Chapter 4: Shifting the Blame
Another two years had passed since that fateful day when Bruno found himself suddenly engaged to the bastard daughter of a princely family. And during this time, she became the only real friend the boy had.
Heidi would visit Bruno's family home as frequently as her father would allow. Where the two of them would mostly spend time together in the family library. The collection of knowledge within it was quite vast. Even if many of the subjects were woefully outdated by the standards of the 21st century.
Bruno would treat the girl nicely, but he had an awkward time when dealing with her. In his past life, he was a middle-aged man with no family to speak of. He never really had any interaction with children outside of his own childhood.
Because of this, he had a difficult time understanding how to socialize kids his own age after he had been reborn. But Heidi made this easy on Bruno, as she just seemed to be happy to have someone to speak to about her daily life and the problems in it.
When Bruno was not having "play dates" with his young fiancée, which was supervised by both of their mothers. He was in class. Having begun his primary education earlier than most. But he did not go to a public institution, or a private one for that matter.
Rather, his father had spared no expense to ensure private tutors who were masters of every field of education come to his home and teach the boy personally. Outside of these two activities Bruno either spent his time in self learning, or playing chess.
It was during this time that Bruno discovered something shocking about himself. It could not necessarily be confirmed. But it was definitely something he believed to be true. And that was the fact that his enhanced intelligence was not simply the result of him having memories from a past life in a world far more advanced than the one he currently lived in.
Rather, his new body, more specifically its brain appeared to be at a genius level intellect. In his past life, Bruno, or Karl as he was known then was above average in intelligence, but nothing really special.
It allowed him to perform well in the military as an infantry officer and later as an instructor at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College. But he was by no means a literal genius. And this difference was demonstrated by how quickly he picked up the game of chess in this new lease on life.
During this time, Heidi naturally took an interest in chess, as Bruno was commonly playing against himself during their time together. She begged him for weeks on end to teach her how to play the game until he finally relented.
It took her months to finally get skilled at the game and confident enough to challenge Bruno to an actual match. Where he ruthlessly and relentlessly obliterated her time and again. Naturally causing the girl to become upset with him for not going easy on her.
His response was callous, and could be surmised as an old gamer quote from his past life "git gud" which caused the young girl to remain angry at him, and pout for the next two weeks of their gatherings. Eventually, however, she got over this. And life continued as normal.