As Oskar walked through the long palace corridors toward his room, one unpleasant truth followed him every step of the way: if he did not do something significant soon, then he—and possibly a very large part of the world—was going to be in serious trouble.
By the time the door to his bedroom closed behind him, the immediate weight of Wilhelm II's glare had finally lifted from his shoulders, but the feeling of it remained like a phantom hand around his throat. Only now, with the confrontation over and the adrenaline fading, did Oskar fully appreciate how precarious his position actually was. If the Emperor woke up one morning in an especially terrible mood, decided his strange son had finally become more trouble than he was worth, stripped him of his title, and threw him out of the House of Hohenzollern, that would be it.
No palace. No free meals. No enormous bedroom. No beautiful German maids mysteriously appearing to clean everything he touched. No Prince Oskar of Prussia. He would simply become some unusually tall, unemployed man with excellent cheekbones, terrible German, and absolutely no marketable skills in the glorious year of 1904.
And if that happens, he thought grimly, I can't even become a streamer this time.
There was no internet. There were no video platforms. Trucks barely existed in any useful quantity, which meant even his old fallback profession was largely unavailable. Poverty was waiting for him, or perhaps some humiliating career in a traveling circus where people paid coins to stare at the freakishly muscular giant who spoke German like a concussed caveman.
Oskar shuddered at the image. His knees suddenly gave out beneath him, and he dropped onto the floor, staring up at the ceiling as though the plaster might contain some legal loophole Wilhelm had forgotten.
"No," he groaned. "I don't wanna go to school."
A fresh wave of frustration rolled through him, and he punched the floor once, then again. Somehow, as often happened whenever Oskar became angry and had no idea what else to do with his body, the punches slowly turned into push-ups.
Because what else was a man supposed to do when history itself appeared to be collapsing on top of him?
A soft cough sounded near the door.
Oskar stopped halfway through a repetition and looked over.
Karl was leaning against the wall with his small arms folded across his chest and one eyebrow raised. He had apparently followed Oskar into the room several minutes earlier, but considering Karl's size and the scale of the bedroom, Oskar had somehow managed to forget he was there.
"Well," Karl said calmly, "are you planning to spend the entire week doing push-ups, or is there a second phase to this strategy of yours?"
Oskar exhaled heavily and allowed himself to collapse flat onto his stomach. "Papa is mad," he rumbled into the carpet before lifting his head and correcting himself. "No. I mean, Emperor is… mm… pressing dislike on me."
He had attempted to say displeased but lost the word halfway through.
Karl stared at him for a second before a snort escaped him. "Pressing dislike. Yes. I suppose that is one way of describing it." He unfolded his arms and stepped farther into the room. "His Majesty sounded extremely displeased. I heard most of it through the door. I swear I could practically feel his frustration in my bones. Perhaps you should go back and apologize."
Oskar pushed himself upright and sat back on his knees, thinking.
A man who chases two rabbits catches neither.
The old saying arrived so naturally that he spoke it aloud in Mandarin without realizing it.
Karl blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Oskar coughed into his fist, gathered himself, and then produced, to Karl's surprise, a remarkably clear sentence in German. "Ahem. The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. Go I must."
Karl stared at him.
"…Yes," he said slowly. "Of course. Definitely nothing strange happening inside your head."
Thus, only a few minutes after escaping the Kaiser's study, Oskar found himself back inside it.
On his knees.
"Please, my man—no, I mean Father—no, Your Majesty!" he babbled, the words falling over one another almost faster than he could arrange them. "Let me out of house arrest. I cannot take it anymore. Please, I'm sorry. I'll go to Academy, okay? I'll be good boy."
Wilhelm II stared down at him in complete silence.
The Emperor was painfully aware that court gossip traveled faster than trains, and one look at his enormous son groveling on the carpet was enough for him to imagine the story multiplying through corridors, salons, drawing rooms, and officers' clubs by breakfast.
The son of the German Emperor begging on the floor like a peasant?
Absolutely not.
Wilhelm flicked one hand sharply, the gesture containing less mercy than command, as though he were trying to erase the entire scene before anyone else could see it and turn it into a story. "Enough. Get up," he snapped. "Perhaps I expected too much of you. Very well. Your confinement is lifted."
Oskar's face brightened immediately, but Wilhelm's eyes narrowed before he could celebrate.
"You will still report to Kiel in one week. Do not test my patience again, and do not go wandering around the foreign quarter pestering those Asians with your strange questions. You already frightened them badly enough to have the police called once. If I hear of anything like that happening again…"
The unfinished threat was more than sufficient.
Oskar bowed so low that his forehead nearly touched the carpet. "Yes, Father. Thank you. I will go. I will be… model student."
One disaster had been averted.
Unfortunately, almost nothing else had been solved.
As Oskar and Karl walked back through the palace corridors, the brief relief began to evaporate. He still had no money, at least none he properly understood how to access. He still had very little actual freedom, and in one week he was apparently going to be shipped off for four years of military education conducted almost entirely in a language he could barely speak.
Which, in Oskar's mind, was considerably worse than war.
"Fleeting freedom," he muttered as they walked. "One week. Then four years in Kiel."
Karl's expression softened by a fraction. "Well, don't despair too much, Your Highness. As much as you may be lacking in certain skills…" He glanced sideways at him. "Having seen that diary of yours several times now, you are at least obviously educated in drawing, mathematics, and whatever those Asian languages are. You apparently speak them very well too, so I'm sure you'll manage somehow. Besides, I hear the food is decent, and the sea is beautiful this time of year."
Oskar grimaced. "Yes. Very educated. School is… easy work. Yes."
Karl blinked once. "That," he said carefully, "was technically a sentence. You may wish to expand your vocabulary before arriving. I suspect the Naval Academy will demand slightly more than 'easy work.'"
The dread immediately returned to Oskar's stomach.
He could already see the future waiting for him: four years of humiliation, confusion, unreadable assignments, incomprehensible lectures, and being remembered forever as the enormous strange prince who somehow got bullied by fifteen-year-old naval nerds.
By the time they returned to his bedroom, the door closed behind them with the soft, decisive click of polite imprisonment. The room was enormous and beautifully decorated, every expensive piece of furniture apparently existing for the sole purpose of reminding visitors how wealthy and important the Hohenzollerns were.
It was also, in every meaningful sense, a golden cage.
Oskar began pacing.
"Four years," he muttered in Mandarin. "Four years of hell and humiliation. I'm definitely getting bullied. And I'll have no time to build anything."
Those years mattered. He needed them to lay the foundations of an industrial network, establish connections in finance and shipbuilding, understand logistics, build companies, make money, and accumulate enough influence that people might eventually listen when he told them something important. At Kiel, meanwhile, he would be marching, saluting, memorizing regulations, and failing vocabulary examinations while Europe continued crawling toward disaster without him.
I can't just accept the doomed scripted route, he thought. I need a glitch. A cheat code.
He stopped in front of the window and stared out over the dark palace grounds. He was still wearing the same sweaty clothes, and under ordinary circumstances he might already have been planning another midnight escape to the lake, but tonight he felt too restless, too irritated, and far too desperate to sit still long enough to bathe.
So he paced instead.
In his first life, he had gamed and streamed for years. He had played those strangely addictive household-management games where the objective was supposedly to build a happy family but somehow always ended with half the city pregnant for the amusement of chat. He had also played the more respectable kind, where civilizations rose from mud huts, built industries, conquered continents, and eventually launched humanity toward the stars.
None of it had been real, of course, but at least those games had taught him one useful lesson: when the rules refused to cooperate, you looked for another way around them.
This life was apparently the same game, except now he was playing on hard mode.
"Think," he muttered. "Think like a war gamer. How do you beat a scripted event?"
The answer came almost immediately.
You did not stop the event.
You bent it.
Oskar could no longer refuse Kiel. The Emperor's decision had been made, and trying to challenge it again would probably end with him under permanent guard or dragged to the academy in chains. But perhaps he did not have to attend in the normal way.
A ridiculous idea slowly surfaced, exactly the sort of idea that in his previous life would have caused him to lean into his microphone while thousands of viewers filled chat with laughing emojis.
What if I go to Kiel… but I don't really go to Kiel?
Not in the day-to-day sense, anyway. Perhaps he could appear when necessary, sit the important examinations, somehow pass them, attend enough ceremonies and inspections to keep everyone satisfied, and spend the rest of his time doing things that actually mattered. Traveling, meeting industrialists, building connections, designing things, investing—anything that might help him turn the ideas in his head into something real before the years began slipping away.
The Naval Academy could become a paper shield. On official documents, Prince Oskar would be a diligent cadet faithfully fulfilling his duty to the Empire. In reality, he would be somewhere else entirely, laying the foundations of whatever future plan he eventually managed to build. A ghost student. A finals-only cadet. It was insane, probably impossible, and exactly the sort of loophole that would have gotten him banned from half the strategy servers he used to play on. Unfortunately, it was also the first idea he had found that might allow him to keep both his royal status and enough freedom to actually accomplish something.
There was only one rather significant problem: the director of the Kiel Naval Academy would have to agree to bend the rules.
Realistically, that meant bribery, royal privilege, divine intervention, or some combination of all three.
"Karl," Oskar called.
Karl was already sprawled lazily across one of the sofas, eating pastries with the relaxed satisfaction of a dwarf who had just finished a long day in the mines and discovered that the gold belonged to somebody else. He looked up from the pastry in his hand. "Yes, Your Highness?"
Oskar turned toward him, his expression suddenly sharper and more focused. "We go to Kiel."
Karl frowned. "Yes? That was already the plan, unless you have decided to tunnel your way out of Germany."
"No. We go now," Oskar said, gesturing impatiently. "Before orders. Before official summons. We go first."
Karl stared at him for several seconds, then slowly lowered the pastry. "Voluntarily?"
Oskar nodded.
"Your Highness," Karl said carefully, "are you feeling well?"
"I must talk to director."
"The director," Karl repeated, as though making certain he had heard correctly. "Of the Naval Academy. The man famous for being about as flexible as a steel beam."
Oskar nodded again, this time more enthusiastically, and smiled like a boy who had just received a perfect score in manners.
Karl's suspicion only deepened. "And your plan is to convince this famously inflexible man of… something?"
"Yes," Oskar said eagerly.
Karl dragged one hand slowly down his face. "Wonderful. This can only end in one of two ways: either you succeed, or I eventually find myself working in some provincial post office after both of us have been publicly disgraced."
Oskar crossed the room, dropped to one knee beside the sofa, and placed a reassuring hand on Karl's shoulder. "Trust in the process," he said solemnly.
"I would," Karl replied dryly, "if I had the slightest idea what the process was."
Oskar held his serious expression for another moment before his gaze slowly drifted toward the plate of pastries beside Karl. Whatever grand strategy had been forming inside his head was temporarily postponed as he reached for one and began gathering his strength in the most practical way available: by eating.
That same night, while the Kaiser presumably believed his strange son was quietly reflecting on his behavior and the consequences of disappointing the Imperial House, Oskar and Karl simply left.
Technically, Oskar was not supposed to be going anywhere, especially not at night and certainly not without informing anyone. Practically, however, nobody seemed particularly eager to stop a prince who put on a coat, walked through the palace corridors with complete confidence, and offered absolutely no explanation for where he was going. Guards straightened when he passed, servants stepped aside, and more than one person opened their mouth as if preparing to question him only to reconsider at the last moment. Rank had that effect on people—or perhaps nobody wanted the responsibility of discovering what the increasingly peculiar Prince Oskar was attempting this time.
Karl followed a step behind, glancing from side to side with steadily growing unease. "This," he muttered, keeping his voice low, "is highly irregular."
Oskar did not slow down.
They had nearly reached the outer hall when someone finally gathered enough courage to intervene. Tanya came hurrying after them, gathering her skirts in both hands as she tried to catch up, worry plainly written across her face. "Your Highness," she called, slightly breathless. "Are you… are you alright?"
Oskar stopped long enough to look down at her. "Yes," he replied gravely.
Tanya hesitated, clearly unconvinced. "You haven't bathed or changed your clothes since yesterday. You barely ate anything, and now you're leaving the palace in the middle of the night." Her voice softened, and a faint flush crept across her cheeks. "Perhaps you should at least wait until morning? Or I could prepare a bath first. I could help you change, if you—"
Oskar considered this with all the solemnity of a statesman weighing an international treaty. "It is what it is," he said finally.
Tanya stared at him, completely lost.
Behind her, several other maids had begun gathering at a cautious distance and whispering among themselves. One guard frowned while another suddenly became intensely interested in staring straight ahead. Apparently, if a Prince of Prussia wished to leave the palace in the dead of night while smelling faintly of sweat, stress, and poor judgment, nobody could actually prevent him unless the Emperor had specifically ordered them to.
Karl leaned closer. "You see," he whispered, "this is the point where everyone begins assuming something has gone terribly wrong."
Oskar nodded thoughtfully. "Yes."
Then he kept walking.
They passed through the outer hall, continued down the long driveway, and headed toward the great iron gates separating the palace grounds from the surrounding royal district. Tanya followed uncertainly behind them the entire way, apparently unable to decide whether she had the authority to stop him or merely the responsibility to panic. The moment Oskar actually passed through the gates, however, indecision gave way to alarm.
"Your Highness—wait!"
She ran after them, her shoes striking sharply against the stone as her breath came faster. A strand of hair worked loose from its pins and fell against her cheek, but she did not seem to notice. She kept calling his title as though the words might physically hook him by the collar and drag him back into the palace.
Tanya finally caught them just beyond the gates and bent forward for a moment, fighting to regain her breath. "Please, wait," she said, her voice tight with worry. "Where are you even going? You don't have a suitcase, you have no spare clothes, and do you even have money with you? What exactly are you doing?"
Oskar turned toward her. Moonlight caught the edge of his smile, making him look absurdly confident for a man whose plan had been invented less than an hour earlier. "Destiny waits," he announced solemnly, then destroyed whatever dignity the line possessed by winking at her. "Be without care, woman. We will be back."
Tanya looked horrified.
Then she turned desperately toward Karl, as though the tiny assistant might be the final sane person remaining in the German Empire. Karl raised both hands in helpless surrender. "I'm simply doing my job," he said. "But don't worry. I'll make certain he doesn't get lost again."
Oskar nodded approvingly. "Karl. Buy train. Two tickets. Kiel."
Karl released the sigh of a man voluntarily walking into trouble because his employment contract apparently required it. "Of course. Talking and paying are what I'm here for, since Your Highness appears to prefer mysterious declarations over practical communication."
Oskar flicked his short blond hair back and answered with complete confidence in German, "My man."
Karl closed his eyes briefly. "I truly do not understand you."
As they continued down the road, Karl began suggesting that perhaps they should take a carriage—or even find an automobile—to the railway station rather than walk the entire distance. Oskar caught only fragments of the explanation and answered with the absolute certainty of someone who had understood none of the important parts. "Ah yes, my little man. We go to the train."
So they walked.
They walked through the dead of night beneath a clear sky for considerably longer than Karl considered reasonable. Anyone still awake stared as they passed: one extremely tall young man and one remarkably small older companion marching purposefully through the darkness, neither dressed like commoners and neither volunteering an explanation. Some recognized Oskar immediately and bowed or stepped aside. Others simply sensed that whatever was happening probably involved people above their social station and decided that curiosity was not worth the trouble.
Far behind them, Tanya remained beside the palace gates with her arms folded tightly around herself, watching until the two figures finally vanished into the darkness. She still could not decide whether she had just witnessed her prince bravely setting out to confront his destiny or merely walking enthusiastically toward another disaster.
By the time they reached the station, Oskar was sweating again, but he was smiling.
Germany's railways stretched across the Empire like iron veins, carrying people, mail, soldiers, coal, machinery, and goods from city to city with a reliability that Oskar found genuinely impressive. There were no passenger aircraft, automobiles remained uncommon, and much of ordinary movement still depended on rails, carriages, and horses.
The horses, he quickly discovered, also meant an astonishing amount of shit in the streets.
Karl purchased two first-class tickets with his own money without needing to be told, while Oskar wandered freely around the station attempting to socialize. He greeted almost anyone who came within speaking distance with some variation of, "Hello, nice day, my man," despite the fact that it was very obviously the middle of the night. He shook hands whenever someone allowed it and attempted to practice his German by asking strangers questions about themselves, which quickly began sounding less like friendly conversation and more like an interrogation conducted by an unusually cheerful detective. Where were they going? Why were they at the station? How old were they? What were their names? Did they have good wages? Did they currently possess much money?
People stared at him with increasing uncertainty, but few seemed willing to refuse the questions of a royal prince. Fortunately for everyone involved, Karl eventually noticed what was happening and pulled him away before Oskar could begin gathering employment statistics from the entire platform.
Unfortunately, that was when a journalist recognized him.
The man hurried toward them almost immediately. "Your Royal Highness! Where are you traveling at this hour? Is this connected to your future studies? Are you looking forward to—"
"Hello," Oskar replied warmly. "Nice day indeed, my man."
The journalist paused.
Then, apparently deciding that this only made the encounter more interesting, he continued firing questions. Oskar responded enthusiastically with answers that bore increasingly little relationship to anything being asked, while Karl sat several paces away on a bench and watched the exchange with mounting horror.
Eventually, Karl stood, seized the prince by the sleeve, and physically guided him away before the morning papers could publish something along the lines of Fifth Prince Officially Insane?
They boarded the finest carriage available and settled into a first-class compartment. By the standards of 1904, it was clean, spacious, and remarkably comfortable. By Oskar's standards, it was slow, noisy, and filled with an unmistakable mixture of coal smoke, leather, tobacco, boiled food, and the lingering ghosts of several hundred cigarettes.
Oskar loved it.
He spent most of the journey pressed close to the window with the excitement of a child on his first family holiday, quietly muttering to himself in Mandarin and broken German while fields, villages, towns, and factory chimneys drifted past outside. He had seen Europe countless times before on computer screens, satellite imagery, maps, documentaries, and strategy games, but this was something entirely different. This was Europe raw: brick factories and black smokestacks, carts rolling along muddy roads, horses pulling freight, and men and women wrapped in heavy, formal-looking clothes even while doing ordinary work.
There were no phone screens glowing in the darkness, no neon signs staining the streets, no endless roar of modern engines. Instead there were whistles, steel wheels hammering against rails, horseshoes striking stone, and the distant smoke of industry hanging over towns. Even the people looked strangely untouched by the visual habits of his old world. Almost everyone around him had natural, undyed hair, uncovered faces, and clothing that seemed impossibly formal to someone raised in an age where people sometimes went grocery shopping in pajamas.
Karl sat opposite him with a newspaper spread across his lap. His legs did not quite reach the floor, and from his seat he could see considerably less through the window than Oskar could, so reading appeared to be his preferred method of pretending the outside world did not exist.
After some time, Karl lowered the newspaper slightly and regarded his prince over the top of it. "So," he said, "are you finally going to tell me why we're visiting the Academy early?"
Oskar considered Karl's question for a moment. He couldn't tell him everything, partly because Karl would probably think him insane and partly because Oskar himself barely understood what he was trying to accomplish. Still, of everyone he had met in this strange timeline, Karl was the person he trusted most.
"I need freedom," Oskar said at last.
Karl lowered the newspaper slightly and looked over the top of it.
"If I'm chained to daily classes, I can't build anything," Oskar continued, struggling to keep the German simple enough that he wouldn't lose himself halfway through. "I need time."
"Time to do what?" Karl asked. "More push-ups?"
Oskar ignored that and turned his gaze back toward the passing countryside. His voice dropped slightly when he answered. "To make sure Germany does not start putting… very stupid symbols on flags."
Karl remained silent for several seconds. Then, with great care, he folded the newspaper and placed it across his lap. "I have absolutely no idea what that means," he said, "and I suspect I may be happier that way. But I will tell you this: if you want anyone in this country to allow a prince to skip lessons while every other cadet studies, drills, and sweats through the normal training, then you are going to need a miracle."
Oskar nodded solemnly. "Where there is a will, there is a way."
Karl rubbed both eyes. "Please stop speaking like a fortune cookie. It makes my head hurt."
By the time the train finally rolled into Kiel, the sky had deepened into a rich orange over the horizon. Kiel was not a grand city in the way Berlin or Potsdam could be grand. It was a working city, and Oskar liked that almost immediately. The air carried salt, coal smoke, tar, and seaweed, while masts, cranes, chimneys, and shipyard structures cut across the skyline in every direction. Everything about the place seemed built around ships, steel, labor, and the sea.
"This," Oskar said quietly as he stared toward the harbor, "is heart of fleet."
Not far away lay the great naval yards and Germaniawerft, places capable of producing the warships that would one day form the steel core of Germany's challenge at sea. Even from a distance, Oskar could already imagine what might be built there if someone introduced the right ideas early enough.
Karl adjusted his coat beside him. "First we find an inn," he said. "After that, you may stand dramatically beside the harbor and contemplate the destiny of the German Navy for as long as you wish."
They found a respectable hotel without much difficulty. The innkeeper took one look at Oskar's documents, realized exactly who had just entered his establishment, and nearly folded himself in half trying to bow deeply enough.
Oskar smiled warmly at him. "My man. Nice sunny day."
It was early morning.
The innkeeper produced a confused noise that somehow still sounded loyal and retreated before the prince could say anything else. Karl watched him disappear and wisely chose not to comment.
The moment they reached their rooms, Karl went to bed.
Oskar did not.
He lay awake for a long time staring at the ceiling, turning the problem over and over inside his head. How did one convince a man like the director of the Naval Academy to break his own rules? Bribery had been Oskar's first instinct, but the more he thought about it, the less certain he became. How much money would even tempt a senior naval officer? And perhaps money was the wrong weapon entirely.
His thoughts drifted toward the admirals, generals, and officers he had studied in his previous life. Men of that type, especially old-school military professionals, tended to place enormous value on competence, results, discipline, honor, and reputation. Money could tempt some of them, certainly, but pride could often move them more effectively.
If I walk in there and tell him I want to skip everything, he'll think I'm lazy, Oskar thought.
Unless he framed it differently.
What if he made it a challenge?
Judge him entirely by results. Give him the same examinations as everyone else, perhaps even harder ones. No favors, no reduced standards, no royal protection. If he failed, throw him out. But if he passed—if he proved he could meet every academic requirement without sitting through the daily routine—then he earned the right to use his time differently.
Hardcore mode.
Oskar smiled into the darkness. "Yes," he whispered. "Ironman Naval Academy."
For once, the thought actually calmed him.
He eventually fell asleep.
By late morning Kiel had come alive with the cries of gulls and the distant rhythmic hammering of the shipyards. After a short nap came breakfast, and then Oskar and Karl made their way through the city toward the Naval Academy, with Oskar growing quieter the closer they came.
The Academy rose above the harbor in brick and stone, severe and symmetrical, its parade grounds laid out with military precision while rows of identical windows stared down like inspectors waiting to find fault. The entire place seemed designed to teach discipline before a cadet had even crossed the gate.
Oskar presented his documents to the guards. Recognition came almost immediately. Men snapped to attention, messages were sent ahead, and within minutes Oskar and Karl were being escorted through polished corridors toward the director's office.
A brass plaque beside the door read: Konteradmiral Ludwig von Birkenhagen, Direktor der Kaiserlichen Marineakademie Kiel.
Even the name sounded as though it had been carved from a rigid spine.
The door opened, and behind a heavy desk stood a tall, spare man in a dark naval uniform. Not a button, fold, ribbon, or strand of hair appeared out of place. His face looked as though someone had constructed it with a ruler and then forgotten to add warmth.
Konteradmiral Ludwig von Birkenhagen did not smile.
"Your Royal Highness," he said, bowing just deeply enough to satisfy etiquette without suggesting friendliness. "Welcome to the Kiel Naval Academy. Have you come to report early for your studies?"
His tone carried an unspoken addition: You had better say yes.
The admiral had already heard enough gossip from Berlin to form an opinion. A prince who had argued against the Emperor's wishes, resisted his education, behaved strangely around the palace, and apparently required special handling was not an encouraging prospect. As far as Birkenhagen was concerned, Prince Oskar was already a problem before he had even officially enrolled.
Oskar saluted cleanly. "Admiral von Birkenhagen. Yes. I have come regarding my enrollment."
"Very good," the admiral replied. "The nation expects much from its princes. I assume you are prepared to commit yourself fully to naval training."
Behind Oskar, Karl silently began praying to every saint he could remember.
Oskar inhaled slowly.
Here we go.
"Admiral," he said, carefully choosing each word, "I have a request."
One of Birkenhagen's eyebrows moved by perhaps a millimeter. "A request."
"Yes."
The admiral regarded him coolly. "From most cadets, that would mean questions about accommodation or elective subjects. From a prince, I have learned that it often means a desire for less work. Which is it in your case?"
Oskar met his eyes.
"During my enrollment," he said slowly, "I request exemption from daily classes and drills. I attend examinations only. No time restrictions."
Karl's jaw dropped.
Birkenhagen stared at Oskar as though the prince had just requested permission to sleep on the barrel of a battleship's main gun.
The admiral's expression darkened gradually, like steel being heated in a forge. "The Kiel Naval Academy," he said, each word clipped and precise, "is the cradle of the officers of His Majesty's Navy. Here we forge the minds and characters of men who will command ships, sailors, and perhaps one day entire squadrons. Our cadets study, drill, sweat, and sacrifice for the privilege of serving the Reich at sea."
His eyes narrowed.
"And you, Your Royal Highness, wish to skip class."
Karl quietly closed his eyes.
Oskar did not look away. "I wish to be judged only by results," he said. "Not attendance. I take every examination. If I fail, expel me. If I pass, I ask freedom to use my time as I see fit while remaining cadet in good standing."
Birkenhagen simply stared at him.
Inside Oskar's head, a small voice was screaming.
I sound insane. This is insane. Why am I like this?
The admiral's lips compressed into a thin line. "Your Royal Highness," he said coldly, "if you do not wish to attend the Kiel Naval Academy, I will not force you."
He stepped around the desk, the heels of his boots striking the floor with deliberate force. "Let us be perfectly clear. His Majesty the Emperor personally requested that you enroll here. I accepted that request because I serve His Majesty, as I always have and always will."
Birkenhagen clasped his hands behind his back and stopped directly in front of Oskar. "If you stand in my office and tell me that you refuse to undergo the same training endured by every other cadet, then I will send a telegram to Berlin this very hour informing His Majesty that you will not be joining us at all. I will respectfully request that the Emperor withdraw his order and find some other institution willing to accommodate you."
Karl felt his heart stop.
If the Kaiser learned that Oskar had argued with him, apologized, promised to attend, and then immediately traveled behind his back to negotiate his way out of the Academy anyway, this would no longer be simple disappointment. It could become an actual disaster.
The room suddenly seemed much smaller.
Oskar understood that too.
For several seconds, he could see three possible paths in front of him. He could retreat, apologize, and accept four years of ordinary training. He could double down on the insanity and probably destroy whatever goodwill remained. Or he could somehow turn Birkenhagen's anger into respect.
Oskar drew a slow breath.
"Admiral," he said, his voice lower now, "I do not refuse training."
He stepped forward.
"I refuse wasting potential. Give me harder test."
Birkenhagen's eyes narrowed another fraction.
Behind him, Karl whispered, "Oh no."
The director of the Kiel Naval Academy stood perfectly still while the most troublesome prince in Prussia gambled his future on the most dangerous thing Oskar possessed: a ridiculous idea that just might work.