So yeah 99% chance this is virtual magic making perfect copies of the past, but really hoping for the 1% chance that they did time travel and can rewrite at least a few wrongs from the empire. Also Zala looking like she's genetically related to the royal family with the same red hair and having an ex-saintess mother is......really suspicious.
Sounds like they might try to spin it as Kogahara realizing her initial affection was towards Lemon, which would be fine because it opens Sunao/Lemon back up to being endgame without hurting Kogahara's feelings, but there's the unfortunate circumstance of "author probably won't unpack the implications of Kogahara being sapphic in a straight shoujo manga" and make Kogahara relieved that Lemon is just a 'really good friend'.










every time Jade has a delusion it's a full step further poor man is going to end up with ten imaginary kids before either of them confess at this point