Murase is the kind of man who takes packaging to an almost unreasonable extreme. Adjusting cushioning material to the nearest millimeter is the baseline. The tension on the securing straps, he recalibrates every time humidity shifts by a single percent.

Ten years at a space equipment transport company. The checklist runs to 401 items. Tonight, like every other night, he worked through all of them — up to item 400. Item 401 has always been different. Its label reads “Pre-Departure Confirmation (Optional),” and the example entry says simply: “May be omitted.” For ten years, Murase has omitted it. He’d never quite gotten around to asking the other packers what they do with it.

Tonight’s cargo was special. A space telescope — one that cost tens of billions of yen — would leave on a truck tomorrow morning, bound for the launch site. The whiteboard on the warehouse wall read: Today’s Shipment: 1 / NGRT-Telescope. He was the one scheduled to erase it in the morning.

The new hire, Nakata, had already gone home. Murase was alone in the warehouse.

He started gathering his things to leave, then found himself standing still.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk. In the back was an old notebook — left behind by his predecessor, Mimura, when the man retired. Inside, in the handwriting of packers going back years: Safe travels. Take care of yourself. All the best. Have a good journey. Short lines, scattered across a dozen pages. When Mimura handed it over, he’d said, “Do what you like with it.” Murase hadn’t opened it once in ten years. Tonight, somehow, was the first time he’d actually read it.

He walked back to the large wooden crate and stood in front of it for a moment.

Then the words just came out.

“Have a safe trip.”

Saying it out loud was more embarrassing than he’d expected. The sound rose to the warehouse ceiling and faded into silence.

He turned back to packing up his things. Behind him, the door opened.

“Oh — still here?”

Nakata. He’d forgotten his wallet, apparently; he was pulling it from his locker. He must have caught Murase’s voice, because there was a slightly odd look on his face.

”…Did you hear that?”

“Yeah,” Nakata said. “You said, ‘Have a safe trip,’ right?”

“Well. Tonight’s cargo is special,” Murase said.

“It really is.” Nakata started back toward the locker, then turned around. “Actually — I’ve wanted to do that ever since I started here. Mimura told me about it. But you never did it, so I figured I couldn’t say anything.”

Murase didn’t answer for a moment.

“I’m glad you went first,” Nakata said. He turned to face the crate, and in a clear voice said, “Have a safe trip.”

The transport company in this story is fictional, but the people who handle space equipment most carefully here on the ground — they’re real.