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Umino Iruka looked down at the note a very sleepy Nara Shikamaru had presented to him before putting his things away and heading up to his seat.
He knows he isn't supposed to sleep in class. He gets enough sleep at home.
One of Shikamaru's parents had responded to the note he had sent home with the boy after the end of their second week, but if the fact that Shikamaru had already tipped over and his little head was already on the desk in front of them was any indication, it was something Shikamaru was ignoring.
It wasn't long until Yamanaka Ino had entered the room and had beelined right for Shikamaru, her voice rising loud enough above the din of the classroom.
"Shikamaru, you're not supposed to be sleeping in class!"
He had sent a note home with her, too, mentioning that she had spent the whole of the first week annoying, harassing, and sometimes outright bullying Shikamaru when he wasn't doing things to her satisfaction, which as far as Iruka could tell, was every moment Shikamaru was in sight.
She hadn't brought a note back in return. Iruka was going to have to go out of his way to talk to Ino's parents, then, which he wasn't looking forward to.
Plenty of other students had been sent home with notes as well, beyond them, and before it was time to start taking class attendance, he had received notes in return for all of him, too; the only one who had thought they had been clever enough to get away with it seemed to be Ino.
Iruka got halfway through the roll when the door into his classroom opened up, and an older chūnin who taught one of the older grades stuck his head through, making eye contact with Iruka.
"I think this is one of yours," Daikoku said. "He was lost outside."
Before Iruka could ask, Daikoku pushed Uzumaki Naruto past the threshold, who looked at Iruka and the rest of the class in a way that told Iruka that Naruto hadn't been lost at all.
The first few days of class had gone about as well as it could with new academy students who were new to going to school and still getting used to everything, with relatively little crying and few accidents, but by the end of the first week, some of the students in the class had started to avoid Naruto.
At the end of the second week, none of the students who had been willing to play with Naruto at the beginning were willing to approach him at all, and the boy had spent the last recess of the week alone at the swings. By the end of the school day, Naruto had stopped trying to pay attention or even answer anything in class at all.
The Hokage had only frowned and made a disappointing sigh before dismissing Iruka after he gave his report.
It was going to be a very long school year if he couldn't turn things around.
"Thank you for bringing him in, Daikoku," Iruka said.
His eyes swept over the classroom for a moment; this young, the desks and benches almost swallowed the students, and it meant that they didn't like to sit at them in the usual groupings of three to a desk; some of them in fours, which left a few spaces with only two students. He would need to rearrange them, but for now, it was working in his favor.
Shikamaru had already dozed off again rather than listen for his name to be called out, and next to him, Ino was creeping closer, hands reaching out like claws, ready to use the sharp nails that appeared to be unique to young children on him. There was no one else sitting in their row.
From what he had seen, Naruto liked to be noisy, but was behind in his basic skills, unlike the students who had parents. Suzume in the class next door had boasted that her class had multiple advanced students who had elder siblings that were already genin and chūnin.
"Naruto, why don't you go sit between Shikamaru and Ino."
Hearing their names made Shikamaru open his eyes and Ino very quickly pull away as though she hadn't been seconds away from attacking her friend.
Naruto only gave him a suspicious look and ran off for his newly assigned seat.
He hoped he wasn't about to regret this.
The day after the next, Ino still had no note, despite the fact that Iruka had sent her with another one, but both Ino and Shikamaru had come to class with an additional lunch to share.
From his vantage point at his desk in the front, he could watch Ino not give Naruto any choice except to eat the one she had brought, but Naruto didn't seem to mind, and neither did Shikamaru.
At the end of the week, Naruto had put his hand up to answer a question, and it had even been the right answer. Even if it had been due to the fact that Naruto had spent the whole lesson whispering to Shikamaru, asking him questions, it was still progress.
One month into the school year, the initial chaos had started to settle down, like the other teachers had promised it would. It did mean, however, that his students were starting to become confident in doing things that went beyond speaking up in class or volunteering.
That became apparent one day when he returned to the class when all of the students were supposed to return from their recess period and the desk row that was supposed to have Shikamaru, Naruto, and Ino was completely empty of students. While some students were home sick from a cold that was going around the village, all three of them had shown up this morning in good health.
Two clan heirs. Naruto. And it had not been so very long ago that the village had an attempted kidnapping. All of the Hyūga children at the academy were escorted to and from the building by an adult clan member.
He excused himself, dropped into the teacher's lounge to find someone to keep an eye on the rest of the class, and went out onto the roof. It would give him the best vantage point of the grounds and the immediate area around the academy side of the building.
If nothing had happened to them, there was only so far they could have gotten in the twenty minutes they were given to play in— and if something had—
He chose to not think about that.
It wasn't long at all before he spotted a hint of yellow near a line of bushes that bordered some of the academy training grounds.
He didn't allow himself to relax until he got to the ground, reaching the spot in question in almost no time at all.
Pushing apart the bushes, he found two sets of blue eyes looking up at him in accusing squints. Both Ino and Naruto were sitting down on the dirt, next to Shikamaru.
Shikamaru was asleep, but that wasn't stopping Naruto and Ino from using him as a messy table. They had gotten a small scroll, brush, and a bottle of ink from somewhere. There was already a black drip on Shikamaru's back where his t-shirt had ridden up, and Naruto had splotches of ink on his hands and arms. Ino was suspiciously ink-free.
"You three are supposed to be in class," Iruka said, crossing his arms. "What are you doing out here?"
"Naruto doesn't want to become a ninja anymore," Ino answered, sounding very patient and condescending, "So we're working on a map."
"I'm going to become a pirate instead," Naruto confirmed. "And find and bury treasure."
This was not the sort of conversation Iruka had been prepared for while going through the training to become an academy teacher. "You can't become a pirate, Naruto. You're supposed to be in school."
"It's a ninja academy," Shikamaru said, speaking up, showing that he wasn't actually asleep at all. For the first time, Iruka wished he had been asleep. "Not a pirate academy."
"I don't have to go to school anymore if I'm not going to become a ninja," Naruto said, very firmly, but unlike before, where he had been meeting Iruka's eyes, his gaze had sunk to the ground.
"Not everyone who goes to the academy goes on to become a ninja," Iruka told him. Strictly speaking, it was something they didn't really tell the students, but it wasn't something they weren't allowed to tell them, either. "You can still go to the academy and… become a pirate afterwards."
The expressions on their faces told him it was the wrong thing to say before they even said a word. Even Shikamaru was wearing a little frown.
"I don't wanna go back." This time, Naruto's words were softer.
Before he could say anything in response to that, Ino stood up, her hands balled up into fists. "It isn't fair if you make him go back! It's not fair that Naruto doesn't have any friends and no one likes him! If you make him go back I'll hate you forever and I won't go back either!" It was emphasized with a baleful glare and a slight stomp that would have been more intimidating if she had been a few years older.
As it was, Iruka felt more intimidated than he would have expected to feel from an academy student who had barely completed their first month of classes.
He crouched down, until he was just about even with Ino's line of sight. "Are you so sure about that?"
"Huh?"
"It looks like he has friends and people who like him to me," he clarified. "If he didn't, he'd be out here on his own, not with the two of you."
Ino turned pink, and next to her, Naruto's eyes widened.
Shikamaru yawned and sat up, sending the things that had been on his back to the ground. "I tried to tell her," he insisted.
"You just yawned and laid down," Ino complained.
"Are they really my friends?" Naruto asked.
"That's a question for them," Iruka admitted, "but it at least looks like it, to me. I was hoping things would work out by having you sit between them, and it looks like it did."
"Do I have to go back to class?"
"Shikamaru would probably be sad if you didn't go back. I think he likes sitting next to you more than next to Ino."
Shikamaru nodded his head. "You're less annoying than Ino and you don't pinch me."
Naruto grinned.
"Now come on, let's get back to class."
Though they didn't need to, Ino made Naruto hold her and Shikamaru's hands on the walk back, and both blonds loudly balked when Iruka tried to separate Shikamaru from them, and Shikamaru wasn't willing to go alone either. Despite his best tries, Iruka gave up and Shikamaru ended up having to go back into the classroom with ink stains on his back and shirt, looking only a little bit more annoyed than he usually did.
The rest of the day went smoothly, until class was over.
Notes sent home weren't going to cover it, not for today, and instead, Iruka followed his students out to the yard where most of the children who were in their first year of the academy waited to be picked up by their parents or walked home from with their friends.
Naruto was on the swing again, but this time it was with his friends. At least they would be there until they left.
"Did Shikamaru fall asleep against a painted sign or something?" A man's voice startled him from his thoughts, and it took longer than Iruka wanted to admit to realize that it was Nara Shikaku speaking to him. Every time since the entrance ceremony it had been Shikamaru's mother who came to pick him up and walk him home. He hadn't been expecting to deal with the jōnin commander or have to tell him what happened.
"Ah, there was a little accident with some ink…" Iruka trailed off, not sure if he wanted to say what happened anymore or not. While Ino and Naruto were the ones who had done it— probably Naruto— he didn't want to say anything that would give Naruto any more of a worse reputation, but he wasn't sure if he was supposed to take responsibility for it, either.
To his surprise, Shikaku laughed. "Whatever happened, Shikamaru probably allowed it, even if it did involve Ino."
"Uh— I didn't—"
Shikaku only shook his head, before tilting it towards his son, Ino, and Naruto. "Don't worry, I can put it together. Shikamaru, Ino, I'm here for both of you."
This was going to be worse than he thought, and Iruka could only watch Naruto visibly deflate as both Ino and Shikamaru made their way over.
"Both of us?" Ino asked. Despite everything from earlier that day, she looked completely innocent.
"Your parents are busy. They volunteered to help with medicinal herb picking. I'm going to go do that after I drop you all off at our house," Shikaku said, casually. His eyes reached past them, and Iruka looked to see what he was gazing at; it was Naruto. "Why don't you two see if your friend wants to join you both for dinner?"
It said a lot for the little friendship that had been developing that Naruto didn't question it or express any doubt over it, and immediately went over to join them.
They were just about to exit the academy grounds when Iruka remembered.
"Oh, um, Shikaku-san!"
"What is it?"
"I've been sending Ino home with notes… if you could let her parents know, I'd be grateful."
It got a short laugh out of Shikaku again, as he heaved Shikamaru up to sit on his shoulders. "Don't worry, they already know. They want Ino to be confident."
As he watched them leave, Ino's hand in Naruto's, with Naruto pushed to stand next to Shikaku, Iruka could see why.