Responses
The prayer at the end told everything about how kousuke feels. I think it was for the sake of plot twist that the author is trying to achieve made kousuke seem lacking. But really he isn't. Even the uke isn't questioning kousuke's feelings towards him, he is more concerned on kousuke being popular, that just shows how much he(uke) is being loved.
i feel that the confession the aoyagi gave was not too straightforward (no i like you it was done in a kind of roundabout way), and so what throws us off maybe is the fact that kousuke sighed and also accepted in a roundabout way. we really don't see a lot of kousuke's feelings in this at all, even the moments when he snaps he seems very calm and very collected, even when aoyagi was so sexy kousuke seemed very calm, adn even back in middle school when he used to get bullied kousuke seemed very calm. i think the thing that's off is that kousuke is always so calm, so we barely see his feelings, which makes us feel insecure in a way? Insecure that he actually has feelings for aoyagi, or if he's just going with the flow. When he went and sat with aoyagi in middle school was he also going with the flow, or did he feel happy to be called out? I think the lack of emotional connection we get from kousuke is the thing that's off and making us insecure about any of this. At least that's how i felt about this.