The way I see it, she still seems to be wavering between admitting the crush to herself and then falling back into the denial again. She's definitely aware that Shima is someone very special to her, yet she's not quite willing to fully admit the true extent of her feelings even to herself. The denial is certainly getting weaker and weaker, though.
I dunno man, Adachi seems to have twigged on pretty quick that what she feels for Shimamura is beyond platonic love. That dream of hers in the very beginning was the spark that set the whole thing burning. She's used the term "unrequited love" several times, "in love" or as close as she can force herself to articulate it. Even admitted that the Christmas date is a date as far as she's concerned--while in the same breath admitting it's no big deal to Shimamura in all liklihood. And hoo boy did that green-eyed monster come out swinging she saw Shimamura and Nagafuji out together...
I do agree with you for the most part, really, but at the same time, she's also still trying her best to deny this even internally to herself - and often failing miserably. Even this chapter we still had that quick switch from fallen in lo- to "love" in quotation marks so she could ensure herself that it was not quite that serious. Likewise, instead of fully admitting to unrequited love, she tries to get around it by going with no different from unrequited love - making it functionally the same, but with the excuse that it's not really that, again. It's not much, but the last shreds of denial still remain. Probably won't take her long this way to finally truly accept her own feelings, though.
last edited at Jul 15, 2019 6:47PM
