Can you use "soon" relative to the past

Solution 1:

I think the only possible corrections to person B here are:

1. "Actually, you ate 1 hour ago; you ate later than you thought."
2. "Actually, you ate 1 hour ago; you ate more recently than you thought."
3. "Actually, you ate 1 hour ago; 2 hours ago would be earlier than what really occurred."

The word 'soon' can surely be used for a past event: "Soon before we arrived, the room was made up by the cleaning staff."

It can also be used in a comparative form referring to a past event: "He arrived sooner than expected."

However, something about the comparative 'sooner' in combination with the concept of past 'thought' sounds strange to me: "She thought about it 'sooner' than I did." Something about that combination sounds off. I think it's because of a lack of expectation in the intended meaning.

Semantically, the use of 'eat' + 'sooner' seems to work just fine in describing an upcoming expectation: "I think we will eat sooner than 8 pm tonight." There is inherent expectation at play here. In a past event, there could also be expectation at play: "We expected to eat sooner than 8 pm" might work as well as "we expected to eat before 8 pm". Similarly, using the verb 'eat', "he ate the hamburger sooner than we'd expected"; i.e., we expected him to eat the hamburger later.

"Soon means ‘a short time after now’ and ‘a short time after a point in the past’. Like many other short adverbs, we can use it in front position, mid position or end position, though we don’t use it in end position when referring to the past: …" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/soon)

Using Cambridge's logic, "we ate soon after 1 pm" is "a short time after a point in the past." However, I cannot find any dictionary examples with 'sooner' used in such a way; i.e., "we ate sooner than they did". Using 'earlier' typically seems to work better in such a case, but there could be expectation in this example as well, so I believe "we ate sooner than expected" would work (as opposed to "sooner after 1 pm"; there's no comparison/expectation here).

I'm not sure that clarified this point at all, but it's a great starting point for discussion perhaps. ;)