Chapter 80: Winter

In the blink of an eye, another two months flew by and winter finally arrived in the villages of List. For Konoha, heavy snow was rare, but this year, surprisingly, there was almost as much snow as in the Land of Snow. Of course, the weather was much more favorable, severe frosts were not typical for the Land of Fire. But, the residents still dressed warmly and continued to live their lives, and the shinobi carry out missions. Here, the snow and cold snap did not frighten anyone, there were even those who were glad of such a situation. Children played in the snow, sculpting different figures, although some, even at such a time, were still studying, comprehending the path of the ninja.

The roof of the Academy was covered with snow, which persistently continued to fall and fall, growing into huge snowdrifts. Even the roof of the Hokage's residence already looked like a whole mountain. Today, in one of the auditoriums of the Academy, absolute silence reigned, each of those present persistently wrote something in a notebook, without being distracted by extraneous things. Outside the window, snowflakes soared quietly, driven by a light winter breeze, and most of the trees around were wrapped in warm snow-white fur coats. The winter season was clearly different from all the others, catching up with melancholy and at the same time a strange feeling of calm and peace.

Among those present in the class, only a few students had already looked up from their notebooks and calmly awaited the end of the test. They were some of the most outstanding students in the group, this year Iruka was very lucky and there were many more of them than he expected. The whole three were sitting on the last desk, from the window by name they were: Shikamaru, Ino and Chоji. All three of them had already finished the test a long time ago, especially Shikamaru, he finished it like that without looking at all the answers. And Iruka did not even doubt the correctness of his decision, he knew very well that this test was not mandatory for a guy, there was even a possibility that he could already pass the Chūnin exam.

Half a month ago, Iruka witnessed a small skirmish between several genin and one single Shikamaru. Then, as a teacher, he naturally wanted to intervene, nevertheless, Geninov was headed by a young Chūnin, who was not particularly distinguished by politeness, they themselves were looking for trouble that day. Shikamaru was quietly training at the training ground when the four decided to chase him away and probably have some fun. Unfortunately for them, they paid dearly for this. In general, Shikamaru was called a jerk, and then something happened that Iruka will never forget - all four, along with this Chūnin, were beaten so that they could not even crawl home. Not one of them even managed to hurt Shikamaru, as they were immediately defeated. They tried to use Ninjutsu, but were ultimately defeated by simple Academy Taijutsu. Naturally, it was not so simple, in the hands of this child it turned out to be terribly strong. It was then that Iruka realized why the director of the Academy warned once again just to ignore the boy's affairs and his omissions. They were not frequent, but still there were, only Iruka now understood that Shikamaru did not have to go to classes at all. Therefore, he still wondered why he even went to study. It does not seem at all that he did not know something from the main program ... He, as an instructor who took a whole class, had to just watch such cases. Therefore, because of all this, Iruka even suspected that this boy may well be smarter and stronger than him - a Chūnian with experience and even a teacher. This, of course, was a very strange feeling, for the first time he encountered such a genius, although he had heard about them more than once: the Fourth Hokage, Kakashi Hatake, and of course Itachi Uchiha. It seems that a similar child prodigy has fallen to the lot of the new instructor. Although, he suspected that his entire issue would be very special. In addition to Shikamaru, there were also some quite smart guys here.

Chоji and Ino whispered softly and sometimes turned to Shikamaru just to get a short positive nod or a slow negative nod. Shikamaru himself looked without blinking out the window, watching the snowflakes circling in the air. There was a feeling that he was just floating in the clouds, and was not present in the class. All three were excellent students, and the results of Ino and Chоji grew and grew. Not long focusing on this trinity, he lowered his gaze below. There was another trinity of children, among whom there were also two capable boys. On the edge of the window sat Aburame Shino, who finished his father-in-law a couple of minutes ago, in the middle sat Kiba Inuzuka with a frown that would most likely get a C. From his expression on his face, Iruka could only assume an estimate in this limit, he had studied his students very well lately. Well, and on the edge sat an even more interesting child - Naruto Uzumaki. When Umino's gaze touched this child, he sighed slightly. In fact, he did not know what to do with this boy, how to behave ... On the one hand, the boy was quite good at practice, although he lagged behind in his studies. He clearly tried and it was clear from his body that the guy was definitely training. Despite the fact that he lived alone, completely without parents. But on the other hand, Iruka knew exactly what kind of creature was sitting inside the guy ... So it was very embarrassing for him to talk to him or somehow interact. But, the man also understood that this could not last long, one day he would have to decide what to do with him. Nevertheless, the instructor is obliged to teach the whole class until graduation, now he is with them to the end and was simply obliged to establish relations with everyone.

Sighing, Iruka glanced at several more students who had already finished the test. Sakura Haruno, very talented in control and theory, Hinata Hyuga is talented in Taijutsu thanks to her clan training. In her class, she was quite capable ... and he is Sasuke Uchiha. The guy was, as usual, calm and quiet, quite smart and quick-witted. His test results were quite decent, although of course they did not reach the clever class of such as Sakura or Shikamaru. But in practice he was one of the best, worthy of a metal shuriken and was very physically enduring. True, there were a couple of capable children in this class. Of course, Iruka had already stopped attributing Shikamaru to them. In his opinion, it was pointless, like his training here. He planned to talk in more detail about this with the director, because Iruka did not even know what to teach him and whether there was any point in it.

According to Iruka, Sasuke Uchiha was a rather kind and very humble child. It was difficult for him, like several other children in the class, to find friends. And it doesn't seem that someone would try ... Many quickly found a common language, and some were still sitting quietly, distancing themselves from everyone, like Hinata Hyuga, for example. Perhaps the point was that they came from influential clans. The same children from the allied clans quickly became friends, Shikamaru, Chоji and Ino for sure, especially recently, these three only walk together, which of course Iruka liked very much. Thanks to communication with Shikamaru, these two are showing very good results. Take Ino, for example, just a couple of months ago, when she was not so close with these two, she had good results for a child, but then time passed and on yesterday's practice test, the girl showed amazing success in throwing kunai and taijutsu. Moreover, Iruka began to suspect that it was possible that the two, Chоji and Ino, would be able to graduate from the Academy earlier. It was pleasing, but also surprising, it is quite possible that it was Shikamaru who counted on this by training with them. You can try to force children, but they don't always get interested, but if this is your peer, everything can go completely differently. I was glad that Shikamaru was teaching them something good ...

"Haa, I wish the rest of the stunned would learn something," Iruka sighed. Naturally, he also had students who were lagging behind. Three or four at least definitely will not graduate this year. Although they managed to enroll, since the admission standards were lowered, this still does not mean anything. The standards were lowered, there were more repeaters and even third years. This was not uncommon, unfortunately ...

"Well ..." - having examined the class again, Iruka nodded - "I'll give them another ten minutes."