The drawing of the home had no floor.
Haeseong laid out the five modules and turned the paper. Windows and passages stayed in every orientation. No rotating habitation ring appeared beneath anybody’s feet. Darae studied the arrow at the top: a direction chosen because people were easier to draw that way.
Eleven days after the first rescue, Raon’s living-support office held a group explanation. Seo, housing-facilities staff and medical and living-environment staff each covered their own field. Residents were there for the general guidance within whatever scope they chose to attend. Any questions about an individual’s health could go to a separate consultation, rather than into the group discussion.
Beside a guardian, Maru slid both feet beneath the chair, then drew them out again. Yesterday’s slow walk was not an invitation to evaluate that body before everybody today. Darae left MY LEGS DO THE WORK off her question sheet.
“I wanted to ask whether securing the filter lets us go back and live there,” Haeseong said.
Seo summarized yesterday’s stock inspection. A second sound-cartridge candidate awaited further verification in Raon’s workshop. S-6’s main cartridge and two temporary canisters remained where they were. Securing one more had not settled continuing supply, heat rejection or power restoration.
Housing staff marked the main habitat’s unchecked items: pressure, ventilation, power, radiators and separation interfaces. Even resolving every one would leave a facility that did not rotate.
“Couldn’t we spin the modules?” a resident asked.
Darae had first imagined that too. Send the five around like Raon’s ring and perhaps a floor would appear.
The staff member turned the layout over to show attachments and passages. This facility was not designed and verified as a rotating structure supporting people. Making something turn differed from making it safe to live in. Propulsion, attitude control and structural loads needed fresh examination; those tasks could not simply enter today’s restoration scope.
Haeseong kept the arrow. Beside it he wrote REFERENCE DIRECTION, a small correction preventing something without a floor from being read as though it had one.
The medical staff member explained long-term microgravity’s bodily demands. Muscles, bones and the sense of supporting one’s body all required provision. Which activities suited which person needed individual assessment. THEY’VE LIVED THERE FOR YEARS, THEY’RE USED TO IT could not settle everybody’s case.
Maru raised a hand.
“If I adapt well here, does that mean I can’t go back?”
No, the staff member answered. Adaptation support at Raon and choosing a future home were separate. Actual environmental safety still required appropriate explanation and review with the individual and guardian. Being good at moving along handrails did not replace a health assessment.
Maru put both feet on the floor. Darae did not write RELIEVED. She waited. The next question concerned whether a place for growing seeds also needed lights.
Seo smiled.
“Leaves and people don’t need the same light. We need to plan human sleeping and activity hours too.”
That assigned the seed owner no night-lighting duty. Adults would separately check living-space lighting and growing equipment. Maru leaned back after asking, without spending the whole meeting reading communications schedules.
Darae remembered the first rescue voyage, asking what people needed to use a delivered object. Then the urgency was another day in a less stifling room. Now the question covered sleeping, working and growing older. The time written beside the same cartridge had become much longer.
During the break, staff showed an existing daily-living training area. It was a place for actual exercise or medical assessment when those activities were separately arranged and guided by qualified staff. Merely being shown the room today did not begin either one. Today the residents could look at equipment and movement routes.
A man stopped at a low threshold. Accustomed to moving at handrail height, he found it late with his foot. Darae reached toward his arm; he caught the neighboring rail first.
“I’ve got it.”
She lowered her hand and stepped aside. Asking whether help was needed differed from catching everybody unfamiliar with a place. Staff increased the space between people so nobody hurried. After a moment, the man continued.
Haeseong stopped there too, looked down and laughed.
“The passage keeps getting under my feet here.”
Laughing, Darae noticed handprints above the doorway. People accustomed to Raon used those rails too. She wanted no story in which walking well here made one body normal and living at Sai made another wrong. They needed conditions for future life, not words ranking people’s bodies.
Back at the group session, the woman with the leaf container confirmed her relocation application. Please do not record today’s health explanation as what first frightened her into leaving.
“I didn’t want to return before this. I’m still checking work and living conditions here.”
Darae acknowledged it. Hearing the same explanation did not require everybody’s reasons to fit one kind. Haeseong’s restoration-review preference also remained. He clarified it himself: he wanted to know the possible environment, rather than promise an unconditional return.
Housing staff also added radiation and shielding conditions to the list requiring review for any future long-term living arrangement. Sound-looking outer panels on old construction modules could not authorize long-term residence. Records, actual configuration and observation conditions needed specialist examination. Beautiful sunlight through a window was no answer in that field.
Could thick water containers go against the walls? Seo said existing objects could enter the assessment, but arbitrary placement could not establish safety. Adding mass changed structural and towing plans. Drinking water also needed places for use and management.
Mujin briefly joined to explain transport. A drawing of a new ring did not increase current vessels’ fuel or certified docking equipment. Two nearby floating objects did not share motion because somebody wanted a connecting corridor.
His explanation was short. Darae felt it made the drawing’s gaps clearer. A home required more than enough rooms: labor and parts to protect people over time, daily support and actual transport routes.
Residents wrote their own requirements. One asked about traveling to work and medical appointments on the same day. Another wanted a separate quiet sleeping space. A guardian asked whom to approach when children’s support overlapped adult working hours.
Darae separated communal-facility requirements from private consultation points instead of posting every condition with a name. Knowing the size of somebody’s hoped-for home differed from reading their medical history.
A resident drew a small dining table in one corner. They had eaten together at Sai and wanted that place preserved. Another remembered securing luggage there. Neither memory had to be wrong: they described different arrangements at different times.
Darae asked when, leaving both accounts. More residents had meant folding the table away. Eventually blankets and parts shared the same wall. The drawing of the home had never been settled all at once.
“I’d like to unfold it again if we return.”
Housing staff recorded a living-space requirement. The position must leave ventilation and passages clear, let people secure their bodies and place their dishes. They could not merely add table area while pretending the available bed count stayed unchanged.
Darae remembered the first video showing twenty-three food containers. Each was somebody’s dinner. A table was somewhere to choose whom to eat it with. Correct airflow and fastening points could not explain every desire to go home. Precisely because that desire mattered, equipment conditions could not remain empty either.
She added the space needed to unfold the table. She scheduled no voyage to retrieve it. A remembered place did not require a promise nobody could keep.
Haeseong stopped while listing maintenance he could perform alone. He had consented to two hours’ explanation daily for three days. Talking about long-term operation did not extend those hours into daily standby.
“It makes me write this as if I have to be there forever.”
“We need conditions that work while you’re absent too,” Seo said.
Haeseong wrote RELIEF STAFF NOT YET CONFIRMED beside his name. No minor communications apprentice entered that blank. Staffing would need another review. A safe home could not rest on one person promising to report for work for life.
Near the end, Darae returned to the first layout. Conditions now surrounded the reference arrow. NO REOCCUPATION BEFORE VERIFICATION remained unchanged. The page was more crowded; the home seemed closer to the size of actual people.
Maru left early with the guardian, cupping the seed pouch instead of shaking it. The woman said she would await a photograph. New leaves did not come quickly, Maru answered. They shared one promise without a deadline.
Darae liked that. Today she could not promise when another person’s home would be repaired. People could still agree to wait for something to grow.
Before private consultations, an adult called her over. He had injured an arm while moving parts at Sai. He was not asking for a diagnosis. Where should he submit the work records if he later relocated?
Days registered as a worker differed from days sharing resident expenses. On some papers he appeared only as a work participant; in support information he became only an unregistered occupant. Neither had a field for living and working there over time.
Darae did not ask him to lift a sleeve and show the arm. She connected him with staff to check which relevant records he wanted to submit, somewhere the scope of health-information disclosure could be explained separately.
“Is there somewhere my injury belongs?”
She wanted to say yes before anything else. Surely one route could accept it. Yet the different forms support staff brought repeated NOT ELIGIBLE beneath the same name.
Darae wrote his chosen intake code on her contact sheet. Tomorrow welfare and insurance staff must answer in the same room. More desks to pass him onward would not help if none actually took him in.