Six objects were drawn on the contract's first page.
Only the number five remained in the completion field on the last. Darae did not erase it. Beside it she made a space for the work's scope. Knowing one object was missing differed from knowing the other five had actually moved.
Two days after the first rescue, she was briefly back at her own bench in Raon's lost-and-found office. Light crossed the rail beyond the window. The intake chime sounded three times.
Someone had come for a sock.
“The left one's waited a long time,” he said.
Darae obtained receipt confirmation and handed over its partner. He checked the label and put it in a small pouch. One signature matched one physical object: an ordinary return. That little task let her begin the day again.
Across the bench, 7-B remained isolated. Its initial thirty-six-hour decision deadline had passed; emergency preservation continued. She checked the seal and custody handover. Preservation of sound support equipment in unoccupied S-6 was still separate from ownership proceedings for this faulty item.
DEADLINE PASSED did not mean automatic disposal. Jingyeong and the Safety Office's preservation approval identified the present custodian and next review desk. Darae did not restart the date to hide the deadline. She checked its passage, the reason for preservation, and the hearing's evidence reference together.
“Recording that we didn't throw it away takes as long as recording receipt,” the duty clerk said.
“We need an answer when somebody asks why it's here.”
She handed over seal photographs and cleared the bench.
Catalog displayed a routine status check. The sorting software could report completed returns. It could not discover a rescue or a contract's falsehoods itself. Darae finished her assigned checks and went to her inspection appointment at the registration office.
Jingyeong and another official had prepared relevant portions of the contract scope and performance material Interconnection Transport submitted after the hearing. Original custodians retained originals; revisions stayed separately. Darae's access covered the portions linked to property handover routes.
Bae Giwan joined by communications. Field staff names and unrelated contract information were obscured. Less redaction did not necessarily make better evidence. With the redacted fields and original custodian identified, Darae could still ask what mattered.
“Does recovery in this contract mean acquiring ownership, or towing the modules to Raon?”
Giwan opened a schedule instead of the first page.
“There are stages. Site inspection, classification of items for receipt, separation and towing, handover at the designated location. They don't all happen the same day.”
“Which stage does the completion sheet mean?”
“Parts are ambiguous if you read only the final sheet. You need the stage records.”
She did not reduce the answer to evasion. The contract did contain stages. Calling a completion mark ambiguous did not correct it automatically.
The first schedule covered external inspection and receipt preparation for five main modules. S-6 appeared under separate separation support and towing review. The original six and final five were linked through removal of that optional item.
Yet current independent observations showed all five main modules and detached S-6 in orbit. Darae set the images beside the contract instead of covering it. Possible completed ownership transfer and claimed completed towing required separate verification.
“The record's ‘five modules handed over’ became actual movement completed,” the inspection official said. “Let's establish what was done.”
Flight material was not immediately clear. The work vessel's relevant voyage included approach, holding relative motion, and external inspection. No description of assembling and towing the modules appeared in the provided bundle. Darae did not write that absence proved no towing. She requested other voyages or attachments.
First, she examined smaller items with actual handover records: toolboxes, removed fastening components, some household goods. Items measured on different bases or with different packaging allowances were not added into one mass. Among them was the receipt route leading to L-204.
She found her own name.
It was the line she had corrected to household goods. Somebody's moving belongings; no record of receiving entire modules. An item she had properly returned was attached as evidence of a much larger completion.
“I verified these physical items and their recipients. I didn't confirm recovery of the whole building.”
Jingyeong studied where the reference had been attached. The other official answered. Property return and asset-recovery inspection used the same intake number. They would examine how the link was made.
Darae gripped her pen. Her name seemed to have traveled into a responsibility that was not hers. Then she remembered the document she had not read to the end. She need not accept having performed a check she never made. She did need to examine whether she had stated the limits of her actual check clearly enough.
“I'll supply the handover screen and submission history from then. Including the extent of my note.”
Giwan sent records of a change to the field operation. The instruction said to hold separation and towing and submit the current-state receipt list first. Paper receipt had been prioritized without completing the planned movement. Identifying who later made the final completion sheet required more dispatch history.
“Then they knew they hadn't moved it?” Darae asked.
She heard how broad the question was. Whose knowledge, of what? Before Giwan answered, she corrected herself.
“Field staff receiving this message would know towing was on hold. We need to check whether that status reached the final inspector.”
“I've requested that material.”
Answering only the corrected question did not prove concealment. She retained her original question too. As suspicion grew, the subjects of her sentences kept expanding to include everybody.
Haeseong and one resident joined the limited inspection briefing. Individual summaries would go to others who did not want long-term return. A representative reading a contract could not become consent from the other twenty-two.
Haeseong pointed to a growing mat on the household list.
“We took that to the main habitat. Receiving it at Raon didn't mean we lived at Raon.”
“Yes. Return location and final home are different.”
“They told us to write ‘new workplace.’ Calling it housing would make the process longer.”
Darae asked who had said it directly and when. Haeseong could not remember the staff member's name precisely. He might still have the guidance note, but it was in his personal document compartment in the main habitat. Nobody told him to fetch it now. The recollection remained unverified, its possible location linked to preserved property.
The other resident did not remember hearing that explanation. Haeseong did not insist on a memory. Darae wrote the two answers separately. Living in the same facility did not require everybody to have heard the same instructions.
The official summarized verified performance so far. The relevant voyage's approach and external inspection, removal of some items, and L-204 receipt were connected by records. Evidence for physical towing and final delivery of the entire facility, including S-6, remained insufficient. Present observations supported the facilities remaining in orbit outside Raon.
The separate record of finding a 6.2-tonne discrepancy in the measurements from three months ago remained on file. Comparing ledger and towing-vessel measurements on the same basis had produced the missing-S-6 hypothesis. Darae did not combine today's small-cargo lists to force that number to reappear. Which contract and stage each figure belonged to still needed checking.
She looked at the space between the records. A number useful in discovering an omission could not answer every question today. Observation, handover, and contract performance needed to stand separately until each pointed the same way.
“Please distinguish verifying performance from deciding we billed improperly,” Giwan said. “We haven't submitted all the settlement material yet.”
“We do. Today concerns scope and verified performance,” the official answered.
Darae added COST ASSESSMENT NOT REVIEWED to her summary. Even if evidence eventually established no towing, what costs had been charged under which headings would require separate review. Accepting the boundary did not require withdrawing the question.
Seo's afternoon report arrived on the unoccupied facilities. Support equipment remained preserved in S-6's designated states. Resident return to the main habitat was still unapproved. After emergency rescue, the Safety Office continued tracking and collision-prevention observation. Darae read the reply so contract inspection would not make her forget the actual objects.
She checked the duty handover at the lost-and-found office. Another clerk was handling ordinary returns normally. Today it was a relief that the place could function without her alone. She arranged when to resume new intakes and closed the communicator.
Before inspection ended, the official made a three-column table: commissioned scope, currently evidenced performance, further material required. The fields Darae had first left blank began filling with different words beside the six-object diagram.
The line FINAL RECOVERY COMPLETE changed to PROVISIONAL VERIFICATION. The correction did not erase the historical record. It linked the old completion sheet to the reason for change and requested original attachments supporting full completion. Final ownership, company intent, and cost liability remained undecided.
Haeseong wrote today's explanation behind his receipt sheet in smaller letters than before. Darae nearly offered bigger writing, then saw him reading it himself and waited.
“A finished contract didn't mean our lives there were finished.”
She agreed. Too many documents had traveled around to establish something so obvious. At least they now had somewhere to ask which document had made those lives disappear.
After everyone left, Jingyeong reopened the final sheet. Beneath the field requiring more external-work evidence stood REGISTRATION REVIEW COMPLETE.
Reviewer: Oh Jingyeong.
Darae did not read the name aloud. The registrar spoke first.
“I'll submit separately what I looked at when I approved it.”
The personal archive index opened: a folder of remote reports and review notes, not on-site measurement photographs.
In the third column, Darae wrote the next evidence needed.
What the person who wrote COMPLETE had actually seen that day.