Before filling a blank, the new address asked when they would return.
Darae read the four modules' habitation conditions. No floor had appeared in that nonrotating home. Physical care and daily life differed from Raon's ring with its faint downward pressure. Residents needed actual examinations, rest and routes to other facilities.
It was morning in Raon's housing-choice consultation room, sixty-two days after temporary handover. A month of repairs and environmental verification had followed towing. Today's document was actual approval for residential and work spaces, specifying permitted people, numbers, operating and health conditions and interruption criteria.
On her property-duty days, Darae had received specialist replies. Structure, pressure-tightness, power, heat, ventilation, shielding, eating and sleeping spaces were checked individually. She had never promised a moving date merely because some of those individual tests had passed.
Forty-one days after handover, Raon's unused coolant circulation pump completed compatibility review and physical testing for the repair configuration. Staff opening protective packaging, inspection history and approved-voyage acceptance were recorded. Repacking was not installation. After transport, separate confirmation established specialist installation and system testing.
The sound candidate cartridge reassigned from maintenance-test use had not automatically followed that day. Separate inspections, outward handover, actual transport and installation followed. Function tests passed in the permitted configuration, including existing removal systems and backup response. Nobody repaired faulty 7-B or retrieved S-6's main cartridge.
Seo distinguished oxygen supply, carbon-dioxide removal, moisture and heat management for residents. One installed cartridge did not solve all life support. Essential supplies, backups, inspections and actual replacement staff were verified together. Future maintenance resources and supply responsibilities formed part of operational handover too.
One test failed fifty days after handover. Airflow behind a temporary sleeping-area partition did not meet plan. Normal pressure could not excuse that failure. Prescribed test loads stood in for people. Darae folded away the note in which a quiet bedroom photograph had reassured her too soon.
Specialists changed layout and ventilation routes, then repeated thermal and ventilation tests. Dining-space restraints and passage clearance changed too. Merely making room to unfold the table would not restore life. Conditions must hold when real belongings and people's time entered those rooms.
Sustained tests and abnormal-condition response followed. Actual staff tested power transfer, alarm receipt, adult duty through communications gaps, transport assistance and evacuation handovers. Equipment indicators connected to received human messages. Maru's name did not fill an empty roster.
Private health consultations stayed outside public meetings. Individuals received professional explanations of microgravity conditions, care, examinations and transport plans. No home suited everyone forever. Minors' living, education and guardian support received separate review, without dangerous work or excessive adaptation as conditions.
Four modules were approved for living and work within defined limits. One faulty module remained separately isolated and unoccupied; S-6 remained unsuitable for long-term residence. Four approved spaces did not restore all six original ones. Access and habitation permissions each retained their own scope.
Darae examined the formal-use address, different from the old temporary contact address. She tested whether searching it sent people to a cargo-owner field. The first search prioritized old L-204. Staff separated current-address guidance from preserved history and tested again.
The intake number still traced an object's past. Current personal mail had no reason to return to that faulty cartridge. A test notice reached the new operations desk; the receiving person answered. Today, registering letters and making letters deliverable had finally joined.
Housing consultations did not ask everyone to raise hands together. Each received final conditions, costs, support-ending scope, actual transport schedules and property rights. Incomplete offers were supplemented before choice. Even when the alternatives appeared on tables of equal size, nobody had to make their personal health or family circumstances public in order to choose.
The woman with the leaf container chose an offer at another station. Her earlier application now had actual space, living support, cost and job conditions and transport. She checked where her tree could stand and read work and housing terms separately. Must she keep the job forever to keep her home?
Staff explained contractual scope and support and consultation routes after changes. She compared the answer, then signed. The other earlier applicant chose a different offer. They were not bundled as departing people with one shared contact. Each had assigned receipt and transport-confirmation staff.
The injured resident now actually chose a home. Previously wanting information only, he selected another facility after checking his offered support, costs, treatment and transport conditions. Insurance and welfare intakes continued. Darae distinguished today's new decision from an application he had never made earlier.
Other residents completed individual explanations too. The original decision deadline did not apply unchanged where necessary information arrived late. No actual offer meant no abrupt cutoff of temporary support. Assigned staff continued consultation and living support until the last reply came.
Beside a guardian, Maru heard the option of remaining at Raon. All four minors, including Maru, and four adults sharing responsibility for their daily lives chose formal Raon accommodation. Offers confirmed educational links, protection and individual spaces. Children did not earn housing by taking technical duty.
“Does that mean we've lost the old home?” Maru asked.
Haeseong did not rush an answer. Staff explained that property and communal-asset rights continued under earlier agreements; choosing housing was not blanket abandonment. Maru asked about taking seeds to Raon's permitted growing area. The guardian joined the actual conditions check.
Haeseong chose the approved four-module residence route. Nine adults including him individually checked health and operational conditions and living plans before choosing it. Their representative did not write nine names for them. Qualified, consenting adult professionals shared shifts and maintenance; every resident would not work all night.
He checked that his earlier consent to two hours' explanation work daily for three days had not become a long-term maintenance contract. New duties received separate scope and conditions. Mujin and Safety handed over access, transport and emergency response; maintenance specialists handed over facility upkeep. Enthusiasm supplied no missing qualification.
Six adults altogether chose other facilities, including the leaf-container woman, the other original applicant and the injured resident. Eight chose Raon, nine the four modules: twenty-three in all. Nineteen adults and four minors still matched.
After confirming totals, Darae read individual copies too. A correct count could conceal one person entered twice and another missing. Each actual offer had to connect, one person at a time, to that person's received and confirmed final choice. Public notices omitted detailed health and present room numbers, retaining only the extent of completed choices.
The final individual reply arrived that afternoon. Everyone's long-term housing choice was complete; moves were not. Raon's eight confirmed transition schedules from temporary support to formal acceptance. The other facilities' six and four modules' nine checked approved transport and destination receiving staff separately.
Nobody lost a sleeping place before then. Support status would change when departure handover connected to actual destination receipt. Darae read who would give the next notice after delays. Choosing a home must not leave someone spending a night at the port.
Meanwhile, authorized recovery and actual cargo handovers had brought the woman's personal cooking support into Raon specialist custody. Today she checked its condition and received it. Her communal-counter contribution stayed separate under their agreement. Taking a small support did not surrender all rights in the large kitchen.
Maru wanted a new contact route. Through support staff, the woman provided a means she permitted: a route settled now. Could Maru send a seed-pouch photograph? She agreed. Darae did not put that address in her inventory's public field.
Haeseong's table photograph remained in his pouch. The actual table was inspected and secured to the approved four-module layout. He would take the picture there, without holding it out to demand other people return. Darae watched those staying and leaving receive the same property explanation in individual copies.
A recovery-fee correction follow-up arrived too. Relevant revised-billing review had been applied; payment staff recorded the portion of repayments actually received. Other follow-up and objection scopes remained separate. Money was not distributed wholesale as residents' moving costs, nor had expected refunds financed today's approval.
Jingyeong handled ordinary intake within restrictions on relevant independent approvals. Darae gave her the new-address postal guidance. She read its verified scope and formally connected it to current responsible staff. Correcting the past did not let Darae restore her authority; restrictions did not prohibit all remaining work.
S-6's main cartridge, installed temporary canister and unused sealed reserve remained preserved in their designated unoccupied positions. The faulty module stayed separate. Neither was somewhere to gain time by putting people inside again. Evidence preservation of 7-B, card and packaging continued. Readiness for a new home's door did not close old record boxes.
That evening, Darae checked the next worker's name. Housing and property-transfer follow-up questions had delayed her handover. Only after her colleague read actual receipts and the location sheet did she let go of the terminal. Seeing work through did not mean holding it alone forever.
Inside her own office drawer lay a small metal tag. One ring was bent; she had kept this personal object separately for a long time. She almost placed it on the shared lost-property counter, then stopped. She had read everyone's next address today. Her own old object still lay here.
At the doorway, Mujin asked whether her shift was over. Darae said she had completed handover and closed her hand around the tag. The homes twenty-three people had chosen now had real addresses and someone to receive arrivals. Now her turn had come to decide where one possession of her own belonged, and to hand this lost-and-found office over properly to the colleague who would take the next intake.