My Boyfriend is an Executioner

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.

We run past the house where Beom and I live and continue down the dirt alley. Two cats, one black and one orange, watch us run by as they wait patiently for dinner by the open back gate to our courtyard. Leaves and branches scratch my face. My feet hurt from running over the uneven ground in slippers. Metal needles, spoons, and scalpels jangle in the wooden chest under Beom’s long arm.

The scent of jasmine tea hits first. Jinny’s back gate looks like every other back gate in Namchon, heavy wood set into crumbling stone a little taller than Beom. Locked tight.

I knock three times. The dead girl’s gold hairpin is clenched in my fist. I don’t remember picking it up.

“The kibun of the night is good.” That’s the code phrase for “we’re fucked, let us in and get Jinny immediately.”

Metal scrapes wood. The gate cracks open. Hae-joo slips through first, then Beom, then me. A guard in black hemp glances into the alley and seals us inside. Another man sprints up the gravel path.

Jinny’s courtyard is small and tight. Stone walls, a pine in the corner, the pond a dark mirror. Everything in its place. It’s the kind of order that takes a long time to build and a very short time to lose.

I take a breath.

Beom just killed a royal investigator.

Holy shit.

Holy shit. Holyshitholyshitholyshit.

Deep breath. Exhale. Now do your job, Na-young.

The older kisaeng is breathing too hard, qi jammed high in her chest. I take her elbow. “Sit before you fall.”

She slumps against the wooden gate. I loosen her jacket and waistband, my thumb already hunting the pressure point above her lip. One hard press.

“Ah!” She jerks, swipes at me. “That hurts!”

Her breathing steadies. She sits up, fixes the bun at her nape with quick, practiced fingers, and smoothes the folds of her skirt. The small gesture pulls her dignity back into place.

A lantern approaches. Beom’s warm hand finds my shoulder. He’s so calm and cool. The trouble we’re in leaves my mind. I smile, and he smiles back. I could watch his face all night.

“Will you two stop that and tell me what’s going on?” Jinny Lee stands beside him in a white and black hanbok, although her skirt doesn’t splay out like the older woman’s. Her face is round and framed by waves of long black hair. Her hair is messy and she’s got one white and one blue slipper on. She motions to the heavyset kisaeng with her chin. “Is she all right?”

A pair of animal eyes flash yellow in the dim light. A tiny fox scampers from the stone pond in the middle of the courtyard.

I nod.

“What happened?” Jinny asks.

“I must go,” Beom says, already turning. His hair splashes across his forehead and over his scar, and for a moment I want to brush it away. The scar makes him look tough, and I like the way it feels when someone so tough looks at me tenderly.

“No!” Jinny’s single word freezes him. “Tell me first, then decide.”

I swallow. “Beom killed a royal investigator. In the courtyard of the pine-tree kisaeng house.”

Jinny’s eyes flick to him, then back to me. “Why?”

Beom stares at the ground. He does that when he doesn’t want to say anything. His guilty expression makes me imagine him as a little boy being scolded. He must have been so cute.

“It’s complicated,” I say. “There was another kisaeng there. I didn’t know it but she was already dead. Then the investigator showed up. He wanted to arrest us, but …”

Jinny doesn’t push. She knows how complex the relationship with a kibu can be. Kibu are protectors, yes, but they take part of what a kisaeng makes from her patrons. It’s the closest thing to marriage any kisaeng can know.

“This neighborhood is about to become a madhouse,” she mutters.

“I should go,” Beom says again, but his feet don’t move. Everyone in these alleys knows his face. The scar alone marks him.

Jinny studies him once, calculating. “Jungwoo can take him to Banchon tonight. The Black Silk gang will get him the rest of the way. Investigators still think twice before pushing too hard in the Scholar district.”

She’s right. I hate it, but she’s right. I grip Beom’s hand. It’s warm, and I can feel his heartbeat. “Go. I’ll send word when it’s safe.”

He nods once. Our mouths meet, quick and desperate. His palms press the small of my back. His heartbeat is calm and alive in his chest.

Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. For three heartbeats, there are no investigators, no social classes, and no laws telling kisaeng what they can not do. It’s just me and him, him and me. I thought I’d lost him once. Never again.

Beom, please get somewhere safe. Please let me see you again.

Jungwoo steps forward. One of Jinny’s kibu. Thin and clean, he doesn’t carry a sword hidden in a cane like Beom does. His weapon is a gold tiger crest glinting on his grey cloth scholar’s robe. It answers questions before they’re asked.

The gate opens and swallows them both.

My face is still warm where his cheek pressed against mine. The courtyard sounds fill back in … gravel under feet, a girl’s whisper, water moving in the pond.