i just woke up and maybe my mood wasn't right for it but what the fuck is the point of Hebikawa, like literally pretty sure if she doesn't exist nothing will change about this story the mc hate her the manga frame it so we're supposed to hate her, is it like a long ass redemtion arc plan that will rival Luffy finding out what the One piece is? We're 46 chapter in and she serve 0 purpose fucking Irie over there (best girl btw) has more of a development that she is come on man
I suspect Hebikawa is going to be the catalyst that pushes Kusunoki to develop/recognize her feelings for Keisuke.
Thus far, Kusunoki has actively denied having any feelings for the ML, making his crush on her entirely one-sided.
We recently learned that part of her reasoning for "not understanding"--but possibly now more actively avoiding--love and romance; but now that she's realized that Otobe might have a crush on Keisuke, she has even more reason to avoid that sort of entanglement with the Keisuke, and is now trying to distance herself from him.
Cue Hebikawa, whose primary character goal is to make Kusunoki "fall" - she thinks that anyone who has a "perfect person appearance" is actually hiding a darkness underneath, and is thus determined to expose Kusunoki's dark/bad side to everyone else. She's also wrapped up in Keisuke's past trauma, being the reason he can't really talk to girls for the most part.
But now that Hebikawa thinks she can get to Kusunoki through Keisuke by going after him and seducing him (because she's clocked Kusunoki as having latent feelings for Keisuke), she'll be trying to spend more time around Keisuke in order to "get him", which she believes will push Kusunoki into breaking her "perfect person persona" and get jealous/yandere or something that will expose that darkness she's convinced Kusunoki has inside.
But (I suspect) in the process of that, Hebikawa will start falling for Keisuke instead, which might still end up pushing Kusunoki to act on her feelings for him and thus pursue/reciprocate his crush on her.
So in essence - if I'm correct, Hebikawa is the character that serves as a foil both for Kusunoki's character (the "dark" to her perfectionism), as well as the foil to the romance between Kusunoki and Keisuke. Without any outside motivation/pressure, Kusunoki will continue running from romance, until she's forced to actually participate by virtue of the chance of losing her romance target (Keisuke) to someone else.
Also - and this is my person opinion only - but without Hebikawa, this becomes an incredibly generic romcom school manga that we've seen plenty of times before. So I personally still read this entirely because her character exists; otherwise everyone else is pretty generic and formulaic in their presentation: Kusunoki is the "perfect heroine protagonist"; Keisuke is the ML who falls for the main heroine and attempts to get her to notice him by being generally helpful in all the standard ways; Otobe is the tomboy childhood friend who's over-protective, but then falls for the ML and becomes a Losing Heroine.
Hebikawa exists outside of that dynamic, and introduces depth to the arcs of Kusunoki and Keisuke that elevates this above the bog standard fair of schoolkid-age romcom titles.
