Classroom Seating Arrangement

On the third day of the Ninja Academy term, the seating chart was rearranged.

Iruka Umino unfolded a hand-drawn seating plan at the podium, pinned it to the blackboard with magnets, and announced that everyone would be reseated according to height. The classroom immediately erupted into activity. Some wanted to sit with their best friends, some wanted to stay far away from people they disliked, and some—Naruto Uzumaki, for instance—were craning their necks toward the back rows, probably trying to figure out how not to be separated from Shinichi.

Shinichi was thinking about the same thing.

His current seat was in the center of the front row, with Naruto on his left and an empty seat on his right. That empty seat had originally belonged to a boy named Yamada, but Yamada had gotten food poisoning yesterday and taken three days off. Over the first two days of school, Shinichi had thoroughly mapped out the classroom's seating arrangement—the seat nearest the door in the front row belonged to Sakura Haruno, while the seats beside Sakura by the aisle were occupied by several unremarkable civilian-born students. In the middle column, from front to back: he and Naruto in the first row, Kiba Inuzuka and Shino Aburame in the second, Ino and several other girls in the third. The window-side column was the most conspicuous—Sasuke Uchiha occupied the window seat in the last row by himself, while the row in front of him held the fixed pair of Shikamaru Nara and Choji Akimichi, and Hinata sat in front of them. Hinata sat by the window because the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan required sufficient light for routine eyesight training. Her seat had not changed since enrollment.

This world was more logical than the original story, at least. The seating arrangements had a physical basis. Shinichi thought.

Naruto dragged his schoolbag over and announced that he had claimed the very center seat in the front row. Then he grabbed Shinichi by the sleeve and ran toward the seat Naruto had picked out. Shinichi stumbled two steps after being dragged along. He glanced at the neighboring desk Naruto was slapping hard enough to shake the room, then set his schoolbag down and sat. He did not tell Naruto that this was actually the seat he had planned to take himself—Naruto taking the initiative to pull him over would work better than Shinichi taking the initiative to sit beside Naruto.

But sitting with Naruto was not his only goal. After putting his schoolbag away, he looked up and swept his gaze over the last seat in the window-side column. Sasuke was already seated, his hands folded on the desk and his eyes fixed straight ahead on the blackboard, entirely unconcerned by the commotion of everyone changing seats. Beside him—the second-to-last row by the window—was currently empty. That seat had originally belonged to a boy named Tanaka, but Tanaka had applied to transfer classes because his family was moving. Iruka Umino scanned the roll sheet at the podium, looked up, and asked if anyone was willing to voluntarily switch to the second-to-last row of the window-side column. Several students exchanged glances, but no one raised a hand.

That seat was too close to Sasuke. The Uchiha Clan's genius boy might have been handsome and top of the class, but he radiated an aura that said, "Don't talk to me." Ordinary children instinctively avoided him.

"Sensei," Shinichi raised his hand. "I can move there."

Iruka looked up from the roll sheet, and his gaze paused on Shinichi's face. It was not the look a teacher gave an ordinary student. There was something faint layered beneath it—as if he were silently confirming a judgment he had not yet written into his observation records. He lightly marked the roll sheet with his pencil and nodded. "Senju, move to the second-to-last row in the window-side column." Then he looked up. "This seating arrangement will remain fixed for one month. If you have any issues, come see me."

Shinichi picked up his schoolbag from the front row. Naruto stared at him wide-eyed, his expression like that of a golden retriever whose owner had suddenly switched out its food bowl—not angry, just confused and aggrieved.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Naruto grabbed his sleeve. "You're going to sit that far away? Then how are we supposed to discuss things in class? How are we supposed to chat after class? How are we supposed to eat lunch together?"

"We'll still eat together." Shinichi patted the back of Naruto's hand and leaned close to whisper in his ear. "No one sits next to Sasuke. If we leave him alone, he'll never talk to anyone. You stay in the front and listen carefully in class. I'll watch things from the back. During breaks, I'll come find you."

Naruto blinked a few times. The grievance remained on his face, but now it was joined by a solemn sense of mission. He released Shinichi's sleeve and nodded hard, then turned around with his hands on his hips and announced to the whole class, "Then none of you are allowed to bully him! If anyone bullies him, I'll—mmph mmph mmph!" Shinichi covered his mouth from behind and dragged him away. Shikamaru lay sprawled over his desk, watched the scene, yawned, and said something meaningful. "Shinichi isn't changing seats. He's playing shogi." Choji looked up from his bag of chips and asked what that meant. Shikamaru rolled his eyes, turned his back on him, and could not be bothered to explain.

Second-to-last row of the window-side column. Shinichi sat down, hung up his schoolbag, took out his textbooks and pencil case one by one, then opened his notebook.

Sasuke was on his left, less than a meter away. The window was on his right, looking directly out at the large camphor tree in the school's rear courtyard. From this angle, he could see the entire training ground as well as the flow of people entering and leaving through the rear door of the school building. Good visibility, an excellent observation point, close enough to Sasuke without being excessively close. He drew a simple seating map in his notebook, marked everyone's position with different symbols, then quickly wrote a line in shorthand only he could understand in the corner of the page: "Window-side layout complete. Sasuke's neighboring seat secured; contact frequency can be gradually increased."

Sasuke's gaze shifted from the window and paused on the Senju Clan crest on Shinichi's notebook cover. He neither asked Shinichi to leave nor frowned. That was Sasuke's version of goodwill—not disliking someone meant tacit acceptance, and tacit acceptance meant allowing them to remain beside him. Shinichi did not initiate a conversation. He opened Basic Theory of Ninjutsu and began previewing the next chapter. The two of them read quietly less than a meter apart. From the front of the classroom came the laughter of Ino and several girls discussing the colors of their new hair ties, occasionally mixed with Naruto's anxious shouts as he questioned Iruka Umino about why his seat was so far from Shinichi and whether he could change it.

When the break bell rang, Naruto was the first to rush over and inspect Shinichi's new seat. He looked left and right, then nodded in satisfaction. "By the window is pretty good. Good ventilation." Then he lowered his voice into a whisper he thought was secret but that the entire class could hear. "I think nobody really dares sit beside Sasuke. Did you do this on purpose—"

Sasuke turned a page in his textbook very loudly. Naruto went silent. Shinichi opened his desk drawer and began taking out stationery, moving with the calm of someone organizing their workstation.

As Ino passed behind him, she suddenly stopped and lightly tapped the corner of Shinichi's desk twice with her fingertips. Tilting her head, she looked at his seat. "Hey, how come you were sitting next to Naruto on the first day, and now you've moved next to Sasuke? Are you carrying out some kind of plan to catch all the important people in one net?"

"The ventilation is good," Shinichi continued stacking his textbooks. "It helps with eyesight too."

"Liar," Ino replied with a grin, then swung her ponytail as she returned to her own seat.

Hinata did not come over. She remained in her seat several rows ahead in the window-side column, secretly glancing toward the new seat from the corner of her eye. Her fingers tugged at the edge of a page, slowly folding it and releasing it again. Judging by the slight relaxation of her lips, the new seating arrangement seemed to have eased the tense atmosphere for her even before it did for Sasuke himself.

Shinichi lowered his gaze back to his notebook and added an even smaller note beside the seating map: "Naruto · Sasuke · Hinata · Ino—contact windows established in all four directions." Then he turned the page and began recording that day's ninjutsu theory notes. By the third day of school, he had established preliminary connections, through different means, with every key person he needed to contact in this classroom.