Well the chapter 8 I am quite literally writing the script for right now lays the groundwork for the ending. There have been 2 endings for this story in my mind from day 1. I am going to try not to spoil too much. But 1 ending would be Misaki and Ryou leaving the circle together and having a family. While Akari joins full time. ending 2 would be Misaki leaving Ryou. Then depending on more player choices destroying the circle from the inside/leading a new circle. I know its kinda late into the story for branching routes but I do feel like player choice is a big deal in a game like this so that the game can end the way you want it to. I am not sure how many endings there will be due to the branching paths to the end, Though in my mind the "good" end will be where both mc and ryou leave and start a family together. If I were to take a guess I would say it will be somewhere between 3-5 endings minimum. As chapters 9 and 10 are the planned endgame but they will be released in parts as I will be doing smaller more frequent updates for those as they will be a couple steps towards all possible routes at a time. I have changed my chapter style already into a scene format, for example the titles for chapter 8s scenes that I have planned so far are (Though I only have finished scripting the dialogue for the first 3 scenes so far....)
Scene 1 - Misaki's Apartment
Scene 2 - At the swingers club
Scene 3 - VIP Room
Scene 4 - Chat at the Bar
Scene 5 - Kishimotos Test
Scene 6 - Return to the Club
Scene 7 - Ragnarok
So during chapters 9 and 10 I plan to make these smaller releases scene by scene instead of chapter by chapter since there will be so much to script and code on my end making all the possible branches for each one of the players choices. I mean its either do that or release chapters at a much slower pace than I currently am. Which I am not a fan of as the idea behind this game is to start a community to have a starting platform when going into the second game. I feel like if I take too much time between releases players will forget about this game and ignore future chapter releases thereby shrinking the audience. Right now it has around 1000 players that are downloading each chapter as they come out. Though no where near that many players on itch.io I am unsure why its much less popular here than it is on f95