It must be both to avoid the "our protagonist are now in another league" syndrome and leaving the previous characaters in the dust, and for the implied team they were building up in previous chapter. In the previous pages Fujita also showed some attention to Yumi and asked a game with her. And if you pay attention to the tiles and score in the table you'll notice Yumi won that game against Fujita, Hisa and Mako.
So maybe those two are in whatever scheme they are planning.
