This is a pretty lame arc. It’s just not fun. Saotome clearly doesn’t want this, but was sort of pressured into this, so this is pretty mean-spirited of Kujaku. However, despite having the guts to turn down a confession, also not saying no is so unbelievably pathetic , so it’s hard to feel bad. Similarly, it feels like the mangaka doesn’t want this either, since so little effort is put into this.