I came here to write this. Routing and networking is still confusing for me and all the writing about it is usually very "abstract" to me. A hands-on example like this one is really appreciated. Nice work, OP. I'll try to do it myself and follow along.

EDIT: one of the only other posts about this stuff that has made much sense to me is this one from Tailscale. It contains lots of "worked out examples" that really make it clear how everything fits together.

https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/