But the cameras were rolling.

“More fake ,” the creative director whispered through the megaphone. “Not real tears. Fake tears. Like you’re crying for a brand.”

The stylist, Jiyoon, adjusted Hana’s collar from behind a monitor. “The gallery drop goes live in six hours. Remember—this isn’t a photoshoot. It’s a style gallery . Every frame is a fashion editorial, every pose a product.” The first set was a hall of shattered floor mirrors. Hana wore a chrome corset top over a ballooning sheer skirt , paired with platform boots wrapped in cassette tape ribbons . Her makeup: glass-skin base, but with a single glossy black tear painted beneath her left eye—the signature “fake cry” look.

Seoul — 2:47 AM

She stopped at the last image—an unposed shot the photographer had snuck in. Hana sitting on a crate between sets, holding a real cup of coffee, no makeup, looking tired. The creative director had photoshopped it anyway: added a fake neon sign in the background that read “REALITY™,” and turned her coffee cup into a prop with no steam.

The shoot wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

Click. That became the gallery’s opening image: Scene 2: The Vending Machine Alley Outside, a temporary alley was built between two loading docks. A row of pastel vending machines glitched between real and digital—one dispensed canned oxygen labeled “SADNESS (0 CAL),” another flashed “SOLD OUT” in binary.

Hana, lead visual of the rookie group , stood alone in the center of an abandoned department store. Broken escalators twisted upward into darkness. Mannequins with cracked porcelain faces wore last season’s luxury coats, their frozen limbs tangled in fake vines.

Hana knelt on the mirrored floor. Her reflection fractured into 100 pieces. She held a to her ear, no dial tone, lips slightly parted.

She smiled. That part wasn’t for the gallery.