Right. You can heavily infer that Kusunoki likes Keisuke.
The issue is, she is actively running from him, and from actually confronting herself about her feelings.
Which again, is her being avoidant, and that is a marked departure from her behavior since entering high school, as all of her successes and progress toward her "debut" involved her actually being direct and not running away from things.
She wants to be more confident, she wants to speak up and make friends and remake herself--and in this one instance--that I'd argue is quite significant given Keisuke is at the core of her successful debut--she suddenly reverts and turns back into her middle school self, and is repeating 'bad habits'.
Worse yet, this could end up costing her Keisuke's friendship anyway, because realistically this much avoidant behavior would put off most people, when even attempts to talk are met with deflection or absolute radio silence.
Which was my original point - Kusunoki had been making great strides in overcoming her past self, but her character has completely reverted now, and she's undoing all of that progress she made.
And, she's doing this entirely on her own--she's not talking to Keisuke or Otobe, she's not confided in either of them as to what happened to her before, and all three of them are in the dark, as a result. She'd just have to be honest and up front with Keisuke, or even just with Otobe, and a lot of this would be on its way to being solved.
Instead, Otobe thinks that her best friend has no interest in Keisuke, and thinks she now has the green light to make her move on her crush. Because Kusunoki effectively lied by refusing to face herself, she's now risking her best friend getting her heart broken when the truth inevitably comes out.
This is Old Kusunoki behavior, not New Kusunoki behavior, and I can't help but feel like the writing is forcing her to regress to set up this tension, instead of trusting in the three of them to navigate things as they are now, and find the best solution.
