The Saint Wants to Rest - vanish into fiction

As Ian let out a short scream and squeezed his eyes shut, the four men lunged forward simultaneously with beast-like reflexes. Vermouth’s solid arm reached him first. Choi Jae-heon quickly supported Ian’s shoulder, while Yoon Tae-gyeom grabbed the IV stand and Hong Seo-yun caught his hand.

“Ian, are you okay? Why did you get up so suddenly? The doctor said ‘absolute rest’!”

Choi Jae-heon, his previous cold aura vanished and replaced by a pale face, looked Ian over. Vermouth simply scooped Ian up and laid him back down on the bed.

Ian pulled out the weapon that would end this situation: his “frailty.”

“Ah, my head hurts. It’s so noisy that my head is spinning…”

At those words, a sudden silence enveloped the room. Ian, with only his eyes peeking out from over the blanket, spoke heavily. Since things had turned out like this, he decided to push for what he had wanted to do for a long time.

“I… want to leave this crowded place and rest for a bit.”

“Where? If there is a place you want, I will look into it for you.”

Choi Jae-heon said this and tried to take Ian’s hand, but Ian quietly pulled it back.

“I want to be alone, in a place where no one else is. For five years in Lancia, I was never alone for even a single moment. I thought things would be different when I came to Earth, but from the moment the Gate burst to now, lying in this hospital bed, I feel like I’m constantly being watched.”

Ian’s voice was low, but it held a deep sense of fatigue.

“I really need some time to myself where no one follows me. Without Hyung, without Vermouth, and without anyone else. I just want to exist as myself for a while. If you don’t listen to my stubbornness this time and follow me secretly… I really won’t look at your faces until the day I die.”

It wasn’t a simple tantrum. It was a desperate plea from a young man who had carried the lives of tens of thousands on his shoulders under the name of a Saint. At this extreme ultimatum, Choi Jae-heon’s shoulders trembled, and Vermouth bit his lip.

Ian took advantage of the momentum and made a solemn declaration.

“Hyung. Issue an official statement in the name of Stigma. Healer Choi Ian exhausted his power in this Gate and is currently in critical condition, requiring ‘absolute rest.’ Absolutely no visitors from the outside. So, whether it’s a dating rumor or whatever, say we won’t be taking questions for the time being. Put it out like that.”

“I understand. I’ll contact the guild’s PR team right away and have them release the article, so just calm down, Ian.”

Ultimately, unable to break Ian’s desperate stubbornness, they spent several days searching and rented out an entire private pension complex deep in the mountains of Gangwon Province. On the surface, they were pretending to respect Ian’s wishes and letting him have a ‘solo vacation.’

The dawn air in Gangwon Province was cold but refreshing. Ian stood in the pension’s yard and took a deep breath. It wasn’t the Seoul air mixed with exhaust fumes or a battlefield tainted with demonic energy; it was the air of a real forest.

“Ah, this is truly great.”

Ian stretched and looked back. The main building of the pension was a space exclusively for Ian.

‘…Hyung and Vermouth didn’t really come, right?’

Ian cast a suspicious glance at the neighboring ‘Pine Wind Wing’ and the distant ‘Moonlight Wing.’ Choi Jae-heon had definitely said he would stay in Seoul, albeit reluctantly, and Vermouth had also sworn not to even cast a shadow near him.

However, Ian did not know. He did not know that the entire pension complex had been leased long-term by the Stigma Guild. Nor did he know that Choi Jae-heon and Vermouth were currently ‘undercover’ in the nearest building to the main house where Ian was staying. Originally, the two had intended to use different wings, but because they didn’t trust each other, they ended up in the same place.

Inside the Pine Wind Wing, Choi Jae-heon was fretting while holding a pair of binoculars between the curtains.

“…Ian came out to the yard. The air is cold, so why is he only wearing a thin cardigan?”

“Calm down. It will be a disaster if we are caught.”

Vermouth replied coldly from a corner of the room. He didn’t use binoculars as noisily as Choi Jae-heon, but with the unique senses of a knight, he was monitoring every single beat of Ian’s heart.

Knowing nothing, Ian finally sat at the living room table and pulled out an old notebook. Then, he wrote a title.

[ Choi Ian’s ‘Easy Life’ Bucket List ]

-Try every single type of cup of ramen sold at the convenience store.

-Lie down all day long with no purpose at all.

-Go to a comic book cafe, order black bean noodles, and stay up all night.

-Go to a shopping mall, pick out my own clothes, and walk around.

-Get everyone together, including the older brothers, and have a strong drink.

Ian chuckled to himself as he wrote down each item. Others might ask if this was really all he wanted, but for a Saint who had lived on the front lines of a battlefield, there was no greater luxury than this.