Iruka locked the note in a drawer.
The lock clicked softly, but Naruto flinched.
He stood beside the podium, his cuffs still wrinkled as if he had clenched that half-sheet of paper for too long. Che sat in the last row without speaking. Outside, sounds from another class practicing throws drifted in from the training ground—wooden pins striking targets, bang, bang—like someone was counting time for the classroom through the wall.
Iruka put the key away in his ninja tool pouch.
"This matter stops with me for now."
Naruto immediately looked up. "Why? He didn't even write a name."
"Precisely because he didn't write a name."
"Then maybe someone just wrote it to mess around."
Che glanced at Naruto. Naruto said it was just someone messing around, but his fingers were still picking at his cuff. That phrase had struck him. The kind of person no one watched—those words were too precise, too precise to be an ordinary child's random prank.
Iruka walked over to Naruto, crouched down, and brought their eyes level.
"You want to be seen. There's nothing wrong with that."
Naruto's face instantly flushed red. "I do not."
"You do."
This time, Iruka did not beat around the bush. Naruto was left speechless, his eyes wide as if he had been caught with something he could not admit.
"But you have to judge for yourself what methods people want you to use to be seen," Iruka said. "The notes others give you are not always a path. Sometimes they're just grass by the edge of a pit."
Che could not help looking up.
Iruka rarely said things like that. It was not eloquent, a little clumsy even, but it was just enough for Naruto to understand. Grass by the edge of a pit—Kiyo would probably ask whether