Part 3: Around You

On October 27th, 2016, the first teaser image was posted to Twitter for LOONA's second member: Hyunjin. Her representative animal is a cat, her representative color is yellow, and she is associated with Tokyo, Japan.

In her very first teaser, Hyunjin is seen leaning against a sign written in Japanese. The majority of her teaser images, as well as her music video, were shot in Tokyo.

She wears a simple white sweater and black skirt, as well as what looks to be pearl earrings, similar to the ones Heejin wore in her own teasers. As stated before, pearls are often compared to the moon, which LOONA is heavily associated with, and can represent innocence, beauty, sincerity, spiritual transformation, and motherhood.

Her name is written in her representative color, yellow.

In the second teaser image, we have our first instance of Heejin and Hyunjin together! Heejin is wearing the same lacy peach dress and cross earrings from her own teasers, and the setting is the same garden with pink flowers.

Now though, she is joined by Hyunjin, who wears a similar dress in the same color, as well as pearl earrings and a pearl headband. Hyunjin looks directly towards the camera, while Heejin looks away. Hyunjin has her hand on Heejin's shoulder, and Heejin reaches to touch it with her own hand. The pose is sort of ambiguous though - is she reaching to hold Hyunjin's hand, or to brush it off her shoulder? It's unclear.

Their names are written side-by-side this time, and are both in Hyunjin's yellow.

The third teaser image shows Hyunjin with a clear umbrella in the rain, turning to look back at the viewer. She wears a black dress with a yellowish clover-esque pattern. Her name is written in yellow.

In the fourth teaser image, Hyunjin is back in the outfit and location from the first teaser. We can see now that the white sweater has black stripes on the sleeves, and she's wearing black shoes with white socks.

We also have a better view of the street she's standing in, and we can see now that the sign she was leaning against was a railroad crossing sign. She stands in front of the tracks with her, looking at the viewer and holding her skirt. Her name is written in yellow.

The fifth teaser image gives us a new setting, with Hyunjin outside standing by a wooden fence, in what looks to be some kind of viewing area. Her hair is tied back, and she wears a heavily patterned dress in navy blue, red, brown, and white.

This time, her name is written in a sort of teal color, which looks almost identical to the specific "eden green" color that Go Won is associated with. However as stated before, I won't discuss other members in detail until later, so for now let's move on.

In the sixth teaser image, we get another look at Hyunjin in the rain with her umbrella. Her name is written in the same teal color as the previous teaser.

In the seventh teaser image, we once again get a brand new scene. Here, Hyunjin is laying on a wooden floor, looking up at the viewer. She wears a lacy white dress and holds a bouquet of what looks to be white roses. White roses can symbolize purity, youth, innocence, loyalty, and new beginnings.

She also has various flowers in her hair, in white, pink, and possibly yellow. (I'm not sure what kind - if you're a flower person and you're able to identify these, please tell me!) Her name is written in yellow.

The eighth and final teaser image once again features Heejin and Hyunjin together, but in a totally new scene this time. They're standing in front of a pole covered in stickers, with a large building in the background. They both wear long frilly dresses with patterns; Hyunjin's is red and dark green with abstract shapes, while Heejin's is a pale pink with green plants and pink flowers.

They're holding hands and facing the viewer, with expressions that look somewhat focused/blank. Hyunjin has one hand up to block the sun from her eyes. Their names are both written like in the second teaser, but this time they're in their respective colors; Heejin's in vivid pink and Hyunjin's in yellow.

Like Heejin's, Hyunjin's teasers contained no captions aside from the hashtags of LOONA and her name. We can't glean as much from them as we could with Heejin's, but there's still a little bit here to analyze.

From the urban environments she's shown in, we can guess that Hyunjin is a city girl, and she isn't shown in any overtly ornate clothing or settings for the most part, which points to her being another average girl. The fanciest her clothing gets is in the second teaser, where she's standing in the garden with Heejin. Perhaps this is a part of Heejin's daydreams of a lavish lifestyle?

The duo teasers also tell us that these two know each other, or at least that they'll meet at some point. Hyunjin also has a much more reserved expression and demeanor in these teasers, compared to the confidence that Heejin displayed in ViViD.

Beyond that though, there's only so much these images can tell us, so let's move on!

Next, we're given our first look at Hyunjin's solo, Around You, via "[Teaser] 이달의소녀/현진 (LOONA/HyunJin) "다녀가요 (Around You)."

Like with ViViD, this teaser just consists of a scene from the music video itself, so I'll wait until then to discuss its contents.

The next day, another teaser video was released - this time for a music video with both Heejin and Hyunjin, titled I'll Be There. However, this MV wouldn't be released until after Around You, so all discussion of it and this teaser will be relegated to Part 4 of this analysis.

Yet another teaser video was released after that, titled "[Teaser] 이달의소녀/현진 (LOONA/HyunJin) "Tokyo." Just like Heejin's "Paris" teaser, this one really just consists of behind-the-scenes photoshoot footage and clips from LOONA TV. It doesn't really offer anything lore-wise, so I won't be including it here.

Finally though, on November 10th, 2016, Hyunjin's solo was released. Around You is a bit of a special case, as there are actually multiple different versions of its music video. The first to be released was "[MV] 이달의소녀/현진 (LOONA/HyunJin) "다녀가요 (Around You) Original Film Ver." - a ten minute cinematic short film.

This was then shortened into a 4 minute version more in-line with your usual music video, released a week later as simply "[MV] 이달의소녀/현진 (LOONA/HyunJin) "다녀가요 (Around You)"

We'll be covering the original film version, as it gives us much more to work with. But first, let's go over the rest of the promotional material.

The official Twitter account posted a link to the MV, with the caption (via auto-translate): "Introducing Hyunjin's short film. Find out the identity of the cat girl through "[Around You] (Original Film Ver.)"!"

As stated in the previous part, the early LOONA videos lack any real descriptions, but they did exist on Korean music streaming sites and have been translated by fans over here.

Around You is described as a "teenage ballad track that has not been heard in some time, which paints the emotions of a beautiful crush that an adolescent girl might have upon a piano melody," and the MV is likened to a Japanese romance film.

This description also mentions that LOONA are "slowly drawing up a musical 'big picture'" and that they will release content allowing fans to "experience background lore that expands with each new member."

Around You also has a different title in Korean, that being "다녀가요" which roughly translates to "Leaving," but specifically refers to the act of visiting and then leaving a place you visited, placing emphasis on being a temporary visitor. This connects to the lyrics of the song, which we'll get into later.

For now, get comfy, and let's watch the Around You MV (Original Film Ver.)!

(Note: Only the shortened version has official subtitles. This upload of the Original Film Ver. with subtitles comes from the channel LOONACORE on YouTube. All credit goes to them!)

Like with ViViD, let's go through the whole MV and song first, and then we'll talk about the main takeaways.

The first shot of this MV is quite striking - a girl with a large orange cat head! However we're given no context, so we'll have to come back to this shot later.

After the "LOONA" title card, we see Hyunjin sitting at a table within a house, which we can assume is hers. The camera is shaky as it approaches, almost like we're seeing from the perspective of a person who's walking in.

As the camera gets closer, we can see more of the house. There's some kind of drawing of a cat and what looks like blue roses, as well as a sign that says "Live by the Sun, Love by the Moon," which of course furthers the ties to the moon.

This phrase can be interpreted in different ways, but the two most common interpretations are:

A. Work hard during the day so you can relax with your loved ones at night.

B. The importance of balancing being active and hardworking (the sun) and being in tune with your emotions and relationships (the moon).

Nothing about this phrase is immediately relevant to our purpose here though, so we can continue on.

There are plants all over the room, and lots of photos on the wall. This includes these portraits of cats in suits, as well as a cat wall decoration.

There's a vintage radio on the counter. This is a Victor R-615, which you can find technical details on here. It was released by the Japan Victor Company (known in Japan as just "Victor"), but unfortunately the year this model released doesn't seem to be publicly available.

The radio has the company's "His Master's Voice" logo, which features a dog named Nipper and is taken from the 1899 painting of the same name by Francis Barraud.

(Huge thanks to users Tom Albrecht and Nortonics from the Antique Radios forum for helping identify this model!)

Hyunjin is wearing a yellow sweater and socks, and we see her singing along to the song as she writes something. They appear to be letters, but we can't make out any of their contents.

Also on the table, there's a teacup with an orange and gray cat, and a stack of books with purple and pink flowers laying on top of them.

The top book can't be made out, but the second one reads "Your Genes and Your Destiny." This is a book by Augusta and I. J. Greenblatt published in 1979, which discusses genetic factors that place people at risk for life-shortening disorders.

The third book is titled "The Auk, the Dodo, and the Oryx" by Robert Silverberg. It was published in 1967 and chronicles the stories behind extinct and endangered animals.

Suddenly though, we get a shot of something running through the grass outside, then inside the house peering up at Hyunjin. It watches her get up, drink a glass of water, and then sit back down. Hyunjin doesn't seem to notice.

Finally though, we hear the sound of something breaking, and Hyunjin gets up. She looks around in confusion before finding the source of the noise.

Something has broken one of her vases, containing what looks to be a red thistle plant; assumedly fake judging from the style. Thistles can symbolize devotion, bravery, determination, and protection.

Hyunjin looks around to try and find what broke it, eventually opening the front door. She looks around for a moment before spotting something left at her doorstep: a bracelet.

She sees the bracelet and smiles. Does she know who left this here, then?

We get another title card, this time with the lyric, "I just leave again without a word." It can be inferred then that this line (in this context) is meant to connect to this mysterious visitor.

Next, we see Hyunjin in a new outfit leaving her house. She wears an indigo dress with a multi-colored flower pattern, and a red purse. She also wears magenta earrings in the shape of flowers, which can be seen better in later shots.

As she's walking, she notices something in an alleyway and stops. Just like in the beginning, the shot is from the perspective of some kind of small animal, which she beckons to. However the animal doesn't budge, so she inches closer.

Strangely, Hyunjin offers it the collection of letters she's holding, assumedly the ones she was writing in the previous scene. As she does, the beginning of the song finally comes in in full swing.

We see Hyunjin cross the street and continue to walk, running her hands over the letters and looking at them contemplatively. In the song, she says she "had to come again today," and wonders what she would do if she ran into the person the song is addressed to.

She waits for a train to pass, then walks across a bridge - the same bridge we saw the cat-head person walking across in the very beginning. She continues to look at the letters and rests her head against the railing, with a longing look on her face.

Finally we see her arrive at a building, with a sign reading "Hair Salon." She peers into the window, where a figure is working inside. She again looks at the letters, gives a slight smile, and then walks up the stairs.

The salon is heavily decorated with a lot of different knick-knacks. There's one decoration in particular here that has some very interesting implications, but unfortunately as it relates to future material, I'll have to wait to talk about it later.

Hyunjin watches intently as the hairdresser walks around getting things ready. It's presumably a man, but we never get to see his face. She sneaks looks at him, looking away bashfully. Once again, she looks down at the letters in her hand, before we cut away to a new scene as the second verse begins to play.

It's clear at this point that she has feelings for this hairdresser, and the letters are likely her way of confessing. The lyrics of the chorus (and the song overall) detail Hyunjin silently watching her love interest, simply leaving without ever being able to say anything. We can assume she's been here many times before, trying to build up the courage to confess, only to end up leaving without a word.

Hyunjin now wears a white beret and a dark purple top with, yet again, pearls. There are cat decorations in the window, but now there are also actual cats! According to LOONA TV, there are eight cats in total.

She holds a box decorated with purple flowers, which was sitting on the table earlier in the MV.

We then see Hyunjin once again in the hair salon, sitting on a ladder and grasping the letters. She sings again about how she can't "spit these simple words out," and then we see her leaving the salon, presumably after the appointment we saw earlier.

An orange cat appears at the bottom of the stairs, but Hyunjin doesn't pay it any mind. She just slumps against the wall in dismay, still holding the letters. It seems that once again, she has just left without saying anything.

Here we're able to get a better view of the letters/postcards, and this is when something very strange is made fully apparent - they're old.

We can see earlier in the MV that the paper and handwriting of the letters appear vintage, not like modern stationery. But this close-up shot shows us a postcard from the 1930s-40s, for Springville Motel in Utah. This motel isn't anywhere near Tokyo, where Hyunjin presumably lives, and it also doesn't exist anymore.

This postcard also happens to mention exactly 12 rooms... the number of members in LOONA. A coincidence? Or a really obscure, intentional detail? Unclear.

This rabbit hole actually goes way deeper, but as it involves later material, we'll have to wait to explore it any further. For now, the question is raised: Why are the postcards and stationery that Hyunjin uses so old?

Also in this hallway with the staircase, we can see a poster that says "Hanger Holic." This is a poster by the Japanese artist Hajime Yasuda, who creates art using clothing hangers. Strangely however, the title and the images are taken from two different posters.

There are actually a lot of hangers around the hair salon, so it seems like this could have some kind of significance. Though it's unclear what that could be...

(Credit to @loona_theory on Twitter for these observations about the letters and hangers!)

The music swells and as the final chorus plays, we see various shots from earlier in the MV: Hyunjin writing the letters, looking in the salon window, sitting on the ladder, resting her head on the bridge, and sitting in her house with the cats. Except now, she has an orange cat head - the same one we saw in the very beginning.

The song ends on this shot of Hyunjin looking at the camera, with a bunch of clones of her wearing the cat head behind her. There are seven cat-headed Hyunjins, making eight in total.

The credits roll as Hyunjin sings with the letters while looking out at the cityscape. She wears a totally new outfit, a white shirt with a red striped jacket. But wait, the MV isn't over quite yet!

In the post-credits scene, we see Heejin! She's sitting on a blue bench, and we can tell from the text on it that we're still in Japan.

Hyunjin, wearing the orange cat head, walks over and sits down on the white bench beside her.

Heejin looks over in confusion, before apparently deciding to mind her business and returning to looking at her phone. A biker speeds by, also staring at Hyunjin, and then the video ends.

Strangely, in 2018, the MV's director later posted a photo of this same scene, but without Hyunjin wearing the cat head. It's unknown if this has any actual significance or if it's considered "non-canon" since it was cut, but it does tell us that another version without the cat head was at least filmed.

The shortened version of the MV includes a few shots not shown here, but they don't really give us anything new. The only things of note are that this post-credits scene with Heejin is not included, and in one shot we're able to get a clear look at another one of Hyunjin's postcards.

I searched for the original photo, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything. It does seem to be in the style of other vintage postcards though, with it being partially in black-and-white with splashes of color. There's a woman wearing pink, Heejin's color, and another figure who's obscured wearing yellow, Hyunjin's color. (It could also be orange.)

There is actually a third MV for Around You, titled "Special Ver." However, this one is just a tie-in with the web drama "Woomanna," which starred members of LOONA and is completely unrelated to the Loonaverse, so we don't have to talk about it here.

With all that out of the way though, we have finally gone over all the content for this section. So now, let's discuss more in-depth.

As mentioned before, it's made clear that Hyunjin has feelings for the hairdresser she visits, and seemingly writes him letters that she ends up never delivering because she's too shy. The abundance of cats in the MV isn't just because they're her representative animal, but because they quite literally represent her.

Cats are known for often being silent and shying away from people, which is why at the end of the MV, after Hyunjin once again fails to give the letters to her crush, she becomes a cat herself.

The eight versions of herself at the end, I believe, are simply meant to show us a sort of "timelapse" of all the different spots she's been in. Each one is an instance of her visiting the hairdresser and leaving without confessing, visually showing us just how many times she's been through this.

With all this in mind, the story of this MV seems pretty simple; especially compared to ViViD, which had a lot more weirdness going on. But if you think about it more, there's actually still a lot in this MV that doesn't have a clear answer. The most pressing of which is the very beginning.

From the low-down perspective, and the scene later on of Hyunjin beckoning to the camera, it seems clear that in these shots we are seeing from the perspective of a small animal. And with the aggressive cat theming of this MV, we can assume that it's a cat. This was later confirmed by Hyunjin herself.

A cat running into Hyunjin's house and breaking a vase isn't that out of the ordinary. It's what happens after that that's the strange part.

Who left this bracelet on Hyunjin's doorstep? Considering it comes right after the cat shows up, we can assume that perhaps the cat delivered this. But even if that's true, it would've had to have been sent by someone. And considering that Hyunjin smiles when she sees it, it's likely that she knows who sent it.

Within the context of this single MV, the only other people we can really consider are either the hairdresser or Heejin. And considering that Heejin didn't seem to recognize Hyunjin at all when they sat on the benches, it's likely not her.

We did see a cat by the salon, at the bottom of the stairs after Hyunjin leaves. So perhaps it belongs to the hairdresser, and he sent it to deliver the bracelet?

That would explain why Hyunjin seems to offer the letters to the cat in the alleyway. Perhaps she was trying to get it to deliver them to the hairdresser for her?

We may or may not find out more about this later on (wink wink) but for now, we're simply left to wonder.

Lingering mysteries aside, this MV gives us a good grasp of Hyunjin's character. She's pretty shy and reserved, and she has trouble feeling brave enough to express her feelings. Importantly, she also seems to be just an average girl, just like Heejin. She's only shown doing everyday activities, and nothing about her home or clothes implies that she's significantly rich or important in any way.

Speaking of Heejin, we discussed in the last part how she takes on the role of Alice in Wonderland in ViViD. Near the end of her journey, Alice meets the Cheshire Cat. Now at the end of this MV, she has met Hyunjin with the cat head!

That's about all there is to talk about for now with this MV, but it's far from the last time it'll be relevant. We've now seen Heejin and Hyunjin meet, but where things go from here remains to be seen.

Let's move onto Part 4 now, and discuss the relationship between our first two members!