I know that romcom manga fans may not want to hear this, but even in Japan you often don't have any grand "I'm in love with you, please start dating me" kind of scene. Things often just sort of naturally progress from one stage to the next as they are here. That said, this still is a shonen romcom, so I expect such a scene, but it certainly isn't necessary.They really pushing the limits of what they can do before it counts as outright dating.
I tried to translate it as accurately as I could, because it’s not terribly clear in Japanese either, but I got the sense that he actually couldn’t go into the reason (that is, because he didn’t know) rather than didn’t want to (because it was embarrassing).I'm stupid, why did he really buy the bandaid?