@Judy posted:
On a personal note, I hope it doesn't go romance but that's just me.
Same here. The end of Ch. 3, for instance, has a much richer emotional payoff to me as something in a story about awkward but heartfelt family relationships, than it would in a weird and slightly kinky oedipus-complex-ish live-in romance. This being a romance would be, frankly, a waste of a perfectly good, heartwarming story.
I'm braced for the possibility of romance, though. Japan has taught me to approach any stories of family-like relationships with extreme caution, and this one has been dropping a lot of the usual hints.