The name label was smaller than the receipt.
Haeseong unfolded the paper inside a transparent pouch so the little piece would not detach. The larger sheet recorded receipt of L-204’s household goods. The scrap laid over it carried a name and transport instructions in another hand. Darae had not written that address.
“Who attached it?”
“The person who carried this. They said to send the next parcel to their receiving box.”
Four days after the first rescue, they sat in Raon’s temporary consultation area. The rotating habitation ring supplied enough weight to keep paper on the table. Even so, Haeseong held down one corner with his palm: an old habit of hands that had lived in microgravity.
Darae did not take the paper. He had agreed to show only the relevant portion of a personal receipt from his belongings. This was a record of everyday life after receiving his things, not an original recovery contract.
The named person was not a Sai resident. An adult transporting components at Raon had accepted personal parcels and forwarded them on a later service. People without registered residential addresses had borrowed one another’s receiving boxes.
“Did this person know all twenty-three residents?”
“I doubt it. Only the people who asked.”
Darae changed the heading COMPLETE POSTAL NETWORK. Today they could verify one indirect receipt and its subsequent handover. Addressless people had connections; no single person guaranteed everybody’s story.
Haeseong put a new intake notice beside it. Even today, it said REPRESENTATIVE RECEIPT. Apparently somebody had copied an old form when booking consultations. He did not want to change his name. He wanted to stop all the residents’ messages being treated as his to receive.
Darae called the consultation clerk and compared actual requests. Some had authorized Haeseong to relay messages; others wanted direct replies. The clerk removed COMMON REPRESENTATIVE and divided the notices individually. The first, mistaken printout was marked out of use and linked to its replacement.
“I came for a new label and had to correct the old one first.”
Only after pocketing the notice did Haeseong reopen his receipt. While investigating yesterday’s detours, they had nearly directed today’s messages through one representative again. The past and the present contact desk occupied the same table. Neither could wait for the other to be settled.
The items were growing mats and bundled dishes. Some he had taken directly from L-204 to Sai. Small accessories had traveled separately later. The intake number remained on packaging, so they used it when asking about subsequent goods.
“My original label stayed attached.”
“We meant to replace it when we got a new address.”
He looked at the worn scrap. Three months had passed waiting for that address. Darae could not have read that time from her office’s single completed line.
Could she contact the old box’s owner? Haeseong would first pass along the institutional contact desk, then connect them if the person wished. A name in his phone did not mean he would immediately give away the number.
While they waited, Maru arrived with a guardian to collect a personal-property inquiry label. The seed pouch stayed closed. The shoelaces were uneven.
“Things keep catching my feet here.”
Darae pointed out a chair without grabbing somebody else’s shoe. While the guardian tied the laces, Maru showed a paper locating growing mats in the main habitat. Its mark meant the desired item had been registered for inquiry, not that entry was authorized.
“When I attach the new label, can I throw away the old number?”
“Keep it beside the new one. We may need it to check the earlier route.”
Maru placed two sheets together: old intake number, individual inquiry code. Watching the hands pause before overlapping them, Darae linked her own screen so the new address did not cover the past.
Maru and the guardian left for another consultation. Nobody asked the apprentice to retrieve every old communications record. Rest and rebuilding a daily life were not another communications assignment.
After lunch, the box’s owner replied. The component carrier consented to a call through the designated institutional desk. Darae prepared questions about property handover, leaving module ownership and the residents’ long-term housing wishes outside his responsibility.
He had forwarded small mat components and dish restraints. They had not been smuggled aboard: the cargo had been accepted under permitted personal-property procedures. His Raon receiving box appeared as origin; the next handover point was the construction-remnant maintenance area.
“Were you told it was housing?”
“I knew people stayed there. I didn’t know whether residential approval had been granted.”
Sending parcels proved no residence permit. It could nevertheless establish an actual route to the facility after the records called recovery complete.
He would provide intake and handover portions for those two cargoes, with other customers’ names obscured. The Raon box appeared in the first stage; an approved cargo field on a separate transport service continued the second. Final receipt fell on the date of Haeseong’s sheet.
Darae checked the service number against her office’s records. The physical L-204 return had happened earlier. Later carriage concerned additional accessories, not another receipt of the entire original load. Separating dates and item names turned what resembled three movements of identical cargo into two different kinds of work.
“My number described something received before. It wasn’t an address.”
Haeseong nodded slowly.
“But when new things didn’t arrive, we asked using it. We were afraid explaining the whole location would mean they wouldn’t accept them.”
He stopped. Darae did not ask why they had not registered immediately. Registration responsibilities and the risks of his detour needed examination, but first this paper could show who received what, and when.
It offered a clue to L-204 on 7-B’s manual card. Haeseong agreed. This differed from the initial mistake of treating a bulk cargo recipient as every resident’s contact. They had held on to an old item number as the last desk a person remembered.
“We thought the lost-property clerk would at least open it before throwing it away.”
Darae could not receive that as praise. What if the approved status-check request had been absent, or somebody else on duty? A route that depended on reaching her particular kindness was not a good postal system.
She showed Haeseong the temporary contact instructions again. Residents could inquire directly under their own codes. Personal-property questions and support consultations went to separate staff. She did not propose turning this old detour into a continuing public postal address.
The carrier asked, “Should I refuse their parcels now?”
“You can direct them to the new desk rather than refusing everything. Set the limits of what you can forward. Personal items aren’t opened without the recipient’s consent.”
Darae connected him to the responsible staff so she did not decide support arrangements beyond her logistics role. An old favor created no indefinite obligation. After hearing this, he listed messages he could no longer manage.
For the first time, somebody who lent out an address had work they could finish too.
Back at the office that afternoon, Darae checked physical labels. A returned tool pouch bore its new recipient’s name. The previous owner’s label had been retained inside the record envelope, with a new one outside. When the person an object should reach changed, verification changed with it.
“Nothing but labels today?” the duty clerk asked, smiling.
“I’ve learned how far they travel.”
She looped her pen around her wrist. Would a label bring that home too? She had no intention of assigning three carriers to retrieve a pen. Shortening its loop cost less.
She submitted only relevant material to registration: the accessories’ actual route to the facility after contract completion, and the explanation that L-204 had been reused for household-goods inquiries and indirect contact. They had found neither the original recovery receipt nor final settlement material. Those limits accompanied the submission.
Jingyeong acknowledged it in her own name. A separate reviewer would still handle today’s assessment. Yesterday’s submission of review notes had not become a public hearing’s conclusion.
Haeseong called again. Some residents had borrowed his name to receive old belongings; others had used separate boxes. Darae did not demand every route in one immediate table. They could connect people who wished to locate relevant items, with consent first.
“With only my name, it looks as if I received everything.”
“Separate what you physically received from messages you only passed along.”
He wrote RELAYED CONTACT ONLY beside his receipt. She treated it as today’s supplementary explanation, not an original-date entry. The words remained beside the old receipt without pretending to have been written when those goods traveled. They explained his role more accurately while preserving what the earlier paper had actually said. More precise historical dates could be compared with transport records.
Near the call’s end, three familiar signals announced a delivery robot waiting with a small envelope. Darae read the outer label first: personal lost property for Sai’s temporary contact desk, transferred from an old Raon storage compartment.
PHOTOGRAPHS, said the envelope. Its description resembled an inquiry from an adult recently returned aboard the rescue vessel, who had carried a small photograph envelope during the hurried departure and left a frame at S-6.
Darae did not assume they were identical. This newly received envelope might contain another bundle lost on a much earlier visit to Raon. She checked its seal and asked the person.
The reply surprised her. They seemed to be his photographs, but he did not think he should receive them alone. Please do not contact one of the other people pictured, he added.
She opened the RETURN COMPLETE field, then closed it. The right name label did not yet decide the right way to give something back.