It did not take long for Bruno to find himself greeted by some familiar faces-faces he had not seen in more than a couple of years. By his count, it was close to five years since he had seen these people.
In such a large and magnificent palace, it was not uncommon for the entire extended royal family to dwell within it or at least gather very often. Japan was no exception, with the Emperor’s sons, daughters, and grandchildren all living within his personal abode.
At the same time, whatever siblings and children he had were also present, probably as a show that he valued Bruno as a representative of his most powerful ally. Bruno spoke with various members of the Emperor’s family, all of whom were as pleasant to him as they had been when he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun all those years ago for his actions at Port Arthur.
More or less, he remembered the faces he saw, especially the adults, as they had not changed all that much in a mere four to five years. However, there was one person he did not recognize as he greeted the Japanese Royal Family for the second time in his life.
Frankly speaking, the transformation was far too much for Bruno, who had not seen her since she was a little girl, to fully comprehend. This was a girl who did not exist in his past life. After all, her father was one of Emperor Meiji’s sons, who had died in Bruno’s previous life during childhood.
It was because of this and other small changes that were different from the history he knew from his past life that Bruno was aware that while this world was nearly identical to the one, he had once lived in, it was not a perfect 1:1 scale replica.
After all, this teenage girl was most certainly proof of this. Bruno had not recognized who this girl was, as his memory of her was brief, and she was roughly ten years old at the time they first met. Instead, he bowed respectfully before her and introduced himself as if they were unacquainted prior to this moment.
“My apologies, Princess; we must have missed each other during my last visit. My name is Lord Bruno von Zehntner, Generaloberst of the German Army. It would be my highest honor if I could learn your identity.”
Bruno was stunned when the teenage girl looked at him with fury in her eyes before shifting her head and line of sight away from him entirely. She quickly began to pout and cross her arms as she responded to him with Bruno’s alternative identity.
“Well, Prince Zehntner, it appears you didn’t get a good enough impression of me when we last met. And here I was, dying to meet with you again after all these years, yet you clearly didn’t once think of me!”
After saying this, the girl stormed off, throwing a minor hissy fit as she did so, causing Bruno to become confused. It finally hit him who the teenage girl was. He looked over to Emperor Meiji, who was smirking at him with a shit-eating grin, and voiced his confusion aloud.
“Don’t tell me that girl is Princess Sakura?”
Emperor Meiji nodded his head; his niece had followed Bruno’s rapid and legendary rise to prominence quite thoroughly over the years. She was what one might consider his greatest fangirl, and her admiration for him grew with each major achievement he received.
Because of this, she was quite offended that he appeared to have forgotten all about her existence, which could only cause her uncle, her father, and all of her older relatives to laugh at her anger, as they knew all too well Bruno would not have recognized her. She had grown quite beautiful and was no longer a small child.
They also knew Bruno was a man who was already happily married and had no thoughts toward other women, as rumors of other monarchs trying to tempt him with their daughters, especially after he had become a bona fide prince himself, had spread even to the land of the Rising Sun.
Not to mention, Bruno was a foreigner, and it would appear that Westerners had a hard time differentiating the people of the Orient from one another. As a result, they suspected he would probably not even remember their brief encounter all those years ago, let alone recognize her face.
Bruno, who prided himself on always remembering a face, felt stumped as Emperor Meiji laughed at his expense, while also making an “unfair remark” that only added further fuel to the fire.
“Oh? Isn’t this a surprise! My little niece has been quite the adoring fan of yours, following your exploits since your performance in Port Arthur. To think the hero, she adored had so thoroughly forgotten her-I truly pity the girl…
Still, it surprises me that you even remembered her name, albeit I’m afraid it was a bit too late to bring the girl any happiness she initially expected to achieve from this second encounter with her idol.”
Bruno couldn’t help but stare at Meiji as if he were a bastard for mocking him to such an extent. I mean, honestly, the last time he saw her, she was a literal child. And sure, she was still young, but she was old enough to have developed quite significantly during this time. Did he really expect him to instantly recognize her, especially since they only had one conversation together nearly half a decade prior?
As for the admiration that Meiji claimed she had for him, that was simply unfathomable for Bruno. He was just a soldier at the end of the day, doing the job required of him. He wasn’t some legendary hero of a Greek epoch, and he did not deserve to be revered as such.
Because of this, Bruno sighed and shook his head, expressing his thoughts aloud-a sentiment that caused more than a few members of the Japanese royal family to raise their brows in curiosity.
“I’m nobody’s hero…”
After saying this, Bruno returned to greeting the rest of the Imperial Japanese Family members, none of whom had left as thorough an impression on him as the Emperor, his sons, and the young teenage princess, who apparently had developed some form of fascination with his career.
Princess Sakura was more than displeased by the fact that Bruno had appeared to have forgotten about her. She stormed off to her room to sulk in silence for a while, missing the banquet that was thrown in Bruno’s honor, as she instead wrote to her pen pals about her dissatisfaction.
The letters previously exchanged between her and these strangers were hewn across the desk, openly on display for anyone who dared to enter her room. Had Bruno followed the girl to apologize, he would have noticed that the Japanese princess was in communication with a few other girls roughly her age, with whom he had come into contact over the years.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, Archduchess Hedwig of Austro-Hungary, and Princess Victoria-Louise of Prussia. Had Bruno discovered this, he would immediately understand why the Prussian princess had insulted him by calling him a rake during his last encounter with her.
As these various princesses had, through a chain of letters, discovered that Bruno had come into contact with them all, and though Bruno had never expressed any interest in any of them as romantic partners, merely using them as a tool to establish friendlier ties with various
noble houses.
They, in their youthful naivety, had mistaken his kind fa?ade as some form of courtship. After realizing that he was merely being friendly with the lot of them for diplomatic purposes, they again mistook this fact as if he were some kind of degenerate womanizer.
Sakura had not truly believed Bruno was of such a character until now, where she wrote to her friends about how the man was truly an outlandish rake of the highest order. She further slandered his good name out of some form of misplaced resentment toward the other princesses with whom Bruno had come into contact.
Though Bruno did not realize it yet, he would have to bear the consequences of this misunderstanding at a later date. But for now, he was enjoying himself and the hospitality of the legendary Japanese Emperor, who desired to pick the man’s brain, specifically regarding his vision of a great war and when it would come.
This was a war that the Japanese royal family seemed plausible but also, at the same time, somehow disconnected from their reality. Any war the Japanese fought with the great powers of the world would be fought in Asia, where their military strength was lacking. Either way, Meiji was convinced this was an opportunity that Japan could take advantage of to seize territory, defeat the British and French Empires, and in doing so establish themselves as
an equal to the West.