I'll share my two cents.
About a year before I met my current girlfriend, I took interest in someone who I met attending an anime convention who happened to attend the same university as I do. We started talking, obviously it was easy as we had a mutual interests and were both students so there was a mutual respect for each other from the get go.
Long story short, I asked if she wanted to go to a dessert place I've been meaning to go to but haven't been able to find anyone to go with, she agreed, we went, had good communication, good vibes for sure. We continued talking after that first "date" but I continuously asked her out for more food dates but she kept declining for a period of 2 or 3 months claiming she was too busy with classes and needed to go home right after class or was just busy with work on weekends. I took that as a sign that she wasn't interested as she didn't make an effort to reschedule or find time and I simply moved on.
About 2 months after we stopped talking, I got a random call from an unknown number, turns out it was one of her girlfriends drunk calling me (they were together drinking) and telling me how she's told them everything about me and how she keeps thinking about me and wants to go out with me etc. etc.
In the end, nothing happened, but I was kind of like oh, so you did have a thing for me
I'm not sure what point I'm trying to prove here, I guess maybe that even when you're sure that the person you're interested in, isn't interested in you, it might not be true? Perhaps wait longer? Don't know. Perhaps I wasn't being blunt enough? I know the process/methods I used with my current girlfriend to let her know I wanted to be with her was super blunt, basically told her I liked her right off the start and made everything as obvious as possible and asked her to be mine two weeks after we met, after only 3 or 4 dates
