I can't fathom folks showing up to a new work from one of vanishingly few mangaka (or published authors in general) repping committed aro/ace relationships to say "gosh, I hope this one is more like everything else I read!"
I think pigeonholing Shio as an "aro/ace author" is kind of reductive in and of itself. For starters, in my opinion Crescent Moon and Doughnuts is her only real aro/ace story. Trying Out Marriage is most certainly a slow burn, but I did not get the impression the heroines didn't want a physical relationship by the end. It just took a very long time for them to work out their feelings. It's true this story story is a bit more "traditional" (school setting, the characters have a much more standard view on physical contact etc), but it still has the kind of writing that makes Shio unique.
In any case, I really liked this chapter. Probably my favorite so far.
I agree. The protagonists in each series are fundamentally different from each other in many ways- their age, their personalities, their life experience and their relationships with each other- so it thus isn't necessarily to assume that just because Hinako and Asahi are asexual that Kurumi and Ruriko or Asako and Nagi are. For example, Hinako desperately wanted to be "normal" at first, including feeling attracted to her partner, while Kurumi wasn't uninterested in romance per se, but didn't think anyone would put up with her.
It's interesting to see more about Asako's feelings about her sister. She sounds rather bitter when recalling her sister apparently choosing her lover over Asako and the other people close to her, but at the same time, she still seems to want to understand why her sister did what she did. I hope we can eventually see Asako's sister's perspective, since it's likely that Asako is missing some key information.
Incidentally, I notice that Usui is using the black borders to denote flashbacks in this series(which is typical of manga), rather than scenes at night like in her other series. I was a bit confused when I saw the black backgrounds in the other two series, and thought the night scenes were flashbacks at first.