Just distraction.
It still doesn’t give the most important answer in this shipping : does Aqua want Ruby or not.
This time it ends with a kiss, but Ruby forced it on him by surprise. It still afford Aka the excuse that Aqua didn’t initiate it by his own will, so it doesn’t count as him reciprocating Ruby’s feeling yet (the “yet” is important because need to keep hope so readers will keep active engagement).
To make it worse, the scene quickly jumps to the filming, just so readers never gets an answer.
Ruby loving Aqua is no secret, she’s been showing it, and also say it in words. Meanwhile Aqua never directly says he wants or doesn’t want the relationship.
Inside the story, Aqua is still a coward. His words are never about his own feeling of whether he loves Ruby back (in the same way as she loves him).
He only try to put situation where he wants Ruby to think it’s impossible and back off on her own (make her change her choice, without him having to make his choice). So he doesn’t need to feel guilty of hurting her by rejection.
Although in practice, Ruby doesn’t care of his excuses. If he wants her to start learning to move on, he will need to choose to reject her and make it clear he doesn’t want her as lover.
Outside the story, the whole Aqua Ruby had been feeding a lot of engagement.
The coupling got a lot of fan arts. And every time new fan service bones are thrown, the crowd explodes in conversation.
Making Aqua choose (or reject) Ruby here would kills a lot of that. Not sure Aka had the courage to take the step rather than keeping it safe and ambiguous like this.
