Feels a lot like she's being played with but there's enough room to assume the situation was similar on the other side, she's clearly making romantic advances when they're together, but MC never did anything more so it's fair to assume that both had the same mindset of "want more but unsure", when MC did finally make a move she was surprised but accepted it and then made her own move. I read the afterword more as saying there is more progress to be made than saying they never would. Maybe I'm just being more optimistic than I should be though
Also there is literally nothing ambiguous about someone saying "Person, I like you" in that manner and I really hate when manga do that. Even if it can mean love in a friend way, no friend is professing how they love you in that way. You'd have to be incredibly dense to not understand that in those situations, which to be fair plenty of manga characters are.