
Seeing them as "just friends" and "misinterpreting their friendship" feels more like you can't read between the lines of the dialogue, because if you look at Rebecca's actions and actually look at them it would be seen that she was in love with MC if Rebecca was a male and she acted the same exact way it would be seen as he was in love with her because if you read between the lines they're chemistry is there it's just not explicitly put out there for whatever reasons.

Look, it may be something more, it may be something less. I'm just looking at the point where it's more of Rebecca trying to go against her norm of becoming the empress to a useless emperor and becoming the head of her household instead. If she had been male, it would've been the case from the start, etc etc.
I feel that at this point you just really want it to be gl becuase that's how it sorta has been up till now, with Sasha being the pet to mostly women aristocrats.
This clearly screems YURI but I feel like the creator made it straight so that they could get more views because even the writing would make more sense if it was a yuri and not straight.
But thats my opinion so just ignore if you wanna be a bitch