"I'm all right with dating you..."
I'm pleasantly surprised Ino came clean about her reasons to him and practically accepted his confession. I was kinda expecting her answer to get dragged out by her competitive pride but we actually got an answer. The thought that another girl could take him away made short work of that. I mean, this series did start out with him being confessed to by another girl, so her fears are very credible.
I am also rather disappointed the answer turned out to be a "yes, we will officially start dating, but not now" because she still has to soothe her competitive but bruised ego that's obsessed with winning and losing. I wonder if she'll realize she's just engaging in some kind of one-sided rivalry against him, he doesn't really care at all about things like one-upping the other like she is.
I guess this sets the tone for the coming chapters. Would've liked it better if they just outright started officially dating for real though. There's just not enough male-oriented romcoms where the leads are officially dating for a significant chunk of the series. It's almost always near the end if not the finish line.