#(a lot of this is inspired by Ender's gam.e bc that's a great book and parallels really well)

[kaibacorpbros]

Boarding School

On occasion, Gozaburo would ship Seto off to boarding schools for a couple of weeks at a time. Sometimes this was due to needing specific materials for special subjects (i.e. a chemistry lab was easier to just send him to a school for), sometimes it was to force him to learn how people worked and how to work with them make them useful, and sometimes it was a trick of a test to keep Seto on his toes.

Seto never fit in well with the other kids there, but he was never meant to. Usually, by the end of doing all his assignments, both for the school as well as his tutors/Gozaburo he was too exhausted to do anything else but crash in his bunk and a kid that was asleep half the time was no fun, so he never made any friends.

However, when he wasn't recovering, Gozaburo set it up so the other kids would be against him. Like a teacher's pet, the instructors would talk up Seto's skills in front of the other boys, making them resent him. As well as due to his entire education not being through the school it would appear as if he was getting off with less work than everyone else. And the other boys did act on this resentment of special treatment. They would try to sabotage his work and pick fights with him. Whenever these conflicts happened, this too was a trap with no way to win. Gozaburo orchestrated this to be a catch 22 with no right answer. If he didn’t fight back he’d be punished for not being ruthless enough, something he’d need if he were to be the heir. Yet if he did and it was noticeable, (a couple of boys did get some lasting injuries) then he could be punished for lack of control or lack of obedience if he was caught by the teachers.