Chapter 194: Selecting a Replacement
Bruno returned to the party not long after his conversation with the Prussian Princess. They would never speak again of what had been said in private within the snow-filled palace gardens, nor would there be any hostilities between them due to the awkwardness that had resulted from the misunderstandings of a teenage girl and her unrequited love.
In fact, Hedwig, Olga, and Sakura were all around the same age and would themselves be married off in the following years, forgetting all about whatever foolish notions they had towards Bruno. This did not mean, however, that the bonds Bruno had forged with their royal families as a result of these misunderstandings would disintegrate.
Rather, he would be far friendlier with all of them going forward, as any sense of unease caused by these misunderstandings was thoroughly gone, replaced instead with a sibling-like friendship.
When Princess Victoria-Louise returned to the party in a much better mood than she had been for quite some time, the Kaiser approached Bruno and patted him on the shoulder.
"I take it things went well between the two of you?"
This was a question obviously hinting at Bruno to address the elephant in the room: whether he had cleared up the matter between him and the Kaiser's daughter. Bruno simply reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a flask, whose leather carrier was embossed with the symbol of the German 8th Army, which he had recently been given command of.
The flask naturally contained some form of distilled spirits, and from the slight sense of intoxication the Kaiser received just by taking a whiff of it, he figured the alcohol inside was unusually potent.
After taking a swig from the flask, Bruno quickly stashed it away before grumbling something or other about what he had just been through.
"Had I known she had such feelings toward me, I would have told her to get over them a damn decade ago, before they had time to manifest into something stronger... Why the hell didn't you tell me about this?"
Kaiser Wilhelm II displayed an unusually chipper and playful character toward Bruno as he smacked the man on the back, joking at his misfortune.