These stories are always weird to me where this whole arc setup was "here's a bunch of new characters who are all high-ranked adventurers. By the way now they're dead."
I still want it to happen that in the middle of all this competing between all the other girls who are vying for Saotome for Itachi to just be like "yeah I've actually liked you for a while, wanna go out?" and have that be the result.
Even though this is obviously the start of delinquent 1st year girl becoming a contender I'm still continuing to hold out hope that Itachi is the winner