1965

West Berlin, Germany

"Hilda! Hilda! Kommen Sie und Spiel mit mir!"

The beautiful young woman dropped her pen and diverted her attention from her summer coursework and to her little brother, Heinrich, who was running toward her desk with a cookie in his hand. Hilda shook her head and looked at him.

"Nein," she told him. "Not right now. Maybe later."

"Come on!" Heinrich pleaded in his cute, small voice. "Bitte? There's always something better to do than work!"

"That's what you do when you are my age, Heinrich," Hilda reminded him, staring down into his baby blue eyes. "Life is work."

Hilda, a young woman of twenty-two, was doing college coursework to pass her final year at FreieUniversity, where she had been accepted on a full scholarship given to her by the BenedicktAcademy during her last year there. No one in the entire school knew about her getting the scholarship because the faculty didn't want the other students to be jealous of Hilda. However, everyone at the academy knew how insanely intelligent she was and they knew for sure she would be going places. At the end of her last year at BenedicktAcademy, the headmaster and her teachers had called her into a private meeting where she was told of her "superb accomplishment". She was eighteen at the time, but when she got the news to her parents, Ludwig and Krista, they were overjoyed; but baby Heinrich had not known what was going on.

Heinrich was born on July 27th, 1959, and when he was born, Ludwig had not been more proud of his son—he always wanted one and was so glad to finally have one. When he was just a few months old, the baby boy had already started to look like his father, but now, he was six years old—his father had become more prevalent in his appearance. He was a very handsome child with his father's strong, chiseled features, blond hair, and blue eyes. As a toddler, he resembled his older sister, but the effeminate baby-face faded quickly. Heinrich was not as intellectually gifted as his older sister, but he was very agile. Just a few weeks before, Ludwig had made him exercise everyday in order to be well-built like him.

"I just got exercise," Heinrich told his sister.

"Ja, and you're having a cookie. Dad isn't going to be happy with you once he finds out," Hilda answered.

"Mom gave me the cookie," Heinrich said sneakily, his voice turning into a whisper. "Dad doesn't know." He giggled sinisterly as Hilda closed her book, pushed it back on the table and stretched gingerly.

Hilda had grown up to be an intelligent, beautiful young woman—her long blonde hair was cut to just below her shoulders and it was always styled in a bouffant-like style. Her clear blue eyes were the most well-known of her feminine facial features, which started to look even more like her mother's. Hilda's eyes were still large, and she had a small nose and mouth which attracted many. During her four years at the university, many young men had tried their hardest to make Hilda theirs, but to no avail. The only problems she faced were the problems of being a target due to her naturally large bosom, and even though she barely had an exposed cleavage, boys who knew her always got together and thought of ways to come close to her, whether by dropping their books in front of her or bumping into her deliberately. Hilda did not know what exactly she wanted to be, but she majored in Classic Literature, a subject she had excelled in at the BenedicktAcademy, but she also took courses in world history, music, and French. Unlike the other languages she had learned as a child and became fluent in, she was slow to learn French, but when she drew linguistic parallels to Italian (which she spoke fluently), things started to come together and her mastery of the language came into being.

"Fraulein Bielschmidt, Heinrich; lunch is ready downstairs," Mathilde, their maid, told them as she peeked her head in the doorway.

As Heinrich ran down the stairs to the ornate dining room, Hilda took her time and rearranged her books neatly on her desk. She placed her pen back in the tin cup which held her other writing utensils and walked to the full-length mirror in her room. Because it was summer and her bedroom was hot, Hilda had undone a few buttons near the neckline of her dress, and when she saw them in the mirror, she buttoned them back up and brushed her hair just before joining her family downstairs.

The house of retired Lieutenant-General Ludwig Bielschmidt was quite sizeable, so it took some time for Hilda to finally reach their ornate dining room downstairs to have lunch with her family.

"BOO!"

Hilda jumped, startled by the sight of her little brother popping out at her playfully from behind a chair that stood near the stairwell.

"Don't do that!" Hilda lectured coldly.

"I was just kidding around," Heinrich told her, taking her hand. "Come on! Lunch is going to get cold! Come on! Come on!"

Hilda let herself be pulled to the dining room by Heinrich, but he didn't let her go until she sat down. Once Heinrich took his seat across from her at the table, Hilda saw their mother and father look at them blankly.

"You seem excited to eat," Krista told her son.

"I love bratwurst," the little boy replied as he seized his fork and chewed on his first bite rapidly.

"Don't eat so fast," Ludwig ordered, looking at his son strangely. "You're not an animal."

"But it tastes so good!" Heinrich cooed with his cute voice. Ludwig rolled his eyes as Mathilde came to him and served him a drink—it was a cold glass of beer; Hilda had noticed that after the birth of Heinrich, he had started to drink beer more often. She supposed that in his mind, he was the head of the household and was entitled to have such things whenever he wanted.

"Gibt es irgend etwas anderes, dass Sie, Herr Bielschmidt möchten?" she asked sweetly in her soft-spoken voice.

"Nein, danke," he answered.

Hilda watched as Mathilde left the room. Mathilde was a young, unmarried woman just three years older than Hilda, and the two young women got along like best friends. She had light brown hair and blue-green eyes with prominent high cheekbones and a small beauty mark near her soft pink lips. Mathilde was very beautiful, and she had come from Munich to work for the Bielschmidts shortly after Elsa, Hilda's old-fashioned, uptight nanny-maid, had retired from domestic service. She was pushing seventy when she retired in 1960 and she had gotten a chance to meet Heinrich even though he was just a baby. Hilda and the old woman had still kept in touch and sent letters, proving that the young woman had never forgotten who had really raised her alongside her father. Heinrich really took to Mathilde quickly as a baby, but his attachment grew as time passed. She also a had a gentle demeanor and she always gave good advice, which were a few reasons why Hilda liked her so much—in a sense, Mathilde was her first best friend.

Ludwig looked over at his grown daughter reverently as she ate small bites of her lunch, one of the many lady-like behaviors she had picked up at her elite university. One day, Hilda had been sitting alone as usual until she saw a bunch of more popular girls approach her table and sit with her. Hilda noticed how daintily they were eating their food, and from then on, the young woman felt that this was the way to go.

"What are you doing, Hilda?" he asked. She looked up at him, straightened her back and placed her fork on the table.

"What do you mean?" she questioned with a deep breath.

"You are eating like a rabbit," he said. "You've never eaten like that before." The young woman raised her defined blond eyebrows and looked at him, her clear, great blue eyes sparkling.

"Everybody eats like that at Freie," Hilda told him. "Especially the girls."

"The girls eat like that?" Krista asked, staring at her with her demonic black eyes, holding her fork as daintily as her daughter was eating her food.

"Ja," she told her mother. "It keeps the waist smaller."

"I will try that," Krista said, taking a small portion of food on her fork before taking it into her mouth.

"Hilda, you don't need to be any skinnier. You are fine the way you are," Ludwig reminded her, continuing to eat his food. Heinrich looked at his sister across the table curiously.

"Can I eat like that, too, Hilda?" he asked.

"Nein!" Ludwig said, pounding his fist on the table. "Heinrich! Eat like a normal human being! Don't listen to your sister!"

"Ludwig! Leave him alone!" Krista told him. "He's curious."

"Heinrich, this kind of eating is for girls," Hilda told him sweetly. "You are a boy."

"I know I'm a boy. I'll be big and strong like daddy," the little boy answered with a proud smile as he extended his arms and flexed. Krista and Hilda laughed at him as he continued on. "I'll take a really big bite of my bratwurst! Just like daddy!"

The little boy scooped up a large portion of his food with his fork and opened his mouth wide, trying to fit all the food in his mouth. As he chewed, his mother and sister started to laugh hysterically at the mess that was all over his mouth. Ludwig looked at his son with shock, and his eyes turned to the doorway, hoping the maid would come and clean him up.

"Mathilde!" he called out. He saw her as she rushed in, but she also began to laugh upon seeing Heinrich's messy face and still chewing on the large amount of food he had put in his mouth to demonstrate his budding manliness. He looked at the laughing women and stood up, his frustration causing his heart rate to rise and his face to get red.

"Enough!" he shouted. Mathilde was startled by his sudden shout, and Hilda and Krista just sat there looking up at him. Ludwig took a deep breath and looked over at the maid, whose hands were clasped primly in front of her.

"Mathilde," he said. "Will you please clean up my son?"