‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk.

My older brother, Adam, met a girl online a few years ago. With his bad record of
failed relationships, you wouldn’t think that this relationship would be particularly
successful, but surprisingly, this girl that Adam met online hit it off with him. My parents
weren’t very fond of her at first, as there was a severe lack of background information on
her, and she always came up with excuses as to why we couldn’t meet her side of the
family. However, this girl, Emma, ended up being a lovely person. Despite all the ambiguity
surrounding her, she became a pillar in Adam’s life, always playing a major supporting role
in all the important moments of his life. After three long years of being together, Adam
finally had the guts to ask a very important question.

It was a sunny morning, and Adam had already told my parents and I about his plan.
My parents were still wary, but these three years had proven to them that Emma was a
good person that could be trusted. So, later that day, Adam drove Emma to the café that
they met on their first date. He had planned to finally propose to her, as he had recently
finished university and had gotten a stable job, so he figured that this would be the right
time to start a family with Emma. My parents and I had expected him to come home, hand
in hand with Emma and the room would be filled with tears of happiness. However, that
day, Adam came home alone, his face grief-stricken. Emma was nowhere to be seen.
Without saying anything, Adam went up to his room, leaving the rest of us in shocked
silence. In the evening over dinner, we found out that Emma had rejected his marriage
proposal without further explanation and immediately left the café, leaving my brother all
alone.

For the rest of the year, my brother was absolutely miserable. He lost his job
because he fell into a bout of depression and couldn’t bring himself to go to work. Every
day, he would just wallow in a pool of sorrow, blaming himself for not being a good enough
partner for Emma. He constantly felt that he was being too forward with her, and that his
sudden proposal had scared her away. He refused to eat and often stayed in his locked
room for days at a time. My parents and I couldn’t blame him though, we all knew how
much Emma meant to him and even we were shocked that they didn’t get their happily ever
after. After all that happened between them, we couldn’t even begin to speculate as to why
she had rejected his proposal so coldly. However, as much as we didn’t like to admit it, we
knew that there had always been something fishy about her due to her lack of background
information. She had always been very vague in regards to where she studied, where she
grew up or even about her family.

My brother’s reclusive behaviour had continued on for the rest of the year, until one
day, something on television had shocked him and brought him back to his senses.
Somewhere in October of that year, my father had finally convinced Adam to leave his room
and get some fresh air. As they were leaving the house, my mother could be heard
screaming from the living room, pleading them to look at what was on television. We were
all left aghast at what we saw. A familiar face was plastered on the screen on the breaking
news panel, a face that we hadn’t seen in months. We didn’t need to say a word to each
other, but rather, we kept our eyes glued to the screen. The girl we knew as Emma, was
actually a spy for the Chinese Communist Party of China. Apparently, she had been on the
run underground for quite some time, along with a few of her fellow spies. Police were
speculating if she had caused any casualties or stolen any private information, and were
looking for people who had information on her. This was a turning point for my brother,
whose eyes suddenly became a little brighter than they had been in the last months.

It has been half a year since we last saw Emma’s face on national television. Adam
has been in a much better place now as he knows it was never his fault that Emma left him.
He came to realise that she had only left him because he wanted to keep him uninvolved
with any dangerous spy or criminal organisations. He managed to find a new job since then,
and although he still misses Emma sometimes, he has grown from that experience and now
ensures that he does background checks on all his new dates.