Thanks for the chapter, Andy.
There are a lot of funny people reading this manga, playing up their shock at MC's "mistake"; it's as if they aren't aware of the author's intentional thinking behind that scene, or of the mechanism by which such a bait-and-switch (were it played straight, so to speak) would work--as if that mechanism wasn't shown on page 22, the cover page on almost every chapter up to this point, or even Arka's introduction page.
Speaking of awareness, the author himself is aware of how unsightly it is for a guy to flip out over a pretty girl holding his hand, and yet here's another stock effeminate MC doing so. That aside, it IS good that said MC is now on track to self-improve and stop being such an effeminate (to a certain degree, anyway), and has to stay on it or risk spiritual death. It's just unfortunate that there's a limit very likely baked into that improvement process, and you can see it in the way he's dressed.