When Does Watching Become Spying?”

**When Does Watching Become Spying?

Written By; Huzaifa Haroon

*In the silence between eyes, truth and betrayal intertwine.*

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It started with the window.

Every evening at 8:12 p.m., the curtain across the street would shift — just slightly, like a breath being held. The kind of movement you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it.

Eli wasn’t looking for it. Not at first.

But once he noticed, he couldn’t unsee it.

Apartment 2B. Blue curtains. No balcony. A single plant silhouetted in the window and, occasionally, the glint of glasses reflecting streetlight.

He never saw her face clearly. Just the figure, half-hidden. Always still. Always watching.

At first, he told himself it was nothing. People look out windows. People watch the street, the birds, the lives they don’t live.

But this wasn’t that. She didn’t just glance — she observed. And she did it with discipline. With intention. Every night.

He started leaving his own blinds cracked, just to confirm.

8:12. Every time.

---

On the sixth night, he waved.

She didn’t move.

---

Eli didn’t think of himself as paranoid. Just… curious. Rational.

He was a systems analyst by day, and the world made sense to him when patterns formed. He liked neatness, consistency. But this wasn’t that. This was something else. Something that made the hair on his arms rise in the quiet hours.

Who just *watches* people every night?

And more unsettling — why him?

---

He didn’t talk about it with friends. Not that he had many. After the breakup with Liana, his world had narrowed — intentionally. Clean lines. Less noise.

But one night, curiosity scraped its way into action. He left his apartment at 8:10, crossed the street, and rang the buzzer for 2B.

No answer.

He waited. Buzzed again. Nothing.

The curtain didn’t move that night.

---

It became obsession.

He started documenting it. A notebook by the window, timestamps, weather, what he was doing when she appeared. Sometimes, he thought she was writing too. Her head would dip occasionally. Maybe she was recording him just as he was recording her.

And if she was — why?

---

Then, one morning, a note appeared under his door.

It was handwritten, neat cursive on lined paper.

> **You look lonely when you think no one’s watching.**

> — 2B

He sat down, the paper trembling in his hand.

He hadn’t told anyone. He hadn't spoken about her. He hadn’t waved again since the first time. But she was still watching.

And now, she was responding.

---

He thought of calling the landlord. Or the police. But what would he say? *A woman across the street is watching me and wrote me a note telling me I look lonely.*

They’d tell him to get out more.

So he wrote back.

> **Why me? Why every night?**

He slipped it under her door while pretending to check his mail. He didn’t wait for an answer.

But the next night, the curtain opened early.

7:45.

A new note followed.

Because you watch too. And neither of us knows how to ask why.**

That night, Eli didn’t write anything down. He didn’t look through the window. He just sat on his floor in the half-dark, feeling like something inside him was being slowly, methodically exposed.

Maybe he had been spying.

Maybe they both were.

Maybe this was less about watching and more about needing to be seen.

---

The last note arrived three days later.

This was never about spying. It was about recognition.

We both needed someone to witness us — even if it was in silence.

Thank you.

Apartment 2B was empty the next morning.

No curtains. No plant. No figure at 8:12.

Just an open window.

And Eli, standing across the street, wondering whether being seen was a gift—or a mirror.

*— end —*