...Because Cari operates on old-school VN logic in that most of his scenes revolve around the main LIs (
plus Caly since she's already confirmed to be a main LI but relegated to the side girl bar in the gallery due to her "unique" status) and that the side girl scenes in the beginning were just there to obviously pad content for those who might think that the beginning chapters of the story is just barren in terms of lewds?
Then there's also the fact that this was what he said on Itch.io a while back.
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Yes, the game originally planned 9 LIs*, but from what we've seen so far Cari had to axe the 9th** and relegate Caly to hidden 8th due to her "special status." Cari doesn't operate on "if a female is introduced then she's bangable" logic. Like his past game, the lewds are mainly going to center around the 7 main LIs (with the hidden 8th also getting some scenes but not as much as the rest of the girls) and once we hit the latter half of the story we're going to start seeing combo scenes (threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, a whole damn orgy, you name it).
Not to mention this is a story-first VN that just happens to have said story tied to the romantic advancement of the main LIs, so adding more to the harem pile is just going to overcomplicate shit and needlessly extend the story when Cari obviously has a story to tell and he wants to do so within a certain timeframe (it was already mentioned in his Discord server that the outline for the main story is already done, all he has to do is just fill it up).
*Proof from Discord:
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**Gut tells me that the 9th was
Eva. I dunno, just got the feeling given her overall design and dialogue in 0.1 (as well as the fact that she suddenly popped up again in the current story without warning)
Edit: Added some more stuff on the proof pile from Discord