The Glass Veranda

CHAPTER 5 : DIGITAL TRACING

Darkness pressed heavily against the walls of the small hotel room on the outskirts of London, the place where Nisa chose to wait before her night flight. The air felt dense, almost unbreathable, as if oxygen itself had been replaced by something bitter and corrosive. Hatred had weight. It settled in her lungs and refused to dissolve.

The only light in the room came from the laptop resting on her lap. Its blue glow carved sharp angles across her pale face. The brightness stung her eyes, yet she refused to blink. She had the irrational conviction that if she looked away for even a second, the fragile structure of truth she was assembling would collapse into smoke.

After Thomsen left with his carefully polished lies, she did not go straight to the airport. That would have been too impulsive, too reactive. No. She needed to dissect her enemy first. She needed to understand the woman who had transformed her husband into a secret painter, a man who suddenly guarded sketches like contraband.

Her fingers moved across the trackpad with unnatural speed. She began with the name written beneath the sketch.

Min hee.

In the art world, anonymity was an illusion. If you knew where to look, every artist left a trail. Nisa accessed international curatorial databases, scanning through records of collective exhibitions. She moved next to independent artist forums based in Seoul, filtering by region, medium, and emerging profiles. Her breathing grew shallow as the digital web tightened.

Then she found it.

A personal social media account. Public. Unlocked. An open window into a life Thomsen had concealed from her.

The laptop screen filled with photographs that made her breath stall in her throat.

Min hee.

The woman was younger than Nisa had imagined. In the images, she did not resemble a polished gallery model or a socialite obsessed with image. Her hair was cut short and uneven, as though she had hacked it off herself during a midnight frustration. She wore oversized T shirts stained with cobalt and cadmium red oil paint. Sometimes there were streaks of color on her cheek, her forehead, even the bridge of her nose. She looked like a living extension of her own canvas.

She looked real.

Unfiltered. Disordered.

And that honesty pierced Nisa more sharply than any beauty could have.

For a moment, the screen dimmed as the page refreshed. In the black reflection, Nisa saw herself hovering over Min hee’s life. Her own hair had not shifted a millimeter out of place. Her nails were coated in a flawless nude polish. Even now, in a hotel room alone, she wore tailored trousers that cost more than a struggling artist’s yearly rent in Mapo. She was control incarnate. Structure. Precision.

Min hee, in contrast, was chaos. But it was an authentic chaos, not curated.

Nisa scrolled deeper.

The photographs began to form a narrative that tightened around her ribs. A wooden table cluttered with beer cans and empty ramyun bowls. A short caption in Korean that her browser translated automatically: Waiting for you among these colors.

Her jaw stiffened.

Another photo. Two shadows cast against a studio wall. One of them unmistakably male. The line of the shoulders. The familiar tilt of the head. The man held a wine glass. Even as a silhouette, she knew him.

Heat surged through her chest, sudden and violent. For an instant she wanted to slam the laptop shut, to smash the screen until it fractured into glittering shards. She wanted to erase Min hee’s wide smile in the next image, the one where her slightly uneven teeth showed without self consciousness. That smile radiated something Nisa had not felt in seven years.

Joy without calculation.

She wanted to crush the phone that had captured those moments. To burn down the studio where they had met. To dismantle every inch of a reality that existed without her.

But her hand did not strike.

Instead, it lifted slowly.

Her fingertips extended toward the screen, hovering for a heartbeat before making contact. She touched Min hee’s face through the cold glass, tracing the digital curve of her cheek. The gesture was gentle. Almost reverent. Yet her eyes had gone glacial.

“So this is what he’s been looking for,” Nisa whispered into the thick silence. “Someone who doesn’t need fixing. Someone who lets him be flawed.”

The realization cut deeper than the physical betrayal.

Thomsen had not only been unfaithful to his wife. He had been unfaithful to their entire lifestyle. He had escaped the porcelain plates and rigid conversations of Mayfair for a paint splattered studio floor and reckless laughter. Min hee was not merely an affair. She was an exit. An escape route from the golden cage Nisa had maintained with immaculate devotion.

Nisa kept scrolling.

There was something magnetic in the way Min hee held a brush. The grip was firm but unpretentious. Her strokes on canvas looked impulsive, almost violent, yet undeniably alive. That raw passion could not be purchased with family connections or gallery influence.

A strange mixture churned inside Nisa. Hatred, yes. Jealousy, undeniably. But also a morbid curiosity. What did it feel like to be Min hee? What did Thomsen say to her in that studio filled with the scent of thinner and sweat? Did he laugh differently there? Did his shoulders relax?

Hours slipped past without measure. The hotel room remained dark except for the laptop glow. Her eyes watered from strain, but her mind refused to slow. She documented everything. The cafe Min hee frequented in Yeonnam dong. The art supply store in Hongdae. Most crucial of all, the studio address in Mapo gu, located in an old building with large glass windows.

When the alarm on her phone chimed softly, signaling that her taxi to Heathrow Airport would arrive soon, she closed the laptop with deliberate calm.

The click of it shutting felt final.

She stood and adjusted her coat, then faced the mirror for one last look.

“You’re too polished, Nisa,” she murmured to her reflection. Her lips curved faintly, though her eyes did not soften. “Let’s see how long you survive in that chaos.”

She lifted her suitcase and left the room.

During the ride to the airport, the city lights blurred into streaks against the window. Her fingertip still tingled from where it had touched the screen. That touch felt like a vow. She would not arrive as a passive observer. She would arrive as a storm, ready to wash every color out of Min hee’s life until nothing remained but a sterile, blinding white.

At the departure terminal, she moved through passport control with unsettling composure. In the executive lounge, she sat with her back straight, sipping warm green tea. The steam rose gently, fogging her vision for a moment before dissipating.

She retrieved a new backup phone.

With steady fingers, she created a new social media profile.

Sarah.

No face. Only curated images of minimalist architecture, silk textures, ambiguous abstract art. A digital persona crafted to intrigue an artist hungry for recognition and mystery.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

Then she sent a friend request to Min hee.

Her heart began to pound, not erratically, but with deliberate intensity. This was the first step toward the edge of a cliff. She was feeding herself into her husband’s hidden world.

Minutes passed.

Then her phone vibrated.

Min hee had accepted the request.

A message followed almost immediately.

Your photos are beautiful. The textures feel so real. Are you a collector?

Nisa stared at the screen, and a thin smile curved across her lips. The bait had been taken. Faster than she anticipated.

She began typing, her English casual yet subtly refined.

I am just a wanderer searching for something honest in art. I will be in Seoul next week. Perhaps we can share a perspective or two.

The boarding announcement echoed through the lounge, a polite voice calling passengers to line up.

She rose, collecting her handbag, and walked toward the gate. Her pulse thrummed beneath her skin. It felt less like fear and more like awakening. She was on a mission to reclaim what was hers. Or, if reclamation proved impossible, to destroy it so completely that no one else could possess it.

Just before switching off her phone for takeoff, another message from Min hee appeared.

Funny. My lover says the same thing about searching for honesty in art. He just landed here today. Seoul will feel very crowded next week.

The word lover burned on the screen.

Nisa’s smile froze, then dissolved entirely. The impact was physical, like a slap delivered in public. Heat rose up her neck.

She powered off the phone with abrupt force and leaned back into the aircraft seat. As the plane began to taxi, London’s lights shimmered outside the window, growing smaller with every second.

She would not merely find Min hee.

She would step directly into the heart of the betrayal.

And when she arrived, she would not hesitate, even if her hands had to be stained with paint, with blood, or with tears.

Seoul lay thousands of miles ahead, but the war had already begun at thirty thousand feet above the earth.

Nisa closed her eyes and summoned Min hee’s face once more. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she made herself a promise.

That smile would not survive for long after Sarah set foot on Korean soil.