Henry used to never spy on his neighbors, but now he did.<\/p>\n
Actually, even now he wasn’t spying on\u00a0neighbors<\/em>, really. It was a neighbor in particular. That one girl across the street. Amber Liu. She went to his high school, they had exchanged words a couple of times, and now Henry was looking at her through his bedroom window with a pair of binoculars he had gotten for his tenth birthday.<\/p>\n “I still don’t know why you dug out that piece of junk just to look over some girl you’re mooning over,” said Whitney, who was perched on his bed.<\/p>\n “These are not junk,” said Henry, absentmindedly waving his binoculars in his hand before leaning toward his window to look through the glass again.<\/p>\n “They’re over five years old. That’s junk to me.”<\/p>\n “Then you’re junk too,” Henry mumbled. He moved his binoculars to the side a little so he could get a better angle – perfect. Amber had just went over to her radio and turned it on, and was now moving in some complicated manner with a grin on her face.<\/p>\n “You are so creepy, Henry,” came Whitney’s voice behind him. There was the sound of slipping, shuffled footsteps, and then the closing of a door.<\/p>\n Henry continued watching Amber from his window, unbothered.<\/p>\n **<\/p>\n “Dude,” said Brent, unceremoniously walking into Henry’s room and, like Whitney before, plopping onto his bed. “This<\/em>is what you’ve been doing all summer? Spying on some chick across the street?”<\/p>\n “Yup,” said Henry absently.<\/p>\n Then suddenly he felt a jab at his side, and before he could do anything about it, Brent had grabbed the binoculars out of his hand and looked through them out the window.<\/p>\n “Dude! You’ve been looking at Amber Liu?\u00a0She’s<\/em>\u00a0the one you’ve been stalking?”<\/p>\n “I wasn’t stalking,” Henry mumbled, feeling his cheeks grow warm.<\/p>\n Brent handed his binoculars back to him. “What are you staring at her for? She’s not hot, and she’s not even half-naked! All she’s doing is dancing… or something, I can’t really tell.”<\/p>\n Henry shifted his shoulders and fidgeted under his friend’s gaze. Not like he expected Brent to say anything different when he’d been found out. Though Henry had been half-hoping not to be found out, but trust Whitney to tell the first person to ring at their door.<\/p>\n “C’mon, Henry,” said Brent, thoughts about staring at girls all forgotten. “Let’s go catch a movie.”<\/p>\n But Henry didn’t go. He wanted to look at Amber, instead.<\/p>\n **<\/p>\n School started on the last day of August. Henry walked to the bus stop, feeling jittery. Kids were already standing there.<\/p>\n Henry walked amongst them, trying to look as casual as he felt. First days of school were never his favorite.<\/p>\n “Hey, you’re Henry Lau?” said a voice by his side suddenly. Henry whipped around to see Amber Liu looking at him expectantly.<\/p>\n Henry stifled a noise of surprise. Next to him, he heard Whitney snort.<\/p>\n “Not to seem creepy or anything. I’ve just noticed you around the neighborhood.” Amber grinned. “We’re in the same grade?” she continued, as Henry didn’t say anything.<\/p>\n He finally found his voice.<\/p>\n “Ah – um, yeah.”<\/p>\n Whitney snorted again.<\/p>\n “Cool.” Amber smiled.<\/p>\n Henry did his best to make it not obvious that he had been watching Amber practically every day all summer. “So, um,” he said. “What classes are you taking this year?” There, that was casual enough.<\/p>\n “Oh, you know, the usual.” Amber rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking of joining more clubs this year, though, since I’m basically in like, zero.”<\/p>\n “Oh that’s good.” And before he could stop himself, Henry was saying, “You should join the dance team.”<\/p>\n Amber looked at him. She was smiling, eyes thoughtful underneath her dark bangs. He could see the sunlight gleaming in them.<\/p>\n “You know,” said Amber. “I might.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Henry used to never spy on his neighbors, but now he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38],"fandom":[532],"rating":[674],"ship":[],"relationship":[608],"minorfandomships":[790],"class_list":["post-2162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-default","tag-high-school","fandom-kpop","rating-general","relationship-het","minorfandomships-amber-henry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2163,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions\/2163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"fandom","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fandom?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"ship","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ship?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"relationship","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/relationship?post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"minorfandomships","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroceu.com\/fic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/minorfandomships?post=2162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}