Not to mention the wacky romantic hijinx of a crew of lesbian high school girls who hang out at the apartment one of them lives in alone above the cafe where a couple of them work.
The “don’t know what the author intends” is a function of the incredibly muddled storytelling.
The series was not like this at the beginning, though. It started out pretty strong, and had a clear and concise theme, a girl with one-sided feelings for her sister-in-law. But along the way it started to lose its focus, and it muddled things to the point where it looks like it will need a further 30 chapters at the very least to resolve anything. Focusing on the side characters too much, adding unnecessary plotlines (to the point the original one pretty much vanished), I do not think the author is making a "slow burn" out of it, I think the author simply has no, or almost no idea where to take this, and is aimlessly drifting. I would be very surprised if these chapters are actually planned in advance.
I for one thinks the story is quite well made in which the main conflict does not happen in a bubble with the characters. The characters involved are/are still quite dependent on others. Uta is still a child and still relies on adults for many parts of her life, mainly her brother, her parents/mom and Kaoru primarily because of her age. Kaoru on the other hand is also dependent on the people around her, but not because of financial or parental reasons but because of her personality type that makes her have to rely on the inputs of people around her to have a sense of self or urgency.
An interesting thing here is that they are both mutually dependent on each other. Uta is decisive and shows initiative, shown in the previous chapters where she started to compute her savings and also confessed to AND confronted Kaoru to find a response to her feelings. Kaoru though shows the opposite of this, relying more on her friends and focusing on the hapiness and keeping a state of agreement between the people she loves. Kaoru acts upon her wishes INDIRECTLY, always second guessing herself and does not assert her true thoughts and feelings well (as evidenced in this chapter where she didn't pry when Risako opened her doubt, did not directly answer Uta's confession at first) and is inclined making compromises instead of acting to her will (most seen in the part where she supported Uta leaving as to make them 'a family' again despite the family background).
The first part of the story focuses more on Uta, she has a clear goal and the initiative to do so and had done so. She had friends that accept her for how she is and friends who she can trust with her issues. This part we're in focuses on Kaoru, where she keeps making compromises and is watching them fall apart. This may be in part with her situation, she seems to be the 'baby' of the friend group (referenced as to how they come up with answers and things for her to do whenever she shares a problem and their patronizing attitude of her) and also a big factor to Uta and her brother's parents falling apart as stated in earlier chapters.
To this I agree that the story seems to be aimlessly wandering for now, but it is in a way that is true to Kaoru's character. Kaoru seems like the type of person who would need a very direct stimulus to get her to decide for herself, and as Uta already passed the baton of her feelings to Kaoru (the story now instead of 'girl with one-sided feelings for her sister-in-law' to 'woman reacting to one sided feelings of her husband's younger sister') we have to wait for what she does and what happens next in the story.
That was a long post, but yes, I think this is how the story is unraveling to be. Kaoru being somewhat a parallel to the girl who fell in love with the nurse and is now using promiscuity to fill her heart. The story could have well went another way, perhaps excluding the parts of the other people in their lives to make it a lot less muddled, but the muddiness of all the other people getting a say on what their life should be gives it that weird twist that appears some people love and some people hate from what I get from this forum. The characters are very context bound, I tell you guys that, and it seems to me this story will be more about the ride than the destination.
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