Dude really just flat out said to her face that he doesn't really care if she's being driven into a corner, then 2 seconds later claims to care about her as a friend, lmao.
iinm, there are similar kind of case in real life. Usually in abusive relationship.
The abuser crush their victim’s self-worth, and then make the victim became mentally dependent on them.
Those kind of the abuser suddenly saying sorry, showing care, also can make the victim start doubting themselves, and lured to self-blaming (maybe it’s me who had been wrong, actually he is nice, he is feeling sorry, if I can just be better he wouldn’t be like this, I can help him, he need me, I’m needed, and so on).
It sounds stupid from 3rd party perspective who has the luxury to objectively observe from safe place. But if you’re cornered with nowhere else to go, everything you’re confident about yourself is constantly getting dissed until you’re not sure of yourself or your self-worth anymore, and then given one place, an identity to hold on to, people’s broken mind can get desperate.
It’s been what Mimori been doing in general.
Corner them, and then when they’re defenseless, give an exit to run away from things they can’t take anymore.
And the invisible cage here is, they’re haunted by anxiety about rejecting Haruka. They already lose self-confidence about standing for themselves (from trauma of situation that cornered them). Even if they try to stand on their own, what if they fail, and now they have nowhere else to fall back to. So they would rather take what Haruka had given them for a price, rather than take a risk to where they have failed before.