#keykata

(Eyyy nice to see someone who doesn’t hate Gerald for once lol jk XDD)

Well, there’s a lot we don’t see from their childhood, so there’s a few small details that we can speculate on. Like you said, constantly flaunting his sibling status to Gerald is a great excuse to be as concerned of her as he is and makes it seem normal that he is always by side without suspicion. 

(proceeds to pull out a scene from a different villainess otome isekai manga with almost the exact same dynamic hjgsjgsjdf)

There’s also the fact that Katarina has always wanted a little sibling, and I can probably guess that maybe Keith had tried to distance himself from the image of a little brother in the past in order to be seen more as a man than as family, but either the endearment to the term on his side (because it is was the start of joining a happy and warm family) or on Katarina’s side (since she’d probably be worried if Keith stopped calling her “big sister”, suspecting that he might be upset with her or unsatisfied to have her as a sibling) might be drawing him back from separating himself from it. 

Though you are right to suspect that his lack of action is giving him bad karma now, as in Volume 6, he gets confused on how to act around Katarina because he fears that being direct and acting on his feelings might scare his beloved sister away. Even though being direct usually works when it comes to Katarina, he is still deciding whether or not to cross the line because he doesn’t know what areas his sister is comfortable yet when it comes to romance. 

Gerald can easily be honest with his feelings, but Keith is very aware that he can’t act the same because Katarina views him as family. Good luck to him on trying to slowly find a comfortable area where he can have best of both worlds before transitioning to a full-fledged suitor in Katarina’s eyes fjsdhgfjs

As for Miri and Luigi’s stance on the matter, well we haven’t actually seen their parents in a while, and when we do it’s very short glimpses. Keith really doesn’t seem to act like a contender to Katarina’s feelings unless it’s around the student council members, so anything caring that he does towards Katarina in front of their parents is probably just seen as being a loving family member rather than anything romantic. 

For a while there’s been some misinformation spread that Miri approves of Keith’s feelings (in fact it’s even in the TVtropes page for hamefura until now), and as someone who reads the English LNs and knows someone who reads the JP/CH novels, I can guarantee that it isn’t true. It’s fun to speculate on it, but if you want want concrete proof then I can’t give you any hgsjfgsj. The idea of their parents approving Keith’s feelings is very endearing, and it means they would love Keith to completely join the family through this way and hand Katarina over to someone who can fully devote themself to her, but also personally I already think that Miri and Luigi already completely sees Keith as a Claes so they might think of having a positive reaction like that immediately. 

Then again, many have already told me that step sibling relationships are approved of, if not encouraged, during the era that hamefura seems to be set in, so who knows. They could probably approve of such relationship, but whether or not they know is something that I still suspect as being unlikely, unless proven otherwise. I’d like to hear other people’s take on it, if mine is too insensitive to Keith or his family or something jhgfsdfgdsj