Part 3 of the written L-Gaim short story epilogue that was published in Animedia sometime in 1985. This is the final part.
Read Part 1 here:
https://translationmartyzone.blogspot.com/2026/03/good-bye-my-love-heavy-metal-l-gaim.html
Part 2:
https://translationmartyzone.blogspot.com/2026/03/good-bye-my-love-heavy-metal-l-gaim_17.html
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-Chapter 3-
Buzz.
At the sound of the machine's nozzle, Leccee reflexively jumped out of bed. She gave a wry smile at her own habit and stretched widely.
She was on a bed in one of Daba's rooms.
I still haven't completely shaken off my soldier habits. I can't exactly laugh at Daba like this, can I?
Leccee stretched again, then looked out the window where morning sunlight streamed in, surveying the land stretching out before her.
Operating the farming machine was Daba.
Beside him, scooping soil with her hands, was what appeared to be Olibee. Daba should have returned late last night. After the long conversation with Rey and Olibee ended, Leccee had slipped into this bed. Exhausted from the long journey and the excitement of reuniting with Daba, she had fallen into a deep sleep immediately and hadn't known of Daba's return.
An hour later, Leccee stood beside Daba at work.
Without wiping the sweat streaming down his face, he mixed the soil with a milky-white chemical, ran it through the analyzer attached to the farming machine, and then, with a serious expression, entered the data into the computer.
The grime on the computer spoke volumes about the tens of thousands of times he must have repeated this simple yet mind-numbing task over the past five years.
"You see, Myroad..."
Rey's words from last night came back to her.
"You see, Myroad has become something like an advisor to the villagers now, like today... but when he first came back here, he went through a period where he was completely lost. Maybe it was because he was finally released from the tension of so many years of fighting. Even though he had that sense of mission to restore Olibee's consciousness... he was losing his confidence."
"I thought Daba had a superhuman spirit."
It was when Leccee asked Rey about her puzzlement over why Daba focused so much on soil improvement, despite the fact that fresh produce manufacturing relied on established artificial solar systems in each district, eliminating the need to plow the land.
"I wonder how many times the whole village has asked the same question you did. Yet it seems Myroad couldn't find the right words to answer it."
"He's not good with words," Leccee said, recalling how he'd always frown in frustration while trying to explain things to her and Amu.
Daba's soil improvement efforts were met with the village's cold stares and uncooperative responses.
Certainly, using Daba Myroad's name as the hero who led Pentagona to liberation could have forced cooperation, but Daba disliked that.
And amid the mockery of futile effort and the whispers that he'd lost his edge in battle, even Daba nearly lost his confidence.
"But what saved him was that single flower growing in the stone wall Olibee planted. That gave him the certainty that his instinct to bring Olibee back here from Gastogal wasn't wrong."
"..."
"Do you know how a mother holds her baby?"
"Huh? Well..."
Leccee stammered, flustered by the sudden question.
"She rests the head on her left arm. That way, the heartbeat reaches the baby... That rhythm becomes a message from the mother. The baby can fall asleep feeling safe... Tomorrow, watch Myroad at work. I think you'll understand what I mean. You didn't come all this way to meet him just for a vacation, did you...?"
As if reading Leccee's mind, Rey gently smiled at her while mimicking the act of cradling a baby.
Daba loves the soil, she thought.
And she remembered how she, too, felt a sense of nostalgia for this earthy scent. She finally felt like she understood why Daba had said he would take Olibee, who had lost her memories due to the bio-sensor, back to Koam.
This smell of soil is the scent of humans. The earth itself is the mother of all people.
By letting Olibee, corrupted by the machine, keep smelling it, Daba must be trying to restore her human heart.
He probably thought of this because he himself grew up smelling the earth's scent.
"Ah..." A sigh escaped her involuntarily.
What a wonderful person Daba was, sensing the greatness of the earth that people had forgotten. Thinking this, she felt ashamed of her own jealousy toward Olibee.
"Gablae, you see..."
Daba suddenly spoke up, perhaps apologetically for having been so absorbed in his work he'd neglected his visitor from afar.
"Gablae, you see, keeps finding excuses to stop by here. He doesn't say anything, but I suppose he's concerned about Olibee."
"That reminds me, he became an autonomous official in Koam, didn't he... Having returned to his hometown in glory, he must be feeling pretty smug."
Even during this conversation, villagers passing by invariably called out to Daba. Some even offered to help, and Daba struggled to decline.
"It's nice of them to offer... but the invitations to the feast afterward come back tenfold," he said with a delightful smile.
That smile shone with the confidence of a man who had found a new purpose in life, different from the toughness he'd shown on the battlefield. He was a man who had grown even more mentally mature than he had been five years ago.
Daba had fully integrated into the village.
Not as the hero who liberated Pentagona, but as a reliable man whom the entire village needed. It was also a sign of the great man Pentagona would soon need.
During Leccee's stay, villagers came constantly seeking Daba's advice, and she lost her chance to confide her feelings.
Yet Leccee was satisfied.
Daba's actions helped her understand that people walk their own paths. The passage of time would separate the youngsters, but that too was a sign of growth.
I can take pride in having loved this man for a time.
Her hesitation had vanished without her noticing. She, who had abandoned her clan for Daba, would now return to her clan because of Daba. That too, she thought, was life.
"Leccee..."
Daba, who had come to see her off, spoke as they waited for the return bus.
"I can't do any more for you... but don't do anything you'll regret."
Unexpected words left Leccee speechless.
Unable to bear it, Leccee threw herself into the bulky chest of the beloved one she would likely never see again.
"Good-bye... my love..."
Her whisper was drowned out by the sound of the approaching bus's nozzle.
It was the end of Leccee's love.
(The End)
