Chapter 3. Horse Stable Hireling Sosam
Hireling.
It referred to someone who, unable to keep themselves fed, had no choice but to live off another household and take orders under an employer.
Simply put, a hired hand.
A hireling and an employer were bound by contract, but most contracts were either useless—or became the start of a shackle instead.
That was because the contract wasn't managed by the authorities; it was managed by the employer.
The employer could tear up the contract and write a new one whenever it suited them.
In particular, hirelings who belonged to murim sects were closer to slaves than servants.
Under the principle of "officials and murim do not interfere", the authorities, unless something special happened, showed no interest in the hireling of murim sects.
They knew those people were being exploited, but by then it was no longer considered the authorities' domain.
***
Sosam was the Danri Family's horse stable hireling.
He had originally been the third son of a slashingly poor hillside farmer.
Life wasn't abundant, but those were happy days.
Then one day, when he was five, a typhoon struck—his entire family died, and he alone survived.
After that, without a retainer household, Sosam lived by wandering and begging.
Then, for the single reason that he knocked on the Danri Family's gate to beg, he became the Danri Family's hireling.
And so, for more than ten years, he had done the work of tending the family's horses.
Needless to say, as a servant, he was also saddled with all the nasty work inside the household.
Not only cleaning the estate—sometimes he had to do kitchen grunt work, and at times he even had to clean the toilet.
He was called a horse stable hireling, but the only times Sosam could feel he truly was one were when he took the horses for walks morning and evening, and when he slept.
His bed was the stable.
Living in the stable, his body naturally absorbed the horses' stench—the rank animal smell, the rot of old hay, and the stink of manure.
On top of his low status, that reek made even other lowborn people shun him.
For those reasons, people in the household called him not by his real name, Sosam, but Mabyeonsam.
"Ma" from horse stable hireling, "byeon" because he smelled like horse dung, and "sam" from Sosam's sam.
Twist those three together, and you got Mabyeonsam.
To Sosam—no, to Mabyeonsam—the Danri Family was home, but on the other hand, it was also Fengdu Prison.
***
As usual, Mabyeonsam was enduring another grueling day today.
One of the military hirelings, Machil, had drafted Mabyeonsam for his own personal errands and worked him like a dog—and it was possible because it happened often and nobody paid Mabyeonsam any attention.
Mabyeonsam was at the very bottom, even among the bottom-tier hirelings.
The two of them had come to a weapons shop in Bongyang to receive the made-to-order weapons commissioned for the Danri Family's warriors.
"Machil, you came?"
The shop owner came out and greeted Machil first.
Because the Danri Family was the biggest sect in Bongyang, no matter where you went in Bongyang, they were the top customer at any weapons shop.
Naturally, this shop owner also supplied many weapons to the Danri Family, and he was on familiar terms with Machil, a military hireling of the Danri Family.
"We're here to pick up everything from the spear-and-sword lot we ordered a month ago."
"Ah, you came at just the right time. For a whole month I couldn't even sleep properly—only yesterday did I finally finish them."
The weapons shop owner complained in the way merchants always did, and brought out the finished goods.
There were so many that only after going back and forth to the storeroom several times did he manage to pile all the weapons in front of Machil.
Machil gave them a quick once-over and paid the fee.
Since he wasn't going to use them himself, as long as they looked fine on the outside, he didn't care.
"But only the two of you came? I don't see a cart—will you be alright carrying all this back to the Danri Family? It's quite far."
"What's there to worry about? Look, we've got a splendid horse right here."
Machil curled his lips into a grin and slammed a fist hard into the chest of Mabyeonsam standing beside him.
Thud—.
Mabyeonsam, gaunt and nothing but bone, crumpled helplessly onto the weapons shop floor from Machil's punch.
Even though he'd watched it happen right in front of him, the shop owner merely shook his head and turned away.
No matter what he said, nobody would listen—and it was an internal matter of the Danri Family.
In Bongyang, there was no one who didn't know Mabyeonsam's situation, but no one stepped forward for him.
People like him existed anywhere in the Central Plains.
"Hey, Mabyeonsam. What are you doing? Get up right now and start moving the weapons. Unless you want to die like that."
"......."
Without a single groan, Mabyeonsam got up and shouldered as many weapons as he could carry.
At this rate, he would probably spend the whole day just hauling these into the household.
"I've got business at the Bongyang Inn, so I'll be there. When you're done moving everything, come there. Got it?"
"........"
Mabyeonsam only nodded without answering.
His nutrition was so poor that even speaking was something he tried to conserve, in its own way.
But not answering wasn't a good survival tactic.
Thwack.
Machil punched Mabyeonsam in the face.
Mabyeonsam fell to the floor again.
A faint smear of blood appeared at his mouth—his lip had split.
"Hey, you bastard. Answer me. Answer. You think you can ignore me because we're both Ma surname?"
"N-no, sir ..."
Only then did Mabyeonsam finally speak.
Like his shriveled body, his voice was bone-dry and poor as sand, and as he spoke, blood trickled out of his mouth.
It wasn't just his lip—his tongue and the roof of his mouth had also been torn badly.
Thwack.
Seeing Mabyeonsam bleeding, Machil kicked him in the face again.
This time the impact was worse—Mabyeonsam rolled and rolled until he crashed into the corner of the shop.
Even with barely any strength, he lifted his head with everything he had and stared at Machil.
The whites of his eyes were webbed with burst vessels, and his bloodshot gaze said this:
Why? Why? Why ...?
"Ah, because of that damn bastard, blood splattered all over the weapons. What rotten luck. Useless piece of trash—no matter what you do, you're no help."
Just for that ...?
Mabyeonsam—no, Sosam—was truly miserable.
Living day to day was so hard, and he wanted nothing more than to die.
But even mustering the courage to die wasn't easy.
Every time he tried, fear made him give up.
Each time, he would tell himself: with the courage it takes to die, try living hard one more time...
But before long, he'd want to die again.
After repeating that cycle so many times, even the will to keep living had mostly run out.
Unable to die, and yet unable to live,
Sosam hated himself for being such a coward, neither one thing nor the other.
Feeling along the wall, he barely managed to push himself upright.
Stagger, stagger.
Even while tottering, he approached Machil.
Tap tap—Machil lightly poked Sosam's forehead with a finger.
Then came the sneering tone.
"Move all the weapons, and wipe every last drop of that splattered blood clean. I'll check later—if there's even one drop left, you'd better be ready to cough up a bucket of blood from your mouth for every single drop. Got it?"
"Yes ..."
With that threat, Machil left the weapons shop.
As he'd said, he was heading to the Bongyang Inn.
Sosam knew well why Machil was going there.
Nine times out of ten, he was going to see Aeng-aeng.
Machil would spend the time there fondling Aeng-aeng's soft flesh until Sosam finished hauling all the weapons.
Wipe, wipe.
With a scrap of old cloth the shop owner handed him, Sosam wiped the blood at his mouth.
It was the only help the shop owner could offer.
It was nothing, really—but Sosam's eyes stung with tears.
Inside the Danri Family, there wasn't even anyone who would do this much for him.
He was nothing but the most useless, foul-smelling hireling in the household—worse than a bug.
He handed the bloodstained cloth scrap back to the shop owner and thanked him.
Then, shouldering two spears with great effort, he left the weapons shop.
***
Huff, huff.
Ragged breaths poured out.
Drip, drip.
Hot sweat kept streaming down without pause.
Near evening, Sosam—completely spent—finally finished moving all the weapons.
Seeing him like that, the shop owner said,
"How about you rest a bit? Your face doesn't look good. Like you're...."
The shop owner swallowed the rest—like someone about to die.
He felt that saying something unlucky might make it come true.
"I'm fine ..."
Sosam said that and moved again.
Every bone in his body creaked, and his muscles screamed for him to rest, but he had to keep moving.
Leaving the shop owner's pitiful gaze behind, Sosam stepped out of the weapons shop.
Even while wobbling as if he might die, he trudged, one step at a time, toward the Bongyang Inn.
Maybe because he'd pushed himself too hard, his breathing was turning rough, like it might cut out, and sweat poured down in streams.
If he pushed even a little more in this state, it felt like he might truly die.
Even so, somehow he didn't collapse, and he managed to reach the Bongyang Inn.
"Stop."
"Why... are you stopping me?"
"Why? You fucking idiot—if you were me, would you let something like you in there?"
"........"
The inn's attendant looked Sosam's filthy body up and down, pinched his nose between two fingers, and refused him entry.
He'd always been dirty, but right now Sosam's state was truly beyond words.
The blood he'd spilled from Machil's beating earlier and the sweat from hauling weapons had mixed with grime and sweat-stain runoff until he looked like a complete vagrant.
In the end, he asked the attendant to tell Machil that the job was done, then turned away.
It was obvious Machil would later grill him—why didn't you tell me yourself, why did you make the attendant do it?
But Sosam had no choice.
If he didn't hurry back and rest, it felt like his breath would truly stop.
"...It's hard. I just... want to rest...…"
His heart was running toward the Danri Family stable—shabby, but his own nest—
but his body wouldn't listen.
He was so exhausted he wanted to lie down right on the road.
At this point, it felt like if he collapsed from exhaustion and died, it might even be a relief.
Damn it, damn it.
Yet despite those thoughts, maybe he still wanted to live.
Even more unsteadily than before, his two feet carried him across Bongyang's bustling streets, dyed red by the setting sun, toward the household.
Heh... ha, ha.
A twisted laugh leaked out between his split lips without him meaning to.
Sosam… Sosam… do you want to keep dragging out a bug's life like this, even if it's only like this?
He asked himself again and again.
"Yeah... yes. Even like this...."
I don't want to die.
Let's live. Yeah, let's live.
If you live long enough, someday a good day will come.
"Hey, Mabyeonsam."
He was dying of exhaustion, and someone called him.
Sosam forced open his heavy-lidding eyes to find the owner of the voice.
His vision was blurry, so it wasn't easy to tell who it was, but he still lifted his head fully.
Bump.
He felt himself collide with someone he thought was the owner of the voice.