I've been thinking this for a while but hasn't she been sharing an apartment with Sayuri or did she move again? Even if she did, there's been so many situations where her coworkers, friends or just Sayuri got "unexisted" or when she kept her issues super vague for the sake of her making some kind of stupid decision instead of just going "hey Sayuri/colleague, I've got this problem". This is one of the first times she actually ASKED one of her coworkers something instead of being force-fed a lesson. At least now she's getting confronted with the fact that while to her and most people her work is transactional, to others it isn't.