Iruka's Concern

Iruka graded papers until eleven at night.

He was the only one left in the instructors' office. A stack of test papers sat on his desk—the week's chakra theory exam, thirty-one papers from the whole class. He stopped when he reached the twenty-eighth.

The twenty-eighth belonged to Uchiha Sakuya.

He pulled out the paper and read it again.

Multiple choice: eighty percent correct. Fill-in-the-blanks: two mistakes in the basic section, but the final advanced question—on higher-level applications of chakra nature transformation—was answered with extraordinary precision, down to percentages. Short-answer questions: fluent writing, clear logic, no visible errors.

Total score: fifth in the class.

It looked like a decent result—above average, but not exceptional, enough to avoid anyone's attention. Yet Iruka stared at the paper, the lines between his brows tightening deeper and deeper.

He opened the grade book. Under Shuo Ye's name were records of every test result from the semester:

Shuriken throwing—eighth in class. Taijutsu sparring—seventh in class. Basic ninjutsu theory—sixth in class. Chakra control test—ninth in class. Ninja tool knowledge—sixth in class.

Every score fluctuated between sixth and ninth place. Never in the top five, never below the top ten.

That was no coincidence.

An ordinary student's grades would rise and fall—one day, they might be in good form and place second in throwing; the next, they might be off and drop to fifteenth in physical fitness. No one could stay between sixth and ninth every time, as though measured with a ruler.

He put away the test paper, turned off the desk lamp, and left the office.

Only moonlight filled the hallway. The Ninja Academy's school building was quiet at night. The glass windows reflected the silhouettes of treetops outside. Every now and then, a leaf fell from a branch and landed on the windowsill with a soft sound.

Iruka stood by the window and remembered something from three months ago.

It had been an outdoor lesson. He had taken the students to the training ground for an obstacle course, requiring them to use the basic Clone Technique to evade obstacles. Naruto's clone had flopped limply onto the ground, and the students had burst into laughter. When it was Shuo Ye's turn, he paused for two seconds—then created three clones. Their movements were standard, their chakra distribution even. It was a textbook-perfect execution.

But just as Iruka had been about to award him a high score, one of the clones had "accidentally" stepped on a pebble and stumbled.

Final rating: Good.

Iruka had thought it was a coincidence at the time. He no longer thought so.

The boy was concealing his strength. Not merely holding back, but deliberately disguising it with precise calculation.

But why?

After class ended the next morning, Iruka stopped Shuo Ye.

"Shuo Ye, can you come to the instructors' office?"

Shuo Ye had been packing his schoolbag. At those words, his fingers paused on the clasp for an instant—briefly, less than half a second—before he continued fastening it and stood up.

"Okay."

He followed Iruka down the hallway, his expression calm. His steps were steady, his hands hanging naturally by his sides.

The windows in the instructors' office were open. The curtains billowed in the wind, slapping against the window frame. Iruka pulled out a chair for Shuo Ye, then sat across from him. The stack of test papers and the grade book lay on the desk.

He opened the grade book and pushed it toward Shuo Ye.

"Shuo Ye, this records all your grades since you enrolled." Iruka drew a horizontal line across the data with his finger. "Every subject is above average. Very stable."

Shuo Ye glanced at the book, then looked up at Iruka.

"Thank you."

"I'm not praising you." Iruka's tone remained calm, but his focused gaze made Shuo Ye a little uncomfortable. "I want to know why you can stay this consistent."

Shuo Ye did not answer right away.

The wind from outside lifted the loose strands of hair on his forehead. He reached up and pressed them back down.

"I only perform at the level I usually train at."

"The level you usually train at." Iruka repeated the words, leaned back in his chair, and folded his arms. "Then let me ask another way—when you train normally, do you find it easy?"

"No."

"Then do you think you could actually have done better than what you wrote on that test?"

Shuo Ye fell silent for two seconds.

He knew what Iruka was asking. Iruka did not suspect him of cheating—cheating for high grades was understandable, but what reason was there to deliberately control one's score? Iruka's real question was: What are you hiding? Why would an eight-year-old child go to such lengths to conceal his strength?

Iruka was a good teacher. He gave every student the same attention—whether they were a genius, a dead last, or an orphan left behind by the Uchiha Clan. His sense of responsibility would not let him overlook anything unusual about any student.

Shuo Ye looked at the scar running across Iruka's nose. This man had been a victim of the Nine-Tails incident. His parents had died beneath the Nine-Tails' claws, yet he had never transferred that hatred onto Naruto. He did not possess the narrow-mindedness of most people in this village.

But he was only an ordinary Chunin instructor. The Third Hokage, Danzo, ANBU, Root—the power struggles among those at the top had nothing to do with Iruka. The more he knew, the more dangerous it would be for him.

"Iruka-sensei," Shuo Ye said.

"Yes?"

"You know about my family, right?"

Iruka's expression changed slightly. It was subtle, but Shuo Ye saw it: the space between his brows tightened, and his lips pressed together.

"I do."

"Before the massacre, my father told me some things." Shuo Ye spoke slowly, each word seeming to be pried from memory. "He said that in the ninja world, being too strong and not becoming a ninja were both dangerous."

That was a lie. Before the massacre, his father had never said those words. At the time, his father had already been caught in the vortex of the coup, returning home each day with nothing but silence and exhaustion. But that was not the important part. What mattered was that Iruka needed an explanation he could accept. And that explanation could not be, I'm afraid of drawing the attention of the Third Hokage and Danzo. That would reveal that Shuo Ye knew too much.

"So you want to keep a low profile?" Iruka asked.

"No. I just haven't decided what kind of person I want to become yet."

Iruka was silent for a long time.

He looked at Shuo Ye. The child sat upright, his hands resting on his knees. His eyes were gentle and calm, without the slightest flicker of evasion. His tone was steady, entirely unlike the merely "above-average" manner in which he answered questions in class.

"Shuo Ye," Iruka said, his voice softer now, "have you ever considered that your control over your grades is itself very conspicuous?"

Shuo Ye paused.

He had not expected Iruka to notice that. There were thirty-one students in the class, yet Iruka had remembered every one of their grade patterns and spotted the anomaly. His powers of observation exceeded Shuo Ye's expectations.

"I'll be more careful."

"I don't need you to be careful about anything." Iruka stood, walked to Shuo Ye's side, and patted his shoulder. The touch was light, landing on his left shoulder blade. But after doing so, Iruka did not immediately withdraw his hand. It remained there for two seconds. "I just want to ask whether you—need help."

Shuo Ye looked up at him.

There was something difficult to describe in Iruka's eyes. Concern and heartache mixed together with the awkward helplessness of wanting to do something but not knowing how. It was the instinctive reaction of a young teacher barely in his twenties facing an eight-year-old orphan.

"I'm fine," Shuo Ye said.

"Really?"

"Really."

Iruka removed his hand from Shuo Ye's shoulder and nodded.

"If anything happens, my office is always open. It doesn't have to be after class—it can be anytime." He paused. "Even in the middle of the night."

Shuo Ye stood and gave a slight bow.

"Thank you, Iruka-sensei."

He turned and walked to the door. Just as his hand closed around the doorknob, Iruka spoke behind him.

"I've graded your papers ten times. Since you enrolled—it wasn't that you ranked sixth through ninth every time." He paused. "Every single time, I had the illusion that I was reading an adult's answers. Sometimes, it didn't even feel like an illusion."

Shuo Ye stood at the door without turning around.

He opened it and walked out.

No one was in the hallway. Afternoon sunlight slanted in, drawing bright squares across the corridor floor.

Shuo Ye leaned against the wall for a while.

Iruka had noticed earlier than expected. The original plan had been to maintain a position that was "good but unremarkable" until graduation. Now, it seemed that controlling multiple grades at once without attracting attention would require even more precise adjustments.

He glanced out the window. On the training field, Naruto was practicing shuriken alone—perhaps Shikamaru had criticized his accuracy. His cheeks puffed up as he gritted his teeth, his arm tensing like a spring as he threw. The shuriken spun three times through the air before embedding itself squarely in the edge of the target. It was a close call—but far better than before.

When Naruto saw that he had hit it, he jumped up and pumped his fist. Then he realized no one was around, lowered his hand, and clapped for himself. It looked a little silly, but he clapped hard.

Shuo Ye looked away from the window and headed toward the classroom.

At the stairwell corner, he saw Ino standing beside the hallway railing with a bag of flower seeds in her arms. When she saw him approach, she casually waved the bag at him.

"My dad just got a new batch of bellflower seeds—"

"I know."

He walked over. Ino hugged the bag of seeds and fell into step beside him. The two went downstairs, passed through the corridor, and walked past classrooms filled with constant laughter.

Iruka stepped out of the office and stood by the window, watching the two figures on the training field grow smaller and smaller.

After thinking for a moment, he said, "That girl is really persistent."

Then he thought again and added quietly, "Neither of those children has it easy."

That night, Iruka wrote a teaching note. He did not report it to the Third Hokage—that was the official channel. He merely added a page of scattered observations to his private records, his handwriting messy. When he reached the entry for Uchiha Sakuya, he stopped several times. In the end, he did not write an evaluation, but several questions:

"Moderately above average. Deliberately holding back. Why doesn't he want anyone to notice?"

"What did his father tell him before he died?"

"He lives alone in the Uchiha Clan District. Eating, sleeping, going to school—alone."

"He doesn't ask anyone for help."

The question mark after the final line had been traced three times. The pen had pressed so hard that the ink soaked through the paper. After writing it, he stared at those words and realized they were not a judgment of his student—but a question to himself: As a teacher, what else could I do?

He closed the notebook and turned off the desk lamp. Only moonlight remained in the office.

Outside, the night in the Hidden Leaf Village was quiet. In the direction of the Uchiha Clan District, one light was still on. Beneath it sat a boy writing a letter—not to anyone, merely writing down the things he wanted to say. When he finished, he burned it, then lay back down on his bed.

The two did not speak to each other. Yet the night sky of the Hidden Leaf Village covered both their windows at once.