The flashback was two years ago.
Sage is now a senior (4th year) - she graduates in the spring.
But she and Chad were not dating in the flashback.
I initially thought they were but was corrected and rewatched the flashback scene.
She was in her first year as HOT president (her sophomore year).
All the flashback shows is her confirming that the HOTs party with the Alphas and then asking Chad about party planning.
That was part of her job as president.
Chad then ignores her and walks away and she goes after him still talking about planning a party.
The flashback doesn't give any indication to them being together.
There's no way she would have been with Chad for the last two years without any sex.
And we can have some confidence that they have not had sex at all based on their fights.
I think all that points to them only being together for a relatively short amount of time.
You basically discribe a major plothole in the game (of course there are A LOT of them)
But the whole Sage and Chad relationship doesnt make any sense to me. Sage is VERY forward. She wants sex from the start. I cant picture her like this:
Date1: Sage: "Hey Chad, wanna come in?" Chad:"nah iam tired, maybe another day"
Date2: Sage: "god i need a good fuck now" Chad: "nah i have that thing tomorrow, maybe another day"
Date3: Sage: "wanna fuck instead of going out?" Chad: "nah i need my energy to lift weights"
And that goes on for weeks and months??? Nope. Never ever, not with Sage.
And if they were only together for weeks, maybe 2-3 months... why would she stay with him? At the point when MC comes to the college they are already fighting because Sage already found out about an "affair" chad has going on... (the panties she found) So she is kinda fightring for a relationship that is not existent in the first place besides some dates and a kiss here and there? That is totally unbelievable...
If a girl like Sage would find panties from another girl (well, Troy) in the bag of her EARLY boyfriend, in a EARLY relationship that didnt went beyond base 1. She would just drop it and move on...
But she is fighting, is hurt, cries a lot and so on... like she is losing something meaningful. The whole reactions of her shows us that this relationship is not something "fresh" or for a short time... its more shown that this was pretty serious for her and went on a longer time.
As i say... the whole thing doesnt make sense... if its just a short thing, why does she react like the way she does? She acts like she loves him and is very hurt after the breakup. They are even arguing about love. If its such a short relationship like you said, love wouldnt be a topic. Talking about love, but never even had sex?
No matter how i turn this thing around, the whole relationship between Chad and Sage is just unbelievable and doesnt make sense how it went. Chad using her just as a front, and Sage keeping up with that for weeks and months without physical interaction and than crying a river after the breakup over basically nothing? Nope, not buying that. DPC didnt thaught that one through one bit.