"...three different styles," he said. "They're different, clearly done by three different schools of sealing, but there are similarities between them. Big similarities." He looked back at the blanks in his lap, frowning.
"Is that so strange, sensei?" Hazō asked, when it became clear that Kagome-sensei was lost in his thoughts and would require a prompt. The scent of the spiced soup in the bento box wafted into his nose, making him want to sneeze, but he mastered the impulse.
"Hm?" Kagome-sensei said. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Back home you could look through—well, not you you, but me. I could look through our sealcraft library and find a dozen different schools of seal theory, all of them with really different art styles and fundamentals. These are all...." He frowned. "They're all tiny variations on a single methodology. Very clear superficial differences, but the underlying elements...."
He shook his head in irritation and the frown got fiercer. "At first I thought that there was just one sealmaster in the village when it was founded and everything was derived from him. I don't think that's it, though. I think all of this is derived from one seal. It looks like the villagers reinvented all of sealing theory from studying one single example. They're using elements in ways that they aren't really intended to be used. Clever stuff, some of it's even brilliant, but there are more efficient strategies for a lot of it, and their theory of sealcraft has gone in a really strange direction." He waved at the stack of paper. "Like I said, weird."