Pretty much everyone above said the same feelings anyway. He's still traumatized over how the first rejection turned out, and he's afraid to say it again. He still is in love with the same person he always has, and will give a blunt rejection if he absolutely has to, but still wants to do anything he can to get out of awkward situations, like that cafeteria scene. Pretty much everything else is either just for comedic effect, or showing how he's still easily flustered and embarrassed.

And you can't say you want to "prevent a shipping war" when your literal argument is "Oomori wants to keep Ryuu an available player for shippers". That's a contradiction because people will need to bring it up when they say it's false.

@InversePrime

“Bell knows that Ryuu knows that he likes Ais.”

I dont think that is right. The only people I think Bell is aware of that knows he likes Ais is Hestia and Eina.

“Ryuu says she doesn't need an answer because she already knows what it is.”

She 100% wants an answer, but not because she thinks she has a chance, she most likely wants to be set free from it (no what ifs).

@AbigailWilliams2020 At the beginning of Vol. 17 when Ryuu confronts Bell on why he rejected Syr, he says it’s because there’s already someone he likes. So even if he doesn’t realize that she knows he’s talking about Ais, he definitely knows she knows he likes someone else.

@InversePrime right, but she didn’t get the thought that maybe it could be Ais until Ais saves her at the end of volume 17 (and honestly, that isn’t even solid because it was implied, kind of). She later kind of starts digging into Ais and what Ais thinks of him (Bell), but imo, there’s kind of a gap of when she really puts it all together…

Ryuu definitely knows that Ais is Bell's love interest. That was directly stated in the latest SS when Ais and Ryuu were talking.

It isn't clear though if Bell is aware that Ryuu knows who it is since he didn't give her a name in 17. I think it is very possible that Bell suspects she knows it is Ais though. There aren't very many female adventurers to catch up too. Aside from Eina and Hestia, he hasn't directly told anyone else that I am aware of.

Others that Bell probably/possibly knows that are aware of his affections for Ais despite not telling them directly:

• Freya: She called Ais "your [Bell's] precious Sword Princess" in front of Bell. High probability that Bell knows that she is aware of who he likes since he spent so much time with Freya and because of that statement in front of him.

• Hermes: Bell said he read him like a book at the dance, so Bell probably expects Hermes has put two and two together.

• Welf: Bell possibly thinks Welf knows because he said he admired Ais when asked what girl he likes. Ouka, Luvis, and Dormul were in that conversation too, but Bell should probably think that Welf knows more than them since he did give a somewhat vague answer in that conversation.

• Tiona and Tione: Bell was so emotional when Ais took his hand in 17 and he laid bare his feelings of admiration for Ais, so they would have to be pretty dense if they haven't begun to figure things out yet. They are also aware that there were circumstances that led to Freya keeping Ais away from Bell. It was said that Tiona understood what Ais was feeling during the wargame and also Omori hinted that Tiona had some sort of vague intuition on their potential relationship in MS16 (Bell is unaware of the two latter things though).

• Hedin: Bell was aware that Hedin was watching him during the 17 scene, so I think Bell might suspect that Hedin knows just like Tiona and Tione. Hedin knows about the true nature of Liaris Freese as shared by Freya.

Others that definitely/probably know about Bell's feelings for Ais but, from what we know, Bell is totally unaware of it would be:

• Lili, Haruhime, and Mikoto: Definitely know, all present in the MS8 conversation about Bell's feelings. Bell knew nothing of this conversation.

• Loki: She often surprises me on what she was able to figure out, as shown again in 18. So I think she is close to figuring out that Bell likes Ais and she knows Freya so well that she will have deduced that there is something special about Bell's feelings (he was able to reject her, which shouldn't be possible). Loki also knows Freya singled Ais out during the wargame and prevented her from interacting with Bell. So, she probably has figured out the reason.

• Other Freya Familia Executives: Freya shared the true nature of Liaris Freese to them. It was shown in 18 too that the Gulliver brothers and Hogni knew that Ais "stole Bell away" from Freya.

I also feel like Riveria and Finn might have some awareness too of Bell's feelings, but I think it depends on how much Loki has deduced or shared with them from the circumstances of MS17-18. Also depends on how smart Omori decides to make them.

I don’t think too highly of Bell’s maturity he is still a long way.

The boy is a pushover to Hestia running his personal life and he doesn’t have the courage to turn girls down.

The sign of a grown up is accepting the burden of rejecting the girls whether it hurts or not.

It is basically means do you have the stones to make life and death decisions and the resolve to accept the consequences this includes hurting people’s feelings.

The other is to stand up as a man to question Hestia in running his life.

I think some of you guys are taking too seriusly the scenes on vol 19, where, basically every character show what we can call "immaturity", not just Bell, namely all the people present at the cafeteria scene.

@Leinad91 If we take all the scenes seriously, yes, there's definetly some regression in Bell's attituide with other girls. The excuses given are cheap, like being afraid to roject Ryu because of what happened with Syr. Even if he's not a genius, he should be able to understand that nothing so bad would happen with Ryu.

But also it should be noted that book 19 has many other flaws, in it has been written that way for marketing reasons. In the afterward, Oomori himself said he was planning to include other stuff in this volume but he decided not to. And we can all imagine what has been left out.

I don't think that the author compromised anyone's position though. Those scenes were meant to be funny (personally I don't think they really are), and character actions and thoughts are very vague, and the author will be able to fix all of this in the next volumes with ease.

Personal thought, I think that I will appreciate much more book 19 after the next ones are out. It is just a break in the story, and probably the most important stuff in there is the foreshadowing of the future and the Leon's introduction. All the rest will just be forgotten and won't be really relevant.

Bell to me has a long way to go not only as a Hero but maturity as well.

First step to me is defy Hestia about her involvement in his love life because she hid his growth skill from others but it was so Bell never finds about Ais’s importance to him.

Otaku, Hestia hid it because Bell wouldn't be able to keep secrets from Gods

@Hurricane951, what I wanted to know with this post was if other users had noticed that Omori had gone back to the same nonsense from before (pre-Freya arc), like bad jokes about harem fights and Bell playing dumb to get out of uncomfortable situations.

I had high expectations in that sense, thinking that Bell would be very mature about it from now on and that Omori would begin to put aside those things that at this point no longer make sense, and I wanted to know if other users had had similar expectations to mine.

From the comments I read here I realized that in general it was not expected for Omori to give up those things because they consider them a regular part of the plot, to that sense, they did not expect Bell to change radically post Freya arc nor that Omori gradually quitting his usual cliches.

So that, I consider that this post has already fulfilled its objective since it provided me with the information I wanted to know, which to be honest, was what I expected.