Psycho in Ancient World
Copyright© 2026 by K.W
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.
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