Romantically, of course. I'm not saying exclude 'em, just that they can't all be necessarily romantic in nature; there are many instances of non-romance routes in Key's history so it's not exactly new. And again, coming from an anime with established dynamics, it's hard to perceive someone like Yui for example responding to Otonashi. Reverse-NTR dear gosh
I'd prefer Maeda write hers as an extension of Hinata's route or something.