Holy cop out, Batman! Did the situation just completely defuse itself without any characters actually growing or changing in any significant way? Partway through the chapter, I at least thought this could be building to a (doomed) love confession scene, but nothing meaningful happened at all! Seira is right back to simping for Masato, and Masato is right back to ambiguously friendzoning her, like everyone else? Am I reading this right?!
I guess it's my fault for expecting that a romcom author would willingly disrupt the status quo. 🤦 I've lost a lot of faith that the author plans to do anything interesting within a reasonable time frame.