Why is everyone saying its bait? That seems as much of a confession as one can expect in the middle of a highschool play, and a hell of a lot more progress than kazuya (they did in 30 chapters what kanojo couldn't in 300)
Even if its business as usual after this, both takamine and shirota have expressed their stances (shirota in no uncertain terms in front of the whole school), so now what follows is 2 highschool kids trying to figure out their feelings and how they want to go about it. Even if they didn't explicitly say "i like you", now they know there's something there to work towards, even if they won't admit it.
also, maybe because i came from finishing "don't bully me nagatoro san", but i don't get why yall are still saying takamine is just blackmailing/using shirota at this point. Maybe she did do it at the beginning, but from the flashbacks and her attitude towards shirota i highly doubt she would actually let him go down for assault