Sasuke's eraser had disappeared.
It happened very quietly. During the second class that morning, Iruka had them correct the wrong characters in their name-writing exercises. The classroom was full of the soft scratch of erasers against paper. Sasuke lowered his head and felt through his pencil case once, then a second time. His hand stopped.
Che happened to be sitting diagonally behind him and saw him open his pencil case a little wider.
There was no eraser inside.
If it had been Naruto, half the classroom would probably have known already. But Sasuke merely closed his pencil case and looked down at the mistaken horizontal stroke in his notebook. It was not a long stroke, but it sat right beside his name and was especially glaring.
Iruka said from the front of the classroom, "Correct your mistakes. Don't rub holes in the paper."
A sound immediately came from Naruto's side, clearly because he had already rubbed too hard.
Che looked at his own eraser.
His eraser sat on the right side of his pencil case, its corners already slightly worn round. Lending it out would have been easy. Lending it to Sasuke was the hard part. Sasuke was not Naruto; he would not reach out and ask, and he might not be willing to accept it either. If Che handed it over directly, it would be like telling everyone that he had noticed Sasuke was missing something. To Sasuke, that might have been more troublesome than the wrong character.
After thinking for a moment, he placed the eraser on the edge of his desk by the aisle.
He did not push it over.
He simply left it there.
A breeze came in through the window, stirring the corner of a sheet of paper. Sasuke saw the eraser but did not