Indeed; I'm ALSO on the dom/sub Bella + harem path (the writing of it is just too good, and it scratches an itch that the others don't. Sorry romance Bella, but there's too much saccharine in the rest of the harem!), so that might be related, then?
Yeah, the walkthrough talks about it. Gotta talk to her when it's available on days 1, 3, 6, and 11 I think it was? And then there'll be a kiss option available on the island. Note that the paths merge together at that point for the relationship stuff, so you're only missing out on the Discreet Inc. stuff by doing so. If that's not your jam, then you're not losing out on this route for the relationship.
That was the only time I let James take a shot at anything, lol. He can have her!
So I have some save files from 2017 still that are two digits still, and a few that were near the end that were just barely 3 digits (largest is 130 KB); My largest now (other than "persistent") is 297... but they aren't consistent at all, varying up and down over each save, even though the saves themselves are linear in time progression. Note that the older saves did too, but were generally no more than half the size of the newer saves. I've attached a screenshot of the newer saves and the variance in size below. I can also upload a few of the saves in a zip if you'd like to look at them more closely, in case it might be save-related.