I do have a question are there branching routes where you have to pick a certain love interest or can you pick as many as you want?
You can kind of pick whoever you want to begin with, for instance it is possible as of ch2 to be pursuing all of the LIs simultaneously. Nothing's really been closed off yet. However, doing certain things will close off certain paths as the story goes on. And you will eventually have to commit to a single girl if you're not locked into a path already. But that's quite a way in the future still