ahhh hello again!! thank you for the question too; i had a lot of fun thinking it over and i'm glad the reply was at least something worth reading (´ᵕ `♡)

i'm definitely not immune to clowning and cpn thoughts!!! i love/believe a lot of them, but i do like to be grounded in the way i speak about them because i don't want to enable the mentality that absolutely every single thing they do has to be about each other, especially when it comes to things like brand kadians and such (even though there have been some Interesting™ cases). imo they're comfortable in their relationship because they're able to be their own individual person, and i think how we speak about them should also reflect that c:

tbh i have a few different reasons but the main one is definitely similar to yours! i did it all in reverse and watched all the cql press/bts footage before i even got to the actual show, and i was shocked by how tame the actual (b)romance was compared to everything i saw off-camera... the touching for no reason, the stickiness, the way both of them complained when the other wasn't around, the way it always felt like they were entranced when the other person is speaking/in their own world even when people were milling around them. i think it all came to a head when i saw that infamous clip of a studio exec (?) allegedly asking them how long they've been together and xz's alarmed reaction when yb told him the cameras were still rolling? we'll never know what the exact question was but i always felt that reaction was fishy on its own lmao

and the other one is the backbone of my favourite "how many coincidences before we call it fate" saying :')

there were just very many things that lined up even if they had no reason to. like yb taking weekly flights through shanghai whenever xz was filming there, the Mysterious Suitcases, the packing vlog, the 29 helmet on xz's 29th birthday, the "i miss you" cap the whole time xz was in japan, the birthday letter language that uses a lot of word choices/concepts xz does... AND! cpn whispers that are revealed to be true years/months later, like the racing suit that people said was allegedly designed by xz and no one believed that but the bts footage reveals that yb did ask!!

like sure, it's all 90% conjecture! but it's even more improbable to think that two Totally Unrelated Stars have this many coincidences between them, especially when you're supposed to be top commercial rivals shdfjsfhsf

and lastly. well. whatever this is. i'm not even joking when i say this rewired my brain bc like how do i explain this 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭