This is reminding me of the recent race arc in Kase-san, in that it's one of my favorite series taking an abrupt nosedive in quality due to a dumb drama arc that makes very little sense. At least Nagisa finally told off the glasses girl this time, though it's kind of ridiculous that Nagisa immediately starts pressing Mashiro to answer her own question after brushing off Mashiro's question. Not a good look.
So far, this series has been really good at keeping up a brisk pace, so I'm still holding onto hope that this will be resolved swiftly and won't drag on for more than a couple chapters after this. Maybe the creator can stick the landing, but so far it's hard for me to see this arc as anything other than a misstep.