes. The chalk is unimportant and thus perfect.
Izayoi crosses the second rectangle at the same time Naruto returns through the first. He meets Naruto's near sleeve the way a book meets a fingertip - turning a page that has already decided to turn. No contact. Only permission.
"Three words," Iruka says to the room.Shikadai: "Pause. Before. Pride."Hinata: "Less. Quiet. Close."A boy who nearly owed five: "See. Place. End."
Iruka nods. "Again, with seats one finger wrong," he says, and taps two chair legs to make the wrong honest. "We learn people, not furniture, but the furniture helps."
They do it again. It gets quiet faster.
Mizuki tips the clipboard a degree. The degree is exactly one note that will be typed later. He does not speak it now.
Iruka turns to chalk and makes a diagonal line between rectangles, then erases half with his thumb. "Transitions," he says. "You will stop here and here and here inside your body where no one can see it. If I can see it from the far wall, it is too large."
Naruto does the line and the erasures. In the middle he meets pride and refuses to purchase. At the end he breathes in the place the next movement will pay for and does not let satisfaction get into his ankles.
Izayoi follows with the same sentence said in a different handwriting. His body writes smaller. The chalk line becomes a reminder rather than a command.
Iruka does not applaud. He makes it practical. "The runner is a test that does not belong to us," he says. "We take him through when we must. We do not write him down in our bodies as a habit. You will forget him by the time you reach the second chair. Forgetting is useful."
Hinata lifts her hand to chest height and then lowers it because the thought she had fits in a single word. "Room," she says.
"Correct," Iruka answers. "We serve the room."
The corridor leaks a fresh rectangle under the door as a cloud changes its mind. At the same moment a pencil near the back starts to roll because floors love teaching you how lazy you are. A boy palms the pencil with the same bored competence he had watched earlier and returns it to the groove. Somewhere in the hall, a door clicks shut. The world is almost polite.
Iruka angles the chalk rectangle nearer the threshold by one finger - exactly the small provocations he has been teaching people to buy cheap - and looks past the class into the corridor to make sure traffic is not about to ruin his point. Traffic behaves.
"Last loop," he says. "Crooked aisle, two chalk doors, no words. Then we sit and write three lines you will actually obey."
They move. Chairs admit they are wrong and the class declines to be right by volume. The chalk doors receive feet like facts. Naruto passes the first without playing at grace. Izayoi returns through the second by being exactly the size the hole needs in that instant. Hinata's eyes remain ordinary and still see what matters. Shikadai becomes ballast in a way even he forgets to notice.
At the door, a shadow stops - not the runner. Taller, slower. A man in flak with a quiet posture that belongs to someone who can wait. Kenta, not yet inside, looks at hands rather than faces.
Mizuki adjusts local gravity by a thumb. Clipboard aligns. He says nothing because silence is the right tool at this distance.
Iruka does not announce a guest. He finishes the loop he started, because completion is a rule in this room. He puts chalk on the rail, a sound that means begin and end without needing to choose.
"Sit," he says. "Three lines - what you will do smaller - what you saw done smaller - how you will make the circle smaller without turning it into a line."
Paper takes pencil. The sound is low and expensive in the way that pays for itself.
Kenta steps into the frame one step only and remains furniture with a different badge. His eyes find Izayoi's hands and then his ankles and then the floor where decision lives before movement knows it does.
Iruka looks up, gives the nod that means procedure, not welcome, and tips his chin at Mizuki so the log will own the moment later.
He does not stop the writing. He does not sell the class a new story.
The chairs are still one finger wrong, and they will stay that way until the last line is written. The room will learn to be right around them.
Kenta does not speak. The measurement will be tomorrow, and rules can wait when rooms are working.
Iruka drags the chalk rectangle one finger nearer the threshold with two quiet taps. The line sharpens. The door breathes. The drill does not end. It continues at the size that keeps it alive.