My Boyfriend Is an Executioner
Copyright© 2026 by HyunnaPark
Chapter 3: Lady Nam
Bukchon is the neighborhood right across the stream. The mountain greenery that threatens to swallow Namchon ends, and once I cross the bridge I’m in another world, one with clean, fresh smelling air. Bukchon is where the wealthy and powerful want to live, because Bukchon is upwind of the stream.
It’s a sea of grand, sweeping, black-tile roofed estates. Their massive wooden pillars, high stone foundations, and imposing wooden gates make Jinny’s compound look like a peasant shack in comparison.
The Nam household is in Bukchon.
I don’t go to their main gate. I go to the servants’ entrance closest to the anchae, the women-only part of the compound. A lone tree branch hangs over the wall, its thick, gnarled wood clearing the stone by a foot.
That’s where Beom will make his entrance if I don’t resolve this.
Two men with long daggers tucked into their belts stop me and tell me to open my bag. They take everything out. Mia’s hairpin. The small wooden box Beom made, the one with my acupuncture needles.
I stay quiet, but the hair on the back of my neck bristles when the heavier one’s fat, piglike fingers touch the box. It’s just a plain wooden thing, not fancy at all, but it was made by his hands and I don’t like them touching it.
The other one finds the hidden pocket and pulls out the bolt of pink silk. It’s about as long as his forearm, ending in gold tassels, and it carries the personal seal of the Queen. They stop and look at each other.
The Palace is upwind of even Bukchon.
One starts putting my things back carefully. The other refolds the silk with both hands and returns it to me with a slight bow.
Neither of them says anything. I don’t either. All of us bowing in embarrassment as we try to figure out how we rank against each other.
A tall girl meets us at the big wooden anchae gate. Black hair loose around her long neck, the girl looks like a swan in a light green and yellow hanbok to me. She bows to the guard and he leaves without a word. No men allowed beyond here.
She waits before the guard is out of earshot before she speaks. “Lady Nam is resting,” she says.
“I’ll wait.”
“She’s been resting since yesterday.”
I look at the girl steadily. “Then I’ll wait here until tomorrow.”
Something shifts in her face. She steps aside and motions me to follow.
The girl, eyes downcast, leads me through a covered outdoor walkway that smells like chrysanthemum. Two women sit outside a sliding door, sewing without speaking. They don’t look up when we enter. Their hands are clean porcelain, so light and delicate despite the crow’s feet around their eyes.
Inside, the walls are made of some of the nicest reddish brown wood that I’ve seen. Beom would get excited by this. “The best house is made from the best materials,” I can almost hear him say it in my mind with his gruff, heavy voice. No, that’s too many words for him. He’d just rub the polished wood with his hands and say “good”, and maybe he wouldn’t even say that. I catch myself smiling.
The girl stops at a door. A scroll hangs across from it, from near the ceiling to the floor. It’s sparse and tattered, and depicts a tall, beautiful woman near the bottom, her arms and legs attached to strings that stretch beyond the top.
The woman on the scroll is looking up, but can’t see who really controls her. A metaphor for all of Joseon, if you ask me.
“She hasn’t eaten yet,” the girl says. Like a warning, or maybe an apology.
She slides the door open and I go in.
Lady Nam is sitting up on her sleeping mat, which tells me she heard us coming and didn’t want to be caught lying down. Her hair is dressed and her hanbok is straight. She’s arranged herself to receive me, but her face is the color of old paper and there are shadows under her eyes that no amount of preparation could hide.
She looks at my bag.
“You’re Jinny Lee’s doctor,” she says. “I was wondering when she’d get the courage to send one of her minions into my home. I’ve been watching her watch us for months.”
The word she uses for “minions” is not polite.
“I’m a doctor,” I say. “Jinny Lee is a mutual friend.”
The corner of her mouth moves. Almost a smile, but not quite.
“Sit down,” she says. “And keep your voice low. There are ears everywhere in this house.”
I sit down near her, my legs folded underneath me on the warm, heated floor. I set my bag down and open it.
“I don’t want those,” she says, nodding at the little blood breaker pellets in my bag. Her eyes are glued to them.
“Let me examine you,” I say with an obsequious low bow. She motions to the floor next to her.
I kneel beside her and take her wrist. It’s warm. Her pulse is fast and shallow, like smooth pearls sliding under my fingertips. Lady Nam is quiet for a moment. I press two fingers below her elbow and she winces slightly. Her qi is knotted in her chest, sitting on top of her lungs. She’s either pregnant or scared.
Why is she afraid?
“I have a message for you from Jinny,” I say in a whisper.
She leans in. Her skin is flawless. No sign of her age except for three little folded wrinkles on the corners of each eye.
“The street saw your son in the neighborhood before the investigator was killed. With the kisaeng who died. If the investigators continue to torture the people who live there, your son’s name will come out,” I say.
She sits back.
I wait, unsure of what happens next.
“Is that all?” she asks.
“I ... we ... thought you might want to stop your husband’s —”
“Is. That. All?” she asks.
My mind blanks. What kind of woman doesn’t want to protect her son? What kind of noble woman isn’t thinking about her son’s status every day?
“I think,” Lady Nam says. “Jinny sent you from across that disgusting stream to threaten me. Like a common street thug. I’d heard better of her.”
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