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Sometimes Yoongi thinks he just doesn't like saying a lot of words.
The longer his sentences get, the more likely he is to lose someone's attention. So he keeps his words short, answers crisp.
That's how it's been forever. Yoongi's voice is the sort that's easy to overlook, fumbling and too quiet, too much like he's talking to himself.
The shorter his words, the less space he takes up.
Maybe that's why, whenever Yoongi is asked who he is, he never really answers the whole question.
The number of words it would take scares him. The effort it would take to explain them all, and the fact that someone might not even know what he means - it's too much for him.
But in these small spaces that Yoongi finds himself in, this hushed corner under the stairs, no one minds that he never answers the whole question.
All that matters is that he belongs - it doesn't quite matter in what way.
When someone asks Yoongi what brought him to this quiet spot, where they all come together for a brief feeling of family, all that Yoongi says is -
"I'm bi."
"Yeah?" the other boy asks, eyes widening in something like hope.
"Yeah."
"Me too."
And that's all there is to it.
/
On the internet, it's a different story.
On the internet, Yoongi can use as many words as he wants, and there will be someone, somewhere, who understands.
In the real world that Yoongi lives in, he is Min Yoongi from Daegu, 22, a music major, and in a hushed voice within parenthesis, bi.
But online, he's myk93, biromantic, asexual, genderqueer. 22, he/they.
Because online, he can feel like that matters.
He can say I'm ace, and not a single person will ask him what's that?
You don't like sex?
You're afraid of sex?
Have you tried it at least?
That's just social anxiety.
That's not a big deal, you can marry whoever you want.
You aren't - oppressed.
Why do you want to date someone if you're ace?
It's just easier this way, to keep his labels separate. To use them as he likes in his own safe spaces, where he knows his voice will matter.
Yoongi doesn't need anyone in the real world to know everything about him - he's content this way.
Yoongi is bi.
It fits, when he hears it out loud.
As quiet as he wants to be, as simple, as proud.
And on the internet, the words that he tells himself, to try and figure himself out -
Asexual.
Biromantic.
Genderqueer.
Whatever words he uses, Yoongi still belongs.
/
The first person he meets who uses more than one label to identify with, is Kim Namjoon.
Kim Namjoon from Ilsan, 21. Panromantic, demisexual.
He's a quiet man, with large glasses and a serious expression, and the first time he appears at the small landing under the stairs, he doesn't quite look like he belongs.
He looks like someone who's lost his way, who was on his way to a lecture and accidentally stumbled into the campus' gay corner.
Yoongi is sitting on the stairs, scrolling on his phone as he watches him. No one has approached him today, and he hasn't approached anyone - it's one of those days that he just wants to sit by himself in a place that he knows he belongs. Where everyone knows who he is and no one gives him a look of disgust for it.
They've all hung out together for long enough that the other guys recognize that, so they leave him alone. Some of them sit in groups, showing each other videos, elbowing each other and laughing every time someone makes a joke. They're happy, in these after hours. It's always a nice environment.
There's a couple, sitting alone a few steps above Yoongi, quietly holding hands in the dark.
And now there's Kim Namjoon, who's name Yoongi doesn't know yet, who's stepped in here for the first time.
The whole group goes silent, the way it always does when someone new steps in.
Namjoon doesn't look like a threat, but around here, anyone can be a threat.
Everyone needs to be sized up.
"Is this - " Namjoon asks, hesitant. "I'm - uhh, a friend told me this is where I should go? The LGBTQ club?"
He's so nervous, the telltale sign of someone looking for a place to belong - and the whole group softens with excitement immediately.
Someone snorts, but it's more amused than mean. "We're not a club, really," he says. It's Kim Seokjin, one of the people that Yoongi can actually call a friend. "We just hang out sometimes."
"What's your name?" someone else asks. It's Hoseok.
"Kim Namjoon."
The group scoots over to let him sit with them, asking Namjoon a ton of questions. Where is he from, what languages does he speak, what's his major, does he have any pets, that weird guy over there is Yoongi, he looks rude but he's a sweetheart, that couple is Jimin and Taehyung, they're the reason gay marriage is illegal, and so on and so on, so forth and so forth.
Namjoon looks a little overwhelmed, a little exhilarated, like he can't believe he's here.
No one asks him about his identity. It's an unspoken rule, that you never press another person for who they are.
It usually takes days, weeks, even months for people to come out to the group, but for Namjoon, it seems easy. He comes out to them on the very first day.
Lost in the warmth of a group of people who understand him, desperate to be one of them forever, it all pours out of him unprompted.
Kim Namjoon from Ilsan, 21. Panromantic, demisexual.
The words leave everyone stumped.
Yoongi tenses, stopping the scrolling on his phone.
There's an awkward tension in the air, with Namjoon, having just handed out his heart, and the rest of the group, unknowing of what exactly the words mean.
"Namjoon-ah," Yoongi calls, looking up from his phone.
Everyone looks at him as one, not expecting him to have spoken.
"Want to join me?" Yoongi asks, patting the space next to him. His hand comes up a little dusty, he shouldn't have touched the stairs.
But he needs to save this, before someone asks what does that mean.
Namjoon looks a little hesitant, but Hoseok gives him a smile and encourages him, spewing out some nonsense about how Yoongi is like the wise old man and you can go to him for prophecies, and Namjoon finally joins him.
He sits with his knees up, taking as little space as possible. Someone with too many words and unsure of how they'll be heard.
Yoongi puts his phone down, trying for a smile.
/
Sometimes Yoongi is a little jealous of his friends.
He's jealous of how they can fit their identities into neat little boxes, the sort that you could say out loud and instantly be understood for.
He wishes it was that easy for him. That he didn't have to try out about a hundred labels before he figured out the ones that stuck. That there couldn't be just one word for all the chaos inside Yoongi's head.
Sometimes, he thinks of his identity as just Yoongi.
There's everyone else, going around being human and gay and pan and bi and trans and nonbinary and everything else, and then there's Yoongi, being Yoongi.
Like a little alien, on a planet of his own.
There's something soothing about identities that can fit into a word, they make it seem like he's - just one person. There's just one part of him, and that part of him is Yoongi.
Biromantic, asexual, genderqueer - it sounds like him, it sounds comfortable, but it makes him feel like pieces of a person stitched together sometimes. It feels like saying I'm bi, but not in the way you think. I'm ace, but not in the way you think. I'm genderqueer, but not in a way I even understand.
The internet is full of little worlds like that, ace is such a broad term - Yoongi has made friends over the internet who are ace and quite love having sex, ace and don't mind either way, ace but would sooner die than let someone touch them, ace and aro, ace and allo, grey ace and demi and whatever not.
Ace is such a broad term. Bi is such a broad term. The whole spectrum of sexuality and gender is so overwhelmingly broad that sometimes Yoongi doesn't know how to explain them anymore. None of the words have any meaning besides what the person who picks them chooses for them to mean, and all that biromantic asexual genderqueer says about Yoongi is just - fifty percent closer to the truth than what any other words would say.
Yoongi is just Yoongi.
Whatever that means.
And this new kid, sitting next to him, is panromantic demisexual.
He says them with the hopeful excitement and fear of someone who thinks he's finally going to be seen for who he is, which is sad, because what sucks about labels is that they're often just for you.
Often the people you talk to don't understand them, and Yoongi never has the energy to explain.
He can't follow up every introduction with what it means to be ace, he just doesn't have the energy.
But he can do this.
He can listen to Namjoon, and he can understand what he means, and he can be a friend.
He can be someone who Namjoon doesn't need to explain himself to.
/
The worst part of telling anyone in the real world that he's ace, is that all of a sudden, Yoongi becomes the spokesperson of anyone on the planet who's ever been asexual.
He's the Representative, with a capital R. The person responsible for educating the masses, for making sure no one misunderstands the identity.
And that's far more than he can handle.
It's hard enough for Yoongi to explain who he is, but he can't end the conversation with that. It's irresponsible, or something, to answer with his own experience.
If someone asks him what does that mean?
Yoongi can't say it means I don't understand sexual attraction. I never want to have sex. I don't know how anyone could want to.
Because that's not what it means to be ace - that's what it means to be Yoongi. And throwing that out into this world, it means that whoever he's talking to is going to think that's what it's like for everyone.
So instead, he has to say It means a lack of sexual attraction. Or a low interest in sexual activity. It doesn't mean all ace people hate sex, or won't have sex, it means something different to everyone since the spectrum is so broad -
The worst part of telling anyone that he's ace, is that he becomes more textbook than human.
It's not Yoongi's job, to make sure they get their facts right - except that it kind of feels like it is.
And that feels kind of pointless.
If to tell anyone who he is, he has to lug around a dictionary to make sure they understand right, and make sure they don't go to the next person who calls themselves ace and spew out something like you hate sex just because that's who Yoongi is - if it's all that difficult Yoongi would rather not do it at all.
Words get harder, when the people around him don't know what they mean.
Yoongi is too tired to explain them.
He's content, to just call himself bi.
/
On the internet, Yoongi calls himself a lot of things.
Not just biromantic asexual genderqueer.
He calls himself gay, and bi, and ace, and enby, and at different points of time, they all fit fine. On the internet, Yoongi never has to prove that he is who he is. There's no one lining up to question him, to ask him how do you know you're bi if you aren't sexually attracted to anyone or you still look like a boy, what do you mean you're genderqueer.
On the internet, Yoongi is free.
And sometimes, that's more liberating.
Sometimes he sits at the stairs with his group of friends, and in the comfort of their presence he texts people across the world.
He doesn't hold the fact that his friends don't understand anything about him against them. They're all a little lost, trying to figure out themselves, and Yoongi thinks it's pushing them to ask them to try and figure him out too.
He's just glad that they're here.
And he's glad he knows other people.
Sometimes, he thinks, if this was the only world that he knew - Yoongi never would have figured himself out at all.
He would have looked at the people around him, and thought, he isn't bi.
He isn't gay.
He's not like them, even if a part of him keeps saying that he is. He doesn't feel these things.
He's lucky that he read as much as he did, that he dug through all the information on the internet until the algorithm started throwing pieces of his own identity at him.
Yoongi is so, so lucky that he has his labels to hold on to. Even if he sometimes wishes he didn't have to.
In the real world, something about being ace seems to tie to being forever alone.
People assume Yoongi doesn't want anyone in his life, just because he says he's ace.
On darker days, he wonders if that's the only reason he calls himself bi.
If it's a quiet hope of don't leave me on my own.
I want to be loved too.
If he types asexual into a search bar, the questions that come up are all the same.
Can an asexual have a crush?
Do asexuals kiss?
Can asexuals fall in love?
Innocent questions, but at the root of it, it feels like they're wondering - are asexuals normal?
Is Min Yoongi normal?
Is Min Yoongi repulsed towards love?
It makes him feel lost.
He doesn't want to be kicked out of this small, but happy family.
Yoongi wants to belong.
Yoongi is just bi.
And then if he explains that - that yes, he is asexual, but yes, he does want to date - then he feels like he's pushing aside all the asexuals who don't want to date.
The worst thing about being part of an identity that no one knows enough about, is how he's unwillingly responsible for how they look at it.
It's cowardly, maybe, to hide behind being bi.
Just bi.
But that's also who Yoongi is.
No one's going to force him to change a label that he's comfortable with, no one has the right to tell him who he is, so Yoongi goes by whatever he feels gets across the most of himself in this messed up world.
/
Sometimes, Yoongi stays on the stairs till late.
He has his back against the wall as he scrolls on his phone, answering texts from his friends and liking their posts. It's pride month, and across the world, people are celebrating, having fun, being alive.
Here, in his own world, Yoongi can't risk going to pride.
So instead he's on his phone, trying to live through the pictures he sees. Hoping that someday he'll be a part of it, that he can hold up his flag and stand proud and be himself.
All of his friends have called it a day and gone back to their rooms, but one person has stayed behind.
It's Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook, 19, from Busan. Queer and can't figure out a label.
Yoongi doesn't realize he's there, until Jungkook reaches out with careful fingers and taps Yoongi's knee.
Yoongi jolts.
Jungkook looks nervous, and a little apologetic, not meeting Yoongi's eyes.
"Jungkook-ah? You didn't go back?"
Jungkook shakes his head. "I, um. I wanted to ask you something."
Yoongi clicks his phone off, setting it to the side to give him his attention.
"You said - I heard you talking to Namjoon hyung that day," he says. "About - about something - the split attraction model?"
"Yeah?"
"I think - I think I'm like that," Jungkook says, and he seems nervous beyond words. "I like boys, but I don't - want to sleep with them. That's fine, right?"
"Jungkook-ah, of course that's fine."
"I think that's - that's why I couldn't find a label," Jungkook says, something earnest to his voice. "I didn't realize I could be so many things, I thought it was just this or that. But I think I might have figured something out, hyung. Like, I'm gay… asexual?"
The words are tentative, like it's his first time trying to say them out loud.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Jungkook says, still uncertain but with hope to it. "I think so."
"That's really cool," Yoongi says.
Jungkook's smile is too wide for his face.
Yoongi bites his tongue.
He could do this, he could also not.
"I'm biromantic asexual," he says quietly.
Jungkook blinks. "Really?"
"Really."
Jungkook lights up far brighter than the words should deserve.
It makes something warm grow in Yoongi's chest.
What sucks about labels is that they're often just for you.
Often the people you talk to don't understand them, and Yoongi never has the energy to explain.
But sometimes, in moments like this, when he meets someone else who gets what he means - in those moments he's glad that there are more words for him than just Yoongi.