In Two Clusters, death was often a choice rather than inevitability.
That was primarily due to a fact that humans lived more than four hundred years on average. Thanks to technologies and DNA modifications over thousands of years, humans evolved to become nearly immortals.
The problem, however, was spiritual integrity. In other words, human minds weren’t built to last hundreds of years without going insane. Another side effect of such longevity was what was referred as “Brain shutdown”. The case was that a person’s brain would seize to function at one point with little warnings prior. This almost always ( 99.9% ) occurred when a person was over 400 years old.
More than half of death was suicide. Socially active people had much higher tendency to commit suicide than solitary people.
In Two Clusters, solitary people (introverts) were favored for all careers related to being in space. This was mainly because of the fact that those who worked in space would have to remain in solitary for weeks if not months to years, and socially active people had a strong tendency to go mentally ill if left in solitary for such a long period.
Personality tests were performed on applicants who wanted active duties in space.
Social people had their places but they were disadvantaged and restricted for jobs in space.
Due to ESP’s stronger and more complex spiritual integrity, ESPs lived far longer than average humans. It was fairly easy for ESPs live up to a thousand years. When an ESP feels his time has come, such an ESP would generally withdraw from the society to die in solitary.
Hyper humans generally had less strong and complex spiritual integrity but they were still better than average Joe. With few exceptions, average age for hyper humans were generally six hundred years mark.
The White Knight (Juun) and the Black Knight (Eran Gro) lived well past six hundred years mark. In fact, both of them lived well past a thousand years of age. This was due to them having the perfect mind (AKA good insanity).
It was fairly common for couples to never have children. And there was no firm culturally accepted marriage age. Some would marry by 20s. Some would marry by 70s. It was all over the scale, and there wasn’t really what could be called an average marriage age.
Due to humans living for hundreds of years, it was fairly common for them to have gone through numerous marriages as well.
Even though not a lot of couples chose to have children, population growth in Two Clusters was steadily on rise. This was because of a certain amount of women who preferred having children with donated sperm.
Women’s ovaries did not stop producing eggs even with aging in Two Clusters and with their hundreds of years of lifespan, it was possible for a single woman to give birth of tens of children with ease. Some women found their goal of life in raising children and this trend offsetted the negative impact of childless couples.
Divorce rate was fairly high among ordinary citizens, but in clans, a divorce wasn’t usually an option because a divorce required a clan approval.
Also divorce rate varied greatly among planets. Poorer planets had significantly less divorces. And divorce rate for clan was almost nil.
Despite being able to live hundreds of years, average humans aged. Age below a hundred year-old was considered young. Middle-age was between 100 to 300. Age above 300 was considered fairly old for average Joe.
Average humans slowly aged and by 400 years old, they had an appearance of people in 40s in our own time.
As for ESPs, physical aging was a choice. Most ESPs remained young until death. But few chose to have different appearances. Masu was a good example who choose to have a grandfather appearance.
Hyper humans aged physically but at a slower rate than average Joe. Unlike ESPs, however, aging was inevitable for them.