>>7452Minor spoilers
The protagonist explicitly states that he has romantic feelings for the other character within the story itself, so the subtext becomes literal text. I'd spent the majority of the book under the impression I was being Fujobrained about it, since I'd gone into it thinking it was just a horror novel, so it was kind of surprising lol. I do not know if the author has elaborated further in any interviews, as I have not yet looked that deeply into it.
It is, of course, a horror story, so I wouldn't anticipate things necessarily ending WELL for the characters, but the romantic feelings are acknowledged by the protagonist himself. It was just a pleasant surprise after spending so much of the book like, "god damn, this man is obsessed. In competent hands, this would be a romantic obsession because there's literally no heterosexual explanation for this."