
Sounds like they might try to spin it as Kogahara realizing her initial affection was towards Lemon, which would be fine because it opens Sunao/Lemon back up to being endgame without hurting Kogahara's feelings, but there's the unfortunate circumstance of "author probably won't unpack the implications of Kogahara being sapphic in a straight shoujo manga" and make Kogahara relieved that Lemon is just a 'really good friend'.

Some of these plots are getting......sloppier? Like the romance is just tacked on for a "happy end" and not really part of the story. The Veiled Bride/Spirit King one felt especially half-hearted (and also suspiciously like a reskin of the Dragon Emperor one a few volumes back where everyone was secretly uggo- granted these are all variations of each other, but that just stuck out to me specifically).
They don't even need romances, I really liked the crossdressing host club ending from this set and one of my favorites of all was the early volume sisters convent ending, but I miss the actual romance development from some of the earlier chapters/volumes.
So yeah 99% chance this is virtual magic making perfect copies of the past, but really hoping for the 1% chance that they did time travel and can rewrite at least a few wrongs from the empire. Also Zala looking like she's genetically related to the royal family with the same red hair and having an ex-saintess mother is......really suspicious.