My Boyfriend Is an Executioner
Copyright© 2026 by HyunnaPark
Chapter 1: The Courtyard
They tell you when you’re a kisaeng, don’t fall in love with your kibu, your protector. But my kibu, Beom, is Just. So. Cool.
“You’re under arr—” the royal investigator says from beneath his wide-brimmed hat.
A sharp, snapping whistle breaks the crisp, pine-scented evening air.
Silence.
A soft, squishy thunk. A red mist hangs in the air just an arm’s length away, not moving, like the investigator’s face.
Beom is so graceful as his sword slides back into its wooden sheath. It makes a metallic hiss that echoes off the stone courtyard walls. He’s so practiced, so controlled. The movement seems almost gentle and snug. Just like when he’s training in our yard.
I should be scared. But I’m not. As long as Beom and I are together, what else is there to worry about, really?
The royal investigator’s head lands on the cobblestone courtyard at his feet, spraying red on his calfskin boots. It bounces once, away from me, and doesn’t move again.
Silence.
This night is only beginning. More like him will come.
Beom just cut the head off an official representative of His Royal Highness, the King of Joseon, a brass royal seal still clutched in the man’s dead hand. Once the investigator recognized Beom, one of them was going to die and Beom was faster.
The heavyset woman kneels over the dead girl. They wear matching pink fluffy hanbok skirts and blue waist-length hanbok jackets. She still hasn’t looked up at the investigator. Her eyes, glassy and dark, are on the dead girl’s face.
The dead investigator’s body crumples and slaps the stone with a fleshy thud. Something wet splashes on my cheek and startles me, and it gets on the dead girl’s hanbok.
The poor girl was dead when we got here, she couldn’t have been more than twenty, and the bright colors of her hanbok say that she was a kisaeng, too. A gold hairpin is caught in her tight black bun, like someone tried to yank it out but couldn’t. She would be very pretty if her neck wasn’t twisted, her leg bent at an impossible angle.
That could have been me if I’d never met Beom and Jinny.
The hanging lantern illuminates half of Beom’s face. A wicked scar runs from his cheek to his eye and casts its own shadow. He squeezes my shoulder. His voice is a low growl, unsettling if you don’t know him, but to me it’s the reassuring sound that draws me back into the moment. “It’s time to go, Na-young.”
Only Beom calls me Na-young.
He’s already got my dark wood medical chest under his arm. Did he pick it up? I don’t remember him doing that. How could a girl not fall in love with a strong man who knows what she needs before she does? I’m lucky I found him first.
Beom gives me a tender look. His brown eyes soften and my shoulders relax. We’re here, together, in this moment. Then he motions with his head to the other woman.
The older kisaeng doesn’t move. Her eyes are locked on the dead, broken body dressed like her. “She was...”
She doesn’t finish the thought, but the look in her face does. She must be devastated. Her hands fidget together. She squeezes the knuckles of one hand, and then switches. How many years did she spend teaching that girl, only to have it end like this?
The world rushes back and I’m not sure how long I’ve been holding my breath. The plucking of stringed instruments from inside the wooden kisaeng house is the only thing I can hear.
“Unni,” I say. It just means “big sister,” and it pulls her out of wherever she is like Beom pulled me out of my head. “We shouldn’t be here when the others find him. We must go, quickly.”
The kisaeng looks at Beom with wild eyes and then back at me.
“Let’s get to Jinny’s.” I grip Beom’s forearm and my fingers get wet with blood. “Jinny will know what to do.”
Keep it together, Na-young. Just until you get to Jinny’s.
The woman’s wrinkled hands are about all that her hanbok leaves bare. With a squeeze of my thumb into her palm, her eyes refocus and her jaw relaxes. She looks up at Beom without fear and then at me, and nods twice.
“I trust you, Soo-yeon,” she says.
Soo-yeon is the name that came with the kisaeng role, and it stuck even after I became a doctor. It’s how everyone in the neighborhood knows me. Besides Beom, of course.
We go out the way we came in, through the back gate and onto the dark, dirt alleyway behind a row of high stone walls. It’s overgrown with thick greenery and branches, and damp with the smell of the first spring. Namsan Mountain stretches upwards, resisting the city’s encroachment.
The heavyset kisaeng has the pink skirt of her hanbok pulled up to her knees. When she runs, her little legs flapping under that giant fluffy cloud of cloth make her look like a startled hen. Her head even flops back and forth. The older kisaeng might not be graceful, but she keeps up just fine.
Beom’s long, powerful legs kick him ahead of us. Even with my medical chest tucked under his arm, he still moves with the grace of a tiger.
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