Me personally i think tlj would be curious about mf the moment he notices who actually runs most of the peak but I also don’t think it’d be romantic, at least not at first.
The moment tlj decides he and mf should be friends is the moment mf walks into a room where he’s smoking, immediately starts coughing, drops all his paperwork, tells him it stinks and he hopes tlj croaks from lung cancer in a highly indirect and polite way, picks up his papers forgetting this year’s highly confidential budget report half under the carpet and them scurries off.
the moment he falls for mf is the moment he, looking for a mf to bother in a nearby town, bears witness to mf snapping a man’s neck because one of his shimei said the guy was harassing her.