Is my friend(22f) interested in me(24m)?

I’ve met this girl 3 years ago. We didn’t really talked much then. But about 9 months ago we’ve taken a class together. We’ve been talking online ever since. Our interactions are mostly online cause I graduated and don’t come to school anymore. She might be romantically interested but she might just be a nice person and I can’t figure it out. She’s also pretty shy and introverted. She’s most probably single but I never asked. Here’s a breakdown:

**Signs:**

* We help each other out a lot (more so me) with stuff like homeworks, career paths, creative works etc.
* First time we’ve met face to face, she burst out lots of “thank you”s because I’ve helped her with the homeworks during our class together (Actually, she helped me more and she already thanked me)
* She likes my every social media post. But not all at once. More like she likes when I post them. Sometimes she sends me a DM on insta about them. We follow each other in multiple platforms. I mostly post about my work, my cat and rarely my selfies. She likes them all. I like her posts too though.
* She enthustuastically accepts whenever I say we do stuff together. Like playing games, homework help etc. Sending me excited reaction gifs and all
* She NEVER lets my text be the last one in the conversation. She always sends me something like laughing emoji or a reaction GIF so her message is the always last one. It’s kinda interesting
* Lately, in the last 6 months or so, her every text includes a laugh phrase. Even the things that aren’t funny and just neutral. We don’t talk in english but laugh phrases’ translation would be “haha”, “lol”, “puhaha” etc.
* Oh and.. she drew me based on a reference picture of myself. It was for a self portrait homework and she was showing me how to draw portraits like that.

**Not-so-interested signs:**

* She never initiates conversation. It’s almost always me who send the first message. There are periods that we didn’t talk for a month.
* She doesn’t responds fast. It would be around 1-6 hours
* She doesn’t ask a lot of questions about my life. Mostly I ask something then she asks something similar. So we mostly talk things like hobbies, work or life in general
* There’s another guy that she plays games and hang out with. I met him a while ago and he seemed to flirt with her and teasing her. She knows him longer than me

​

The thing is I don’t really know if I’m interested in her. I’m single and I could definitely give a chance to this relationship. She makes me feel very comforted. I feel at ease and feel like I don’t have to be more than myself when we talk. But I don’t want to ruin our friendship and I don’t want to make things weird since we share some friends. Being friends with her is just as fine with me.

I might be reading too much into her actions and I’m a huge overthinker about stuff like this. I’m usualy nice and I like to help people so I sometimes think people might get the wrong idea about me. So maybe thats the case with her too. What do you think?

​

**TLDR; a friend of mine enthustically accepts my every request, likes my every social media post and she laughs to neutral statements but she never sends me first message and there is another guy who is interested in her. Is she just nice or is she interested?**