Inspired by: "The ten minutes incident"

Characters: OT9

A few months after we debuted, we came up with our first album named after us, ‘Girls’ Generation’ and shortly after another mini album called ‘Kissing You’. As much as we had fans - if we were allowed to call them ours, we had our fair share of antis too, if not more.

When we debuted, we had told ourselves, no matter what, as long as there are people loving us, we will be giving our best to repay their great love. We had been told about stories by our seniors, telling how there will always be haters and it would not only be just sweet memories while surviving in this industry, especially with girl groups.

With all the experiences shared, we had braced ourselves to face what was coming ahead of us together, no matter what. But sometimes, even if we were strong enough to block out all the negativity, it would still affect us at the slightest.

‘Kissing You’ had brought us our first ever trophy, and it was probably the start of our “spotlight”. The public started gaining recognition of us, not as the group who was named after the famous song, but at the group with nine fresh college girls. At first, many people were saying that we would not last long, knowing how girls are all sensitive human beings and it would be almost impossible to have a group of nine girls staying together for long. But we overcame that saying and proved that it was possible.

With our first trophy comes other great awards that none of the girls would even dream about attaining. We swept almost all of the newcomer awards during that year, and it was an amazing feat, knowing how our efforts have finally been recognised. But as much as there were sweet and memorable times, there were also bitter times.

The group was being invited for Dream Concert 2008 and all the girls could not contain their excitement when we were told of the news. Everyone knew that Dream Concert was a place where all promoting artists of the year would gather together on the same stage. Some of us, being young fan girls of our seniors in the industry, we were anticipating, knowing that we would finally be able to meet our idols.

The concert hosted quite a few big names, namely our seniors from the same label TVXQ and Super Junior, and other top group idols like SS501. While we were excited, we were nervous as well, knowing that this would be the first time that the group was going to perform in front of so many audiences. Feelings from the debut stage came back to us. What if nobody clap? What if we had no supporters? We were probably the only rookie group present.

Tossing our worries and nervousness aside, we put in all our effort to show the best performance we could when it was our turn. While twirling and dancing up on the stage, I was stunned with what happened. As much as a corner of the stadium was shining brightly with pastel pink – our fandom color, everything else was pitched black. Was this the infamous black ocean? Were we being boycotted by the other fandoms? As stunned as I was, the performance still had to go on. Maintaining eye contacts with the rest of the members, we decided to ignore what was happening and finished our performance.

The colorful lights from other fandoms came back up the moment we stepped down the stage. The stadium was shining brightly again. When we went back into the room, the youngest member just had to ask,

“Unnies, why is it that it was so dark when we performed? And then we finished the lights came back up again?”

Oh our innocent youngest, the older members then looked at one another, before landing their eyes on me. Well of course, it was always the leader’s job.

“You see, those colorful lights came from the light sticks of other fandoms. Just like how our fandom is pink in color, those are fandoms of the other groups. There’s always this untold rule during concerts that everyone knows, which is to switch off their light sticks if they don’t like the group that’s performing, so yeah.”  

“Oh... but why? We didn’t do anything wrong.” Seohyun frowned.

“Things like these always happen to girl groups. It’s kind of a norm. Maybe because we’re close to the boy groups and the fans don’t like it that’s why.” It was the truth, which was what one of our seniors told me. It had always been this way ever since the first-generation idols days.

"But they are our seniors.. And we were even from the same company with some of them.. It'd be rude if we ignore them instead.." Seohyun said referring to the boy groups.

“It’s okay guys. You know how they always say that ‘stars shine the brightest in the dark’. Besides, our fandom shined so brightly amongst the rest it was so beautiful!” As usual, Tiffany was spreading her positivity to the others. Or maybe she was just attracted to those pink light sticks. But it did lighten the mood and everyone was giggling, knowing how Tiffany would always prefer pink than anything else.

Even though that may be one of our darkest performance and longest ten minutes on stage which did not seem to end any sooner, we were thankful for those pink lights in the dark. Pink is our strength. Pink is our love. Pink is Sones, our very own dedicated fans.