The animated short film The Doom’s Night opens with the words “THE STAR SEEKERS with TOMORROW X TOGETHER” appearing onscreen, the first “S” in the shape of a dragon being pierced by a star. THE STAR SEEKERS is the name of the fictional universe that was revealed in the live screening of Doom’s Night, an independent HYBE original story, while still maintaining ties to TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s message. “The fictional universe, made in cooperation with TOMORROW X TOGETHER, tells the story of five boys who realize they have magical powers while growing up,” a representative for Original Story Business (OSB), the department responsible for the planning and production behind the short film, explained. “Stories of growth are, above all else, realistic. Everyone grows up by going through childhood, coming up against walls and gaining insight in the process. We wanted to better immerse people in the growth plot by incorporating surreal elements like magic.” To put it another way, Doom’s Night tells its tale of growth through fantastic means but still portrays a realistic experience of growing up.

In the music videos for “CROWN” and “Nap of a star” from the album The Dream Chapter: STAR, the “horns” on the boy’s head symbolized the kind of growing pains he experienced while outgrowing his childhood. Even though the horns become a “CROWN” after meeting “you,” the unnamed listener in the song who has experienced “the same pain,” the singer is “still a little worried / I’m standing in between the cold sneer and the loneliness.” In “Nap of a star,” the narrator encounters his friends in the woods, and although they are similar to but also different from him, they have their own equivalent of horns—SOOBIN with pointed ears, BEOMGYU with spikes on his shoulder, TAEHYUN’s black eyeball, and HUENINGKAI in wings—so they are all in their way tucked away in the forest, separated from society. Even though it could hurt, YEONJUN’s character breaks his horns off because being different from others makes him feel like a monster. In this way, the horns are a special part of his unique identity, but at the same time are something he wants to do away with because to be different from others is to be alienated. In The Doom’s Night, however, growing stronger to protect loved ones prompts the horns to grow back. Not only do the horns sprout out of his head again as a reflection of their increasing strength, but they are also a symbol the enormity of the power he wielded in order to defeat a “visitor” who got the drop on them to make a surprise attack, a power which is also echoed in the flickering lights across the city. Much like Harry Potter, the protagonist from the series of the same name, wears a lightning-shaped scar on this forehead as both a wound resulting from the events of the past as well as a token of his glory in overcoming that same hardship, the horns in THE STAR SEEKERS are a symbol of both the boy wanting to turn away from the past and growing to accept it.

In The Doom’s Night, there are scenes where visitors attack TOMORROW X TOGETHER and a dragon destroys their concert stadium. When the group were faced with problems in their music that they felt they couldn’t handle, they would run away—“wanna run away” (“CROWN”), “Should we run away?” (“9 and Three Quarters”)—or wait for a helping hand: “save me” (“Can’t You See Me?”). But at the Doom’s Night premiere, SOOBIN said, “I don’t think I would be able to hold back. Because I’d do whatever I could to stop it. In The Doom’s Night, one character risks his life and goes forward to stop the dragon.” The group also steps up to defend their world: Up on stage, they have to overcome their fear; with fans in the audience, the boys summon all their strength to defeat the visitor and protect everyone from the dragon that destroys the stadium. Now, rather than ask themselves like before whether they should run away, and despite not knowing whether they will be able to defeat whatever attacks them—be it a dragon, a visitor or otherwise—they have chosen to step forward and face the problem head-on. To that end, the story unfolding in the world of TOMORROW X TOGETHER from The Dream Chapter: STAR to Doom’s Night is one that starts with wanting to hide or run away when their horns lead them to realize that they are unique, but ends with them learning to face the harsh influences of reality as symbolized by things like the dragon.

This is the path of development as painted by the brush of the fantasy genre. The fantasy world in The Doom’s Night that has been building up throughout TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s run uses the various fantasy-related symbols found throughout into the exploration of becoming an adult. For example, the odd-eyed cat that appears in the animated film captures the double-sided nature of all people. Cats with differently colored eyes are considered good luck, while black cats are seen as ominous, so when the odd-eyed black cat appears it’s a mystery as to whether it’s a savior of good intention or a harbinger of ruin. “Judging from its vibe, it looks bad,” BEOMGYU said at the showing of the film, but explained how you can’t strictly separate the good from the bad, because “after the cat appears on The Doom’s Night the characters get special powers. I think everyone would have been helpless if it weren’t for the cat so I don’t know if it’s completely bad.” The odd-eyed cat, which like the horns before it is unique and odd because it’s different, shows how someone can embody two opposing ideas at once rather than having to be prescribed one side between good and bad, virtue and evil, lucky and ominous. We also see such polar opposites in the boys’ characters: a boy with white angelic wings in “Nap of a star” who is later shown with devilish black wings in “Eternally”; a boy with a spiked shoulder hiding alone in a tunnel who later in the same video becomes a threat who causes harm to others. Through such images we see how the boys come to accept that all the conflicting words that at first seemed like they could never coexist form a part of themselves and at last fuse together effortlessly. “If you watch carefully, even the surreal elements are closely related to reality, and are also a way of expressing the deficiencies and desires one might have in the real world,” the OSB representative said. “For a teenager who grew up reading stories about magic, magic can feel less like fantasy and more like a reality spoken in a familiar language.” And so, the TOMORROW X TOGETHER fictional universe gives shape to a version of our real-world selves, but as seen through a fantasy lens that’s more familiar to us.

YEONJUN spoke to his thoughts at the Doom’s Night premiere. “I think it’d also be nice to think about the story that THE STAR SEEKERS want to tell,” he said. “It’s a story that our peers could relate to and it’s also a story that TOMORROW X TOGETHER would like to deliver with our albums and music.” As he said, on the surface, The Doom’s Night is a movie about the surreal world of magical idols, but it focuses on the anxiety and pain that people experience as they grow up in their own ways and their efforts to come to terms with it all. And Doom’s Night is just the beginning of their STAR SEEKERS narrative. That’s why we’re excited to move past the things we’ve overcome today and jump head first into growing up with TOMORROW X TOGETHER.