Work Text:
It was never a good sign, in Kiba’s opinion, when Ino tried talking to him. The girls in general seemed to think he had fleas because one of the civilian girls came in with lice, and no amount of explaining that Akamaru was a nin-dog exonerated him. Shino even made a valiant attempt at explaining that his insects would have eaten any fleas, which was at best ignored and at worse met with shrieking and more running. The only plus side was they all refused to work with them, so group projects got done faster.
Ino, though. She knew what a nin-dog was and still scrunched her nose up whenever Akamaru sneezed at her as if she wasn’t covering everything around her in pollen. Mentally he mourned the last ten minutes of his lunchbreak as he watched her march over, dragging Sakura with her like an overloaded shopping bag.
“You’re blocking my light,” he grunted. She kicked him in the knee. “You’re already in the shade I’m not blocking anything!” Ino dragged Sakura forwards with some resistance, then took a deep breath.
“Sakura saw Iruka-sensei at the rental office last and she said he said he was going to move out and the lady said she didn’t have any apartments in Konoha and he said that’s fine and she said he could still sell the apartment but Sakura thinks if he was just moving in Konoha he’s be looking for an apartment to move into. Shikamaru doesn’t care and but if he’s leaving then we get another teacher and if he’s leaving it’s probably because he’s so sick of running around after you and Naruto all the time, so can you be good in class, so he doesn’t go?”
Akamaru yawned, stretched, and flopped over onto his back. “Not my problem.”
“Yes, it is!”
“No, it ain’t. He always gives me detention when Akamaru barks even when I told him Yakko’s hiding a dog whistle in his bag.”
“He gave Yakko-kun a detention too last time,” Sakura said quietly, “and if he leaves, they might combine our class with Mizuki-sensei’s next year and get shinobi who aren’t teachers to take over.”
Akamaru rolled onto his stomach and Kiba sat up, jolted awake. “They can’t do that!”
“They can,” Ino said grimly. The bell rung. Having confirmed his premonition and ruined his lunch, she went a step further and ruined his day by saying “last time we had a cover teacher they told you to leave Akamaru in the corridor, so you better be good!” She flounced away again, smacking Sakura in the face as she ran back into the building.
Sakura bobbed a weird half-bow, half-wave, and left him and Akamaru to sit under a much colder tree.
Ino’s next target was Naruto. Identifying him wasn’t a problem since he was so noisy but finding him was harder than she thought. Waiting for him after school didn’t work since he got detention for drawing something on the desk that made Iruka very red and her mama told her she had to come straight home after school, so it was a whole week before she managed to find him during morning break. She never saw him during lunch, not in the canteen or in the packed lunch hall.
Naruto only responded to yelling and simple instructions, so yelling was the tactic.
“You need to stop being so naughty! Or else Iruka will leave!” That should do it.
When he startled upright, she scowled at the grass in his hair. “Where’s he going?”
“He’s not gonna live in Konoha anymore! Shikamaru heard him tell Mizuki he’s going at the end of the month! And it’s all because you can’t be good in class! So, you have to start being good, so he changes his mind!” This had the desired effect of getting Naruto’s focus, but the furrowed brow showed her he was still confused.
Well, whatever. If he can’t be good in class, he won’t be a good shinobi either.
Over the last few weeks, Iruka had noticed a strange mood sweep through his classroom. He’d noticed it first when he told them they’d have a substitute in a few weeks and been too busy to notice much more than general diligence and minimal truancy but looking at his class as they shuffled in for wilderness survival, he realised the mood was agitated the way a rabbit colony was after a fox had torn through the warren.
Faces stayed turned to the board even if eyes were glassy, so he made mental notes where he lost them, doubled back to see if the light had returned, and moved on when he’d recaptured focus.
Some eyes stayed glassy. Kiba and Naruto seemed to have begun some kind of competition, the rules of which were unclear but seemed to involve who could be the best student. Kiba was more successful, but mostly because he was clearly having Akamaru feed him information he missed.
When he eventually set them loose, rather than scrambling for the door (or in some cases, the window), there was a slow shuffle to get their bags ready and a hushed argument he tried not to listen to.
This was hard because they were nine, so indoor voices were still in practice and even their whispering could be heard by any shinobi in the building.
“-Ask him if-”
“-my idea so why should I-”
“-draw straws? Fairest option-”
“-cheater! You’d just move the straws around! Rolling a dice-”
“-Rolling dice sucks!” Naruto yelled, swiftly followed by a chorus of shushing.
Iruka sighed, dropped their worksheets on the desk, and turned to face them when they jumped.
He waited for someone to start talking. The easiest way to get captives talking is to wait for them to crack first, Ibiki had told him once, helpful advice in exchange for helping me get home, he’d followed up as Iruka’d hauled him up to his door and let him sprawl on the stoop.
Probably he wasn’t giving him this information to use on students, but the only difference between missing nin interrogation and trying to find out who broke a window was the handcuffs on the former.
“Iruka-sensei! I heard a rumour you’re going! Where are you going! Why are you going! Can you stay?”
Iruka blinked at the gaggle of children now lined up in front of his desk. “…Home?”
Ino pushed her way to the front, chin jutting out in a way he’d seen her mother do during parent’s evening.
“I got Kiba and Naruto to be good and Shikamaru to stop sleeping and Chouji to stop sneaking snacks and Shino to stop scaring the girls and Yakko to stop spraying bug spray at Shino and Sasuke to stop drawing cats on his worksheet! Hinata and me and Sakura are good anyway so we don’t need to change but if you tell us what to change we can!”
He watched her pant softly, recovering from her explosion as the penny dropped.
“Is this why you’ve all been so quiet? You think I’m… moving to… where do you think I’m moving to?”
“Water Country.”
Umi no Iruka. It would be a good deduction if it wasn’t so completely off.
“And when do you think I’m going.”
“End of the month.” When the substitute took over. Another good deduction.
“Right. Right. Alright.” He clapped his hands twice. Idly he wondered if he should speak to Ino’s parents about her stalking habit, but the image of trying to speak to the family who’d all but claimed the Intelligence Division about intelligence gathering put that idea to rest.
“I am moving.” The room seemed to hold its breath.
“I am moving from the chuunin barracks to a bigger house.”
“Ohhh,” sighed the chorus, “you’re getting married.”
Iruka took a breath, counted to five, and let it out. “I am not. I just want to move somewhere that’s not the chuunin barracks and I’m taking time off to move. With your permission, of course,” he added dryly, looking out at the rascals he was trying to mould into shinobi.
After a hurried, whispered discussion, Ino stepped out of the huddle again, having volunteered to be spokeswoman. Spokesgirl.
“That’s fine, but you have to promise to come back afterwards.”
If I went to Water Country, I’d be a missing-nin. Best leave that can of worms unopened.
“Now that we’ve discovered that I’m not leaving Konoha, can you all get out? Ah, maybe you don’t have enough homework to do at home and that’s why you aren’t rushing off?” Before he could even speculate on what kind of essay to assign, the herd scattered, out the door (and nearest window) in a way he hadn’t realised he was nostalgic for.
One last straggler remained, shuffling his feet in front of his desk. Iruka sat on the floor heavily and patted the spot next to him so Naruto could lean back against his desk.
Waiting for confessions was a good tactic in the classroom, and it worked just as well for anxious nine year olds who were too scared to ask a question but just as scared to not know the answer.
“…Iruka-sensei, you promise you won’t leave? You promise?” He’d crammed his index and middle finger into his mouth to chew the nails, and his plea was muffled as a result.
“I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”
No use bringing up the fact he was moving because the barracks didn’t have apartments with two rooms. No guarantee he’d be allowed to move Naruto in, but if he just happened to have room, no one could get involved.