Aaaah, I felt it was coming. Poor Tohno-kun... i feel so bad for him and need to track down the evil that did this to him.
Dunno if this is where the author is going but this is actually the perfect chance. I am still annoyed that the Rei-simp is only really helping cuz she has this fantasy about MC being her future brother in law, but she is defs developing. The other girls are so eugh wtf like chill.
But with their introduction and the current separation we can go two ways. MC can start trying to explore his trust issues and the Rei-Simp can try to help as she seems to genuinely care a bit and be developing. While they are doing this Houjou and her friend can start discussing a bit what happened, Houjou is fairly airhead so she needs someone to help her figure things out likely but on top of that Tohno isn't the kind to go out of his way to explain the situation unless put in a corner or approached directly about it. So it's the perfect time for the annoying other simps to be useful. Since now they think Houjou has info and has been gathering info while Tohno is dealing with his own stuff maybe one or a few of them approach Houjou about how close she has gotten and whether she has any "Info on Rei-Sama kyaaaaa~♡" fake ass blurgh. Anyways one of them could say something brazen like: "what other reason would you have to get close to Tohno-kun?" Honestly I can see that happening none of these girls have tact, the vibes are atrocious. Anyways this could lead to Houjou looking into what it means and a proper confrontation where the two reconcile and start properly bonding.
