honestly, it's splendid how aof took time to deeply explore patpran's feelings and viewpoints and how he built the story on top of these factors. every new episode, we as spectators, get to perceive another dimension and depth of theirs emotions, for example:
pran is aware of his feelings for pat; he had been for a long time. he may dislike these feelings or doesn't fully accept them, but the truth is that he's conscious and in touch with them. this fact leads us, the audience, to notice his feelings and doubtlessly sympathize with him first. we get the idea that the story is going through pran's pov cause his emotions are explicit, there's nothing between the lines, we see pran's heart crystal clear because that's how it's for him too. the connection we form with him is almost instantly.
in contrast, pat isn't aware of his feelings for pran even though they've been there for a long time. unconsciously, he feels intrigued by pran and constantly feels the need to be around him: in today's episode represented as pat wanting to sleep in pran's room or pat being worried and wanting to take care of pran. summing up, pat wants to get close to pran, both physically and emotionally, but for some reason, he only reads it all as the desire of being pran's friend; he doesn't notice he's and had always been in love.
pat's feelings and emotions are blurry and between the lines, which led him to project what he feels for pran on ink cause that's seems like an easier way to "understand" himself and his heart. looking closely, his actions and words in today's episode were never genuinely directed to ink; pat let the nostalgia and his confused feelings for pran project something that isn't real: the whole time, he's just escaping the truth.
the audience feels far and somehow disconnected from pat because of his blindness and uncertainty towards his feelings; we don't sympathize with him as we do with pran. continuously, pat is giving us, pran and the spectators, mixed signals. for that reason, our response and behavior towards pat are always inconstant; when his love seems reciprocal, we feel happy and behave nicely. when pat's love doesn't seem mutual, we feel hurt and react protectively (pran towards his heart and us towards pran). that's why the audience is having a hard time bonding with pat, cause he's not fully bonded with himself either.
i believe the next episode will be the beginning of pat's self-awareness journey, and progressively, he'll know and understand himself better. also, at some point in the story, pat and pran will be on the same page, and we'll be able to really understand and sympathize with both characters equally.