Lmao, how can you guys actually have believed even for a second that the main ship wasn't gonna happen, is this your first manga or something?
If that ship hadn't happened this manga was actually meaningless.
There were ONLY 2 options: a love triangle, and the ending we got.
What I can say for sure is that the author had 0 reasons to give so much screen time for the side chick, just another example of my waifu war theory being true