Darae looked for somewhere to return the object bearing her own name.
Her shift at Office 4 was over. The little metal tag lay across her palm, one ring bent, shallow scratches running through Yeon Darae. She considered the empty intake rest, then put it into her pocket. Nobody else had lost it.
Mujin waited outside. Instead of asking again whether she had finished, he glanced at the tag. Darae explained that it had belonged on her personal tool bag when she began her first regular job. After the ring bent, she had kept it in a drawer, meaning to deal with it later.
“Have you found the owner?”
She looked at him as though he had just arrived at her counter. Then she laughed. The owner had been putting things off.
He offered no emergency repair. It was not station equipment; there was no reason to slip her private object into a maintenance duty queue. Before finding a sound ring, she needed to find some time that was actually hers.
They crossed from the axial cargo section into the rotating habitation ring. As faint pressure returned beneath Darae's feet, a corner pressed her hand. Microgravity had never made sharp metal less sharp. She moved it into an appropriate personal protective pouch.
In the dining room, Mujin chose a hot meal. Darae reached for tomorrow's training sheet, stopped, and closed her bag. Today's handover was complete. Tomorrow's adult colleague had an assigned training time. Opening one more document now would only let the food grow cold again.
She could not remember whether the tag's worn fastening had originally been black.
“Do you need to know before you can use it?” Mujin asked.
No, she admitted, and ate. She did not need an object's entire past before giving it a present place.
Training began on schedule the next morning, sixty-three days after the residents' temporary handover. Sodam had worked at another cargo desk. Darae almost began explaining everything to a complete beginner, then asked what her colleague had handled before.
Sodam wanted to understand preservation extensions more than returns. Where did a decision not to send something go, and who took responsibility next? Darae took her into storage. Sodam compared the seals on 7-B, its original card and packaging with her own records.
The first thirty-six hours had not restarted. Beside the unchanged seals, Sodam found why the objects must stay, who answered for them, and where the next decision would go. She read those entries against the cabinet before asking another question. Would relocation completion clear the faulty cartridge too? Sodam asked. Darae explained that residents' moves and treatment of designated evidence required different decisions.
A practice search brought up L-204. Sodam began following that history for a present-address inquiry, then stopped. Looking for a cargo object's past and finding someone's current mail route were different questions. She opened the designated address desk herself and read its receiving arrangements.
Darae folded her hands. Pointing to each button would make the demonstration faster. Her fingers, however, would not be here next shift. Sodam explained housing choices, actual departures and confirmed arrivals separately. Only then did they continue.
The twenty-three personal pouches at Raon were being used: belongings taken out, then secured again. They were not all aboard one cargo flight. Sodam found the separate outward-handover and personal-receipt checks for each planned voyage. A scheduled departure acquired no completed-arrival mark.
“Do we delete this when everyone has moved?”
They would follow relevant retention and treatment rules with the responsible staff, Darae said. Finding homes gave them no reason to collect private working copies forever. Nor could either clerk discard related evidence on personal judgment. Keeping less and throwing away carelessly were different actions.
Their next exercise was an actual intake: an empty drinks container with a securing handle, found outside the wash area. Sodam asked about its contents, safety and discovery before touching the lid. When the finder suggested that a name might be inside, she checked the applicable opening procedure.
Darae let her. A small container was not a training prop simply because they could return it quickly. Someone owned it. After permitted exterior identification and intake, contact went out. The owner had not answered when Sodam asked whether she could continue other work.
“Once designated storage and the next responsible person have actually received it.”
Standing in front of a container until a call arrived was not another level of responsibility.
Haeseong's moving-preparation inquiry came next. Could a representative receive nine people's pouches together? Sodam asked. Darae opened the existing mandate. Communal management, individual-property receipt and actual boarding belonged on separate lines. Haeseong had not requested everyone's possessions; he was asking about his own preparations.
Departure staff explained the planned voyages and the person-and-cargo checks still needed. Nine adults were preparing for the four modules. Four adults and four minors would remain at Raon; six adults had other destinations. Darae asked Sodam to find each route's current state instead of merely repeating twenty-three.
Sodam mixed up three S-6 entries: the main cartridge, installed temporary canister and unused sealed reserve. Sharing a module did not mean sharing a use state. She compared her misplaced entry against the originals and corrected it. Darae waited for the explanation, not a memorized answer.
The pump and candidate cartridge prompted another question. Sodam had opened an old Raon-storage reply before their later transport and installation history. They now served the four modules' permitted systems. Darae saw that the route from old stock information to current configuration was less clear than she had thought.
She did not tell Sodam to remember harder. With the current responsible staff, they improved the search guidance. Sodam closed the screen and began again, finding the answer without a finger pointing beside hers. Only then could training completion carry their names.
At lunchtime, Sodam started suggesting one more practice run, looked at the roster and handed over to the next worker. Eagerness did not need to eat lunch as well. Darae felt awkward protecting in someone else the break she herself kept postponing.
Over food, she asked what had looked most different. Sodam said a question about a person's address seemed to produce an old cargo number first. Darae wondered whether her own familiarity with that oddity was the older thing needing attention.
They changed places in the afternoon. Sodam handled intake; Darae stayed within her assigned review role. The container's owner called, asking whether someone else could collect it. Sodam explained the identification and authorization procedure. Knowing a name was not enough to take an object away.
The owner chose to come personally later. Sodam explained collection hours, storage and the contact route after shift change. She did not demand an immediate visit to finish the exercise. Darae could recognize good work while the container was still on its shelf.
An inquiry concerned Haeseong's table photograph. The original was in his personal pouch; only a permitted copy served relevant work. Someone suggested attaching it to new-address mail for recognition. Sodam checked necessity and permission. A working address had not created permission to publish a photograph.
Hearing her colleague ask a familiar question in her own words, Darae almost marked training finished. She waited instead for actual shift handover. Sodam passed the storage details, pending collection and movement inquiries to the next worker, who found them on another screen and confirmed receipt.
At closing time, Darae remembered another question. Sodam asked whether it concerned safety now or a later training session. It was a search exception that might someday confuse someone. Current follow-up had an owner. Darae looked down at the paper and heard her own answer.
“Next time.”
Sodam completed the cupboard check, distinguishing what she could undertake under her name from what she must ask. Darae did not ask from the doorway whether work had finished. She had just heard her colleague answer that herself.
During personal time, she visited the communal household-repair bench. An assigned worker examined her tag without calling it an urgent office repair. Straightening the old ring forcibly might break it. Restoring the original shape and carrying it safely were separate possibilities.
Darae chose a protective sleeve instead of reusing the bent ring. Secured in the designated inner pocket of her own bag, its corner would stay covered. The lettering and scratches remained. It would not shine like new, but neither would it need the drawer again.
She began preparing a long explanation for Mujin, then abandoned it. Nobody required proof of what the tag meant. Her first job's nameplate could travel in her present bag. Returning something to its place did not always mean returning it to the first one.
Sodam's brief work reply arrived: the container's owner had actually collected it, identification and receipt connected. Darae did not return to see the empty shelf. Someone already responsible had confirmed it under her own name. She switched off the screen and touched her protected tag.
Mujin was preparing another voyage and did not come to the dining room that evening. She did not summon him to inspect her repair. Their rosters differed. She left herself the option of a personal message and walked toward her quarters without treating a solitary corridor as abandonment.
Tomorrow's preparation list included actual delivery of residents' mail. The new address had passed its search test. Now someone must receive and read what traveled there. Departure, arrival and receipt had real assigned routes; none required Darae to witness every step herself.
She secured her bag, her own name safe inside it. Then she remembered the waiting envelope. The address worked. Haeseong had chosen his home. But until his arrival had been confirmed, where, exactly, could they deliver his letter?