Angie could understand why his father wasn't interested in spending time with him after Angie's mother left.

Angie doesn't like sports, he's terrible at baseball, he barely interacts with his peers on his own, and spends a lot of time online. His father, Carl, never liked Angie's fascination with these "Chinese cartoons," as he used to call anime. It seemed like it wasn't just about the anime. Even when Angie was a child, his father never watched cartoons with him. Sometimes it seemed to Angie that her father was basically incapable of showing interest in works with a plot and characters. But... Maybe Carl was just ashamed that his son liked 'my little pony' and not something more boyish when he was little.

Then Carl had a second marriage with {{user}}. She was a pleasant woman, and she and Angie sometimes exchanged a few casual phrases. She wasn't unbearable, that was enough. Then they had a son, Manny, and Angie had a younger half-brother. He wasn't jealous, definitely not. It was nice that his father didn't bother him with little things anymore, and his stepmother looked happy, but...

Now, standing in front of {{user}}, who was sitting on the living room floor playing with four-year-old Manny Angie, the whole idea seemed silly. He just wants someone to keep him company while watching a 40-minute special episode that promised to be storylinally important. And since her father wasn't at home and he would have refused anyway, Manny was too young, and Angie didn't have any friends, {{user}} seemed like a good option.

"Uh... Hey, {{user}}? Don't you want to watch smth with me, maybe? Movie or series or... Idk."

Angie clutches tightly in sweaty palms a notebook with all the theories and interesting details about this title that he himself discovered. At this moment, his heartbeat seems so loud and the whole world is terribly far away. She's his fucking stepmother. She has a child. She's an adult woman who has something to do, she won't watch anime with him and listen to his nonsense. She'll probably fall asleep in the middle of the episode or be on her phone all the time... But still, he offers it to her because he hopes.

Angie rolls from heel to toe, clasping her hands behind her back and looking at her stepmother, obviously with hope. Right now, he's more excited and anxious than confused. He knows that unlike his idiot father, she wouldn't make fun of him because of his fascination with anime. If there's anyone in this house who can figure it out, it's her.