5: Advice
"...What girl?"
"Huh?"
For a minute, Langa's reply didn't compute; then the penny dropped and Nanako rushed to correct herself.
"Oh! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed! The person you like - is it... a boy?"
'Be careful!' Nanako admonished herself. 'He may worry about how you're going to react! Just make sure he knows you're supportive!' She gave an encouraging smile.
Langa looked up at her uncertainly, the pink blush that spread across his cheeks confirming she was right. "It... He is, yeah. But it's not... we're just friends. At the moment."
Nanako's smile softened. For once, she wasn't panicking, too caught up in the moment with her son. "But you'd like to be more than that - right?"
"I think so."
"Well, if you're friends, that's a good start," Nanako said. "You know you have interests in common, and things you like to do together." She strongly suspected those "things" might be skateboarding, but didn't add that. "You could tell him what those things mean to you - and why it means a lot to do them with him."
Langa was silent, and for a moment Nanako worried her advice was unhelpful. But then, slowly, he nodded.
"I'll try. Thanks, mom."
Author's Notes: \o/ Look, I made a fic about characters other than Joe and Cherry! (Don't worry, though, because 4/5 of my list of drabble ideas are still about them xD) I'm in love with Nanako's character (seriously, I kept wishing the show would involve her more often because I just wanted her reactions to everything xD) and her relationship with Langa and her wholehearted effort to be supportive as a newly-single parent is just heart-melting. I couldn't help but want to write a continuation of their conversation in Episode 8, which is brilliant and hilarious in all versions but especially the English dub 😄
I originally imagined this as 100 words but quickly realised it would need 200 to do the moment justice, and even then, cutting it down was a tough job! I could have sacrificed that bit of initial dialogue at the beginning to gain a few words back, but it's good dialogue 😉