The Love of My Afterlife(79)

Mr. Yoon blows the air out through his cheeks.

“Are you nervous?” I ask. “About meeting new people?”

He shakes his head no and rolls his eyes at the question.

“Me neither,” I lie. He chuckles, seeing right through me.

We’re on the way out the door when Mr. Yoon holds his hand up for me to stop. He spins and lopes back into the house. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about doing this, but instead he grabs his crossword puzzle book from the kitchen table.

“Oh, you won’t need that!” I say. “It’s a party. You can’t do crosswords there.”

He clasps it to his chest and meets me back in the doorway. I try to take the crossword book off him because the last thing we need is Mr. Yoon ignoring everyone in favour of his puzzle book, but he clings to the book with a grip so strong it is very clear that I am not to attempt to take it from him again. I hold my hands up. “Fine! Jeez. We can take your crosswords.” It must be a comfort thing. Emotional support puzzle book. I get it. “But I bet when we get there it’ll be so much fun that you forget all about it.”

In response Mr. Yoon opens the puzzle book a millimetre, gives a quick nod and then pats the book twice as he holds it to his chest.

“Whatever gets you through, I guess.”



* * *





I gasp as Mr. Yoon and I enter the library music room arm in arm. Beside me I hear Mr. Yoon gasp too.

“Whoa.”

It looks beautiful. It was already a beautiful room with the domed ceiling, the tall circular shelves of books, and the instruments. But Aled has strung the shelves with hundreds of tiny warm twinkle lights and laid out a folded white sheet on top of the grand piano, atop which there are five crystal vases filled with yellow roses. I spot Deli Dan at the far end of the room. He’s pushed together two study desks and is laying out foil trays of sandwiches and cake.

“Everyone loves a fairy light, eh?” Aled says, popping out from behind a double bass, carrying some sort of little machine in his hand.

“It looks incredible!” I say. “Thank you so much! Mr. Yoon, this is Aled. He works at the library.”

“Yes. I run this magnificent ship. It’s cracking to meet you.” Aled shakes Mr. Yoon’s hand, beaming at the possibility of a new friend to add to his collection. “Delphie told me you don’t speak.”

“Rude, Aled!”

Mr. Yoon waves me away, grinning. I can tell that he immediately likes Aled’s forthrightness.

“No offense intended,” Aled says. “It’s just that I was curious if you had ever seen one of these.” Aled holds up the little machine and switches it on so it lights up with a keyboard screen. “It’s a VOCA—a voice output communication aid. We have one here at the library for our nonverbal visitors to use. You’d be surprised how many of them didn’t know it existed. Anyway, Delphie told me you were a recluse these days and—”

“Aled!”

Mr. Yoon shakes with silent laughter, the sight of it a balm. He is clearly on board with Aled’s straight talking.

“And,” Aled says, giving me a pointed glance, “I thought you might not have heard of them either. You basically type in what you want to say, and the machine speaks it for you.”

Aled types in, “Hello hello and a jolly good day to all,” and a man’s voice—which sounds an awful lot like Louis Theroux—speaks the words loudly into the room.

“How cool!” I gasp.

Mr. Yoon reaches out for the machine, inspecting it, a stunned grin on his face.

“You can preload it with other phrases too,” Aled says, handing the device to Mr. Yoon and then swiping onto a new screen that has boxes filled with phrases such as Thank you so much, It’s great to meet you, and, curiously, Get away from me!

Mr. Yoon presses the Thank you so much button and nods, impressed when the Louis Theroux voice pipes up again. He swipes straight onto the previous screen and types out, “This is very good.”

“It’s great!” I say, beaming at the excited flush on Mr. Yoon’s face.

Mr. Yoon types again. “My name is Yoon Jung-won.”

My heart lifts. “Yoon Jung-won!” I hold my hand out to shake his. “It’s good to know you, Yoon Jung-won.”

Mr. Yoon gives my hand a firm squeeze.

“The VOCA has so many useful elements,” Aled says excitedly. “Shall I show you? We have a few minutes until the party officially begins.”

Mr. Yoon swipes onto the next screen, already an expert, and presses the YES button.

Aled escorts him to a velvet two-seater on the other side of the room, where they sit down together, both of their faces animated as Aled chatters away and Mr. Yoon replies on the VOCA.

I grin at the pair of them, already feeling quite sure that they will get along very well. A speaking device. How brilliant.

“Firm friends already, I see.”

I turn around to see Cooper looking perfect in a black T-shirt and grey slim-fitting trousers, resembling a curly-haired Gene Kelly. He’s wearing a large backpack, and I’m about to ask what on earth is in it and why he needed to bring it to a party, when his eyes travel down my body and I’m immediately swept back to the other day, when those same eyes blazed onyx while he watched me come. A shiver runs through me. He must see it, because he does that grin that I used to find so cocky and arrogant and that now makes me want to test how quickly I can remove my clothes and his.