After all it's Yuri manga, i'm almost sure becouse of some unexpected miracle Uta and Kaoru will find TRUE LOVE and idk they'll bang each other and they'll have kids or something like that. I assume.
IDK, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Kaoru only married Reiichi because she was actually subconsciously in love with Uta, but social pressures and heavily ignored feelings made her settle for the next best thing that also permitted her to keep close to Uta.
(I'm being facetious of course.)
Actually, that seemed to be the exact setup for the first chunk of the story.
And frankly, it’s the only escape hatch to a U/K endgame.
I dunno, at this point I think her feelings for Reiichi were real, and I get the sense that she never thought about Uta that way until after Uta's confession. I think she loves Uta and wanted to be her family, but it never even occured to her that romance was an option. And now...she might be considering it? We haven't really gotten to see any of her POV since the confession. The knowledge that her husband is probably cheating, the fact that she's always been the pursuer andd never the pursued before this...There are a lot of things that might be causing her to reevaluate her feelings for Uta, so I don't think "Reiichi was always a substitute" is the only way to an Uta/Kaoru finale.
The big question mark here is Reiichi. Like how much does he know? We know he married Kaoru out of guilt and obligation, and he occasionally seems a little bit aware of what's going on. But did he keep his distance from Kaoru because he suspected his little sister had a crush on her? Is he going behind her back with Risako just because he's selfish and in love with her, or is he just unable to commit to Kaoru because he feels guilty? (Or am I just reading way too much into his little behaviors?)
I mean, I think the author could do a lot of interesting things with a setup like this, but it would require that they quit faffing about with secondary characters. Chloe/Kuroe and her girlfriend are kind of interestingly messed up, but we've just spent way too much time on them, and their relationship just doesn't have much chemistry.