In the first screenshot, we see that when the comparator is positioned from north to south, the subtraction operation does not work correctly

In the second screenshot, on the contrary, the subtraction operation is not applied to the comparator.
This happens when the comparator is positioned from west to east .

I also noticed that with a different location of the signal sources, the comparator can start working correctly in both cases:

This is not a trifle, it is a very important part of the XOR gate