As The Dream Chapter: MAGIC concept trailer closes, HUENINGKAI looks into the camera: “Should we run away?” he asks, likely following the other members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER, who have already disappeared through the door. Three years have passed since then, and the concept trailer for The Name Chapter similarly ends with HUENINGKAI walking out through a door, but this time he’s first. Unlike the world outside the door in the concept trailer for The Dream Chapter: MAGIC, however, here there’s nowhere to stand. The members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER are trapped in a house in the sky shaking like it’s about to collapse. They have to make a quick decision; it’s certain everything is going to crumble. The only way to survive is to jump out the door and let themselves fall.

There is another option, though: “I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back, and then away we go.” Like in the novel Peter Pan, they could fly instead, and when they close their eyes in the trailer, a voice urges them to soar using the same words as in the children’s book. Perhaps the voice is coming from someone or something outside the window high above them. If the boys managed to fly, they could end with a flourish through the sky, not a crash to the ground. “It looked delightfully easy”—and they fly right across the sky without any forethought. But before they do, their bodies are attached to strings and they’re being manipulated. The way they move their bodies while in the sky suggests that they’re flying, but a change of scene quickly reveals they’re only mimicking the move while lying on the floor. And when the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER open their eyes back up, they’re lying on the ground somewhere new but in the same poses. Whereas the floor and walls blend together in the first area and obscure the boundary between real and fabricated images, the floor and walls are more easily distinguished in this second space. In other words, the boys can clearly see they’re still on the ground, not in the sky. Interestingly, what happens in the beginning of The Name Chapter concept trailer makes symbolic use of classic tales revolving around temptation and the Devil. In the timeless legend of Faust, the devil Mephistopheles tempts Faust using all manner of illusions and tricks, just as some being does the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER. It also has a red mouse in its mouth the same way the witch who tempts Faust does. The red liquid that’s poured into a glass and spills in the trailer is also reminiscent of the flame that appears when Faust takes the medicine of youth from the witch and puts it in his mouth. In the concept trailer, the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER face a collapsing reality and whisperings from the Devil saying they can fly. And though the temptation is deceitful, that’s how all temptation begins. What’s distorted about temptation is what makes it so interesting.

When they arrive in the second area, TOMORROW X TOGETHER have developed the power to control light. The more consumed they become with their newfound power, the more the floor beneath them disappears from view. Feathers form out of thin air, surrounding the members and lifting them up. Mysterious floating has long been a symbol of bad omens and demonic temptation. For example, in the Bible, it says, “‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’” (Matthew 4:6 New International Version) The members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER are similarly tempted by the ability to fly through the air using feathers like angel wings and avoid walking on the ground the same way the Devil took Jesus to a high peak and told him this. But every time the boys open their eyes again, the temptation fades away. The third time they open them, the walls full of fantastic images, the light around them and all the floating feathers disappear. In their place, the boys have real feathers attached to them. The ground turns black and the sky white, drawing great contrast between them. But the temptation becomes that much more alluring as the illusion falls away. TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s reality is life as children who have “far to go” (“Thursday’s Child Has Far To Go”) after parting from someone as they “walk and face the fate” leaving “many tears behind.”

The group escapes the enclosed space in The Dream Chapter: MAGIC concept trailer and even shares a moment in “Blue Hour” where “we’re beautiful,” but, like the giant chunks of ice that attack them in the concept trailer for The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE, reality continues to hound them. The boys steal a parent’s car in the music video for “0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)” featuring Seori and the result can be seen at the end of the “LO$ER=LO♡ER” video: They drive the car off a cliff and it looks as though the vehicle will fly off through the sky, but the reality is that it will inevitably come crashing down. And by the time they reach minisode 2: Thursday’s Child, the one who they called out to to “save me” in “LOVESONG” is gone. They have no money, no friends and no lovers. Then why accept reality for what it is? For them, temptation isn’t a matter of deception but a choice. Their choice between accepting reality as it stands and rejecting it to embrace fantasy is like the choice Neo (Keanu Reeves) has to make in The Matrix between the red and blue pills. The Name Chapter concept trailer questions the very nature of reality through the narrative lens of TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s universe. The same is true for all of us lately: We’re incredibly fond of performing mental gymnastics to warp reality and turn a blind eye. By carefully curating your social media timeline, you can fully replace the real world with the world of your mind. If the ground beneath you is crumbling anyway, is it really so wrong to harbor illusions of flight?

The concept trailer for The Name Chapter, like that for The Dream Chapter: MAGIC before it, starts in a walled-off space. The two also make it difficult to determine which way is up. Unlike in the earlier trailer, however, in the latest one, the members of TOMORROW X TOGETHER are no longer trying to escape an enclosed space in school uniforms, nor from school as in the “9 And Three Quarters (Run Away)” music video. When they open their eyes a fourth time, the house in the sky they had lived in is falling apart. It collapses against a backdrop with a color scheme reminiscent of the “Blue Hour” video—a consequence of trying to hold onto the illusion that a moment can last forever. They have only a brief window, “at 5:53,” to talk about eternity—a limited timeframe to see that “we’re [always going to be] beautiful.” It’s precisely for this reason that imagination is a necessity in the face of the realities of youth. The power that imagination in the form of dreams and fantasy brings is needed to break free of schools created by adults and from the closed-off world. But when a young person lives forever in a repeating fantasy and keeps reality at bay, they stop growing. That’s not to say that a person’s youth has to be an unhappy time, but given that that period of life shapes one into an upstanding future adult, continually running off to a fantasy world restricts them to living in their own heads forever.

Peter Pan seems like a metaphor for making the wrong choice in the context of The Name Chapter concept trailer. He instructs children to fly out the window and live in Neverland to stay as children forever, but is that really a blessing if it means their world never expands?