The saga (and most importantly, the funny comments) continues! Once again, the author can't help but flip-flop and refuses to commit to any answers, story or character development. We finally have confirmation that most of this is happening because he is still down bad for her, despite their relationship being short.
The way things are worded seems to imply they haven't really been involved with each other even before dating, not just after. They likely have known each other for what, less than 1% of their lives? We also got another hint that she might have been the one breaking things up ("Even though we only dated for such a short time." "Are you really saying that?" and "I thought you had long forgotten about me.") but no confirmation still.
The author once again can't help but make Kyou seem like a useless person: she gets a little drunk (because of course she does) and when she gets asked once again if she has ulterior motives, instead of denying it like when they first met, she replies with a flirty "Who knows?". This is an adult woman acting cute and dodging the question when being asked something kind of serious. If the guy wasn't so into her, this would also jeopardize her and her daughter's situation for no reason. I hope I don't need to point out that if she is fully aware that he is into her, this would be taking advantage of him to the max and kind of mean, whether she reciprocates fully/partially/not at all at this stage.
Bonus points for wanting to hide this from the daughter... For some reason. They are fine getting along in front of her anyway, and they are doing absolutely nothing inappropriate, so why is this a problem? Maybe her daughter also thinks her mom is useless and can't be trusted around men and alcohol, which would be kind of hilarious. Well, I am sure we can contrive something and then smooth it over for the sake of fake drama.
My sincerest praise goes to the author for getting this tripe published. If we ignore how silly the background for the plot is, the story would just be "bland rom-com for lonely men in their 40s" at best. Well, I guess a lot of garbage gets published nowadays (there is some genuine isekai slop flooding the market every day), so I shouldn't be this surprised.