Man, Japanese is such a pain in the ass language sometimes. Like, she asks her "do you like this boy?" and if looked at out of context, it's just as ambiguous in Japanese as it is in English, but you're meant to understand from the context that this question means "do you have a crush on this boy?" or "are you in love with this boy?", but of course, this only works if the person you're talking to isn't a space cadet like Chihara. And there's like, no casual way to just explicitly and unambiguously ask "ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH HIM?". You can't use "aishiteru?" because that sounds super weird in normal conversation, you gotta use "suki", but "suki" can also just mean platonic liking, so it's, y'know, a pain in the ass, creating the kinds of situations presented in this chapter.