[with ARMY ㉑] "After Hour 15, I Had Been Converted": How Two Best Friends Finally Made It to BTS Together

TORONTO — Before K-POPIT ever approached Lisa Bailey and Talas for an interview, they approached K-POPIT first. "Who's your bias?" one of them asked, striking up a conversation as the two handed out free bookmarks to fellow ARMYs ahead of BTS' "ARIRANG" World Tour at Rogers Stadium.

That easy willingness to connect with another fan was fitting for two best friends whose own BTS story has become as much about the community surrounding the group as the seven members themselves.

Lisa, 38, wasn't an ARMY when she agreed to spend her best friend's birthday watching BTS videos with her. "For her birthday, I told her I would watch BTS videos with her all day," Lisa recalled. "After about 15 hours, I had been converted."

Her best friend Talas, 39, had been following the group considerably longer. The Edmonton, Alberta, native first found K-POP in 2013 and remembers exactly which BTS music video caught her attention. "I saw 'War of Hormone,' and my life changed," Talas said, laughing. "I was like, 'Who are those little punks? I like that.'"

Years later, the two best friends found themselves together in Toronto for BTS' "ARIRANG" World Tour. For both, it was their first time seeing BTS as a group live, something Talas had long believed might never happen.

"I thought that I never would. I never imagined it would actually happen for me," she said. "And now here we are, and I'm living the dream." Lisa was the one who made that dream possible after hearing her best friend talk about how she thought she would never get the chance. "She told me she thought she would never see them, so I bought us tickets," Lisa said.

While Talas had spent years following BTS, Lisa's more recent introduction quickly showed her why her best friend had stayed with the group for so long. Together, they described BTS as the "whole package," pointing to the members' dancing, vocals, songwriting and production, along with the personalities behind the music.

"I like their artistry, but I also like them as people," Talas said. She was particularly inspired by the work ethic behind BTS' career, from the effort they put into their music and performances to the years of work that brought them to where they are today. With a laugh, she admitted, "They work really hard. And I don't, so I find that to be inspirational."

Lisa, meanwhile, found herself drawn to something beyond the seven members: ARMY itself. As a newer fan, she said she was struck by how welcoming other fans had been to her, which was part of the reason she and Talas arrived in Toronto carrying bookmarks to give away.

Along with the bookmarks was a playlist connecting readers to titles recommended by RM, combining Lisa's own love of reading with BTS. "I just thought it was a fun way to connect with fans," she explained.

"It's a really nice community," Talas added. Lisa agreed, summing up their decision to give something away much more simply: "It's fun to be nice. It's Canada. It's what we do."

Ahead of the show, the pair were especially looking forward to experiencing "Body to Body" with the entire stadium and seeing BTS up close during the "IDOL" parade, with their seats positioned near the end of the route.

But for Talas, simply making it to Rogers Stadium already carried a meaning of its own. More than a decade after discovering BTS, she was finally seeing the seven members in person with the same best friend she had once spent an entire birthday trying to convert into an ARMY.

And perhaps the way K-POPIT met them said just as much about the community they had found along the way. Before there was an interview, there was simply one ARMY approaching another with a free bookmark and a question that has started countless conversations between BTS fans: "Who's your bias?"