this.querySelector will return nothing when you define this Web Component before (light)DOM is parsed, because the connectedCallback fires on the opening tag.

Above code will only work when the Web Component is defined after DOM has parsed; using "defer" or "import" makes your JS file execute after DOM is parsed, you "fixed" the problem without understanding what happened.

I blogged about this long time ago: https://dev.to/dannyengelman/web-component-developers-do-not...