The Saint Wants to Rest - Chapter 61.1
It was thanks to the Management Bureau that the guilds, who usually fail to cooperate properly, were unified and deployed in such a manner. To be precise, it was thanks to Yoon Tae-gyeom, her cousin.
“Check, please.”
Yoon So-ra left the restaurant, a bitter taste lingering in her mouth. Her stomach was full, but she couldn’t help the hollow feeling inside. Out of habit, she turned on her phone to check the breaking news.
[Stigma Gate, Miraculous Survival Rate.]
‘A miracle, huh…’
People called it a miracle, but those who were at the scene knew better. It wasn’t a miracle; it was the result of someone’s sacrifice.
Yoon So-ra hailed a taxi. Her destination was the VIP ward of Saseong Hospital. As she headed toward the most heavily secured place in South Korea, she swallowed another sigh.
The image of her cousin, Yoon Tae-gyeom, standing in front of the Gate a few days ago flashed through her mind.
“When will the vanguard be ready! Hurry up!”
It was a side of Yoon Tae-gyeom she never could have imagined. He was a man who always calculated optimal efficiency with cold, hard logic. He, who treated emotions as unnecessary noise, had been shouting at the top of his lungs, the veins in his neck bulging.
It was as if he were a man who had left his entire world behind inside that Gate.
‘Is it simply because they are friends? Or because they are important national assets?’
Yoon So-ra shook her head. To say it was merely that, Yoon Tae-gyeom’s gaze had been far too desperate. Those weren’t the eyes of a Management Bureau official. They were the eyes of a perfectly ordinary human being, trembling with the fear of losing something precious.
‘They must have been that important to him.’
Perhaps that was why the hours ahead felt even more bitter.
***
The atmosphere in the hospital room was deeply sunken. Originally, the mood can’t be good when a loved one is hospitalized, but this place was uniquely filled with despair and sorrow.
The rhythmic beeping of the EKG monitor broke the silence, but that was all.
“…I told you to get some sleep.”
Yoon Tae-gyeom clicked his tongue and closed the door to the sickroom. In his hands were two lunch boxes he had bought from the convenience store downstairs. However, the two men in the room did not move an inch.
Choi Jae-heon sat in a chair beside Ian’s bed, clasping his pale younger brother’s hand. His face, covered in several days’ worth of dark stubble as if he hadn’t even bothered to wash, let alone shave, looked half-vacant.
“Jae-heon. You’re going to collapse before Ian even wakes up at this rate.”
“…I’m not sleeping.”
Choi Jae-heon’s voice was as rough as if he had chewed on sand.
“I can’t sleep.”
Choi Jae-heon’s gaze was fixed on Ian’s face, which was breathing faintly with the help of an oxygen mask. The moment Ian had collapsed while vomiting blood that day was tattooed onto his retinas, refusing to be erased.
‘I called him. I’m the one who made him come.’
He had always promised to protect him, but he failed to keep that promise and instead drove Ian into the jaws of death. The wounds on Ian’s body had disappeared, but an indelible guilt remained in Choi Jae-heon’s heart.
It was the same for the man on the other side of the bed.
Vermouth stood like a stone statue, looking down at Ian.
“Mr. Vermouth, please sit down. I know your physical strength is incredible, but you’re making me anxious just watching you.”
Yoon Tae-gyeom spoke cautiously, but Vermouth didn’t seem to hear him. His violet eyes were obsessively fixed on Ian’s closed eyelids.
‘I swore to protect him.’
He had grandly declared that not a single hair would be harmed wherever his sword could reach. But what was the result? To make up for his own incompetence, Ian had whittled away his own life to burn his light. That brilliant wide-area purification was not a salvation for Vermouth, but a painful punishment. A life obtained by sacrificing a lover was nothing short of horrific.
While they were withering away in a hellish guilt in reality, Ian’s consciousness had arrived at a place very far away.
***
It was a pure white space.
A world of infinite whiteness with no up or down. Ian stood dazed in the middle of that strange yet familiar space. It was a place where neither the pain of reality nor heavy guilt existed.
The sensation against the soles of his feet felt like fluffy clouds, or perhaps well-manicured grass.
‘Is this…’
‘Am I dead? Or is this still a dream?’
Ian looked down at his hands. They were clean, without a trace of blood or dust. Instead of the nauseating demonic energy or the scent of blood that had filled his nose until moments ago, a refreshing and holy fragrance, like the dawn air in a forest, seeped deep into his lungs. It resembled the overwhelming divine power he had felt when he first stepped into the Great Temple of Regnasia.
“You have suffered much, my child.”
At the soft voice coming from behind him, Ian slowly turned his body.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
