The four of us met up again for our weekly dinner, which, lately, had been constantly rescheduled to fit each of our busy schedules. We only frequented clubs about once a month now, since we all rather use our free time to squeeze in another hour of sleep, spend a night in with the group, or just spend another night with our significant others.

I didn’t know if I could label Sehun as my significant other just yet, but I could not deny that I did rather spend a night with him instead of dancing and drinking my hours away at a club. Our contract had started, and we were now working together for the advertising campaign. We were still having dinners together and sleeping together. But we tried to keep two sides of our lives – the professional and the private. At this point, everything was still “casual,” but I no longer knew if that was now a pure joke to tease each other, or if it still was effect. Although, I could say that it was probably more of the former, since we always spent the night. We still lacked a label, but it didn’t bother me at all.

“So you’re dating Sehun now,” Clara said in a flat tone.

“Nope, it’s casual.”

“ buddies.”

“No, we’re just…well,” I couldn’t find any more words to describe our relationship without making matters worse. So I just sat silently, simply staring at the unstrung letters on the fancy menu in my hands.

“Dating without the label then,” Mia said.

I looked up from my unproductive reading of the laminated pieces of cardstock only to be met with her starry gaze. It seemed as if she had just met the love of her life, but she was only mushing over another’s nonexistent love story. Because in her mind, every story played like a romantic comedy movie before her eyes.

“God, Mia. It’s not like that,” I muttered.

I heard Sam and Clara both scoff as the waiter approached our table. It was turning into the same scene as two weeks ago, when I had first told them about Sehun’s return. No longer was I rejecting the idea of having a relationship with Sehun, but I also didn’t want to force the situation to progress more than it was intended to.

We began shooting the photos for the new promotional campaign, so that was probably another reason why he and I never bothered to define our relationship. Perhaps it was just the inconvenient timing. Or perhaps it was the lesson learned from our brief past together. Or maybe it was our lack of concern to defined lines and details falling perfectly into strict categories at this point in our lives. We were both in our late twenties, a time where our obsessive tendencies gave way to self-discovery and reasonable risks.

During the shoots, Sehun and I acted as though we didn’t just fall asleep to the synced beating of the same pair hearts, as though we didn’t share pancakes and giggles over the same glass dining table, as though we didn’t step out of the same apartment door. And during the breaks we pretended that we were simple coworkers meeting casually for the second time, conversing about harmless current events over two overpriced lunchboxes. I couldn’t deny that his lustrous gaze that I saw through the viewfinder of my camera brought flutters to my stomach, and the occasional winks that he sneaked in transformed me into a teenager fawning over her first puppy love.

But there was no commitment in the relationship. It was as if we were friends with benefits, where the benefits extended beyond the bedroom. It was a relationship that emitted an illusion of safety without the safety aspect of a legitimate relationship. We internally labeled whatever relationship we shared as “exclusive” for respect as we