Dear Sooyoung,

To me, you have always been one of the members who stands out at first glance. And it’s not just your height, or how you’ll always speak your mind before anyone else can even think of anything to say. It’s not just that stage presence you have, either: the grace and elegance you somehow can manage in tandem with the charisma and confidence that everyone can see, even from across contents and through barriers of language and customs.

Yes, those were the things I did notice about you right away, when I watched my first Girls’ Generation music video and fell head-over-heels into my first Girls’ Generation variety show. And it did take me a while, after I had decided to identify myself as a SONE, to realize that there was one huge part of you that I hadn’t been as consciously aware of at first.

We all often forget that people can’t be boiled down into a single package of characteristics. Those familiar with the K-Pop scene, especially, are usually aware that what we see is what idols choose to show us. So it’s easy to start identifying by a few traits and actions that are the most consistent, the most obvious.

Using that train of thought, we can say that you are loud and friendly and confident to the point where it’s almost a gag (because you can also take more than a joke or two). But as upfront and outspoken and blunt as you are, Choi Sooyoung, you are also the master of something else entirely.

Let’s rewind to a few years ago. To the car accident that ended with you in the hospital. We were all worried, of course; but then you made a video. Because you felt sorry for not being able to meet fans in Taiwan. Because you worried since we were worried. And so you filmed some clips and wrote “I’m fine” in multiple languages, putting together a message that showed a softer side, the one usually just on the edges of our awareness.

And this instance is just one example.

So yes, you are Choi Sooyoung, the member who can carry the show, whether it’s with your quick mind or your very unique brand of aegyo. You’re the one with a bite to your humor (and there’s no sting because we know you don’t mean anything by it).

But you are also the Choi Sooyoung with a sillier side, who calls your mother right away when you may very well have ruined the soup you’d so brazenly taken charge of. And the Choi Sooyoung who takes all of your fire and fights for causes both dear to your heart (volunteering time for your father’s Retinitis Pigmentosa Society), and all of the others your heart simply expands for (time and time again, visiting Park Seungil, bedridden from Lou Gehrig’s disease) in order to hold them all close.

Happy birthday, Sooyoung. Thank you for always taking the time to tell us that everything will be okay, eventually. Thank you for reminding us that we still have the strength to do what needs to be done, because there are a multitude of wills and just as many ways.

And most importantly, thank you for showing us, through everything you do, that a heart doesn’t have to be loud in order to wrap the entire world in its warm embrace.

Sources: Soo Heart 24, Casio, Girls’ Generation Arena Tour Pocket Book, SMTOWN@YouTube.com , StarN News, SosizWritten by: moonrise31@soshified