Little Pink Starfish

Five weeks ago.

HR Corporation, which held exclusive rights to distribute Sedalbaekil’s first album The First Day in Western territories and some parts of Asia (excluding Korea, China, and Japan), began to move.

Han Sion had sold Sedalbaekil’s debut album in a very straightforward way.

He gathered talented creators, made a good album, and released it to the public.

And that alone had led to tremendous success.

It became the best-selling album in K-pop idol history.

But to Andrew Bryant, the newly appointed CEO of HR Corporation, and Chief Manager Alex Pereira, that result felt disappointing.

They even said it was like assembling the Avengers just to clean up a local street gang.

So, they decided to sell TFD in a slightly more complicated way.

It began with the HBO documentary Before, After and Future.

BAF, as it came to be called, was a documentary series that interviewed legends who had once dominated Billboard, tracing the footsteps of modern music history and glimpsing its future.

It was a standard format in the robust and well-established documentary market of the English-speaking world—and a structure ideal for becoming steady content.

A documentary of this scale doesn’t just drop out of nowhere.

Naturally, HBO and the investment firms involved in its production started promoting it.

The public accepted that as par for the course.

But the direction of the promotion soon took a strange turn.

It started with a talk show appearance by BAF participant and the eternal blues rascal, Donald McGuss.

Donald McGuss disparaged today’s blues musicians on the Alan High Talk Show, which provoked a response from Yingwi Geichi.

[You don’t need to take the words of a senile old man too seriously. His blues peaked with his third album, and he became irrelevant starting with the fourth.]

Normally, this kind of beef would’ve played out as a battle of music.

Comparing Donald McGuss’s albums with those of Yingwi Geichi.

In that case, the winner would’ve undoubtedly been Donald McGuss.

Though still called a “rascal,” he was an elder—a living piece of blues history.

But Yingwi Geichi was clever.

Rather than comparing music, he targeted McGuss’s judgment, redirecting the discussion.

[Here’s one more bit of proof that he’s either senile or just in need of cash.]

He latched onto Donald McGuss’s recent glowing praise of a K-pop idol.

And it wasn’t a stretch—McGuss’s latest public activity had been his participation in a K-pop group’s album and his effusive praise of the artist.

Not something from a year or two ago—but just a few months back.

So critics watching the beef noted that Yingwi Geichi had made a very strategic attack.

—I still think McGuss’s music is superior, but in this diss battle, Geichi might take the win.

—He cleverly turned the tide, and now the fight is out of McGuss’s control.

The public agreed.

—I wasn’t the only one who unfollowed McGuss when he started talking up K-pop idols.

—If he needed money, couldn’t he have found a classier way to get it?

—China money sure is powerful.

—It’s a personal choice. Even when celebs promote perfumes that smell like garbage, that’s their right.

In truth, when Donald McGuss had helped promote Zion and Sedalbaekil, not all blues fans were happy about it.

Quite the opposite—many dismissed TFD outright, accusing McGuss of selling out for money.

But McGuss stood firm.

—HBO will have the answer.

He was implying that the soon-to-air documentary would vindicate him.

At this point, some began to suspect the whole thing was orchestrated to promote the HBO documentary, BAF.

But that theory wasn’t widely supported.

Donald McGuss’s career was too massive for him to risk tarnishing it just to promote a documentary.

Then the documentary aired—and the tide turned.

BAF was a four-part series, released weekly.

Part 1 focused on “Blues & Jazz,” and it featured two extraordinary tracks.

The first: Donald McGuss playing guitar, drunk, on a rooftop.

Captured by a stationary camera, it wasn’t a polished performance.

He was too drunk to care about framing—he’s barely visible, silhouetted by a bright full moon and a giant swaying tree.

But the song was phenomenal.

So phenomenal that even the amateurish setting felt profound.

But the kicker? McGuss hadn’t composed that song.

[He was a man who told delightful lies.]

That was followed by a caption: “Afterward, Donald McGuss participated in an album by a K-pop group produced by Zion.”

That wasn’t all.

Another jazz & blues legend appeared—Jankos Bolero Greenwood.

He too performed a stunning song.

And again, it was subtly implied to have been composed by the same person.

But the documentary was cautious.

It clearly didn’t want to distract from its own theme—even as it featured this incredible music.

Zion and Sedalbaekil were barely mentioned.

But it didn’t matter.

For all intents and purposes, the stars of Part 1 were Donald McGuss and Jankos Greenwood—playing music written by Zion.

Naturally, people got curious.

—So who is this Zion guy?

---

The story started changing.

After the documentary aired, Jankos Greenwood entered the beef between Donald McGuss and Yingwi Geichi.

[When we were young, we’d play for a beer and sing pop songs we didn’t even like just to catch a pretty girl’s gaze.]

[It’s those moments that made us who we are.]

[To think we’d throw it all away for some pocket change—that’s an insult.]

[He’s a talented young man.]

People called Greenwood a coward.

He’d stayed quiet during the heated beef—then stepped in only once the public opinion had shifted.

But on the flip side, this meant Greenwood had timed his entry carefully—to strike when he knew he’d win.

—Alright, I give in. Even if this was all just Zion’s promo campaign, I’ll give it a listen.

—Zion’s some kind of Reptilian? He’s practically manipulating all of Billboard now.

—Reptilian? No, you dumb nerd. He’s obviously Illuminati.

People said things like that as they went to listen to the TFD tracks featuring McGuss and Greenwood.

Never once suspecting it had all been orchestrated from the start.

By now, some Billboard promoters were beginning to realize what this was all leading toward.

“Looks like HR’s turning its eye toward Asian culture.”

“Why Korea, though? Wouldn’t China or Japan make more sense?”

“Japan’s a tough market to crack with promotion alone. Korea is more trend-sensitive—and it influences both China and Japan.”

“But China and Japan are bigger in terms of population and economy.”

“That’s the funny thing about Asia.”

They became convinced that HR was planning to push TFD and Sedalbaekil aggressively.

And from HBO’s perspective, it was a win-win.

The beef had drawn attention to the documentary.

Documentary quality alone rarely captures sustained interest.

But for HR Corporation, this was still a money-losing venture.

TFD needed to hit at least Platinum—or better, Double Platinum—to turn a profit.

“The music’s good. This Zion guy is clearly talented.”

“Maybe HR’s signing him to a management deal?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Probably just distribution. I hear he’s got his own indie label.”

In this atmosphere, Yingwi Geichi released a new song.

There’s no better way for a musician to prove themselves than through new music.

And his track was excellent—enough to elevate his standing as a blues artist.

By its second week, it had reached No. 3 on Billboard’s blues chart.

But the more successful the song became, the more people compared it to the track Zion had written—performed in the documentary.

—Isn’t it unfair to compare the two? Zion’s song was played by Donald McGuss himself.

—But Geichi mocked McGuss’s judgment for recognizing Zion. So the comparison is valid.

Around that time, Part 2 of the documentary dropped—and it shocked people.

The theme of Part 2 was Instrumental.

The stars: Eric Scott and Mary Jones.

Eric Scott was the pinnacle of guitar, and Mary Jones the queen of techno.

Both artists who focused more on sound than vocals—making for a logical pairing.

And Zion appeared again.

As before, his name was only mentioned once.

Even as Eric Scott played a custom guitar built by Zion, no subtitles appeared.

Only a line: “A song dedicated to Eric Scott by a friend of Chris Edwards.”

At this point, not mentioning him felt more conspicuous.

By now, word had spread to Korea—Zion was stirring up serious buzz in America.

But the news didn’t go mainstream.

The first ones to cover it were YouTube “lekkas”—clickbait content creators who often exaggerate Korean achievements abroad.

That kind of overhyping eroded trust.

You never knew how much they were inflating the truth.

And anyway, this was the same time Sedalbaekil’s unit albums were rolling out in Korea, and talk was focused on their second full album.

By Korean standards, TFD was old news.

Still, buzz in America kept growing—and Korean-language copies of TFD started selling in notable numbers.

A blues forum uncovered that Zion was actually Sedar from Color Show, and an old performance from Seaside Heights resurfaced.

At this point, the promotion had left HR’s hands.

Some who harbored unconscious bias against Asians dismissed it all as marketing tricks.

Indeed, around this time, HR officially announced it had secured TFD’s distribution rights.

But fans of Zion’s music believed the opposite.

They were convinced HR had moved first because they saw TFD’s potential.

And the person holding the hottest potato in this whole mess?

Chris Edwards.

Even now, he was a top Billboard producer with notable talk show appearances.

And it was Chris who first recognized Zion’s talent—connecting him with legends.

He had stayed silent through the entire media frenzy.

Until now.

“I hope, by tomorrow, everyone understands my choice. All I did was follow great music made by a great musician.”

And with that—Players was released.