If you were to ask Aske if he liked Thira, his answer would indeed be affirmative.
After all, men are visual creatures, and he wasn't the type to claim, "I have face blindness and can't tell if someone looks good or not." If you were to rank team members purely by facial aesthetics, The second place might be up for debate, but Theodora would be firmly in first place.
Such a girl, who practically embodied his aesthetic ideals, admitting that she had a bit of a crush on him naturally gave Aske a sense of arrogant vanity... Ah, no, that's not the problem, the problem is that he couldn't afford to be in a relationship right now!
The specific reasons were cliché and hardly worth mentioning. In any case, having reassured Thira with his words, he finally managed to convince her not to rush back to retake her country for the time being.
Leaving the manor, Aske planned to inspect the girls' progress in leveling up, aiming to help everyone cross the Demigod threshold as soon as possible.
