DAM.NATION

Geni  is  introduced  mid-argument.  She  and  Hyun  of  ISSAYAH  stand  in  the  kitchen,  yelling  at  one  another  and  causing  the  people  around  them  to  either  stare  or  scurry  off.  The  volume  of  the  video  drops  just  enough  for  viewers  to  catch  words  like  “again?”  and  “you  came  with  her?”

The  camera  swings  wide  whenever  it  gets  too  close,  like  it’s  scared  of  them.  Their  fight  continues  silently  across  rooms:  matching  each  other’s  steps  on  the  dance  floor,  locking  eyes  when  they  think  no  one’s  watching.

Later,  Geni’s  seen  resting  her  head  on  Hyun's  shoulder  as  he  silently  smokes  a  cigarette.  She  has  mascara  stains  on  her  cheeks  as  she  blankly  stares  ahead.  When  Hyun  takes  a  drag,  he  uses  his  free  hand  to  bring  Geni's  to  his  lips,  a  small  yet  gentle  act  of  intimacy  for  the  turbulent  couple.

“It  was  all  them.  We  didn't  plan  any  of  it.  They  legitimately  fought  on  set  and  made  up  that  night.  It  was  perfect  for  what  we  were  going  for,  but  also  terrifying  to  be  around.”

Navi  is  the  most  romanticized  character  in  the  MV.  She’s  introduced  alone,  dancing  in  the  kitchen  in  a  glittery  mesh  top,  headphones  on  while  everyone  else  is  tuned  into  the  party.  The  camera  lingers  on  her  as  she  twirls  with  a  wine  bottle  in  hand.

She  locks  eyes  with  Yonghyung.  Their  scenes  are  quiet,  warm,  always  framed  with  candles  or  ambient  glow.  They  keep  passing  each  other:  once  in  the  hallway  (where  he  moves  aside  without  speaking),  once  at  the  fridge  (where  she  closes  it  before  he  can  grab  a  drink),  and  once  on  the  stairs,  where  they  finally  pause,  faces  inches  apart.

But  they  don’t  kiss.  He  gets  a  text,  glances  at  it,  and  leaves.  She  watches  him  go,  smile  fading.

Later,  during  the  bridge,  Hwihun  walks  up  to  her  on  the  back  porch  and  offers  her  a  jacket.  She  declines.

“Navi’s  plot  is  about  never  arriving.  The  party  is  full  of  people  but  she’s  stuck  in  a  loop  with  someone  who  keeps  missing  the  moment.”

The  house  party  is  at  full  volume, the bass  bleeding  through  the  walls,  laughter  overlapping.  But  when  we  cut  to  Finn,  seated  on  a  velvet  couch  with  Minsi  on  his  left  and  Eme  on  his  right,  the  music  dips.  Not  completely.  Just  enough  for  you  to  hear  the  shift  in  energy.  It’s  a  controlled  silence,  like  you’re  holding  your  breath.

The  camera  takes  on  a  voyeuristic  quality  here.  It  doesn’t  try  to  be  objective.  It  picks  sides.  Then  switches.

Minsi’s  leg  is  crossed  tightly,  one  manicured  hand  on  Finn’s  arm.  Eme’s  posture  is  relaxed,  fingers  twirling  a  straw  in  her  drink.  Finn  is…  neutral.  Unaware,  or  pretending  to  be.  But  the  girls  clock  each  other  with  every  movement.  Eme  leans  in  to  say  something.  Minsi  laughs  louder  over  her.  Minsi  pours  Finn  a  drink.  Eme  takes  it  and  offers  it  to  him  first.

Later  in  the  MV,  the  camera  transitions  into  the  bathroom—warm  lighting,  soft  echo.  Eme  and  Minsi  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  front  of  the  mirror.  Silent.  Both  fixing  their  makeup.

Minsi  blots  her  lipstick  too  hard,  leaving  a  faint  smear  on  her  chin.  Eme  notices.  Doesn’t  say  anything.  Just  watches.

Minsi  glances  sideways.  She  knows.

During  the  bridge,  we  see  Finn  again.  This  time  alone  on  the  stairs,  scrolling  his  phone.  The  party  roars  behind  him.

Neither  girl  is  in  sight.  But  the  camera  lingers  long  enough  for  you  to  wonder  who  he’s  thinking  about.

“We  never  confirmed  who  Finn  liked.  That  wasn’t  the  point.  The  point  was  that  both  girls  were  performing  until  it  stopped  being  a  performance.”

Akiko  starts  the  MV  off  lowkey.  She’s  introduced  in  the  background  of  someone  else’s  scene,  fixing  her  lipstick  in  the  hallway  mirror,  barely  in  frame.  For  a  while,  she  blends  in.  Until  she  doesn’t.

Midway  through  the  MV,  she’s  spotted  slipping  into  a  closed-off  bedroom  where  Londyn  and  Hajin  had  been  hanging  out  earlier.  It  cuts  to  her  rifling  through  someone’s  makeup  bag,  smirking  to  herself  as  she  applies  a  silver  eyeshadow  that  doesn’t  belong  to  her.

She  walks  back  out  and  ends  up  sharing  a  cigarette  on  the  balcony  with  Juni.  There’s  no  dialogue,  just  overlapping  laughter  from  the  party  behind  them  and  Akiko  staring  off  into  the  night,  totally  still,  as  Juni  watches  her.

“Akiko  has  the  smallest  storyline,  but  she’s  the  most  deliberate.  She’s  always  slightly  off-angle,  like  she  knows  she’s  being  filmed  and  doesn’t  care.”

Harin’s  entrance  is  theatrical.  She  appears  in  the  bathroom  doorway  in  full  glam,  tossing  her  coat  onto  someone’s  lap  and  stepping  over  Kaori  and  Kaleina  mid-fight  over  aux.

She  makes  eye  contact  with  Zion,  smirks,  and  deliberately  sits  next  to  Chloe  on  the  couch.  Chloe  looks  pissed  off,  looking  at  Harin  and  asking  'Who  is  this?'  over  the  music.  Harin  smirks  at  the  camera,  showing  her  chunky  and  extravagant  nails.

Throughout  the  night,  Harin’s  the  girl  people  whisper  about.  We  catch  glimpses  of  her  laughing  with  Hanjae  of  Loopin  in  the  hallway  mirror,  then  slow  dancing  dramatically  with  Drew  in  a  scene  too  glamorous  for  the  rest  of  the  video.

Near  the  end,  we  see  her  by  herself  in  the  laundry  room—smeared  mascara,  silk  dress  stained,  staring  at  her  reflection  like  she  just  lost  something.

“Harin  was  the  most  powerful  girl  in  the  house  until  the  very  last  scene.  We  wanted  her  to  feel  like  the  aftermath  of  something.  She’s  the  kind  of  girl  who  ruins  a  party  by  existing  too  loudly  and  then  vanishes  before  you  can  ask  why  she’s  crying.”

Ayun  and  Nami  are  introduced  dancing  together  on  the  couch,  passing  a  vape  back  and  forth,  hands  tracing  collarbones.  Their  chemistry  is  undeniable.  Everyone  in  the  room  sees  it.

But  then  London  walks  in.  Nami  doesn’t  even  explain;  she  just  disappears  from  the  shot.

Ayun  stares  after  her,  then  shrugs  it  off  and  keeps  dancing.  But  the  camera  catches  her  slipping  into  the  bathroom  later  to  sit  on  the  edge  of  the  tub  and  cry.

Baebi  and  Jiah  slow  dance  under  a  hallway  light  with  pink  film  grain  floating  over  them  like  dust.  Their  joy  is  infectious,  but  it  is  framed  narrowly.

Noah  and  Blue  sit  on  the  rooftop  smoking,  silent.  The  camera  lingers  in  the  stillness.

Hajin  and  Londyn  are  soaked  by  a  garden  hose  under  fairy  lights,  caught  in  overexposed  lens  flares.

Juni,  Yonghyung,  and  Hwihun  are  filmed  through  fogged  mirrors  and  iPhone  flashes  in  a  neon-lit  bathroom.

Kaleina  and  Kaori  scream  into  a  busted  mic  under  garage  light,  the  camera  jerking  with  their  movement.

Hanjae  skates  through  the  hall  as  if  the  party  is  happening  around  him  in  a  different  dimension.

Ania  is  framed  like  a  painting,  champagne  glass  in  hand,  never  speaking.

It’s  past  3AM  now.  The  beat  is  slower,  warped.  Half  the  guests  are  gone.  The  floor  is  sticky.  The  camera  drifts  from  room  to  room,  soft  and  dazed,  like  it’s  forgotten  what  it  came  for.

THIS  IS  THE  COME  DOWN...

Noah  and  Blue  sit  shoulder-to-shoulder,  passing  a  cigarette  without  looking  at  each  other.  They’re  bathed  in  dull  blue  light.  The  skyline  blinks  behind  them.

Zion  leans  against  the  front  door,  eyes  on  his  phone.  Chloe  walks  past  him,  jacket  on,  heels  in  hand.  He  doesn’t  stop  her.  She  doesn’t  look  back.

The  bathroom’s  abandoned  now.  The  lights  flicker.  Ayun  sits  in  the  dry  tub  with  her  knees  drawn  up  to  her  chest,  still  wearing  her  full  makeup.  There’s  a  glitter-streaked  ring  around  the  porcelain,  like  someone  cried  there  earlier.  Maybe  her.  Maybe  not.

She  mouths  along  to  the  outro  of  the  song,  barely  audible.

Outside,  Minsi  sits  on  the  porch  steps,  wrapped  in  someone  else’s  coat.  Her  eyes  are  glassy.  She’s  not  drunk.  She’s  exhausted.  In  the  background,  silhouettes  dance  through  an  upstairs  window,  but  she  doesn’t  look  up.

The  camera  catches  a  small  detail:  her  nails  chipped,  her  phone  screen  cracked,  the  bracelet  Eme  wore  earlier  now  on  her  wrist.

Inside,  Eme  is  alone.  The  same  couch  from  earlier,  where  she  and  Minsi  had  sat  with  Finn.  Now  just  her.  She’s  scrolled  too  far  back  in  her  camera  roll.  Her  phone  lights  her  face  with  something  like  regret.

No  words.  Just  the  door  opening.  Hyun  walks  out  first.  Geni  follows  a  few  seconds  later.  She  doesn’t  take  his  hand,  but  she  walks  beside  him.

The  camera  catches  it  through  the  window.  Framed  like  a  secret

Sitting  on  the  kitchen  counter,  legs  swinging.  Baebi  traces  hearts  on  Drew's  thigh  with  an  empty  eyeliner  pen.  They’re  whispering  something  neither  of  them  will  remember  tomorrow.

Londyn  sneaks  out  through  the  back,  stilettos  in  hand,  wearing  a  hoodie.  Her  lipstick’s  still  perfect.  She  disappears  into  a  waiting  cab.

Nami  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  stairs,  phone  to  her  ear.  No  one  picks  up.  Her  lipstick  is  smudged  like  someone  kissed  her  mid-sentence.

Juni  is  still  in  the  foggy  pink  bathroom,  alone  now.  She  uses  her  lipstick  to  scribble  a  heart  onto  the  mirror  and  walks  away,  leaving  the  room  empty  and  foggy.

Yonghyung  &  Hwihun  push  each  other  on  a  shopping  cart  outside  the  house.  Laughing  like  they  didn’t  witness  five  emotional  breakdowns  an  hour  ago.

Kaori  &  Kaleina  still  scream  over  the  karaoke  mic  in  the  garage.  Everyone  else  has  left  the  room.  The  power  cuts  out  mid-line.  They  continue  to  perform  as  if  they're  on  an  actual  stage.

Ania  is  still  in  that  silent,  gold-lit  room.  This  time,  the  camera  slowly  pushes  in.  She’s  seated  exactly  the  same.  The  only  thing  that’s  changed  is  us.

On  the  staircase,  Akiko  leans  on  the  banister.  She's  the  only  one  looking  directly  at  the  camera.

She  sips  from  a  half-full  glass,  tilts  her  head  like  she  knows  something  no  one  else  does,  and  smirks.

The  front  door  swings  open  again.  The  camera  stumbles  backward  out  of  it.  Someone  (whom  we  never  see)  throws  a  handful  of  glitter.  It  hits  the  lens.  Everything  blurs.

Then  black.

The teacher, despite his title, was never a face the noblechild would see in the schoolhouse. Instead, he’d visit on a Sunday evening, week after week, never late and never missing an appointment. Even after the composer had stopped rewarding him, he came.

After all, the noblechild had not been his only student. Before him, he’d given lessons to both the composer and the noblewoman; had known them since their own childhood. It had been the teacher who had introduced the townspeople to the noblewoman’s song of enchantment, and, indeed, from him she had learned it. The noblechild was yet to learn to sing it. One day, the teacher would teach it to him, but for now they simply focused on the dusty old piano in the drawing room. 

The evenings would pass by quickly, and with nobody else in the entire world to talk to, the noblechild began to yearn for them. The teacher was at least understanding; he never spoke badly of the noblewoman, even though she had turned to dark activity in the end. He continued to revere her, and perhaps just out of sheer gratitude, the noblechild had grown to revere the teacher in return. Every week, as the child grew nearer and nearer to manhood, he’d fear that the teacher would stop showing up. After all, he was soon to stop attending the schoolhouse and venture out to become something like a composer or a teacher of his own right, and earn his own title. Sunday evenings in the dreary old castle, enduring the noblechild’s mediocre piano-playing and the composer’s sealed door and the heavy absence of the noblewoman was nothing more than charity, and the noblechild was forever waiting for that charity to run dry. 

The teacher was not a handsome or young man, not even a particularly kind one, taking no qualms in letting the noblechild know that he had inherited none of his father’s gift for the instrument they’d spend every lesson in front of. There wasn’t much good of the composer, as far as the teacher was concerned, that the noblechild had inherited at all. All of his positives had come from the noblewoman, and this was something that the teacher seemed happy of. The child certainly could not blame anyone for missing his mother. In fact, he was so happy to meet someone who did that he would eagerly overlook the bulk of the mean old man’s flaws.

One night, the noblechild would interrupt the lesson to ask a question; what was his mother like in her youth, before she had met the composer, long before the noblechild had been an imagination? 

The answer had taken an age. The teacher had a bibles’ worth of stories and just as much veneration. He’d spoken until there was no more orange left in the sky, and evening had turned to night, the piano keys hard to see and blinking away under the sleepy light of the petering candles. At some point, the teacher had asked for permission to open a bottle of red wine that had lived, never unsealed, on the mantle for almost as long as the noblechild had been alive; and with no understanding of why one might keep wine unconsumed, the child had granted it. 

As the teacher drank, the noblechild had simply watched until he was offered a glass of his own. He’d refused four or five times, inexperienced with alcohol and opposed to the strong taste and smell, but as the insistence persisted, he eventually agreed to partake in a single glass.

Two extra glasses later, unable to keep his head up straight, the noblechild put his foot down and excused himself for bed, showing the drunken teacher to the guest chambers before retiring himself. 

The long night heavy on his mind, the child tosses and turns, desperate to be granted mercy from the slush in his head, the nausea that had sunk itself into him threatening to spew out at any second. He’d flung his window open, in hopes that the fresh air would wisen him up some, but all it achieves is giving him a chill, even under the heavy quilt that his mother had once imported for him from a faraway land, which had never failed to warm him before. Still, as his body trembles, he eventually accepts the necessity of shutting out the cold air. 

Forcing himself out of bed, still in his school clothes from the day before but far too unwell to bother undressing, the noblechild takes drunken, wobbly steps towards the window and pulls the glass panes shut. Just as he fastens the lock, he hears his chamber door creak open; from the fading candlelight in the hallway, he can make out a figure as tall and wide as his piano teacher, standing silently in the door frame even as the child questions what he’s doing out of bed.  

He does not shift as the child suggests he return to his chambers, and only moves when he instead requests he at least come closer so the child may speak without straining his voice.

Yet the teacher’s movement is staggered and strange, shuffling slowly towards the noblechild. He steps out of the light of the doorway, cloaked in more darkness still, taking jilted and jagged steps towards the child without uttering a single word. A tension grows in the air, it feels as if with each step the room grows colder and the child rubs groggily at his eyes, willing them to adjust to the dark. It’s not until the teacher steps into the light of the window that the child sees that, whatever he has invited into his bedchamber, it is not the teacher at all. 

It has his teacher’s build. It’s wearing his clothes. But the face, mean to begin with, has warped beyond any sense of human cruelty, is twisted and snarled. Broken, bloodied lips pulled back to reveal monstrous, rotten teeth. Shards of yellow bone that shoot out sharply, several inches long and each pointed like knives. This is no man. This is something animal; or worse, this is something from below. 

When the noblechild tries to scream, the teacher- or rather, the thing, suddenly appears before him in a blink. A hand clamps over his mouth and silences him. The creature’s flesh is cold as ice, long, curled fingernails scraping the side of his face, flattening his ear and curling around the back of the noblechild’s head. The creature leans it’s ghastly face in close, eyes so wide they make perfect circles, intense and hungry like a wild fox might look upon a rabbit, pupils dilated so wide that there is no iris to be seen. When it takes it’s hand away, somehow, the child understands to be quiet.

The noblechild cannot move, paralysed with fear as the creature’s long, clawed fingers wrap around his necktie, untangling the striped, violet fabric with none of the difficulty the child himself usually had. This close, he can smell the beast, rancid and foul like carrion. Sweat begins to pool under the noblechild’s arms and clam up his palms; his heart erupting in his chest as his mind shrieks to run and to free himself, though his body refuses to listen, locked in place as the necktie flutters to the ground, the silver thread of the embroidered emblem of his schoolhouse twinkling in the moonlight. 

The wine has clouded him, blackened the edges of his vision and unsteadied him. He feels lightheaded and ill, losing focus as disgusting, calloused fingers pry open his fastened collar, cold air hitting the notch of his neck. 

You will do fine in her stead, says the monster, though he says it in the noblechild’s head and not through his own mouth, voice harsh and metallic like the screech of a bat, tearing through him like a dagger to the temple. You will fill her shoes.

And the teacher, no longer a man, now a nightmare, lurches forward, sinking his teeth deep into the noblechild’s neck, so sudden that despite the pain that fills him, that ripples through every nerve and travels down every vein until it reaches his heart and blackens it, the child still cannot holler for his father. Cannot scream, cannot fight and cannot run, can only stand there, to be drunk from, and to be in her stead. 

His body crumples against the beast, and the noblechild sees nothing though his eyes do not close. 

When the sun rises late the following morn, the noblechild awakens once more, a sickness in the pit of his belly, a thumping in his skull and a cold sheen of sweat across his brow. Sunlight filters through the drapery of his bed, illuminating the otherwise invisible dance of the dust in the air and burning at his skin. The second his eyelids creak open, his insides throw themselves over one another, and he all but falls out of his empirical bed and must untangle himself from the gossamer poster draped across it’s frame before he can burst from his chambers, scrambling down the twisted hallways of the cold old castle and into the latrine. He throws himself over the toilet and empties his stomach, a panic squeezing his lungs as the white porcelain is painted a dark, brownish red. 

Wine, he reminds himself, when the fear truly begins to kick in. He’d been plied with wine. 

When there feels as if there is nothing left inside him to cast outwards, he forces himself onto shaky knees and then slippery feet, steadying himself against the wall as he pushes upright, where his eyes meet himself in the looking glass and he flinches backwards.

Before him, the child does not see the face he has become accustomed to. His ink-coloured hair is plastered to his forehead with old sweat, twisted and tangled like the tendrils of a terrible sea-creature, under whose intimidation lays two sunken and dilated eyes, underlined with purple shadow, whites vividly red and eyelids hanging heavy, struggling to hold themselves up under the morninglight - why did the world feel so bright and mockingly cheerful in what should be the cold, unforgiving December? 

His lips are without any of their rosy colour, cold and grey and breaking across their curves, and his usually-golden skin is waxy and blanched, as though someone had poured dirty water in him and diluted away the sunny complexion he’d been given by the noblewoman, who had passed unto her son all of her wicked beauty and trusted him to look after it. 

A trembling hand lays across his face. His loveliness, his youth, gone. The noblechild’s pinky finger pokes into his mouth, hooking around his sore and flaking upper lip and yanking it roughly upwards. Underneath it, a knifelife tooth protrudes, sharp and aggressive, like that of the frightening hound the next estate over, who had once jumped against the child’s chest and flattened him to the ground, gnashing it’s jaws in the air as means to terrify him out of pestering it to play as it tried to rest. 

The sistertooth is the same - in place of his small, overclean canines are someone - something else’s angry, yellowed teeth, something inhuman and vicious, something which must bring harm to survive. They were sharp and too big for the child’s mouth, had cut into his lower gums and polished his lower set with a pinkish coating — and though he should be in pain, he is not.

And the noblechild, staring in shock at the creature in the glass, stripped of it’s humanity and spirit, bellows like an animal in turn and grieves.