Which is why I said the female mage needs to use her brain, because she know that there's something wrong with his situation, but she somehow failed to talk with the MC when he's leaving, despite she sees him, and instead just stood there doing nothing.
It would make more sense if she didn't met with him when he leaves from the group, and only realized it later when he already moved to the other place, but nope, the author decides to just made her dumb with 2 IQ + damsel in distress bimbo, so the MC can have fun with the bouncy elf alone.
This is an obvious bad writing with the "miscommunication" trope, which is a very common trope on animanga or light novels, because it can artificially prolong the story for quite some time.