A new line had appeared on the back of the training sheet.
Naruto had added it himself.
After Iruka collected the day's log, Naruto didn't immediately run off to argue with Kiyo. Instead, he opened his exercise book to yesterday's page and copied out today's "look first, then move" once more. When he finished, he paused, then added another sentence on the back: check the source of other people's advice first.
The sentence was crooked, but it sounded more like him than any of the lines before it.
Che noticed it as he passed. He said nothing about it, only pressed Naruto's pen cap firmly into place.
"Finally figured out you can write on the back too?" he asked.
Naruto snorted. "I always knew."
"Then why didn't you before?"
Naruto was stumped. After a while, he said, "I never thought anyone would look at the back."
Once he said that, both of them paused.
At the Ninja Academy, the biggest trouble often wasn't in the lines on the front, but in the unfinished lines on the back. Naruto was finally beginning to understand that.
There were no back-to-back tests that morning. Instead, they worked in groups to organize their notes. Mizuki suggested that each group prepare a summary of "today's takeaways," saying it would help the children review their progress. Iruka didn't object. He only added one condition: they had to identify their sources.
"Where did you hear it?" "Who pointed it out?" "Did you see it yourself, or did someone tell you?"
Once those three questions were written down, many of the students fell quiet.
Kiyo scratched his head in frustration and eventually filled an entire page with "the cat's belly" and "Morita Yu always undermines me." After reading it, Morita Yu offered only one reply: "The source is