Although Toshiro Hijikata had a natural talent for fighting, he was not particularly educated himself (which was also the main reason he revered teachers). If Isao Kondo had not picked him up and brought him back to the dojo, the path waiting for Hijikata—rather, the only path he could have taken—would probably have been that of a drifter, right?
What did it mean for someone like that to fall into Sogo's hands? It was like placing a blank sheet of paper before a brat holding an ink brush. Scribbling all over it was only natural...
Even though Sogo had still been such a tiny kid back then, his mind certainly was not tiny. In terms of education and knowledge, Sogo could leave ordinary adults streets behind. So, after Sogo casually helped Hijikata solve a few "difficult" problems, Hijikata had already been completely won over by him—
Look, that was the difference between someone who had studied and someone who had not. Problems that seemed impossibly difficult to Hijikata were effortlessly resolved in Sogo's hands. It was as though Hijikata were the child, while Sogo was an experienced adult.
From then on, Hijikata developed an almost obsessive fixation on studying. Unfortunately, even after reading countless books, he still could not solve problems as smoothly as Sogo did. That made him think that perhaps he simply was not cut out for studying...
Yet Hijikata did not know that, with the amount of knowledge he had gained through hard study, he might not have been able to get into the upper ranks, but getting into a university would have been more than easy. If he had been a little bolder, he might even have gotten into a prestigious school!
But who had Hijikata used as his benchmark? Sogo. How old had Sogo been