> [That], then, leaves you the option of ceding the second place spot to me.

The way in which you've worded this is a little confusing to me, but my guess is that what you're referring to here is the idea of me giving your my spot in the second round of the tournament. That is now also off the table.

It's likely at this point that I will give that spot to someone else, and I hope that if you still do have any suspicion that I manipulated you in this game to put my interests before yours, that act puts them to rest.

That person can't be you though for the following reasons:

     • Gono is now strongly opposed to you getting that spot, I think primarily because of how you treated me. So out of loyalty to him, I can't give it to you.

     • I agree with Gono (and the two other friends he apparently showed that transcript to to get their reads on it) that it appears that you may be trying to intentionally leverage my concern about how I may have hurt you to get me to give that spot to you. I believe that your were hurt, but it also appears to me that you may be trying to use that hurt to get something you want, and I don't want to reward that.

     • I don't want to reward you having treated me unkindly.

The most important reason there is my loyalty to Gono, and not wanting him (or Bankai) to feel like he/they wasted all the energy they invested helping me to get a winning spot. For that reason, It's possible that I still might not give up my spot at all. I need to work that out.

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> To address your implicit question, this result only affirms my suspicions.

I'm not sure what implicit question or suspicions you're referring to. My best guess is that you're going back to believing that I acted toward you in a manner that was malicious. That sucks if you think that. I don't want to try to argue the point anymore, though.

Regardless of what you mean there, is it understandable to me that your life experiences may have made it hard for you to feel comfortable taking the risk of believing the best of someone, and it's also understandable that you may have learned to defend yourself from the possibility being hurt in that way by responding with anger and aggression.

If you are still suspicious that I may have acted as I did with you out of malice, and you're interested in investigating to what degree you're able to view and judge that situation in a clear and unhindered manner, I encourage you to share the transcripts of our conversations with somebody else whose judgement you trust, and get their take on it.

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I feel somewhat wary of bringing up something like this at a time when it seems plausible that you may be be feeling some emotional charge, but it also seems like this might be useful to you, and that there might not be another good time to bring it up:

You haven't shared a huge a mount about your life with me, but from what you have shared, I have the impression that one of your big challenges is that you interact with people in a manner that causes them to dislike you or treat you in an unfriendly manner. I've had two friends who had that challenge to different degrees, and it's had a big impact, making their lives more difficult.

In both of those cases, it was something subtle and difficult to pinpoint about how they acted that caused people to feel disrespected by them, or that they were being an asshole to them, so people would sometimes respond with disrespect or hostility themselves.

And for other people, probably most people, it's just easy to make an immediate rapport with someone you meet, feel respected by them, and respect them in turn, and be ready to whatever you can to act for each others benefit, just out of that baseline care for a person you've connected with.

So even though I'm sure that there's a lot more to the story of you having a relationship of animosity with some of your math professors, my best guess from what you've told me is there's something about your manner of interaction that you're likely not entirely aware of that caused them to regard you negatively, perhaps feeling disrespected or attacked by you, or interpreting you as having motivations that were in some way bad.

I think that when somebody has that issue, it's often something that deeply ingrained from childhood experiences, and difficult to recognize, understand, and change without putting a lot of work into it with the help of a good psychologist. It's not simply a matter of recognizing what you might do that can rub people the wrong way and stopping doing that, but it's also finding something to replace that stance for interacting with other with, which can be a big challenge.

So, I hope that that's not unwelcome. It's perhaps a little off-topic, and perhaps not the best time to bring it up. If my theory is correct that this is an issue that you're dealing with, I hope that me offering this insight may be of help to you. I felt that I should make sure to offer it before we ceased to interact.