The girls that were making fun of Isanuma were the same ones she got into an argument with in chapter 10. The one with the darker hair is the one who said that Isanuma was full of it. And Isanuma sucks at keeping secrets if she was about tell the whole class that she went on a date with their teacher. I got a laugh when the one page panned over most of the relevant girls in the class, you know, those same kinds of scenes that are in competition anime to increase dramatic tension.
I failed to notice this, but that is funny. They are competing in a way.
The only really surprising bit to me was Kokoro realizing she needed to distance herself. I can relate to some extent to being self aware enough to realize your behavior is an issue, but not enough in control to fix the behavior. The best you can do is avoid the situation. This can precede both backsliding and the hard work of changing one's habits and inclinations over a prolonged period of time.
One of those would be a lot more dramatic than the others, for better or worse. It could still be satisfying to see Kokoro redeem herself in ways I speculated about in earlier threads. It seems like I was right about Kokoro's inclinations, but wrong about how far she would take this. Moving on from the person you like, whether you stay friends or not, is also something that can take time. In the friend scenario, sometimes temporary distancing from each other is necessary until the feelings die down some.
The question is how sincere is Kokoro about wanting to continue to support Kurumi. Is she biding her time for her next chance, despite wanting to see herself as someone nicer than that?
It seems to me that the author is interested in writing a story where things are not as dark as they seem. People can fall to bad impulses, but also learn to be better when someone gives them the chance. A lot of sympathetic qualities were written into Naoi, Kurumi, and also Kokoro. Some of them seem like for-the-evuls characters like Isanuma and Kudou, but we also know the least about their backstories. However, we've never seen them question their own behavior yet, which Naoi, Kurumi, Kokoro, Akane, and Isanuma's friend (I forget her name) do. That doesn't mean none of the latter group will fall to the dark side, but I can't write any of them off.
The adults meanwhile are a lost cause. They've already decided who they were going to be, are deep set in their habits, and lost their chance to improve. Their fault for being over 20 in a manga. I'd like to be wrong, but I think the author wants to give the kids the focus. The adults are only a plot device as well as a way to show what can happen if you follow certain impulses to their end, like Naoi and her father or Kokoro and Kurumi's mother. I don't know if Kurumi has an equivalent; maybe the teacher who tries to please everyone and keep up his image, but without Kurumi's sense of ethics.
