Had me in the first half ngl xD
But yes. Aside from very few the "first girl" often wins. Most disappointing endings routes ever imo are 5Toubun no Hanayome.
Hence I like manga where there is the obvious option. As atleast I know what I am in for and wont be disappointed later on.
I'm only disappointed with this one because Kusunoki has been written as a near-superhero with no flaws.
She's just really flat as a character at this point, whereas even Otobe has her "I'm not feminine enough! Notice me senpai!" vibe, and Hebikawa is.............well.
I know that if there's an endgame romance, it'll likely be Kusunoki, but I say that mostly because I'm resigned to not being actually surprised by authors at this point. The fact she's currently being written as not caring about romance, and pointedly keeps deflecting whenever the subject of Keisuke and romance comes up, just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth if the two of them are gonna end up together anyway.
Her whole deal was wanting to debut, and he was going to help her with that, and then he caught feelings and she's denying even thinking about reflecting on whether she feels anything for him. And I just want Keisuke to say "alright, then bye" and go get mixed up with some trouble with Snake-chan because she's far more interesting of a character, flaws and all.
My only solace, is that maybe Hebikawa is used to bait Keisuke away from Kusunoki, and the latter realizes it and then
suddenly decides "oh noes now that I'm losing him I do actually want him teehee" and then we get to see her fight it out with Hebikawa.
Which would also suck, because she's basically perfect and that just means she'd win anyway in that scenario, and again...disappointing.
But, we've got a month before the next chapter even drops to start the next arc, so I'm just griping at this point.