This is chapter 48, it's unreasonable to suggest that Kusonoki shouldn't have had more character development by this point. Moreover, the little development she's had so far has occurred as rushed changes in the status quo, rather than occuring as any sort of process of improvement.
This chapter represents the problem: A major event occurs by happenstance, rather than by either of the two characters actually making a decision. So the whole 'we're just now getting to character development' bit is undermined by the fact that the author just took another plot shortcut instead of relying on character progression to move the plot along.
On a related note: Hebikawa is interesting because she's a character that makes meaningful decisions, not because she's a romance candidate or anything else. It's literally just because she has an interesting backstory that informs the decisions she makes, and those decisions--not accidental happenstance--cause the story to move forward.
This is a pretty good crucial storytelling distinction: Character-driven stories use decisions as their plot engines, while plot-driven stories rely on external factors that allow characters to occupy a solely reactive role in the story. The latter issue results in the plot coming off as generic.
if anything, the bigger "contrivance" to putting Kusunoki & Keisuke together like this, falls on Otobe getting sick--seemingly out of nowhere, as I saw nothing in previous chapters that implies she was doing anything leading up to this point that would "result in a cold".
So where'd that come from? Because it reads like some sort of deus ex machina device that
only serves to put Kusunoki & Keisuke together in a way that the former couldn't talk her way out of, having already met up.
Which reinforces your point about "plot-driven story" versus "character-driven story". Hebikawa is actively making decisions that see her pursuing her aims where they pertain to Kusunoki and Keisuke, while Kusunoki is
actively running away from confronting Keisuke or her own worries, and thus the setting/world itself has to act and force the two of them together.
It starts feeling like lazy writing, and while this might be unfair or harsh of me, it sort of reinforces my view that Hebikawa is
at minimum the most interesting character, by virtue of acting upon the plot via her own will, rather than being purely at the whims of the plot like ...pretty much the rest of the characters are.
Kusunoki has proven to be perfectly adept at and capable of pretty much everything we've seen her do, the first time she tries to do it.
Somehow, the
first thing she isn't good at, leads to her locking lips with Keisuke by virtue of being almost unbelievably bad at a physical activity - when we've seen her be able to do things effortlessly otherwise.
That's a characteristic inconsistency at that point, and off the back of the rest of the chapter, it raises suspicion about that "contrivance" criticism that has been voiced before now, when it comes to progression of Kusunoki's character.
Whenever we see her actually move forward in her "desire for a High School Debut", it's always at the pushing/prodding of other characters, or circumstances and situations that force her hand. She's incredibly passive otherwise, in contrast to Hebikawa and even Otobe.
It'd be nice to see Kusunoki make strides in pushing forward against her worries and the biggest obstacle to her character arc (that being her fears of getting closer to Keisuke or any other guy), but until she does, I don't see the criticisms being leveled at her abating.
