Little Pink Starfish

And so, the song continued with Han Sion’s vocals.

Iion hadn’t appeared in the previous music video, but in this one, Sedalbaekil was nowhere to be seen.

It was ridiculous, but the MV for the group’s promotion track featured only Iion.

Still, people weren’t too surprised.

Had Sedalbaekil ever done things the normal way?

They always did whatever they wanted.

Instead, people were curious about the unfamiliar rookie actress.

-Who’s that girl?

-No idea. But she seems good at acting?

-She’s not, like, super pretty or anything, but somehow looks really good next to Iion.

-Yeah yeah yeah, there’s something strangely captivating about her.

At this point, no one knew, but the actress in Sedalbaekil’s MV had been personally chosen by Han Sion.

Naturally, it was a regression-informed pick.

Back when he was active in the U.S., Han Sion didn’t pay much attention to Korea.

Over nearly a hundred years, he forgot many things about the country.

Even though he regressed in a Korean intersection, he immediately dumped everything on lawyer Choi Jiwoon and flew to the U.S.

The only Korean he kept in contact with was Uncle Hyunsoo.

And yet, Han Sion knew of an actress named Lee Seong-ah.

Because within five years, she would win an Oscar, enter Hollywood, and become a global star.

No matter how disconnected Han Sion had been from Korea, there was no way he didn’t know her.

Lee Seong-ah’s appearance in Sedalbaekil’s MV had been pure coincidence.

They were casting for a female role in the MV, and she applied with a thick portfolio of theater work.

That caught Han Sion’s eye.

At first, Director Seo Seunghyun wanted to cast someone more famous and wasn’t too keen, but after watching her act, he changed his mind.

He even began trying to sign her to SBI Entertainment.

She was still with a theater troupe and had no company yet.

But all that was just a side note—things the public wouldn’t know.

They focused on the MV and pulled out a lot of details.

-This doesn’t seem like Sedalbaekil’s Iion, right?

-Yeah, feels like it’s set in the past. Looks just like him, but like… someone else?

-Is this Iion’s past life?

-Oh, that’s possible.

-But the time period doesn’t line up for a past life. Feels more like a different but similar world?

-F*cking multiverse tastes good again?

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

First of all, the love story unfolding as a flashback wasn’t about Iion from Sedalbaekil, who travels through time with his friends.

Same face, but a different person.

The timeline didn’t fit, and there were tons of visual cues proving it.

Even the name on his name tag wasn’t Iion.

Though the name wasn’t shown clearly, from the lettering it looked like a single-character name.

-Let’s just call him Iion MK2 for convenienceㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

-MK2on

-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz that’s great

This man lost his lover in a tragic event and became a wreck.

But he quickly pulled himself together.

Because he saw one possible path forward.

Time travel.

Of course, the MV didn’t show this in detail.

It’s not some sci-fi movie—fleshing out the entire process of prepping for time travel after a lover’s death would just feel lame.

Instead, they hinted at it through symbolic objects like pocket watches, calendars, and wristwatches.

As the time travel began for the man who looked like Iion, the chorus of the song exploded.

---

The internet exploded with talk about Sedalbaekil.

They released four music videos at 30-minute intervals.

The release order was:

Winter Cream.
Passing Through Time.
Time Traveler.
Stage.

A music video for the title track Stage was expected.

But the other three were a real surprise.

Winter Cream had a connected concept from the last album, but it wasn’t a track that played a crucial role in the album’s cohesiveness.

It wasn’t even one of those “not sure what they did, but it sounds nice” tracks Sedalbaekil was known for.

It blatantly presented itself as easy listening, with everything smashed into it.

Sure, it worked with the market and fans loved it—but people thought Han Sion probably didn’t like it.

But that’s something people say when they don’t know Han Sion.

They say he has a hipster complex and chases uniqueness, but that’s not always true.

If Han Sion’s goal had been 50 million physical album sales, he would’ve become an easy listening monster.

He would’ve tossed “album cohesion” out the window and released album after album packed with pleasant tracks.

But Han Sion’s goal was 200 million.

And he knew exactly how a singer’s career cycle plays out.

When an artist first gains popularity, the music is important.

Release good music, get good reactions, and graft that positivity onto the artist’s character.

But once they reach peak popularity, the artist’s persona becomes more powerful than the music.

It’s no longer “Zion of XX”—it becomes “XX of Zion.”

At this stage, fans and the public begin to have expectations when a new track drops.

That’s not necessarily bad.

The problem is, trends shift, and sensations become predictable.

As a regressor, Han Sion had the ability to match any trend and put out great albums.

But public perception didn’t change that easily.

“Zion’s good at this kind of thing.”
“The meta doesn’t quite match current trends.”
“It’s a decent track, but feels a little off with his image.”

When a popular artist’s character becomes too fixed, even an on-trend album can feel mismatched.

Han Sion learned this lesson the hard way in the life where he lived the longest.

He’d made it to age 42, and that’s when he experienced his first major album flop.

From that point on, he realized that to sell 200 million albums, you must be unpredictable.

No matter how famous you are, if your music gets boxed into a specific mold, it’s over.

That’s why you have to do everything music allows—and sometimes even what it doesn’t.

Only then can you escape the label of “Zion is good at XYZ.”

And only when that label is gone, can you achieve longevity.

But this went directly against how idol promotion worked.

Agencies poured everything into giving entertainers a character and extending its life span.

Yet Han Sion aimed to be a star without a fixed character. Nearly impossible.

What made it possible was his skill.

He was the most musically gifted person on Earth.

Same for Sedalbaekil.

The image of “HipSion” trying all sorts of experimental things had become embedded in Sedalbaekil too.

So when Sedalbaekil dropped a new album, people didn’t try to guess what kind of tracks would be on it.

They just vaguely assumed there’d be good music.

In some sense, that was the biggest accomplishment Han Sion had achieved over the past year.

So him choosing to release Winter Cream’s MV and promote it wasn’t really unexpected.

Even if it looked that way to others.

And in that sense, Passing Through Time was the same.

Sure, it was weird for only one member to appear in a group MV—but it wasn’t impossible.

Iion didn’t appear in Winter Cream, after all.

The truly unexpected move was Time Traveler.

No one in the fandom had imagined a bonus track—one made for fans—would get an MV.

And yet, it played a major role in decoding the album’s universe.

[Connecting the music videos released today – theory thread!]

…….

Anyway, let’s talk about the MVs!

Winter Cream consistently shows a world without Iion, and I think this moon thing is the key.

When the three moons are clear in the sky, it feels like an unstable world.

Like when Goo Taehwan keeps booking tables for five at restaurants?

In those scenes, the moons are always vivid.

But when the moons blur, that unstable world solidifies into reality.

If it fully becomes real, the moons will probably reduce to just one.

Looking closely, it’s always the two outer moons that fade—the center moon stays sharp.

At the end of Winter Cream, the moons were still vivid, right?

That’s basically a hint that Iion will return.

As for why Iion was forgotten—

That’s explained in Passing Through Time and T.T.

-So the MK2on in Passing Through Time is the one who first started time travel, and that power got passed to Iion?

-Yeah yeah yeah, so now it’s like he’s trapped inside Iion?

-Feels more like a split personality—he wakes up when something triggers him.

-Ohhh so in S.O.M, when Iion was acting shady and then warned the members, that was the split personality?

-Yup yup yup. And whenever that persona wakes up, the screen gets all red. Real obvious.

-Right! The S.O.M opening had that red glow sweeping through the auditorium, and Iion snapped out of it when the moonlight hit him.

-So the moonlight is… what, the blessing of the three moons?

-The blessing of Sedalbaekil’s Three Moonsㅋㅋㅋ

-I never expected the MV for a fan song to be this important… I’m emotionalㅠㅠ

-And they included every fan-service shot possibleㅠㅠㅠ

-But still made it super crucial to the story hahaㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ

-hehㅎㅎㅎ

People were decoding the MV with ease.

This wasn’t a confusing MV like State Of Mind.

The symbolic items were clearly marked with mise-en-scène, and the key story points were given direct camera focus.

Han Sion made this choice after reflecting on what happened with the S.O.M MV.

Back then, he hid most of the symbols and packed the story and worldbuilding with layers.

But seeing that fans only interpreted about 30% of what he intended, he decided to make this one easier.

It was a bit of a misjudgment on Han Sion’s part.

In his past life, he was a Billboard superstar.

Even if Sedalbaekil was a big success now, the fandom was on a different scale.

Back then, no matter how complicated he made a music video, collective intelligence would eventually crack it.

Genius users loved the massive symbolism he packed in.

But Sedalbaekil hadn’t yet reached that level of fandom power.

Sure, T.T enjoyed that stuff and gave it a shot, but Han Sion still had to balance both the fans and the general public.

So he made it a bit simpler and watched how people reacted.

And the response exploded.

Even 20- to 30-something men—far removed from idol MV interpretation—responded.

Not surprising, though.

They’d experienced through State Of Mind that idol MVs could feel cinematic.

This time, the seeds that had been sown finally bloomed.