Thanks again to Red_Nova, and their commentary about the game.
So, yeah, cutting the "empty" gaps in the game-calendar down to a single day every instance they occur feels about right. Like, I do want players to have breaks in the story. This will mean re-writing a bunch of things, including the re-writes of the re-writes, but, that might be a small sacrifice for the betterment of the game.
The lore-dumping at the fore of the game probably should also scale back. While I'm touched that people are mistaking it for actual history, it is not. Should I put in a disclaimer about that? Darigaaz, I never thought I would need to consider making a disclaimer! Though, one can rightfully argue that the game's lore is largely irrelevant to the player until the field trip. Even then, I probably should lore-dump only the pieces that are necessary to the game. Most of what Terada throws at the player is fluff that would go into a supplemental episode of a podcast about the legend of Uchioniko. If, you know, the legend actually existed.
Regardless of how many days there will be, or other reconfiguration of the game's story, condensing the game down will necessitate that I will have to drop the idea of the player gaining benefits for getting along with the game's cast. While it might be interesting to see where the variables could be, I just don't think that it's worth my time to investigate how to make the benefits happen. Considering how much grief I was having over deciding what, exactly, I should do on this point, finally putting my foot down, and saying "no" lifts such a huge burden from my shoulders. My apologies for being so indecisive for so long.