One has to wonder how Seto managed to go to school when he was younger. How did he manage his time to the point that he was able to go to school, run Kaiba-Corp, keep his skills as a tournament duelist sharp enough to remain competitive, and raise Mokuba all at the same time?
Willpower and insomnia, I suspect.
After high school, what did he do? Did he go to college? He certainly could have gotten anywhere he wanted. Did he bother? I submit that he did. For a very specific reason.
"We live in a culture that reveres its children," said Doctor Manheim, arms crossed over his substantial middle as he leaned against his desk and looked out at the group of students in front of him. He was a big man, tall and thick, with long hair and a scraggly beard that was going grey at his chin. He wore thin glasses perched atop a bulbous nose, and his mouth was curved in a bright smile. Laugh lines creased the edges of his dark eyes. He reminded any number of his students (and colleagues) of a young Santa Claus. "Some might even say that we've deified them. That is the focus of our time today. I ask you this simple question: is it possible to love your children too much? And on the heels of that…if it is, is this country guilty of it?"
There were a number of parents in this room, and they all found each other and began to speak at once. Manheim scanned the group in front of him with an unfocused but somehow engaged expression on his face, and his eyes stopped on the one parent in the room who was not speaking to the others. He was watching his instructor, cobalt eyes intense yet apathetic. This one did not seem interested in the discussion. He did not wish to hear from his fellow students. Manheim knew this.
Manheim didn't make a habit of following mainstream news—he was one of those sociologists convinced that Big Media was one of the roots of all hardship in the world—choosing instead to read a number of independent newsletters and internet editorials. He knew the name of Seto Kaiba, but only with the barest understanding of who he was, and what it meant to have him in class.
Kaiba sat with his legs straight, knees belt at a perfect 90-degree angle, feet flat on the ground. His arms were bent, his hands clasped atop his desk. He did not speak, he did not even seem to breathe.
Hands began to jump into the air. One person claimed that yes, it was possible to love your children too much, but the country wasn't guilty of doing it. There were too many neglectful parents out there for that to be true. Another woman claimed that it wasn't possible. Your children should be the center of your lives; they were the most important things in the world. They were the precious future. They were everything.
Every other answer to the question was somewhere along the spectrum of those two extremes; there were no neutral responses. This was Manheim's teaching method. He often let his students do most of the discussing, taking their answers and logging them in his mind, which was much sharper than his appearance and general demeanor would indicate.
Forty minutes of the hour-and-a-half period were finished before he finally spoke again, saying, "Mister Kaiba? You're the youngest of us. Part of the new generation. What's your take on this topic?"
Some murmurs broke out that Kaiba—and Manheim—ignored.
The young executive turned his head slowly, almost mechanically, to regard his professor's sparkling brown eyes. He said, slowly but with an undercurrent of anger, "…This country has deluded itself into thinking that it reveres its children. The truth of the matter is that it coddles its children in some misguided attempt at being recognized as heroic for preserving innocence where it cannot be preserved."
Manheim raised an eyebrow. "And the other question? Is it possible to love one's children too much?"
"When your love for a child overshadows your ability to keep your distance enough to raise that child, it's too much," Kaiba snapped. "When your love for a child leads you to depend on that child, it's too much. When a child understands, recognizes, and feels responsible for your love, it's too much."
The problem with the Kaiba boy was that he always had an accusatory sound to his voice that made it entirely too easy to take offense to anything he said. Manheim figured that that was why Ellie McAllister, to whom Kaiba's eyes seemed to have drifted partway through his answer, stood up. She was a tough old bird with a penchant for being particularly opinionated, not to mention loud.
"You gotta lot of nerve coming in here and saying that to us," she snapped. "Who you think you are, talking down on us like you know anything? What's a brat like you know about parenting?"
Kaiba had a look on his face that would have sent braver women than Ellie McAllister running for their lives. Years later, he would refuse to let such a thing rile him. Years later, he would simply ignore the jibe and understand that perception often had little to do with the truth. But he was sixteen years old, still drunk with the power of newfound freedom and an ultimately naïve belief that people could be convinced to understand him if he just told them enough times.
And so he rose.
"You speak of nerve," he said in a voice that would have felt right at home on the tongue of an emperor. "I am many things, McAllister. A boy is not one of them." This was untrue, but he did not know that yet. "I may have only recently been legally recognized as my brother's guardian, but I have been so for far longer. He was born when I was eight years old. I have been his caretaker ever since then. His only caretaker."
A few of the other students, the younger set, knew this. They'd heard Kaiba's story. Orphaned at eleven years old, adopted by the richest man in the city a year later, raised to be the successor to the post of Chief Executive Officer of the Kaiba Corporation. Emancipated at fifteen after his adoptive father's death. And all through this…his small, worshipping little brother had run at his heels.
"I changed his diapers. I taught him to talk, to read, to write. I took him to school, I picked him up, I spoke to his teachers, I attended his school plays. I took him to the park in the summer. I helped him with his homework. I taught him right from wrong!" The more he spoke, the more passionate he became, and Manheim could understand why such a young man had made such an effective CEO. He was a font of determination. "As soon as it was legal to put it in my name, I have paid to keep a roof over his head. I have paid to keep food on his table. I have kept him warm, I have kept him secure, I have kept him happy. I sign his permission slips, I set his curfew. I wake him up in the morning. I give him his lunch money. I set his allowance."
Ellie McAllister was staring at him, speechless now.
Some of the others, Manheim included, were smirking.
"Everything that must be done to properly raise a child, I have done," Kaiba declared. "I researched, I practiced, I executed. Not a single adult assisted me. Not my father, not my godparents, not my social workers, not my caretakers at the Domino Children's Home. I was left to do it. All of it." He leaned down and clutched the handle of the briefcase he brought with him to class each week. "The only reason I'm even here is so that my brother will know that an education is important. So that he will know, whenever it gets too hard for him to handle, that his Niisama did it. I don't need this class, I don't need this degree. I could buy this institution if the mood struck me! But I go…for him. What do I know of parenting?" he sneered. "Too much. What do I know of loving a child? Too much. So watch your mouth."
He stepped out from behind his desk and stopped in front of his instructor. "I have to leave. Mokuba has a presentation at his school auditorium tonight. I will not be attending Friday's class. One of my employees will bring my research paper to you."
Manheim nodded. "That's fine. I'll see you again next week, then, Mister Kaiba."
"Thank you, Doctor," Kaiba said, and strode out of the room, his midnight-black trench coat billowing out behind him like the robe of a king.
Some of you requested more flashback scenes, and in a way this qualifies. The Seto in my work, for the most part, is about 20. He may have been 16 in canon, but I find him more compelling at a later age. So this is a look back at how he looked at the world, and how he dealt with people, before he'd fundamentally given up on them.
Seto is a misanthrope. This scene, I think, is one of the many reasons why.
He's a dark man. Dark moods, dark emotions, dark past, dark future.
What makes him compelling to me is that he keeps fighting. He keeps on going.
Any number of us could learn something from that.
