WORLD, BOY, YOU

Yejin Lee: The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE tells the story that TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s albums have been building up to. The boys previously suffered the inevitable growing pains that come along with encounters with friends, adventure and conflict in The Dream Chapter series, and found themselves in unfamiliar situations—even a pandemic—in minisode1: Blue Hour. Though some time has since passed, the world they face remains the same; what’s different is the way the boys embrace it. Once trying to hold onto their magical moments together despite feeling the winds of change approaching (“Blue Hour”), TOMORROW X TOGETHER now wishes for a miserable “end to it all,” believing “the happiness I dreamed of was a naïve cliché” (“Ice Cream”); the time when they could enjoy simply pressing on without a care in the world (“PUMA”) has come to an end, and they now have to deal with the sober agony that accompanies the choices that leave them at a crossroads (“What if I had been that PUMA”). The emptiness inside them stemming from untamable chaos leads them to hold a cynical attitude toward the world, and all the confusion and anxiety that has built up inside them is expressed through more explicit emotion and desire. With that as a backdrop, the lead single, “0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)” follows the boys and their frozen hearts as their emotions change by way of a breakthrough in the form of “YOU.” Beneath the heavy, cynical rap of dark days past, the dramatic melody expresses a mind disrupted by an “angel who appeared to me one day.” The moment the beat speeds up, the sound begins to rumble loudly and culminates in a kind of explosion as the choreography dramatically capitalizes on the emotional confession bordering on crying out for “YOU” while TOMORROW X TOGETHER leans backwards with their whole bodies in slow motion. Though the boys seem to have no love left, the words “I know I love you” echo throughout the song with a sincerity that breaks through their pessimism. Just as the members’ overexaggerated facial expressions and costumes, as well as the icy fantasy backgrounds, in the WORLD version of the concept photos expose how none of it is real, they recognize at this point in the song that they each give themselves the strength to destroy the “BOY” that was made by this harsh “WORLD” in their time of growth. TOMORROW X TOGETHER once expressed their feelings with distinctive analogies to different objects and revealed their innermost thoughts through unique metaphors and vague language, but they now convey their feelings clearly. By doing so, “YOU” have become who they want to spend their time with going forward. After passing through the Dream Chapter, where the bond between friends was everything in the world, TOMORROW X TOGETHER have started a new kind of love in a brand-new place.

Running on empty

Myungseok Kang: From the music videos of their debut album, The Dream Chapter: STAR, to those of their new album, The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE, TOMORROW X TOGETHER have been deer in a burning forest. These adolescents had left their homes to wander through the woods once discovering the horns growing out of their heads in “Nap of a star” and tried to run away from school to find their own world in “Run Away.” But, as can be seen in the concept trailer for The Dream Chapter: ETERNITY and its lead single (“Can’t You See Me?”), their anxiety and loneliness continue on even after they gather together in their private space. And that place becomes progressively smaller—from forest, to school, to an adult-free home, and finally to a small room or storage space in the “We Lost the Summer” music video from minisode1: Blue Hour. In the concept trailer for FREEZE, the members are huddled around an arcade cabinet that they’re unable to play as the world around them freezes. Moreover, in the music video for “0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You),” YEONJUN runs away from home, putting his game down and leaving his fighting parents behind. The boys were once able to come together in a fantasy world, and it didn’t matter whether it would freeze over or not, but now that world is gone. The only thing left for him is the reality where his parents are fighting right behind him and all he can do is play games. Unlike their fantasy world, this reality is inescapable. Even in a car, no matter how far YEONJUN and the other members drive away, there is no place for them to be. What they thought was a swimming pool they were sticking around in turned out to be nothing more than a temporary small inflatable pool. If the music videos from their previous albums document TOMORROW X TOGETHER as they go to seek refuge somewhere, “LOVESONG” shows them breaking free.

In reality, there’s no forest to run away to, no school in which to draw a magic summoning circle, and no hideaway for hiding food. The “Blue Hour” when they could play in the boundless universe between virtual reality and reality itself is never coming back. Unlike in The Dream Chapter, TOMORROW X TOGETHER is brought back to reality in The Chaos Chapter, where they deal with all the difficulties that beset young life, such as teenage angst, questions around friendship, and school life during the pandemic. When a minor who has to secretly steal their parents’ car just to escape can’t rely on their parents, where are they to lay their head to rest? They rely on who they’re with—those who fled together with them—but the road that lies ahead of the runaway seems as desolate as their volatile future. Except for these escapees, the world remains the same; their escape leads to neither a thrilling adventure nor any kind of dramatic event. Anonymous, in an ordinary world, an ordinary school routine, and with inevitably ordinary family ties, the young man can only scream on the inside; his voice bursts forth in an abrasive shriek like those in 1990s grunge rock. At the same time, hip hop beats and rap, which have essentially become a part of life for the young around the world, become a means to express how they perceive reality, which they liken to playing “chess when you can never win a single game.” Theirs is the generation that can enjoy, from any city, every one of the many genres born before them, all in one playlist. Paradoxically, however, it’s difficult for their generation to create something unique, and even then, this is a generation that the world has difficulty paying attention to. Now, in a time when combining genres comes so naturally that the word “hybrid” itself feels outdated, the sentiment of this generation, one which seems to suffocate in peace, is one that conveys the chaos, and the love, of youth. With K-pop entering the world of young adult pop music, TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s message of “together, tomorrow” carries a completely different meaning than it did at the time of their debut.

Resplendent chaos

Hyunkyung Lim: Game over. In the concept trailer for TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE, the group tries to continue playing an arcade game by inserting more coins, but the coin slot is blocked. As suggested in the lyrics, “Will you hide with me in this game? / I want to be a boy forever” (“Can’t We Just Leave the Monster Alive?”), the dreamworld they escaped to that they were once able to perpetuate by feeding it more coins has come to an end. What follows is a kind of fall. The members run away, dodging the ice attacks that fly at them from all directions as they head for lower ground. TAEHYUN goes down the escalator, using it as a makeshift slide, while YEONJUN jumps down from a high walkway. Backed into a corner, the members try to fight back, but the ice pelts down on them almost like they’re being punished and finally freezes them. The narrative is reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” which tells the story of a boy named Kai, who loses his innocence when fragments of the devil’s mirror become stuck in his eyes and heart and ends up trapped at the edge of a world buried in ice and snow. In that respect, TOMORROW X TOGETHER journeyed from The Dream Chapter to minisode1: Blue Hour and now their escape and fall from the eternal world is a metaphor for the loss of childhood innocence. The group that once sang how “everything seems like the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (“New Rules”) witnesses the world burning after eating the red fruit in the music video for “Can’t You See Me?” and the boy who had dreamed of “flying into eternity” like “Peter Pan” (“Maze in the Mirror”) pleads for the “eternal dream” to “please stop” (“Eternally”). The moment the boys find out about the reality outside their dream, the paradise they had known crumbled away.

“Verily I say unto you, except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” So goes the biblical passage Kai recalls at the end of “The Snow Queen” after he finds the answer to the Snow Queen’s puzzle—“eternity”—with help from Gerda and can finally enjoy the summertime. Of this old fairytale that encourages boys to dream, TOMORROW X TOGETHER petulantly asks, “If that’s the case, what can growing boys, unable to stay young forever, do in the world outside heaven?” In the trailer, YEONJUN jumps up high, smashing ice as it flies in front of him, then appears to fall precariously through the air. But he sees that the shrapnel from the ice that he broke to pieces shakes the chandelier at the highest place and he lands as a smile spreads across his face. Even when his entire body freezes and he can’t budge an inch, YEONJUN recalls someone bathed in a bright light, and the ice trapping him in eternal winter quickly begins to melt. Just as young children are banished from Neverland when they become adults, this change could be considered a kind of corruption. But by willingly going through the stages of growth in a life outside paradise, TOMORROW X TOGETHER stresses that the boy is not a sacred figure who must remain innocent all the time, but an individual with an evolving, maturing personality.

Coupled with all the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER having become legal adults (i.e. 20 years old in Korean age), the fact that the lead single off their new album, The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE, is titled “0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)” is full of significance. No matter how we try to multiply zero and one together, as long as the zero stays, the result will always and irrevocably be zero. And as long as the boys remain a zero, their love song will be nothing more than a cry into an infinite void. In short, the members already know that the eternity they had dreamed up won’t put a stop to the void, even though they long for a love made for all eternity—“eternity,” in Korean, being young-one, mirroring the pronunciation of young (“zero”) and “one.” All this because they have already realized that “an endless vacation” is “nightmarish” (“We Lost the Summer”). With FREEZE, the group chooses to live and to love, even while knowing that such things can’t last forever. That’s why, even though the TXT logo shown after the trailer looks like a cold piece of ice, it still has a heart in the middle that beats with a strong pulse. The dream world came to a close, the boys awoke, and now chaos has come for them. But where there’s chaos, the cosmos can never be far behind, soon to be born out of the void—the end of chaos, heralding the moment when the adolescent will be reborn as an adult.