The short pencil had been sharpened a little shorter.
Naruto was the first to notice when the Shared Box was opened that morning. The pencil had already been short, and now another bit was gone. Shavings still clung to the edge of some scrap paper. Naruto picked it up, his eyes wide.
"Who sharpened it?"
No one in the classroom answered right away.
Iruka-sensei looked up from behind the teacher's desk. "I did."
Naruto's anger suddenly had nowhere to go. He could only look down at the pencil tip. "It was already really short."
"It wouldn't write yesterday afternoon," Iruka-sensei said.
Sasuke glanced at it. "As long as it writes."
Naruto wasn't quite satisfied. "But it's shorter now."
"Being short isn't the same as being unusable."
Naruto sat down frowning at those words. From the little stool borrowed from the East Corridor, Kiyo murmured, "That sounds like you're sticking up for the short pencil."
Morita Yu said coolly, "Don't go finding the pencil a powerful backer."
The morning exercise became a question of whether something was still the same thing after it changed. Once the short pencil had been sharpened shorter, was it still the short pencil from the Shared Box? Once the red string had frayed, was it still the red string from the Pending Identification Box? Once the handkerchief had dried in the sun, was it still the handkerchief that had wiped up water yesterday?
Naruto struggled most with the short pencil. He used it to write two characters. The writing was clearer than yesterday, but the tip had worn down a little more.
"Every time I use it, there's less of it," he said.
Iruka-sensei asked, "Then should we stop using it?"
Naruto shook his head at once.
"Even if you don't use it, it'll still get