And now we have another pair coming into the story before we even establish any sort of knowing about romantic feelings between our main pair.
Something something it's always like that. I don't want to repeat myself too much (i already did) but the side characters will always be step ahead of MCs because MC coming to an end with their feelings mean (most of the time) end of the manga but you don't care if the side characters come to an end with theirs feelings, they not gonna change the story.
The story isn't "dragging" it's called "having characterization for more than two characters"
Last chapter was still a bit of dragging tbh.